22. Infiltration With No Invitation
22
INFILTRATION WITH NO INVITATION
GHOST
After throwing up in the hotel bathroom for the second time, I brace my hands on the sink and stare into my haunted eyes in the mirror. I’m not weak! I’m fully fucking capable of doing this job. I’m skilled, honed, trained, and mentally prepared, but there’s a level of risk to it that I’m unfamiliar with.
Because we’re outside of Moros, have no backup, and if we get caught, we’re dead—tortured and then dead. I trust myself, but I don’t know if I trust my partner. What’ll I do if he gets caught?
He’s the variable making me sick. It’s the conflicting strategies about Riot that are warring with themselves inside my mind, making my jigsaw puzzle come unglued. My eyes are as crazed as my mind is, doing a terrible job of hiding my irrational worries. He’s Riot—Killian Hallows. He’s just as capable as I am, despite how badly I don’t want to admit that. He can handle this, so I don’t know why I’m freaking out about what’s going to happen to him.
Maybe it’s because our plan involves me doing the sneaking and him taking all the heat. Maybe it’s because he’s going to be the charmer, the one talking and distracting and steering the attention away from me as I slink through the compound to get the key we’re after. I’ll be concealed in the shadows while he’ll be spotlighted to keep me hidden. Our risks are different, which means our outcomes and downfalls will be different if shit goes south. I already know what I’m supposed to do if I get caught, and I know what he’s supposed to do if he gets caught, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if he gets caught. That’s a lie I’m trying to make myself believe, because I do know what I’m supposed to do, I just don’t know what I want to do.
He's my Vile House brethren, but he’s also… Killian Hallows. That never used to mean anything to me, but it does now. Because he fucked me. Because he sees me. Because he knows what goes through my mind when I taunt a curse that has set out to ruin me since birth.
Because I slept with my back to him for safety, and I’ve never sought safety in another person before.
I shower and brush my teeth, and when I open the bathroom door, he’s standing at the window, looking out over the city in the distance we’re about to infiltrate.
“No masks,” is all he says.
No Vile House masks. No Vile House power. No Vile House status. We’re two men going into enemy territory under a cover that might be moot. They could have our faces on recognition software and blow our cover as soon as we step foot in Reaper City. Draco, the man I fought and killed, knew exactly who I was. Maybe the entire organization does, too.
My stomach tightens, but I refuse to let it churn. The time for nerves has passed, and now I need to focus on what comes next. This plan has merit, but it also leaves room for spontaneity. We have a target and a goal, but the rest will be a series of ‘what comes next?’ questions as we pass through each stage of the plan.
It’s late evening, the sun almost hidden behind the tall buildings in the distance. With hats on our heads and the cover of darkness, we’ll penetrate Reaper City with no invitation. The only intention we have is to walk back out. With or without the key.
He’s not wearing a shirt, so his Vile House tattoo steals all my focus. Another thing to identify us by if we get captured, but right now, it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. The tattoo suits his body, looks good on his back, and grounds me because it reminds me who we are. Ghost and Riot, two ruthless assholes who never let anyone else take us down. Tonight will be no different. I refuse to let it be.
Standing beside him, reluctantly feeling his warm and stoic energy, I look at Reaper City in the distance and narrow my eyes at it like I do everything else. It’s just one more conquest to conquer. It’s an obstacle, and I love puzzle-solving. It’s a useless fucking game that I’ll enjoy winning.
“We got this?” I ask the window.
Riot is an egotistical prick, so he grins at the pane of glass. “We got this.”
I don’t want to ask, but I do. “How can you be so sure?”
Riot’s grey eyes meet mine, and his grin only widens. “I love showing up where I’m not invited. This is just another chance to shine.” He steps up to me, making me lift my chin with the confidence I’m still trying to convince myself to feel. “Reaper Corp is about to meet the Ghost of Moros.”
Replacing my nerves, a thrill runs through me, heating my skin and fuelling my adrenaline. “Nah,” I correct him. “They’re about to meet the many masks you wear and get caught up in the riot you start. Me? I’ll go undetected because I am the fucking Ghost of Moros.”
Riot smiles at me, and trust me, there’s nothing charming about it. He hasn’t slipped into that mask yet, and maybe this is the first time I’m seeing his base layer. “You’re goddamn right you are.”
The thrill intensifies, and just like that, my mind goes delightfully dark and the job becomes a challenge to win. Riot has always been my best competitor. He notices my shift in mood, commenting on it with the glint in his eyes and the tilt of his lips.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s fuck over Reaper Corp.”
* * *
It all starts here.
It was surprisingly easy to enter the city with a group of tourists. We were on a bus, snapping photos of a place people come to visit for its architecture and history. Once an old sacred city, Reaper Corp overtook it twenty years ago, and since then, they’ve brainwashed the country into believing they did it for the preservation of history, claiming the government and tourism industry would ruin it. Which means people respect Reaper Corp and what they’ve done to protect a sacred city.
Bullshit.
They aren’t protecting it. They’re utilizing it, mind-controlling the citizens, and bringing in tourists to spread their gospel far and wide. Facts said that statistically, a hundred thousand people a year put in a request to move to Reaper City because they believe it to be a safe and wonderful place to raise children. The school system is its own, renowned, and the proof is in the pudding of how many geniuses Reaper City produces. Little do they know, those geniuses are bred in a lab with genetic modifiers for those exact traits, skewing the statistics to further brainwash the continent.
Whatever. None of my business, and seriously, I couldn’t care less about this place. If Reaper Corp wasn’t actively trying to do the same thing in Moros, I’d even respect them for it. But since they are, they’re my enemy, and the only thing I care about is stopping them because Moros is mine. Ours. And no one, not even this corporation that wields power like we wield darkness, is going to take it from us unless they kill us all first.
We got the tour, and towards the end, we slipped away from the crowd near the centre of town. Ransom is in my ear, directing us where to go, and Glitch is remotely bypassing doors for us as we sneak through the lower levels of their research facility. The late evening tour ends a few blocks from here at a cathedral-style building that used to be a church; now, it’s still a place of devotion, but to Reaper Corp. Our plan is to get in, get the keycode, and join up with the tour in no less than forty-five minutes so we can take the same bus back out of the city walls.
You know what they say about well-crafted plans…
“This is it,” Riot says, closing a door behind us.
“Ten minutes before guard shift rotation,” Ransom says through the earpiece. “Get ready.”
Ten minutes. My nerves come back because ten minutes isn’t enough time to… I don’t know, think things I’ll never say aloud. What happens if we don’t make it out of this mission? What will I do if Remi has to live without me? If Selena has to deal with Mom all on her own? If my family loses another brother…
Maybe it’d be a good thing. It wouldn’t be suicide, so it’d break the family curse. I’m too selfish to willingly die to save my family, but if it’s forced upon me, I’ll go down as the hero who ended the infamous Sauder curse, right?
“Get your shit together,” Riot snaps at me, pulling on my wrist until I sink down beneath the glass windows of the room we’re in. It’s an empty meeting room, and right outside the door is the elevator bank that’ll lead to the lab we need. “Stop thinking.”
“I’m not.” I pull my pack off my back.
“You are. Remi and Selena will be fine. Wanna know why?” He kneels in front of me, pulling shit from his own bag. “Because we’re getting out of this fucking place, got it? I don’t give a shit what it takes, Reaper Corp won’t beat us.”
They might…
“I’ll make ya a deal,” Riot says as he pulls on a pair of black gloves, reminding me to do the same. “If we both make it out of here alive, I’ll give you something you want.”
“The fuck do you know about what I want?” I snap, watching him slip a vial of something into his pants pocket. “I have everything I want.”
“Almost,” he grins, pocketing devices. “You want me to hold your hand like I held that little girl’s hand.”
My whole face flushes and I shove against his chest, needing him out of my space while insecurity eats me alive. “You’re fucked.” But he’s not wrong, and I hate that he’s not wrong. I hate that he caught me looking, watching, baffled by the simplicity of hand-holding that comes with no danger and no deception. No one has ever held my hand, and I don’t understand why I want it. It’s a pointless gesture that does nothing but confuse, and I refuse to accept that it means something to me. “I thought our deal was about curses and death chasing?”
He simply grins, and I resent him for masking it in something innocently challenging. “It was.”
“It still is.”
“Okay,” he says like he’s coddling me. “But plans can change. Hurry up and put the contacts in.”
I set my gloves on my lap and use the small mirror he’s holding to place a pair of blue contacts in my eyes. They burn, making my eyes water until I blink enough that they settle in. They’re only a back-up plan if Glitch can’t get me through doors with retinal scanners. I’m going to be a ghost tonight, but there are cameras that will register my body, so I need to look like I fit in. I throw on a blazer to go with my black pants, appearing more business casual than I ever have before.
“Mmm,” Riot hums, eye-fucking me in his utility outfit that looks so damn good on him it only makes me begrudge him more. Since when does he appeal to me so intensely? He’s always been… but now he’s…
“Two minutes,” I remind him, putting the gloves on and making sure all my weapons are in place. “We ride up to the seventeenth floor, and as soon as those doors open, you gotta put on a show so I can walk down the hall unseen.”
“Figures you’d need me to put on a show to make your job easier,” he mocks, smirking. “You got it.”
Call me sweetheart.
The one-minute alarm beeps, and we both stand, hiding behind the door we’ll need to open quickly and quietly to enter the elevator across the hall. Glitch has control of them, and he’ll open the doors for us as soon as the guard rotation switches.
“Ready?” Ransom asks.
“Set,” Riot says.
“Go,” I whisper.
But before I can pull the door open, Riot spins me to face him, lightly grasps my chin, and presses his lips to mine. Simple, quick, entirely jarring, and… overwhelming because it feels so wanted. His lips move against mine, igniting my insides with something sweet and powerful. I’m breathing harder than I want to be when he pulls back, licking his lips.
“The fuck was that for?”
His fingers trace my jaw before falling away, the black eye I gave him staring at me. “Just in case it’s my last chance,” he says. Then he changes into someone new right before my eyes, getting into character for the role he’s about to play.
“Move!” Ransom and Glitch both shout in our ears.
“You got this, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
He pulls open the door and, rejuvenated, we dart straight into the elevator, the doors closing a split second before the guard comes back.