Rage and Ruin | 2

1 | 4

D E L P H I N I U M

      The sunlight hurt my eyes as we transitioned from inside the dark building to outside of it. I had to hold them closed for a few seconds before my eyes could even handle the brightness.

      The car we'd kidnapped the Romanian President in wasn't in the parking lot; he'd already left. Between Arlo's erratic and unsettling behavior, Jake's chilly presence, and my threatening commands, I doubted he could have gotten out of there fast enough.

      Because the car we'd rented was still at the airport, we had to walk all the way back. It wasn't too long of a trek, only about two miles. But it was time being wasted that we could be spending getting back to Hunt and the counsel.

      Now it hardly mattered that they hadn't trusted me before. They'd have to believe that Imperium was back if it was on the word of the President of Romania. It had hurt that they hadn't taken me seriously, but at least they would now.

As we walked, Arlo came up beside me and matched my pace. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. None of us had been expecting the things he'd done in front of the President, especially not what he'd revealed about his past life.

I turned the idea over in my head: Arlo being a science experiment from an young infant. He'd never seen the light of day until he was eighteen. Did that mean that he'd only been let out of the laboratory he'd been imprisoned in after the ONNT found him there? I'd always known that several of the crew members had pasts equally as traumatic and dark as mine, but I'd never known that Arlo was one of them.

He always had exhibited erratic and strange behavior. It was mostly just harmless, but it made me wonder how dangerous he could be if he tried. Arlo hadn't even touched the Romanian President and the man had still been shaking with fear when we let him go. What would he do if he had actually wanted to hurt someone?

It had to do things to the mind, being trapped in a science lab your whole life and being tested on, day after day. I was afraid to wonder how much Arlo's mind had been damaged from it.

Whether he wanted to be or not, he was still a potential threat.

"Oh, Delphinium, here," Arlo said suddenly from next to me and tossed the knife I'd lent him in the air to me. I jumped slightly when he spoke, having just been going over his capacity for danger. "I warmed it up for your next use."

But I stopped it midair and let it hang, levitating above my open palm. "What?" Arlo asked, meeting my flat stare. "I didn't even get that much blood on it."

"You defiled the blade with your saliva."

He frowned. "Does it matter? It helped scare the shit out of the President. Isn't that's what's important in the long run?"

Maintaining eye contact with him the entire time, I slowly wiped the knife off on my sleeve. "You know," he continued on, trying to assuage me, "I didn't even stab the President with it. The only blood on there is my own."

      I looked down at my beloved knife. "That doesn't exactly make matters better."

Jaxon clapped Arlo on the back. "That was crazy. You didn't even have to touch the man and he was scrambling to get away from you."

"Thank you," Arlo replied to Jaxon and gave me a dry look. "At least someone appreciates me."

"Yeah, but Arlo..." Riley trailed off for a moment. "Was what you said true?"

"I said many things in there, you're going to need to be more specific."

"All the things about being in a lab...and, you know, being tested on..."