The Skylar Experiment : Dead Ending (second draft)

Chapter Thirty-Eight - Bed Of Lies

RILEY

SOMEONE COULD HAVE INJECTED a substance to paralyze my brain, it would have felt the same. Double-edged blades seem to scathe down my chest as I inhaled, slicing out painful gashes in their path. I wanted to scream, to thrash, to ransack the room inside out, but I was being pulled under the limits of sanity. I scrabbled around the mess of papers and backpedaled away from the door with the certificate in one hand. 

Dad waited cautiously at the door like he stood on a bomb, eyeing the open binder and the object in my grip with a dark stare. I nearly spiralled into full-blown panic. He knew it. I knew it. How could I forgive him for lying so blatantly to my face—even about how I got adopted? Even when I confronted him in a spur of rage and forced him to admit that he wasn't my father, he lied. God, he lied through his teeth and I believed it. I was so gullible, so stupid, and now the evidence jumped at me with a terrifying clarity. 

Dad's gaze gradually met mine as realization dawned over our heads. All of a sudden, I was staring back at a stranger, an intruder of sorts. His eyes glimmered in the dimness.

"Kiddo... you shouldn't have—"

"—don't call me that," I warned, nails of my fingers digging in my palms.

Each cell in my body was ringing with trepidation, blurring my vision every few seconds as my heart knocked in my ribcage like a sledgehammer. The room felt airless and hot. My knees were rusty from kneeling so long, but I clambered to my feet, looking straight at the man. I flailed the document and it wrinkled in my grip. 

"How could you?"

I never gave him the snarky attitude before, never so much as rolled my eyes at him. My whole life was an illusion thanks to him, and yet he continued his tortured silence. 

"Dad!?"

His gaze softened with a heavy sorrow. Disappointment and betrayal welled in me. The void in my stomach turned into a nauseating knot, lancing all the way to my throat. Dad lifted his hands to his chest as if to protect himself.

"You weren't supposed to find out like this."

"When was I supposed to find out?" I spat. "You knew this whole time—all along, you knew what I am! You let me figure it all out alone!"

He winced like I stabbed him. His posture tensed. "Riley, please... There's more that you don't know about."

I became stock-still. My ears started buzzing and a faint rumble vibrated in my chest.

"What else was a lie? What else!?"

His stare briefly flicked to a corner of the room, focusing on a point but I couldn't tell what. A foreign alertness crossed his expression. Dad lowered his hands and decided to finally step inside, keeping the door wide open. The light of the hallway filtered through, illuminating half of his stone-hard face. I have never seen him like that. I reared back, ramming my hip into the edge of the desk.

"You were given to me after you were born," he said, each word like a sinking rock. "If it wouldn't have been me, they would have chosen someone else. They wanted a human to raise you."

My lips quivered. "Who are 'they'?"

"You know them already."

I impulsively thought of hunters at first, but it didn't make sense. Then, my mind linked the missing puzzle pieces. I stuck my free hand to the wall, teeth gnashed together.

"NIO?" I asked, and he nodded sternly. It explained the register number, the strange facility name, the lack of parents... Because I didn't have any. I was born in a lab. Tears of anger gathered around my eyes, and I was ready to fall to the floor. "Why you? Why do all this?"