Chapter 31 #2
"Watch closely, Naomi," Logan calls. "This is what fighting for a lost cause gets you."
Through darkening vision, I see Naomi scrambling toward the keys, her body contorting painfully to reach them with her chained hands. Logan's grip tightens, and my consciousness starts to slip away.
As long as she can get away. I have to stay alive long enough to give her time.
Then what happens to me doesn’t matter.
The world blurs into a dark haze as Logan's arm cuts off the blood supply to my brain.
My enhanced body reaches its limit and begins to fail.
Through dimming vision, I watch Naomi contorting her body to unhook herself.
I feel rather than see Naomi succeed, the handcuffs and leg irons falling to the ground with a metallic clatter that echoes across the abandoned training yard.
But instead of the sound of retreating footsteps, instead of her running to safety like I desperately want her to, I hear her voice, close.
"Let him go!" she shouts, her voice raw with determination.
Logan's grip loosens slightly, just enough for me to draw a thin, painful breath. He's turning to look at her, distracted by the unexpected challenge.
Logan and I both look and find her holding his discarded weapon.
She’s desperately trying to chamber a round as Logan drops me and stalks to her.
"Run," I manage to rasp out. "Naomi, go!"
But she doesn't run. Even with the approaching monster, she still tries to get the weapon to fire. She’s able to cock it back just as Logan gets to her. She fires, but his hand is already on the barrel. The shot goes through his hand, but he barely flinches.
He swats Naomi away with his good hand like she's nothing. The impact forces a cry of pain from her lips as she crumples to the ground. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth, and she lies there unconscious.
Something breaks inside me.
Something primal. Something beyond my training, something beyond the genetic enhancements, beyond anything I've ever experienced in combat before. It isn't cold. It isn’t tactical. It isn't the calculated fury I've used to survive countless battles.
This is white-hot and overwhelming, primal instinct thundering through my body with the force of a storm. She’s mine. My angel. And you touched her. Now you die.
The pain in my body vanishes. The exhaustion burns away in the inferno of my passion for Naomi. She is air and water and life.
I rush him and he’s surprised by my speed. I knock the gun from his hand.
The world slows as my fist connects with Logan's jaw. Bone cracks beneath my knuckles, but I feel nothing—no pain, no resistance, just the unstoppable force of my body finally unleashing its full potential.
Logan staggers back, genuine surprise flashing across his face for the first time since I've known him. I don't give him time to recover. I advance, landing blow after precise blow.
Logan tries to counter, but I read his movements like they're telegraphed in slow motion. I catch his arm mid-strike and twist, accompanied by the sickening pop of his dislocating shoulder.
I continue to pummel him. Destroy him. The fight is now mine and I knock him to the ground.
Logan spits blood, his body broken but his eyes still alive with hatred. "Finish it," he hisses.
I grab him by the throat, pressing. I have to crush his windpipe. End him. Eliminate the threat permanently. It's the only sure way to keep Naomi safe.
The distant thump of helicopter rotors breaks the moment. My enhanced hearing picks them up before they're visible: large transport choppers, accompanied by the rumble of heavy vehicles approaching on the access road. Naomi stirs, thank God, rising to her elbows.
"Do it," Logan rasps, blood bubbling between his lips. "Show her what we really are."
I begin pounding Logan’s face. A strike for every sin he’s committed. Every time he threatened the woman I love. Every time he put his hands on her.
I don’t stop.
The helicopters appear over the ridge, searchlights cutting through the growing darkness. Humvees crash through the dilapidated fence of Camp Titan, their headlights illuminating the concrete yard where I hold Logan pinned. Naomi is sitting up now. “Walker, stop—”
Armed men pour from the vehicles with their weapons trained on us. Their black uniforms bear no distinct markings.
"Stand down! Hands in the air!" The command echoes across the compound.
I maintain my grip on Logan, calculating odds. At least twenty men surround us now, all armed with automatic weapons. Even with my enhancements, those aren't survivable odds.
"Last warning! Release him and stand down!"
My fist is raised overhead. Logan’s face is a bloody mess. One more strike. That’s all it would take. I’m about to bring it down when Matthew Spencer walks forward, raising his hands toward the armed men.
"Hold your fire!" he shouts.
The soldiers hesitate, their weapons still aimed at us. Spencer continues walking calmly toward me, Naomi, and the broken figure of Logan beneath my hands.
My fist still hovers above Logan's ruined face, trembling with the effort it takes to stop the fatal blow. Blood, his and mine, drips from my knuckles onto his cheek.
"Walker. Please. It’s over." Naomi's voice cuts through the red haze of my rage. She's crawling to me now, recovering from the blow Logan struck, her lip still bleeding, but her gaze steady.
"It isn't." My raw voice is barely human. "He hurt you. He threatened to kill you. He has to die."
The truth of those words burns in my chest. Every fiber of my being, everything I was trained to be, everything I was made to be, tells me to end this threat permanently. Logan will never stop. Never. Not as long as there is breath in his body.
"No," Naomi says softly. "You saved me. He lost."
I look down at Logan, his chest rising and falling in shallow, painful breaths. Broken ribs. Dislocated shoulder. Fractured jaw. But still alive.
"As long as he draws breath, he's a threat. They can't protect you from him," I growl, glaring at Spencer and his team surrounding us. Government agents with government rules. They don't understand what Logan is capable of. And if they kill me after I kill him, then maybe that’s for the best, too.
"No. You were right. I was being naive. I thought the world was a more just place. That laws and rules would make things right. But I was wrong. When Logan captured me, I was afraid. But I hid it from him. I hid it for you.”
“Naomi—” I grit out. She’s breaking my heart. I failed her. She should never fear like that.
“But even though I was afraid, I never felt hopeless. Because of you. I knew the law or a system wasn’t going to save me. You were."
Naomi places a gentle hand on my arm, and something inside me shifts.
I meet her eyes, those beautiful gray-blue depths. They’re not fire. They’re a cool, calm lake. There's no fear there, no doubt, no condemnation for what I am or what I've done. There's only faith. And love.
“I believe in you,” she says. “I love you.”
My breathing slows. My muscles begin to unclench. I lower my fist, and the soldiers around us relax. I slowly rise to my feet, lifting Naomi with me.
"Medic!" Spencer yells, and a team rushes to Logan.
I turn my back on him. Something I never thought I’d be able to do. And when I do, I look at Naomi, and the world narrows to just her face. The helicopters, the soldiers, Spencer, and Logan all fade into the background as I wrap my arms around her beautiful body and draw her against my chest.
"I'm never letting you go again," I murmur into her hair, breathing in her scent, feeling her heartbeat against mine.
She presses closer, her arms encircling my waist, holding me just as tightly. "I know," she whispers.
I pull back. And say something I should have said the moment I knew it was true. When I couldn’t breathe while looking at her. “I love you too.”
Her eyes well with tears.
I kiss her. And at that moment, I become something else, standing in the ruins of the place that forged me into a weapon.
I become human again, a man worthy of loving and being loved by a woman as good, as pure, and beautiful as Naomi.