Chapter 41
“Only top command had access to our security codes, but that ILF terrorist group got them. We have a leak, and it must be stopped.” – Electronic message from New America Present Soren Whitman to New America Vice President Aldous Thatcher
Briar
I’m finally clean.
The supplies we raided were a gold mine. We got rice, beans, clean clothes, and soap.
I didn’t have the energy to walk to the spring near the cave to clean up yesterday. I couldn’t even stay awake until Pax and Marcus brought food back to camp.
They cooked rice and beans at the beach where we took out the Tiders so the scents of cooking food couldn’t be traced to the cave. When Marcus woke me up to eat, I could hardly stay awake long enough to scarf down several bites.
I remember him coming back to me later and moving me on top of him, my chest on his.
His back was on the cold, wet cave floor all night while he was my mattress.
The only other time I woke up was when the air filled with the flapping of hundreds of bats flying out of the cave.
Marcus murmured in my ear that it was fine, they’d be gone soon, and I went back to sleep.
Today I feel like myself again. I scrubbed every inch of my skin and Amira washed my hair three times to get it clean. Ellison bandaged the megamantis cut on my leg. The olive-green pants and T-shirt I’m wearing aren’t a perfect fit, but they’re clean.
Marcus and I are sitting in crooks of a massive tree, using an amplifier to listen in on our camp.
I put my fingers over my earpiece, listening carefully.
“How long you think we’re staying on this shithole island?” a New America soldier asks another.
“Too long. This fuckin’ rash in my crotch keeps getting worse. I’ve got pus-filled blisters all over.”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, no shit. None of the shit in their medical area helps.”
“I miss decent food and blow jobs. Not being covered in mosquito bites.”
Marcus eases the amplifier over a couple of inches, finding another conversation to snoop on.
“...even cooked all the way through, I’m not eating that. Were the cinnamon rolls a one-time thing?”
A green-blue-and-yellow snake is wrapped around a branch next to me, and I don’t like how close it’s getting. I’m about to take out my knife and chop it, but then I remember the trees and plants asking for my help.
The snake is alive. It probably feels pain. I’m the one who doesn’t belong here, not it, and I can’t bring myself to kill it. I nudge it with the tip of my knife, trying to annoy it without hurting it.
“...don’t like it either, but here we are.” That’s Vadim. Marcus moved the amplifier again. “He isn’t himself anymore, and we’re outnumbered.”
The snake is ... getting bigger? I gape at it, wondering if I accidentally ingested a hallucinogen. Its neck and upper body are inflating before my eyes. I don’t want to kill it, but—
A thunk vibrates through the branches of the tree, making me jump. Marcus’s dagger cuts it cleanly, and he uses the tip of his blade to ease the snake’s body from around the branch.
The two halves of the snake drop to the ground.
I furrow my brow, but when our eyes meet, his espresso eyes are wide with alarm.
He mouths “boomslang”, and my jaw drops.
I should have known. I’m not great at identifying snakes, but the bright colors should have tipped me off.
Boomslangs have hemotoxic venom. Their bite causes an agonizing death where the victim bleeds from every orifice for several days.
They’re indigenous to Africa, but there are other plants and animals here that don’t belong.
McClain seeded this island with species he wanted to experiment on.
My skin crawls as I scan the branches around me, alert for more deadly snakes.
“...keep telling you, he’s not like that. Cut the warmth. Marcus is cold and decisive. He’s not a talker. Even his friends said he doesn’t take anyone’s advice on anything. He relies on his own instincts. We’ve been over this.”
“I’m sorry, Commander.”
Marcus’s face is frozen in a scowl as he listens to the conversation between Ingrid and his clone.
“Drum up some concern for the girlfriend.” Ingrid barks the order, exasperated.
“What does drum up mean?”
She groans. “Contextual clues, 6A5. What do you think it means, based on everything else you know?”
“Find? Fabricate?”
“Yes. Marcus would be angry that his girlfriend is gone. He wouldn’t be flirting with the kitchen help.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Remember—no apologizing, ever.”
“Sorry, Commander.”
“Listen to me!” A few seconds of silence pass. “Be him starting now. No apologizing. No listening. You were programmed to be respectful, but I am ordering you to play this part as I want you to. You only defer to me. No one else. People here need to see him in you. He’s cold and ruthless.”
The clone’s tone is short and annoyed as he says, “Is that it? I have things to do.”
“Much better. Let’s get back to questioning his friends. The one-armed guy is close to breaking.”
Chance. I cringe, wondering what they’ve done to him.
Marcus’s expression is one I haven’t seen in a while. I remember it from when I first came to the Dust Walkers camp. He’s shut down. Walls up.
After another couple hours of listening in on the conversations we can reach with the amplifier, we carefully climb down from the tree and start the walk back to the cave. Ingrid still has soldiers searching the jungle for us, so we have to move slowly and listen for anyone approaching.
“It’s not true, you know,” I say softly. “What she said about you.”
He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”
I take his hand. “Yes, it does. You aren’t cold. You do listen.”
“Not to most people.”
“Well ...”
A wry grin slips from his face as quickly as it arrives. “I’ve always maintained emotional distance with people. It’s just part of who I am.”
“Even me?”
The grin returns. “I tried. Didn’t work.”
“When you were gone, I executed two Tiders for stealing food.”
His brows shoot up. “You did?”
“I told them the rules of our camp, and they broke them. Pax offered to do it, but—”
“You did the right thing, B. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard.”
I stop walking, tugging his hand until we’re both protected by a natural corner created by a massive rock formation.
“I didn’t understand it until I had to do it,” I whisper. “I hated it. I resented everyone around me who didn’t have to make that decision and live with it forever.”
His gaze is tender as he looks down at me, brushing his calloused thumb over my jawline.
“No one should have to make choices like that. But I’m built for it. I’ve known since I got to this island that I can’t make friends with people whose lives I have control over.”
“You have friends, though. Nova, Niran, Ellison—"
“Ellison and Nova are different. And Niran ... he resents me.”
“He also loves you, though.”
He shakes his head, his other hand on the small of my back. “I’m a long fucking way from perfect. My trips to and from our island were long, and I had nothing but time to think.”
I thread my fingers into his dark, thick, sweat-dampened hair. Arousal hums through me, even though it’s not the time or place. When my aromium is active, there’s nothing involving Marcus and sex that doesn’t appeal to me.
Dropping to my knees to please him? Yes, right now. Being bent over and fucked hard and fast? I’m in. Losing my pants and underwear so he can grip my ass cheeks and move me up and down on his cock in a sweaty haze of lust until we both come?
I’m already unbuttoning my pants. My need for him is like extreme thirst—it’s all I can think about. It’s more than my own desire. I desperately need to watch him take pleasure from me.
He puts a hand over mine, hunger and regret swirling in his eyes. “I want you so fucking bad, B. But we can’t.”
The hum of my arousal flickers. “Yes, we can. It’s here or nowhere. The cave’s not an option.”
“I know, but ...” He runs a hand through his hair, taking a step back.
My stomach twists with unease. Aromium active or not, Marcus has always wanted me. And it’s been so long.
I refasten my pants, my face warming with embarrassment. He moves closer, my back pressing against the flat surface of the rock behind me. Putting his forearms against the rock next to my head, he comes even closer, his erection against my belly making me inhale sharply.
“I want you every hour of every day. I want to run away from this place and spend the rest of my life with just you. Never think I don’t want you. I’m fucking consumed by my want for you.”
“Then why?” The question comes out soft, breathless.
“We still have things to talk about. When I was on the sub coming back here, I promised you something.” He takes a deep breath, grinding into me again. “Fuck.”
“What?” I say dreamily. “Tell me the promise and then fuck me into the ground.”
He kisses my forehead. “I will always love you, Briar Hollis. Even if you hate me. Even if you kill me. I’m going to be insanely in love with you until the day I die.”
My heart races nervously at the same time his words build a heady, uncontrollable need for him to be inside me. “Marcus, you’re scaring me.”
“There’s one more thing you don’t know. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
He steps back and sighs heavily, my body immediately missing his closeness. At the same time, my mind is reeling. What the hell else could there be?
I look at him expectantly. “So tell me.”
A tortured worry pools in the depths of his dark eyes. “I knew your mom. You probably know that already. She was brilliant and warm and stronger than I’ll ever be.”
My arousal vanishes at his mention of my mom. I’ve wanted to ask him about her since we reconciled, but we’ve hardly had any time alone and even after all these years, her loss still feels raw.
“She questioned the ethics of what we were doing. She was right to. I was there when she did it.” His shoulders sink and he looks at the ground, hands on his hips.
“I could’ve spoken up and agreed with her.
I knew—I fucking knew she was right. But I didn’t say a goddamn word.
I just stood there when they took her away. ”
Tears trail down my cheeks. Imagining that happening to my mom makes my heart crack into pieces.
“I deserve to live in this hell,” Marcus says, his voice thick with emotion. “I fucked Lucy over and now I’m in love with her daughter.”
It hurts. McClain confirmed that my parents are gone, but it was easier when it was abstract. I had hoped they were taken out quickly, not even aware of what was coming.
But she knew.
“I’m so sorry.” Marcus swipes a thumb beneath one of his eyes, looking away.
He walks away, getting himself together. The second he’s gone, a bullet hits the rock in the spot he just occupied, right where his head would have been.