Neon Rush {M/M} ❀

Ch.14.2 A Tool, A Puppet, A Weapon, A Son

From the doorway, a third voice, cool and absent of emotion, says,

"Is that any way to talk about your mother?"

It's as if a wraith entered the room. The temperature drops. Or maybe that's all the blood draining out of Zef upon hearing that particular voice saying those particular words.

Rylan Archer stands in the doorway. Her face is robotically absent of feeling. Immaculately dressed in a suit like liquid mercury, she doesn't look at all like she just got off a plane.

Mother. Mother. Mother. She's Gray's mother.

All the portraits in the mansion. With a baby, a child, a little girl. Not a girl at all. Shame bleeds through Zef, appalled it took him this long, but there'd been no photos of Gray older than the age of five or six. Connecting the frilly pink dresses and bows to the Gray stood in front of him was as far-flung a reality as life on distant stars.

Gray's lips peel back from his teeth. "Zef, leave." His throaty voice, affected with cold, fails to cover a shiver of fear.

"I think he ought to stay," Rylan counters.

"She's your mother?" Zef says.

"I'd ask why Gray isn't still in that cage," Rylan muses, "but having overheard some of that conversation, I don't think I need to."

Zef's shock and uncertainty crystalize, forming an edge keen as a blade that slides through his ribs with a pain too real to keep from his face. "He's your son."

It adds context. Puts into perspective the depth of Gray's hatred, the commitment to vengeance, but it's also confusingly alien. How could she? Why would she? As Gray's handler, Zef could at least comprehend the total lack of empathy. Rylan treated her employees like tools, but her son?

She takes a step forward. Zef steps back. "I don't want him caged," Rylan says. "I want him home, safe and sound."

Gray snarls, "Zef, just go."

Zef can't go. Couldn't leave Gray before, and certainly can't now. "You gilded him full of tech you control instead of letting him transition and expect me to believe you?" Zef says

"Is that how he twisted it?" Rylan responds. "What other lies has he been telling you? I suppose he failed to mention that Project Jewel Wasp was, in part, his idea?"

"Shut up," Gray says.

"Or that he volunteered to beta test it?"

"That's not—"

"Shall I call up the footage to prove it?" Rylan says. "We worked on it together. Our passion project. She was so excited at the time."

The slipped pronoun makes Zef's heart skip a beat. The audacity of Rylan's accusations fuel an anger inside him he didn't realise he had. At the same time, he recognizes that this conversation is entirely for his benefit. He both serves as arbiter for their long-standing feud, and as a forced stalemate, because Gray won't make a move that might endanger him.

At least, not yet.

Gray doesn't meet his eyes when he says, "I didn't lie."

"You only told him the parts of the truth that were convenient," Rylan supplies.

"Fuck you." The tendons in Gray's neck stand out. "You never told me about the control chip. All those things I did, I did them for you because I—" He cuts himself off with a snarl of frustration.

"You're overreacting," Rylan says. "I only used the control chip to protect you. You knew when we installed the tech that it might make you a target for competitors—"