Vengeful Bonds S3 - Ch. 13 - Fen (Patreon)

Unbeta'd/Unedited

Fen was already on edge when it happened.

He’d been pacing, frantic, waiting for the others to return. He’d been reeling since San’s call. Ollie and Deke’s baby somehow tied to Deke’s health... Deke’s emotions? Hearst claiming it could be the same with Seth’s babies too? Using that to further tie the pack to Veritas. 

It was all too much.

Why couldn’t they just have some peace?

Loch had given up on trying to calm him down. He and Binnie had escaped to the kitchen—probably to have a beer and avoid the nervous energy chewing through the alpha pheromones the two had tried to use to soothe him.

Part of him felt guilty.

They were trying to help.

But omega or not, when he was this worked up, he didn’t want to be...tricked into thinking things were fine when they weren’t. He needed to ruminate. He needed to worry. He needed to feel every ugly, uncomfortable emotion instead of having it smoothed over with pheromones and good intentions. Not unless he asked for it. 

The ding of an incoming email didn’t slow his pacing, but he pulled his phone free, half-hoping for a distraction. Anything to keep his mind from spiraling deeper than it already was. Then he saw the email address. And stopped cold.

j.fletcher@cerberus-sec.com

For a second, his brain refused to process what he was seeing. The world seemed to tilt beneath his feet. His pulse stuttered. Every sound in the room faded beneath the sudden roar of blood in his ears. 

Was this some kind of sick joke? An error? A hallucination? He blinked. Looked again. The email address didn't change.

Josh.

His brother's email. The one nobody should have been using. The one that should have been deactivated over a year ago. He didn’t know what sound he made, but it must have been sharp enough to carry through the house because Loch was suddenly at his side.

“What’s wrong, Sunshine?” Loch asked, wrapping an arm around him. “Fenny? Baby?”

“What’s wrong?” Binnie called from the kitchen.

Fen wasn’t listening. His eyes remained locked on the screen. A rush of adrenaline tore through his system, making his skin instantly damp.

“What the fuck,” Fen muttered.

His voice sounded distant. Wrong. “What the fuck?”

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Binnie asked again, closer now.

He heard Loch say, “I don’t know. He won’t answer me.”

“His heart rate’s through the roof. I can hear it from here.”

“I know,” Loch said. “Fenny, baby, please. Are you hurt?”

The fear creeping into Loch’s voice finally broke through the haze.

“Josh,” Fen whispered.

Just his name was enough to suck the air from the room. Like he’d summoned a ghost. Or maybe the ghost had summoned him.

“What?” Loch asked carefully. “You’re not making sense. What about Josh?”

An almost maniacal giggle escaped before Fen could stop it. “He...emailed me again.”

The words sounded ridiculous the moment they left his mouth. Faint. Breathless. Unhinged. Maybe he was losing it. There was a funny sort of irony in his brother somehow finding another way to contact him from beyond the grave. Fen had spent years trying to get Josh to answer his messages. Now that he was dead, Josh apparently wouldn't leave him alone.

The hysterical laughter threatening to bubble out of him scared Fen almost as much as the email itself.

Binnie crowded against his other side. “Fenny, baby,” he said softly. “You’re not making any sense. What’s happening?”

He usually found the heat of their bodies soothing, but at the moment, it felt oppressive. Offensive, almost. He couldn’t shake off the full-body chill racking through him, like someone wasn’t just walking on his grave but dancing on it.

Grave.

Graves.

Cemeteries.

Headstones.

Death.

Dead.

Josh was dead.

Josh was dead, and yet he was emailing him.

The giggle escaped again, followed by a sob as he shook off the two alphas currently witnessing him unravel. He couldn’t speak. His throat had closed completely. He just held the phone out far enough for them to read the email address.

Loch went still. “That’s not possible.”

“No,” Binnie agreed softly.

Loch plucked the phone from Fen’s lax fingers.

It was like he’d untethered him from a weight holding him down. Fen instantly did another lap around the living room. He could hear the two of them discussing it. Discussing him like he wasn’t there. Discussing Josh. But it was all just white noise.

It felt like his brother was standing in the corner behind a pane of glass. There, but not. Visible, but untouchable. Close enough to haunt him. Too far away to save.

He tuned back in just in time to hear Binnie say in a harsh whisper, “They would have deactivated that email when—”

“—he died,” Fen said sharply.

The word hit him like a punch to the chest.

Dead.

Buried.

Gone.

He’d never even gotten to say goodbye properly. Josh had been so close to coming home, then oops, sorry. We accidentally blew up your brother in a training exercise or whatever bullshit excuse they’d given. Happens all the time. Nothing to see here.

Just another dead soldier. Another folded flag. Another family expected to be grateful for the scraps of a story they were handed.

Fen had the irrational urge to scream. To scream and cry and stomp his feet. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He hadn’t reacted this strongly to the news that Josh was dead all those months ago. But now it felt like he was literally unraveling and Cerberus—Dresden—was pulling the thread.

His limbs were suddenly heavy, distant, like they belonged to someone else.

“This has to be some kind of joke,” Fen said under his breath, like if he said it enough times, he would believe it.

“If it is,” Binnie said, “it’s not funny.”

Fen took the phone back and wandered toward the couch on unsteady legs. He barely remembered sitting down. The sender still said Josh. The same name. The same email. The same account that had gone silent several days before his brother died. Not after. Before.

His fingers trembled as he opened the message. His stomach churned violently, acid bubbling into his throat. “It’s a video file.”

Binnie and Loch immediately flanked him on the sofa, crowding close enough that he could feel their body heat once more.

But now he welcomed it. He felt so cold. His body cored out, hollowed and filled with ice.

“Play it,” Loch said, like he was psyching himself up for whatever came next.

“What if it’s a virus?” Binnie asked. “A setup?”

Fen looked at him with dull eyes but didn’t say anything.

Binnie shook his head. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. Play it.”

Fen hit play and turned the phone sideways. 

The footage began. Security camera footage. A concrete room. Two rows of benches pressed against opposite walls. The timestamp in the corner was grainy and difficult to read.

“Is that Cerberus?” Binnie asked.

Loch flinched beside him. “It looks like it. Headquarters.”

Several men in uniform entered the room and sat down. Nothing about them seemed unusual. They weren’t laughing, but they looked relaxed. Comfortable. Like they were waiting for a briefing. Or a medical exam.

They began removing their jackets, stripping down to t-shirts and rolling up their sleeves. Preparing. Waiting their turn. Willing participants in whatever came next?

The picture changed.

This wasn’t security footage. The image was clearer. Color. The camera appeared to be positioned behind a pane of glass. Observation footage. There was no sound. A man sat restrained in a metal chair. 

Fen didn’t recognize him. 

He was a bear of a man, tall and muscular, so large the chair could barely contain him. Shirtless, but still wearing fatigues and lace-up boots. Another man entered carrying a syringe. There was nothing particularly frightening about it. It wasn’t horror-movie big or filled with glowing green liquid. It looked ordinary. Clinical. The kind of injection soldiers probably received all the time.

Except they didn’t restrain people for vaccinations.

“Why is he tied up?” Fen whispered.

The soldier wasn’t fighting. He actually smiled. Laughed like he was trading jokes with the man in the lab coat. He looked comfortable enough that Fen briefly wondered if the restraints were standard procedure. The man administered the injection. The soldier appeared to take it willingly...like the others?

The footage continued. Ten seconds. Thirty. A minute. Nothing happened. Then the soldier froze. 

Every muscle in Fen’s body locked. 

The man's smile vanished. His head jerked backward. His entire body seized. His jaw clenched so hard Fen thought he might shatter his own teeth in sympathy. Veins bulged beneath his skin. Blood spilled from his nose. Then more. Too much blood. It streamed down his mouth and throat. His body arched violently against the restraints. The chair rattled.

Even without sound, Fen could hear it. Could almost hear the metal screaming.

“Jesus Christ,” Binnie breathed.

The soldier convulsed one final time. Then he simply...went limp.

One second he was fighting. The next he looked like a puppet with its strings cut. The room beyond the glass remained eerily calm. Nobody rushed in. Nobody looked surprised. Nobody even seemed concerned. As if they had seen it happen before. As if they had expected it.

The man in the white coat looked at him with a mixture of resignation and disgust. Not horror. Not shock. Resignation. Like he'd just watched an experiment fail. Like the man in the chair wasn't a person at all. Just another disappointing day at the office.

Two men came in, unstrapped the soldier, and hauled him away like yesterday’s garbage.

Fen swallowed hard. The film glitched. 

Then the scene began again.

A different soldier. A different man in a lab coat. Same chair. Same restraints. Same injection? Fen felt something cold settle in his stomach. The first soldier hadn't been an accident. This wasn't a one-off. This was a process. This soldier was more reserved. Nervous, even. His knee bounced once before he forced it still. 

He wasn’t as big and strapping as the previous soldier. If anything, he was thin. Reedy. Not even a swimmer’s build. Just...small. Ordinary. Like whoever was choosing them didn't care what happened to them afterward. If Fen had been forced to guess he would have said the first soldier was an alpha, but this one was a beta. But it would only be a guess.

The injection was given. This time, nothing dramatic appeared to happen. If anything, it was like watching someone get a shot of adrenaline. His eyes went wide. He laughed like he was experiencing a rush of pure joy. His muscles strained. Then bulged. Not comically so. Not enough to look fake. Just enough to look wrong. Like someone had taken the existing framework of his body and quietly turned every dial up.

Then the straps on the chair snapped.

Fen flinched. 

The soldier didn’t hulk out or start throwing things. He just sat there, chest heaving, staring down at the broken restraints. Almost reverently. Like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. Like he was delighted by it. Strangely, the man in the lab coat seemed pleased as well. Not relieved. Pleased.

The scene changed again.

More security footage. That same soldier stood in what looked like a warehouse turned gym. Men in lab coats and military uniforms spectated as he picked up heavier and heavier items like they were at some grotesque carnival sideshow. A barbell with several plates. Then more plates. Then the entire rack of weights. Impossibly heavy. Not impressive. Wrong. So wrong it felt almost comical. Like one of those candid-camera moments where someone was waiting to jump out and reveal the trick.

But nobody was laughing. They were nodding. Scribbling on clipboards. Clapping each other on the back. Proud of...whatever this was. Like they'd just solved a problem.

“What the fuck are we watching?” Binnie muttered.

“Dresden’s experiments?” Loch posited.

The screen flashed.

More security footage.

Fen gasped, his fingers going so numb he almost dropped the phone.

A prison cell. The soldier inside sat on the floor facing away from the camera. Not the same soldier. Not either of the soldiers. But familiar. The recognition hit somewhere deep and primitive. Not a thought. Not a memory. An instinct. It pinged something in Fen’s lizard brain, sending an icy finger of unease slithering down his spine.

For a moment, nothing happened.

The soldier had one leg extended, the other knee drawn to his chest. He seemed bored. Or maybe sleeping. Then he dropped the other leg out in front of him, another broken doll someone had carelessly discarded in the corner.

Then he rolled his left shoulder.

Fen froze.

The soldier stood with an almost inhuman fluidity.

Fen’s breath caught.

Something about that movement. Something about the way he carried himself.

The footage was grainy. Unnecessarily so. Like someone had degraded the image on purpose. Like they wanted him to almost see. Almost know. Almost understand. 

Fen narrowed his eyes and leaned closer.

The man paced the narrow cell in camo pants and a t-shirt, growing more agitated with every second.

“Look at the camera,” Fen whispered.

It was an exercise in futility. Every time Fen thought they might catch even a glimpse of the man's face, he changed direction.

Look at the camera.

Look at the camera.

Look at the camera.

Please.

His pulse hammered harder. Something deep inside him was already screaming. But it didn’t happen. The man in the cell grew increasingly agitated, shoulders heaving, muscles twitching beneath his shirt. He punched the wall once. Then again. And again.

Every impact sent a jolt through Fen.

The wall wasn't cracking. It was coming apart. Every time his fist struck the bricks, larger pieces gave way. Dust plumed into the air. Chunks of concrete scattered across the floor. The destruction felt effortless. Casual. Like the wall was made of cardboard instead of concrete. Fen held his breath until his lungs burned.

Without realizing it, he'd gripped Loch's arm hard enough that his fingers ached.

Men in uniform appeared. Five. Then six. They grabbed him, tried to drag him down. He took all of it, shaking them off like gnats. More men rushed in. It took ten of them in all to restrain him, and one man in a lab coat to sedate him. The soldier hit the concrete floor hard. The men stepped back. For one terrible second, the cell went still. Then the man on the floor lifted his head. His face was partially visible to the camera.

Fen’s entire body went cold.

“Josh?”

The video ended before his full face came into view.

Fen couldn’t move. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His insides trembled, his heart racing so fast it felt like one continuous beat. 

“That was Josh,” he whispered.

“Fenny,” Binnie said carefully. “Someone is fucking with you. With us. Josh is dead.”

“That was Josh,” Fen cried. “Look.”

He restarted the video with clumsy fingers, dragging the progress bar back to the last scene.

“Look at the way he rolls his shoulder. The way he walks. That’s Josh. You know I’m right. You spent more time with him than I did. You know I’m right. You know it.”

“It could be old footage,” Loch said, using his most soothing tone.

Fen shook his head hard enough to make the room tilt.

“No.” He stabbed his finger against the upper left corner of the screen. “Look at the date. That was six months ago.”

Silence crashed down around them. Six months. Josh had been dead for over a year. Dead men didn’t pace prison cells. Dead men didn’t break concrete walls with their bare hands. Dead men didn’t lift their heads like they’d heard their brother calling from the other side of a screen.

“I think someone’s fucking with you, sunshine,” Loch said, though his voice had lost some of its certainty. “I think Dresden is fucking with you.”

“But why?” Fen asked. “Why would he? Why would making me think Josh is alive help him in any way? Especially after going through all the trouble to make me—make us—think he’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” Loch said. “That’s why we need to be very careful.”

“Careful?” Fen echoed.

His voice sounded wrong. Too loud. Too sharp. Edging on hysteria. Like it belonged to someone else. “Josh is alive!”

“We don’t know that,” Loch said. “Baby, you need to take a beat. Please.”

A wave of calm washed over him. Loch. Trying to soothe him. Trying to drag him back from the edge. Again. Normally one touch from Loch could quiet the noise in his head. Not this time. The calm hit something raw and broken inside him and simply slid off.

“Don’t you dare try to dose me right now,” he snapped.

“Fenny, you’re hyperventilating,” Binnie said, voice laced with concern. “We’re trying to help you.”

Fen sucked in a breath. Then another. Neither felt like enough. The room suddenly seemed too small. Too hot. His skin felt tight. His chest hurt.

“I promise we will get to the bottom of this, but you need to breathe,” Loch said.

Josh.

The date on the footage. The shoulder roll. The way he moved. The almost-face. The almost-proof. It all slammed into him at once, too much information trying to force its way through too small a space. Fen pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum.

His heart wouldn’t slow down. His lungs wouldn’t open. His skin wouldn’t stop crawling.

“He was right there,” Fen whispered. “He was right there, and the video cut off. Why would it cut off there unless whoever sent it wanted me to know?”

“Or wanted you to spiral,” Loch said gently.

Fen looked at him. The words should have made sense. They probably did make sense. But all he heard was ‘Josh is dead’.

Josh is dead.

Josh is dead.

And beneath that, louder, uglier, more desperate—What if he isn’t?

The date on the footage. The way he’d rolled his shoulder. The way he’d moved. The shape of his jaw. Josh. It was Josh. It was Josh. It was. It was him. Fen pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“I have a headache,” he muttered.

The pain had appeared out of nowhere. A sharp pressure behind his eyes. A throbbing ache at the base of his skull. The harder he tried to think, the worse it became. His pulse hammered against his temples. Every heartbeat felt like someone driving a nail deeper into his skull.

“Fenny—”

“No.”

He stood too fast. The room lurched violently. Binnie immediately caught his arm before he could stumble.

“No,” Fen repeated, shaking his head. “No. I know what I saw.”

“Baby—” Loch tried again.

“That was him.”

His voice cracked. “I know it was him.”

The words hung in the air. Dangerous. Impossible. Nobody answered. Because they had all seen it. Maybe not enough to be certain. But enough to doubt. And doubt was almost worse.

Fen looked down at the phone still clutched in his hand. The email sat there waiting for him. Josh’s name staring back from the screen. A dead man’s email. A dead man’s video. A dead man moving around inside a prison cell six months after he was supposed to be dead.

His stomach twisted violently. “What if I’m not crazy?” he whispered.

Neither Loch nor Binnie answered. For the first time since the email arrived, neither of them tried to tell him he was wrong. Neither of them said Josh is dead. Neither of them said that's impossible. And somehow that terrified him more than anything.

The beep of the door code made Fen jerk his head toward the entryway. The sudden sound felt deafening. Like he'd been underwater and someone had ripped him back to the surface.

“We’re home,” San called.

The five missing pack members entered the room. Then stopped short. Whatever they’d expected to walk into, it clearly wasn’t this.

Saint frowned. “Who died?”

The question hit Fen like a slap.

A short, broken laugh escaped him.

Binnie looked equally horrified and exhausted. “Funny you should say that,” he said, his tone suggesting it wasn't funny at all.

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t about the drama at Veritas?” Seth asked, one hand resting unconsciously over his still-mostly-flat stomach.

“We’ll see your Veritas drama and raise you our Cerberus drama,” Binnie said grimly.

He gently pried the phone from Fen’s hands. Fen let him. At some point he'd stopped trusting his own grip. Stopped trusting himself not to drop it. Or throw it. Or stare at it until he lost his mind.

Binnie handed the phone to Ollie. “What do you make of this?”

“What is this?” Ollie asked.

Fen watched the exact moment he saw the sender. Ollie exhaled sharply. The color drained from his face.

“What?” Seth asked immediately. “What is it?”

“It’s an email,” Fen said. Another humorless laugh escaped him. The sound scraped against his throat. “From Josh.”

Silence. Complete and immediate.

“What?” Saint rasped.

For the first time since the email arrived, Fen wasn't the only one who looked like he'd seen a ghost. Fenny clung to that while the others huddled around the screen and Ollie pressed play.