Chapter 34 #3
“You—” I spin her around and pin her against the wall with my forearm across her collarbone, pressing just hard enough to make breathing difficult. “That’s what this was? You fucked me so you could escape?”
She’s panting, naked except for the sweat cooling on her skin, and even now—even with my arm on her throat and rage boiling in my chest—some sick part of me notices how beautiful she is. How fucking fierce, like a lioness.
“Can you blame me?” she gasps out. “You’re holding me prisoner. What did you think I was going to do, just accept it?”
“I thought—” I stop myself. What did I think? That she wanted me? That she needed me the way I needed her? That for five fucking minutes, we could pretend none of this was happening?
Idiot. You goddamn fucking moron.
“You used me,” I grind out. “Again.”
She has the decency to look half guilty.
“I used the opportunity,” she says quietly.
“Same difference.”
I stare at her for a long moment—this woman who keeps finding new ways to make me feel like a fool. Who fucks me like she means it, pockets her orgasm, and then tries to run the second I let my guard down. Who makes me want to break her and protect her in equal measure.
You should have seen this coming, the cold voice whispers. She’s an agent, a spy, an assassin. This is what they do. They lie for a living.
But I didn’t see it coming. Because some utterly pathetic part of me wanted to believe it was real.
“Back to the bed,” I say, releasing her.
She doesn’t move.
“Now, Mia.”
For a second, I think she’s going to fight again. Her body is coiled, ready, those sharp eyes calculating distances and angles. But she must see something in my face that tells her it won’t work—that I’m ready this time, that I won’t be caught off guard again.
She walks back to the bed. Sits on the edge. Doesn’t try to cover herself.
I pull on my pants with jerky, furious movements, not looking at her. My throat aches a little where she hit me. My ribs throb where her elbow connected. She didn’t hold back.
Good, some twisted part of me thinks. At least that was honest.
“This doesn’t happen again,” I say, and I’m not sure if I mean the sex or the escape attempt or any of it. “Whatever you think you can manipulate out of me—it’s not going to work. I’m not that stupid.”
“Clearly you are that stupid.” She gives me cutting smile. “Or I wouldn’t have made it to the door.”
The words hit like a slap.
She’s right. She’s absolutely right. I let my dick do my thinking and she nearly walked out because of it.
“Get some sleep,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to say that isn’t me screaming into the void.
“I—”
“No. Fuck you.”
I don’t look back as I close the door and lock it.
I lose time.
That’s the only way to describe it. One moment I’m in the shower, hot water streaming over my skin, and the next I’m standing outside her door with my hand on the knob and no memory of the minutes between.
What the fuck keeps happening?
I blink. Step back. Force myself to walk away from her room. I go and make coffee, check my watch for alerts.
There’s nothing. The city doesn’t need me.
Seems no one does.
The headaches are worse today. I want to say that the stabbing pain behind my eyes is just stress, just tension, just the natural consequence of not sleeping for three days. But there’s something else underneath. A voice. That whisper. Getting louder every hour.
Eliminate the threat.
She knows too much.
I slam my fist into the kitchen counter hard enough to crack the marble.
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter.
Integration complete. Awaiting directives.
The headache spikes, white-hot, and for a second I see something—a flash of white walls and surgical lights and the man with a grey mustache looking down at me.
I’m sorry. This wasn’t what I wanted.
Then it’s gone, and I’m just standing in my kitchen with a cracked counter and blood on my knuckles and no idea what’s happening to me.
You’re falling apart, I think. Whatever they did to you—whatever you are—it’s breaking down.
I need answers.
I don’t know how to get them.
I bring her lunch. Ask more questions. Get more silence.
But something’s different now. She looks at me with more concern than anything else.
“You look terrible,” she says when I set the tray down.
“Thanks,” I say with a sigh, because I fucking feel terrible.
“I didn’t think the genetically engineered could look terrible.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a first time for everything.”
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“Don’t remember. Doesn’t matter. I don’t need it. Genetically engineered, remember.”
“Nate—”
“Please stop.” I hold up a hand. “Stop calling me Nate. Stop pretending you care. Stop pretending last night meant anything other than…”
“Two people who can’t figure out how to stop wanting each other?” She raises an eyebrow. “That’s exactly what it was. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch you fall apart.”
“I’m not falling apart.”
I’m falling apart.
And the look she gives me says she doesn’t believe it either. She can see it, she can see me unraveling at the seams in real time and she’s the one holding the thread.
“I know there’s something wrong with you. Something more than just—this. Us. The way you’ve been losing time. The headaches. The voice you mutter to when you think I can’t hear.”
I go still. “What voice?”
“I can hear you through the walls sometimes. Telling someone to shut up. Telling them to stop. It’s bloody disturbing.” Her eyes search my face. “Who are you talking to?”
Eliminate the threat.
She’s fishing for intelligence.
Don’t tell her anything.
But something cracks inside me. Some last defense crumbling under the weight of too many sleepless nights and too many questions and the memory of her body beneath mine and the voice in my head that won’t stop whispering.
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice sounding hollow. “I don’t know who it is or what it wants. I just know it’s getting louder. And it keeps telling me to…”
“To what?”
I weigh the truth in my mind. It’s not lost on me that I’m supposed to be interrogating her and yet she has me confessing.
“To hurt you,” I finally say. “It keeps telling me to hurt you. To…kill you.”
She nods slowly, like this confirms something she already suspected.
“But you haven’t.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because I love you.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and I shove it back down so hard it feels like it’s tearing a hole right through me.
“Because I’m not a monster,” I say instead. “Whatever they made me—whatever I am—I’m still me. I still get to choose.”
She’s quiet for a long moment.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “You do.”
The call comes at four in the afternoon.
Julia’s face appears on my watch screen, and I feel something cold slide down my spine. I haven’t spoken to her since my calibration. Haven’t checked in or done any of the things I’m supposed to do. And for whatever reason, they’ve let me just be.
Until now.
“Nate.” Her voice is cool and controlled, as usual. “You’ve been hard to reach.”
Have I been? Or have they been giving me time to sort myself out after recalibration?
“Been busy.”
“So I’ve heard. There was quite the incident in Red Hook three nights ago. Russian mob, from what the police reports say. Multiple casualties.” A pause. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I keep my face blank. “Should I?”
“I suppose not.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “Regardless, I need you at headquarters tomorrow morning. Nine sharp. We’re doing a briefing on Paragon’s next phase of deployment.”
My stomach twists uneasily. “What kind of briefing?”
“The kind that requires your presence.” Her smile is thin. “Don’t be late.”
The call ends.
I stand there staring at my watch, thinking about all the things Mia hasn’t told me but I’m starting to piece together on my own.
I need answers. And Mia has them.
I’ve been going at her for three days. Three days of questions and silence and tension thick enough to cut. Nah, she won’t break.
But maybe I’ve been going about this wrong.
Maybe I need to show her what’s at stake.
Maybe I need to make this about me.
That evening, I bring her the laundry.
She looks surprised when I set the folded pile on the dresser—tank top, bra, underwear, socks, tactical pants and jacket. All clean and dry and smelling like fabric softener.
“You did my laundry?” she says incredulously.
“You needed clean clothes,” I explain, leaning against the wall.
“I’ve been wearing yours.”
“And now you have your own.”
She stares at the pile for a long moment. Then she looks at me, and I can’t read her expression at all.
“Why?”
I don’t answer. Because the truth is, I don’t know why. I don’t know why I washed her blood-stained clothes or why I folded them so carefully or why doing something that domestic for her felt like an apology I couldn’t speak out loud.
“Get some sleep,” I say instead. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“And then what?”
“And then,” I say slowly, “we’re going to have a conversation. A real one. And even if you don’t tell me who you really are, you’re going to tell me what you know about Global Dynamix and whatever the fuck they’ve turned me into.”
She stares at me for a moment. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“And I don’t give a fuck what you think. You will tell me. You can even start now, with Marsh,” I say, crossing my arms. “I heard his name at your safehouse. Conrad Marsh, the CEO of Global Dynamix, my employer. Why was he meeting with Russian mobsters in a warehouse in Red Hook?”
She gives me nothing. Not a flicker.
“What was he doing there, Mia? What’s the connection between this Kozlov and Global Dynamix?”
Silence. Her expression doesn’t change. She could be carved from stone.
“Fine.” I push off the wall, frustration boiling over. “Keep your secrets. But whatever you’re protecting, whatever you think is more important than telling me the truth, truth that I deserve to know—I hope it’s worth it.”
“It’s need to know,” she finally says. “That’s how we operate.”
“How you operate!” My voice raises. “Not me! I’m not a fucking spy. I’m your…your…”
I turn to look at her, and I let her see what’s in my eyes.
The desperation. The darkness. The thing that’s been growing inside me, feeding on doubt and fear and the voice that won’t stop whispering.
“You’re going to tell me everything. One way or another.
Because I’m running out of time. And I’m running out of patience and ideas and if you don’t start talking… ” I trail off.
“What?” She sits up straighter, her eyes blazing with challenge. “What will you do?”
I think about the rooftop. About the wind and the drop and the darkness waiting at the bottom.
“I’ll show you what I really am.”
The door closes behind me.
The lock clicks.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, the voice whispers: Integration complete. Awaiting directives.
No, I think.
Generating directives.