Vanguard

Chapter 42

MIA

The hood comes off and the light hits me like a fist.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the glare, my head throbbing where one of them pistol-whipped me in the van.

Everything hurts. My wrists are raw from the zip ties, my ribs ache from where someone landed a kick during the struggle, and there’s blood in my mouth from biting through my lip when they threw me down the stairs.

Stairs. Underground. I counted twelve steps before they shoved me into a chair and tied my hands behind my back.

When I can finally open my eyes, I take in my surroundings with the clinical detachment of someone who knows she might die here.

Concrete walls. No windows. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the kind that make everyone look like a corpse.

A metal table bolted to the floor. A drain in the center of the room.

That drain tells me everything I need to know about what happens in this place. I’ve seen drains like that before, and it was only by the grace of god that I lived to tell the tale.

I’m not sure I’ll be afforded that much grace today.

There’s a man standing in front of me. Big and tall, with shaved head and a nose that’s been broken and reset more than a few times.

He’s rolling up his sleeves with the casual efficiency of someone who does this for a living, showcasing tattoos.

One of them is of The Punisher, and another is of the American flag in blue and black, and that tells me all I need to know. Fucking chump.

And behind him, watching from the shadows near the door, is Dr. Van Veen.

She’s dressed immaculately, of course, why wouldn’t she be? Long-sleeved blouse, tailored trousers, not a hair out of place. She could be heading into a board meeting or hosting a charity gala. The only thing different is that her clothes aren’t pastel as normal, but a dark navy blue.

A color that hides blood stains really well.

“Ms. Baxter.” Her voice echoes off the walls. “Or should I use your real name? Erasmia Reeves. SOE operative. Codename: the Moth.”

My stomach drops, but I keep my face blank. Training. Years of training for exactly this moment. I have to keep it together.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The big man hits me.

His fist connects with my cheekbone and my head snaps to the side, pain exploding across my face in a burst of heated stars. I taste fresh blood. Feel something shift in my jaw that shouldn’t shift.

Maybe he fixed my TMJ, I think absently, the pain throbbing in my vision.

“Let’s skip the part where you pretend,” Julia says, stepping closer.

Her heels click against the concrete. “I’ve known who you are since your little incident at Red Hook.

British intelligence sent you to evaluate my asset.

To determine if Vanguard was a threat. To seduce him for information and, if necessary, eliminate him.

” She tilts her head, studying me. “Did you really think you were being clever?”

Her words sound like they’re coming from somewhere underwater.

“I let it play out,” Julia continues. “I wanted to see what you’d do. What he’d do. Consider it a field test. And I have to say, Ms. Reeves, the results were…illuminating.”

“Yeah? Go fuck yourself again.”

That brings out another hit from the big man. Same spot. The pain is worse this time, layered on top of the first blow, and I feel my eye starting to swell shut.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I have to push through it, I must. Put the pain in that box and wrap it the fuck up.

Of course, Julia doesn’t even blink. She’s impenetrable.

“Your mission parameters,” she says in a clipped voice. “I want them. Every directive London gave you, every piece of intelligence you’ve gathered, every communication channel you’ve used.”

I say nothing.

The next blow catches me in the ribs, right where I’m already bruised. The air leaves my lungs in a sharp gasp and I double over as much as the restraints allow, fighting not to vomit all over myself.

“The names of your handlers in London. Your reporting structure. Any other operatives you’ve been in contact with.”

Silence.

Another hit. This one splits my lip open wider and I feel blood dripping down my chin, warm and copper-tasting.

Take the pain, shove it down, take the pain, shove it down.

Clear head, clear head, clear head.

Julia sighs like I’m being tedious.

“I admire your resolve, I really do. It’s so rare to find someone properly trained these days.

And especially a woman at that, you know it fills me with a sense of misplaced pride.

To think how good you could have been for our side.

” She smiles stiffly. “But surely you understand that this ends only one way. You tell me what I want to know, or Keller keeps hitting you until there’s nothing left to hit. ”

Keller. So the heavy has a name. Probably former ICE before it split from the DHS into its own band of Call of Duty-cosplay hooligans.

At least, judging by those tattoos and the mix of hatred and plain old stupidity in his eyes.

The kind of man who hurts people because he’s good at it and because it’s the only thing that makes him feel powerful.

“Bet you like to be called Keller the Killer, huh?” I manage through swollen lips. “Does hurting women half your size make you feel better about your tiny dick?”

Keller’s face goes red. His fist drives into my stomach and I retch, bile burning up my throat, my vision going grey at the edges. When I can breathe again, Julia is crouched in front of me, her face level with mine.

“You’re wondering about your team,” she says after a moment. “You’re wondering why Adebayo Babatunde can’t hear you through your earrings. Why Yekaterina Alexeevna Morozova hasn’t come running.”

I go still, my heart lodged in my throat. Their names. She knows their full real names.

“Your friend Cal was careless. So eager to check on you that he didn’t notice the tail.” She stands, smoothing her trousers, and something cold settles in my stomach. “He led us straight to them. A safehouse in Hell’s Kitchen. Cramped little apartment. Terrible security.”

No. No, no, no.

“Bayo put up quite a fight, I’m told. Professional to the end.” She examines her nails, casual, like she’s discussing the weather. “Kat tried to run. She didn’t get far.”

“You’re lying.”

God, please, let her be lying. Kat never runs.

“Am I?” Julia pulls out her phone, taps the screen a few times, and holds it up for me to see.

Two bodies. A cramped kitchen. Blood on the linoleum.

I recognize Bayo’s jacket, Kat’s recently highlighted hair, now dark with…

The photo is grainy, taken from something like the body cam of the one who did it, but it’s enough.

The world starts to spin and all I want it to do is spin backwards.

Cal is dead. Bayo and Kat are dead. Everyone I came here with, everyone who trusted me, everyone who had my back, are gone.

All of them gone.

I’m alone.

“There it is.” Julia pockets the phone, satisfaction curling at the corners of her mouth. “That’s the look I was waiting for. The moment you realize just how thoroughly you’ve failed.”

I spit blood in her face, aiming for her mouth, aiming to get that one drop of saliva needed to make her convulse and drop dead.

She flinches just in time, the bloody wad landing on her chin.

She gives me a look of cold disgust and carefully wipes it off with a handkerchief she takes from her pocket, while taking a few steps back. Now she remembers what I truly am.

“Thank you for that,” she says, tucking her handkerchief away. “I’ve wanted a sample of your saliva anyway. See if we can somehow duplicate what was done to you, create some new soldiers with this ability. Would come in handy.”

She turns her back to me and slowly starts walking to the back of the room, while Keller stands at the ready, fists flexing.

But all I can do now is feel exhausted. Feel defeated.

Feel the sudden weight of what I’ve lost.

Bayo. Sweet, smart Bayo, who listened to awful dance music from the ’90s.

Who made terrible coffee, and always burnt his toast, and refused to apologize for it.

Who told me once, after a mission that went sideways, that I was the best operative he’d ever worked with and he was proud to be my handler.

Kat. Who taught me how to kill anyone by using a garrote when I was barely an adult and new to the game.

Who never talked about her past but sometimes, late at night, would listen to Chopin and talk about how much she missed her mother back in Russia.

Who saved my life many times, without any fanfare.

Gone.

Because of me.

Because I got too close to Nate. I let this mission get personal. And I was arrogant enough to think I could play a giant tech conglomerate and win.

The odds weren’t in my favor.

“Now then.” Julia grabs a folding chair and drags it across the concrete, the sound grating my ears, then stops a safe distance away before settling into it, crossing her legs, perfectly at ease. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Let’s talk about him.”

I force myself to focus. To compartmentalize the way I have been taught, to push the grief down into that box again, wrapping it up in chains.

“Nate,” Julia says. She doesn’t sound so bored anymore. “You’ve spent quite a bit of time with my asset. Tell me, what did you think of him?”

“He’s a good fuck,” I say, knowing that’s something she’ll never have. The words come out slurred through my split lip. “That’s about it.”

“Don’t be crude,” she admonishes me, and from the way she’s holding her mouth, I can tell I hit a nerve.

“He’s not some plaything for you to use and discard.

He’s a masterpiece. My masterpiece. Ten years of work, Ms. Reeves, even before I laid eyes on him.

All those years of selecting, shaping, perfecting.

Every aspect of who he is, I designed. His values.

His loyalties. His desperate need to protect.

” Her eyes glint in the fluorescent light, looking almost feverish.

“Do you have any idea what it takes to build a man from nothing? To create something that powerful and keep it under control?”

There’s a fervor in her voice now that wasn’t there before. The mask slipping, just a little. Enough that I can see the obsession underneath, a place I can poke at.

“He didn’t come from nothing and you didn’t create him,” I say. “You just broke him and rebuilt the pieces.”

The lady is fast. In a second she’s out of her chair and her palm is cracking across my already ruined cheek. The pain is almost secondary to the shock of seeing her lose that perfect composure.

“He was broken when I met him,” she hisses, her face inches from mine before she realizes she’s too close and backs up.

“I saved him. I made him. Every part. And you think you can just waltz in with your tight dresses and your poisoned lips and take him from me? You think because he looked at you with those sad eyes and fucked you that it means something?”

“I think it means more than anything he can ever give you,” I say.

She sneers at me, that lip curling, and then suddenly, like she realized I’m getting under her skin, her face goes blank. She straightens up, smoothing her blouse, reassembling her mask piece by piece.

“That’s what Marsh wants too, you know.” She says it like I’m her confidant now, like we’re just two women gossiping about bad boyfriends over drinks.

“To take my asset. Use him to expand Prometheus.” Her jaw tightens.

“As if I’d let that happen. As if I’d let anyone take what belongs to me.

He’s already trying to loan Vanguard to the US military. ”

Interesting that she doesn’t want that to happen.

“I know about the trafficking,” I tell her, hoping she’ll say more. “The consciousness transfers. That you’re trying to build an army but you’re not having much success, other than Paragon.”

She gives me a curt smile. “So you do know something. Good. I guess you crashing the party at the warehouse wasn’t for nothing.

That saves us time.” She stands, adjusting her cuffs.

“I do align with Marsh on a few things. Prometheus is the future, Ms. Reeves, a future we are tweaking every day until one day we can create soldiers without weakness. Soldiers without mercy. Soldiers without the annoying tendency to fall in love with the enemy. Unlike someone I know.”

She lets that hang in the air for a moment, then her tone goes back to business.

“But enough about internal politics. Your little team is gone, but someone sent them. Someone in London is running this particular operation, and I want to know who.” She settles back into her chair, crossing her legs.

“Your handler’s handler. The intelligence you’ve already transmitted. What London knows about Prometheus.”

I say nothing. I’ve already said too much.

“No?” She sighs as if I’m being tedious and looks at her heavy. “Keller?”

Keller comes at me with cunning smile and I know I’m the highlight of the day in his sad, pathetic life.

The next twenty minutes are a blur of pain.

Keller works me over with methodical precision, targeting the spots that hurt worst, never quite breaking anything but coming close.

He asks the same questions as Julia. I don’t answer.

I don’t scream. At some point I start to float, my consciousness detaching from my body, watching from somewhere far away as this broken thing in a chair refuses to give them what they want.

When it finally stops, I’m barely conscious. Blood is pooling in my lap, dripping from my face onto my thighs. One eye is swollen completely shut. My ribs scream with every breath. I spit out a bloody molar.

I am nothing but pain.

Julia is at the door. I can hear her heels clicking, receding, and then stopping.

“This was just the introduction,” she says. “A taste of what’s to come. When I return, I’m bringing someone who’s much better at extracting information than Keller. Someone you know well.”

I lift my head, blinking through blood and swelling, and see her smile before the door slams and the lights go out.

And I’m alone in the dark, bleeding, broken, with nothing left but the promise I made in the van.

I’m going to kill you.