Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lagos
Twenty-four years ago
You’re an abomination.
The stench of blood, cum, and sweat burns my nostrils. I sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress sunken beneath my weight, with my elbows on my knees and my eyes level with the door ahead.
Any minute now...
He will come.
And I will kill him.
Sweat pours down my forehead, and chills rush along my skin. Strange images and shapes plague me.
I’ve been like this since I escaped, burning up from the inside out. My brain is trying to kill me with shock, sensation, fever, thoughts… So many fucked up thoughts that I swear are not mine but come from inside a chamber embedded in my cranium. One I can’t touch or talk to but communicates with me.
But I’m awake.
And in a nightmare.
I don’t know anymore.
Strange words knell in my head from voices that are both mine and somehow… not.
I am locked in a body that is not human though something inside me roars with humanity. Weeps for what I have done.
Continue to do.
You’re filth.
My eyes fall to the dead girl on the bed, my cum leaking from inside her, red finger marks painting her slim throat. I fucked her and choked her to death.
They made me do it.
Kill yourself.
It is the only way.
“I am coming in.” A deep voice rumbles from behind the door, and I rise to my feet like the perfect predator I am.
I roll my shoulders and pump my fists at my side as the door cracks open, and he walks in…
The Xin De man who has been following me around the Upper-tower port M. Shorter than me but bigger than a Common man. Blue eyes that glow, a distinct Xin De trait, and softer features, angular, fine, and clean. I’d place him in his second decade of life.
We all grow up fast.
Innocence is dead.
This clean-cut Xin De man thinks he can sneak up on an assassin.
I sneer. “I expected you.”
“ Easy…” He closes the door behind himself, and the fool locks himself in with a literal human-bear. “I can help you. If you will let me.”
Don’t trust him.
“Why are you following me?” I demand, my pulse fierce, ready, fuelling me with blood to reap violence.
He clasps his hands in front of him in a comfortable move that pisses me off. “Because you’re hurting people, Lagos. And I want to help you.”
I snarl. “Lagos?”
“You don’t have a name yet, right?” He edges over, respectfully hesitant but getting closer. “I’d put you at… sixteen? Am I right? You would have been given one in five years when they released you, but for now, you’re just a number. Still in training. Still a lot to learn. What is your number?”
Zero Zero Six.
Just Six.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask, suspicious, before defensiveness drips down my spine, bringing hot wrath to my forehead. I clench my fists. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“Trade?” He laughs, and it’s the strangest sound I have ever heard. “No. I’m a priest. Do you know what that is?”
I lift my chin instead of admitting I don’t know what the fuck that is.
“That’s fine. I’m not Trade-aligned. I assure you. But I do know what you are.”
“Then you know I am trained to kill, remove, and dissolve, so you’re either very brave or very stupid.”
“Do you like the name Lagos?” he asks like I didn’t just threaten him. “I thought it suited you. You leave rivers of blood for me to follow. Something you wouldn’t do if you were fully trained.” He touches his chest. “Please, let me introduce myself. My name is Tomar, it’s an old-world name. The word lagos comes from the same old-world place. Seeing we are to be brothers.”
He's fucking insane. “Stop following me, or I will kill you, and no one will even know we met.”
“You’re getting more and more sick.” His blue eyes study me, and I want to pull them from their sockets so they can’t. “You’re getting very careless. I can help you. I want to help you.”
I lift my chin while my knuckles ache under the pressure of my clenching and unclenching fist. “You can’t help me.”
No one can.
No one has.
No one cares.
“It’s the iron in your blood,” he says. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
“ Now ,” I hiss, a dark disturbance wrapping around my tone. Taking one big step toward him, I make him flinch, make him show his true hesitation—a healthy fear of me. “How. The hell. Do you know about that?” I finish.
He is Trade.
Kill him!
“It isn’t just the iron!” He shuffles backward, adding space between us. Smart. He must know I could lunge—grow bored of him—and rip his head from his shoulders.
Do it. Kill him.
I grind my molars to the insolent thoughts. Sixteen or not, I am twice this fool’s size. I lower my head, glaring at him through my lashes.
Kill him.
“There is also a coil in your brain. Did you know that?” He rushes out, and I freeze my muscles just as the thoughts compound and growl.
Kill him. Kill him. Don’t trust him. He is lying. He is lying. Lying. Lying. Fuck.
The man named Tomar nods slowly. “Yes. I can help. It will drive you mad until you listen to it, and then when you do, when you let it control you, it will make you kill yourself.”
I lock up my body, fight the impulses, the conditioned instinct to remove obstacles, to dissolve threats. “I don’t need anyone. Never had anyone. Never team up. It’s not in my design.”
He gazes across at the girl on the bed, her skin already turning grey, her glassy eyes resembling a taxidermied being. “You’re killing innocent people… I don’t think you want to.”
“Why not just kill me then?” I dare—desire—but will fight to the last drop of blood, to the final twitch, to my rattling death encore. I will fight.
“Because we can help each other,” he admits this time.
Ah, so he needs me.
“I need a man to protect me while I fulfill my Purpose,” he adds.
“So,” I sneer, “you want to use me? Want your own assassin. I am not available. Too busy killing innocent women,”—I jerk my chin toward the dead bitch— “as you can see. I’m booked up.”
A knowing expression smooths his features, and he tilts his head. “Please, you can’t convince me. You ran. You ran because your heart wasn’t in it; it is stronger than their conditioning. I help people. Let me help you first.”
Kill him. I snarl at the voice snapping in my brain. “How?”
Tomar smiles calmly at me, and taking a big breath, he says, “The excess iron compound was engineered into your bloodstream to activate a Shadow. The coil was designed to control one. But as progressive as The Trade’s tech is, as advanced, the brain in its organic form will always be more complex. And more powerful.
“The coil doesn’t do what it was designed to do, but after nearly a century of testing, they found it did serve a purpose. To destroy a rogue Shadow. To send them mad, activate sickness that isn’t there, signal a virus response—have the body fight itself.
“ And implements voices. Thoughts. Whispers. Shadows have thrown themselves off cliffs. Died when organs have spontaneously shut down. It will kill you one day, and until then, it will torture you.”
Fuck. How does he know about the voices? The accidents… My body nearly forced me into a burning truck yesterday. I didn’t give my legs permission to move, but they did. It was like something else was momentarily in control.
And her— I look at the dead girl, black hair winged out around her on the mattress. I only imagined choking her; it was a fever dream, but there she is.
Real.
Fucked.
Dead.
He’s telling the truth. Rage for my kind and for The Trade bore into my guts, festering a hatred like no other.
He is lying!
I frown. “What can you do?”
He exhales hard, almost relieved I’m talking, listening—considering. “I can have your Brain-Interface coil removed.”