Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Zayn didn’t like this. Not one bit.
A bad feeling sank over him like a suffocating blanket. He stared at the tanks and the bodies inside. He couldn’t even tell if the occupants were alive.
He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He still felt a little shaky from seeing the interrogation room, that small, dank place that he hated so much. He felt like he had no solid footing. Then he looked at Ria and everything steadied.
She pressed a hand to the glass of a tank housing a tall, young man. Suddenly the man’s eyes snapped open. Ria took a hasty step back.
Zayn moved closer. The man didn’t seem like he could see them. His eyes were a milky white, unaware. His chest was a mass of laser burns.
“Do you think he’s dead?” she asked.
“No one could survive a wound like that, even with a medscope.”
She looked down the row of tanks. “You think this is some sort of medical research? Maybe the Guild is testing enhancement procedures and drugs.”
“Maybe.” It still didn’t feel right, and every good pilot knew you had to trust your instincts. He spied a computer terminal ahead. The desk had three curved screens suspended above it. Each screen held an image of a flame-haired woman. He glanced over and saw the woman in the neighboring tank.
In the first image, the woman looked human. In the second, he could see her facial features were changing, morphing. In the last, she had a tiny row of ridges down the side of her face. He frowned. She looked like she was Pictori, like Ria.
“Hey! Hey, you can’t be in here.”
The voice echoed from the center of the lab.
Zayn and Ria spun and saw a man hurrying toward them.
He wore a white lab coat and had surgical goggles pushed up on his head.
The cranial ridge on his forehead and lack of hair was common in his species—the Weent.
A race known to have some of the quickest minds and highest intelligence rates in the galaxy.
“Out.” He made a shooing move with his arms. “You need to get out now. I won’t have—”
Ria reached out and slammed the man against the nearest tank. “I want some answers. Now.”
The man blinked. “You can’t—”
“Where are the babies?”
“B-babies?”
“Future assassins.”
“There aren’t any babies.” The doctor focused on her. “You’re Pictori.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re an assassin, then.”
“Consider me retired. Who are you?”
The man shifted nervously. “Dr. Wendell D’aarn. I work for the Guild.” He tilted his head. “You were created here.”
Ria looked over his shoulder at the tank. Zayn felt his gut-deep dread solidify.
“I just told you, I’m Pictori.”
D’aarn shook his head. “The Pictori are a species I created.”
The pride in the man’s voice made Zayn want to slam a fist into the man’s face.
Ria’s eyes narrowed. “Like I said, I’m Pictori, from the Devil’s Nebula.”
“Ever met a Pictori outside the Guild?” the doctor asked.
She frowned. Then she slammed the doctor against the tank again. He gave a yelp.
“Dr. D’aarn,” Zayn said. “I think you better give her those answers now.” He kept his gaze on Ria and her pale face.
“You’re saying the Guild makes babies in this…lab?” she asked.
D’aarn shook his head. “Gosh, no. They make assassins.”
Zayn and Ria traded a look. The guy was making no sense.
“All these people—” he waved a hand at the tanks “—they’re all adults.
I’m morphing them into assassins. I manipulate their DNA, wipe their memories, add new ones.
Some, whose original identities need to be hidden, are morphed into Pictori.
I also add subliminal assassin training.
They wake up with all the basic skills an assassin needs.
They need far less physical training before they’re ready for the field. ”
Zayn watched Ria rub the scar on her arm. “Master Tarr broke my arm in training when I was eight.”
The doctor shook his head. “A created memory. We found that regenerated subjects are more settled if they remember a childhood…even a fake one. And it decreases memory spill from their…previous existence.”
Jesus. Zayn didn’t know what to think about this Frankenstein lab.
Ria let the doctor go, and he slumped back against the tank. Zayn grabbed her wrist. “Ria, babe, you okay?” He felt the wild drum of her pulse under his thumb.
“Previous existence?” she said the words without a single inflection. One hand moved to rub her ridges.
“Yes,” D’aarn said. “All these subjects. They’re dead. Empty shells I can regenerate. It’s ingenious technology, even if I do say so myself.”
Zayn’s horror increased. How could they do that to people? Desecrate dead bodies, steal their lives?
Ria’s knees buckled, and he caught her, sliding an arm around her waist. He wanted her to lean on him, but her spine stayed stubbornly stiff.
“I was…a dead body.”
“Yes. All assassins start that way. We implant new DNA and cause a rebirth. Regeneration.”
Her gaze was on the tanks. “You bring people back from the dead.”
“No.” D’aarn shook his head vehemently. “The host is most definitely dead. We just use the remains to make an entirely new person. The new generation has no memory of their previous incarnation.”
“Who am I?” Ria said with lethal quietness.
Zayn tightened his hold on her. “Ria—”
“I need to know.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. “We need to know.”
D’aarn cleared his throat. “You are exactly who you are now. You are no longer whoever came before.”
“Who. Am. I.”
The doctor shifted nervously. “I’ll have to check the records.”
Zayn watched the man tap at the computer console. His gut was so tight, and Ria was so still in his arms. Under his palm, he felt her heart bounding.
“I recall your face, actually,” D’aarn said. “You weren’t regenerated that long ago. About two years, I think.”
Oh, God. Zayn saw Ria’s face blanch. “Ria.” He ran a hand down her back in a soothing stroke. “It’s okay.”
Her hand gripped his, like she was using him to hold onto her sanity. “It’s not okay. We both know that.”
“Here you go.” D’aarn touched the screen, sliding until a file appeared. “Subject AG9173.”
Ria and Zayn stared at the photos. One of herself in her Guild robes. One of a woman who looked like her floating in one of the tanks. Her golden hair streaked upward, her skin pale white, and a bullet wound in the center of her forehead.
Zayn looked at the last photo and a noise escaped his chest.
The last photo showed a woman with her blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun, scowling at the camera in her navy Strike Wing uniform.
“Vik,” he whispered.
Ria closed her eyes, her world crashing down around her feet.
She wasn’t who she thought she was.
Her entire life was a lie.
She pushed away from Zayn, trying to draw air into her lungs. She couldn’t look at him.
D’aarn sat heavily on a stool. He pointed to Viktoria’s photo. “You aren’t that woman anymore.”
“I don’t know who I am.” Ria felt a rush of desolation fill her. The mission. She grabbed onto that. She had to focus on the mission.
Whoever she was, she had even more incentive now to be free of the Guild. Free of the organization that had stolen her life and her death. They’d taken her very identity.
Hot anger choked her. “Let’s get out of here.” She speared the doctor with a look. “Is there a quick way out?”
“Delivery door in back. It’s where the bodies are brought in.”
Ria strode away.
Zayn jogged up beside her. “Ria, we need to talk.”
“Not now.” She still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
She’d truly believed he was starting to see her, not the past. She was falling in love with him, and she’d hoped there was a chance he might one day feel something for her.
For Ria. But now she was Viktoria. God, what a mess. “Not now, okay?”
He sighed. “Okay.”
There was a set of sliding frosted-glass doors. As they approached, they slid open.
The delivery area brought her up short. Metal tables lined one wall, all covered in dead bodies shrouded by white sheets. Poor souls waiting for their turn in the tanks.
The boiling sensations in Ria bubbled over. She strode to the first body and ripped off the sheet. The man was an Argylian, in the prime of his life before someone had slit his throat.
She wouldn’t let these people’s remains be desecrated. Wouldn’t let them live a lie, their existence stolen from them.
She spun, studying the room. In the corner, she spied the industrial incinerator. As she neared, she felt the heat pouring off it. She guessed some bodies didn’t make the cut—either too damaged or not possessing the right physical characteristics to make a perfect assassin.
Ria wrenched open the incinerator door and a wave of heat rushed out. The hungry flames burned a neon green, chemically enhanced to burn very hot.
Next, she moved to the table holding the Argylian, gripped his body under the arms, and heaved him off the table.
He was heavy and it took all her strength to drag him across the floor. Then Zayn was there, grabbing the man’s feet.
“You’re sure about this?”
She looked at him now and saw nothing but sympathy on his handsome face. He had a right to be upset and angry as well, but instead he just looked worried.
“I’m not going to let these people become puppets for the Guild.” God, her body had been in here, naked, covered by a sheet. “They died, they deserve to rest in peace.”
With a nod, Zayn hefted the man’s feet. They slid him into the incinerator.
Ria watched the flames leap high and forced herself to watch as the man’s remains dissolved. Then she turned and moved to the next body.
She lost track of time as they dropped the bodies into the flames. Soon, the tables were empty, and Ria felt empty inside too. She felt something on her cheeks and lifted a hand.
Moisture. Tears tracking down her cheeks.
Zayn took her hand and squeezed. She wanted to turn into him, hold him tight, and pretend that everything was all right.
She didn’t. Because everything wasn’t all right.
But she held onto his hand as they watched the devouring flames.