Chapter 6 #3
A wave of panic flooded my veins, the raw terror that lived hidden in my bones rearing its ugly head.
For a split second, the lab vanished. I was eight years old again, strapped to that cold table.
I could smell the antiseptic and feel them cutting into my skull.
I could hear my own screams trapped behind a paralyzed throat as they tried to map my “defective” brain.
My fingers twitched, phantom pain radiating from the scar beneath my hair. The one they’d stitched shut after they realized their mistake.
Fuck.
I forced my breathing to slow, pushing the memory back into the dark box where I kept my humanity. I focused on the screen, on the data, on the hunt.
The computer finished retrieving Annie’s files and the screen filled with her professional file. It was impressive but revealed nothing I didn’t already know. Exemplary service record. Specialized training in Super psychology. Keeper certification for both the Alliance and League.
But nothing before that.
I expanded the search parameters but this time the system bounced back an access denied.
I typed in the override and the system processed my command only to return with an access denied again, though this time a code came with it. 12-A.
Now that was interesting. 12-A was reserved for high-level security matters, witnesses in protection, undercover operatives, or those with connections to major incidents.
The code meant erasure.
I leaned back, tapping my fingers against the console.
“Computer, when did Annie Bishop first appear in Alliance records?”
The screen displayed a date nineteen years ago. She would have been ten.
“What entries are there for Annie Bishop during that time period?”
Only one entry showed, and everything in the entry was redacted apart from her name. I frowned. Havoc had turned Hero about nineteen years ago, but I couldn’t remember the details.
He’d been an idol of mine when he’d been a Villain. His unexpected turn from Villain to Hero had been a blow to my villainous little heart back then, but I’d shifted my focus. If he were a Hero, then he could be my Nemesis. Everybody wins.
“Computer, search for major incidents involving Havoc nineteen to twenty years ago.”
A list populated the screen but two caught my eye. The first was the public turning point, the day Havoc saved the city and betrayed the League. The second was dated a few weeks earlier and titled: “’Redacted’ Incident.”
Fucking redacted.
I stared at the black bars. A ten-year-old girl doesn’t get a 12-A classification for nothing.
I poked at the digital lock. It was complicated and woven with traps. If I pushed too hard, it would alert the Aegis. It would take time to get through.
I sent a message to Number Five, my security expert, requesting he begin unraveling it.
I pulled up Annie’s official file again. Listed residence: The Tower, Suite 87. Lies. Dawn had called Annie her roommate.
She had a second life. A real life. One she thought was safe.
I redirected the search to Dawn Carlisle and within minutes, I had an address in the Bayside Heights district. A modest but respectable neighborhood, close enough to both the museum and the Tower for convenient commutes for both women.
It was a place where Annie could go to pretend she wasn’t surrounded by monsters.
The next part of my plan would be the easiest. Surveillance.
I settled back in my chair, a smug smile spreading across my face as the security feeds from the building across from Annie’s apartment filled my screens.
The angle was perfect, better than I’d dared hope for.
From the rooftop security cameras I’d hijacked, I had a clear view directly into her living room and, more importantly, her bedroom.
Her bedroom was exactly what I would have expected. It was neat and organized, with a place for everything.
There was a thrill in seeing the spaces she kept hidden, a dark satisfaction in knowing I was inside her walls while she was miles away, unaware.
I would learn everything about her, then I would map exactly where to apply pressure to make her crack. I would use every piece of stolen data, every observed habit, to strip that false veneer right off her skin until she was raw and trembling beneath my hands.
The Syndicate bastard had called her frigid. He was a blind fool who didn’t see the fire I had felt when she pressed that blade to my stomach under the table. There was nothing cold about Annie Bishop. She was a suppressed inferno locked behind Alliance rules.
My gaze drifted to the bed displayed on my monitors. My mind immediately supplied the image of what I would do to her on those sheets. I wanted to pin her down, feel the exact moment her resistance turned into desperation, and hear her voice break on my name.
I wanted to shatter that perfect composure into a thousand jagged pieces and leave her ruined, her thighs slick and trembling, yet still begging for more.
I didn’t bother fighting the possessiveness coursing through me. I would take her and find every hidden insecurity she masked behind that stiff posture and ruthlessly exploit it, pushing her to the absolute edge of her sanity until she broke and I was the only thing holding her together.
I wanted her to look at my face and see her destruction and her salvation in the exact same breath. I would become the only safe place she had left after I burned her entire structured world to the ground.
But for now, I would wait. I would watch. I would learn every fucking inch of that room before she ever set foot in it again.