10. Novak
TEN
Novak
Cold stone pressed into the skin beneath my knees, pushing through the thin fabric of the trousers. A projector hummed somewhere behind us, its fan rattling as images flickered across the white sheet nailed to the wall.
Brother Matthias stood behind me, so close I could hear the slow drag of his breathing.
One of his hands rested on my shoulder in the casual way the men here used when they wanted to remind us that our bodies belonged to them.
In his other hand was the small black remote that controlled the collar around my neck, the plastic worn smooth from use.
When he pressed the button, the metal band tightened against my throat, and the current snapped through my nerves.
My muscles contracted immediately, a clean reflex that pulled my shoulders forward and dipped my head as if the shock had driven me to the ground.
I was thirteen now, used to the pain and the voltage, which wasn’t enough to take me to the floor anymore, but I lowered my head anyway because the men here preferred obedience to truth.
The collar clicked again, and the current ran longer this time, spreading across the nerves in my neck and shoulders in a bright electrical line.
My body spasmed and then released. The sensation had changed over the years.
When I was younger, the pain had been sharp and chaotic.
Now it arrived as information: duration, intensity, and the way the muscles responded.
I stayed still when the shock ended because the wrong reaction sometimes made them press the button again.
Brother Matthias’s fingers slid into my hair and gripped until my scalp burned.
He pulled my head back so he could look down at my face, studying me the same way he studied the other boys when he was deciding which of us to use for his demonstrations.
His breathing had already changed. Slower at first, then heavier, the rhythm changing as he watched the projector light flicker across the wall.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
I lifted my eyes across the room before I obeyed. Raphael crouched against the far wall with his arms wrapped around his knees, his gaze fixed on me instead of the screen. He watched everything. Not the way the others did, not with fear or confusion. He watched.
Waited.
I opened my mouth.
Brother Matthias shoved forward immediately, forcing himself in with the careless force of someone who believed there would never be consequences.
His weight shifted forward as the rhythm established itself.
I adjusted my breathing through the narrow passages left through my nose, because choking usually made them press the remote again.
While he moved, I watched.
The projector light flickered across the fabric of his robe.
His pulse was visible in the side of his neck above the collar, a fast, shallow beat that accelerated the longer he held me there.
He leaned with more weight on his right foot than his left, so if something disrupted him, his body would fall toward the stones rather than backward toward the wall.
His grip in my hair tightened whenever my teeth scraped him by accident and loosened when I went still again.
Cause and effect were simple here. Every action produced a reaction.
Raphael stood and I saw the shift in his shoulders when he stepped away from the wall. Brother Matthias didn’t notice. His attention had narrowed to the act itself, to the power he believed he had over the room.
I waited.
Timing mattered more than strength.
When his grip loosened half an inch, and his weight tipped forward again, I closed my teeth.
Hard.
For a fraction of a second, there was resistance, a dull pressure against hard flesh before I tore a chunk away.
His screams tore through the room, drowning out the projector’s steady hum. I pulled back immediately and spat blood and flesh onto the stones between my knees while he staggered, clutching at himself in disbelief.
Raphael was already behind him.
He wrapped his arms around Brother Matthias’s chest and locked his hands together, pinning the man’s elbows against his sides so he couldn’t reach either of us.
The action was rough but effective. Brother Matthias thrashed against him, choking on the scream as blood soaked the front of his robe and dripped down onto the stones.
Neither of us spoke.
We watched.
Raphael held him upright while the screaming turned into wet, broken gasps. The pulse in his neck fluttered unevenly, skipping beats before slowing, the skin around his mouth turning pale under the projector’s light.
When it stopped, Raphael let go.
Brother Matthias collapsed sideways onto the stones with a heavy, graceless thud. The projector continued to flicker against the wall while the others stared.
Raphael returned to the corner and crouched again.
I knelt beside the body, studying the man’s face while the blood spread through the stones beneath him. His eyes were still open. The collar around my own throat gave a faint mechanical hum as it reset.
I needed to get a drink of water to wash the taste of blood out.
“She won’t like that,” Gabriel said.
I knew she wouldn’t. I knew there’d be pain, but… I stared at the broken body… and the blood had dripped into a dent on the floor, a perfect circle…
“We need to kill her too,” Raphael said.
I needed to wake up.
I didn’t want to see this again.
I woke up.
The ceiling above my bed replaced the cracked plaster of the hall.
The projector was gone, and the smell of blood replaced by the neutral air of my apartment.
I stayed still for a moment while the dream’s details settled into place, not fading like most dreams but aligning themselves into the clear, ordered memory they had always been.
After a moment, I lifted a hand and ran my thumb slowly along the inside of my lower teeth, checking the edge of the molars out of habit.
They were still sharp enough.
Across the room, my phone lit up, and I knew what would be there: messages, reports, fragments of information on whatever we’d find when we got to the compound.
I dressed, then drove out to the coordinates Killian had sent the night before.
The place sat well off the road, tucked between a stand of tall pines and a stretch of scrub sloping down toward a dry creek bed.
It was the kind of property that passed as a holiday rental if you didn’t look too closely—wooden structure, wide porch, a roof pitched steep enough to shed winter snow, the boards weathered but maintained.
Whoever had taken this over from the government had thrown money at it.
I killed the engine a short distance away and sat for a moment, studying the angles. One main structure. Two windows were visible from the drive. A side door, half hidden by the porch rail. No secondary vehicles except the van parked near the steps.
Caleb’s hi-tech comms room on wheels.
I stepped out of the truck and drew my gun automatically. The air smelled of pine and cold earth. Gravel crunched under my boots as I walked the perimeter instead of heading straight for the door.
Habit. Procedure. Survival.
Not ready to see Caleb yet.
The boards along the side of the cabin were old but solid.
No fresh tool marks. No broken locks. The windows reflected the trees behind me, dark glass giving nothing away from the inside.
I paused at each corner and listened, letting the quiet settle long enough to separate natural sounds from anything mechanical or human.
Wind in the trees. A distant bird. Nothing else.
I circled the property once more, slower this time, checking lines of sight and cover points out of habit.
Whoever Killian had used to source the place had done their job well.
The tree line gave privacy. The slope behind the cabin meant anyone approaching from the rear would have to climb exposed ground.
The only real vulnerability was the front approach, which meant if someone came for us, they’d likely come loud.
Satisfied, I lowered the gun but didn’t holster it.
Caleb was inside.
Now I needed to see what he’d do when I walked through the door.
He was sitting at a table, laptop open in front of him, headphones resting around his neck.
Cargo pants. Olive T-shirt. An M17 riding high on his right hip, the military issue version of the SIG P320.
Kydex holster. Strong-side carry, about three o’clock.
The grip angled forward for a fast draw. He hadn’t touched it when I walked in.
“Novak,” he said, inclining his head in acknowledgment.
“The perimeter is secure,” I said.
“I know. You tested and tripped every single sensor.”
He pushed his chair back and crossed into the kitchen, a small but functional setup tucked along the back wall.
He opened the refrigerator.
It was fully stocked with food and drinks and I guessed the hardware available to us would be just as comprehensive.
Caleb grabbed a bottle of water, twisted the cap, and leaned back against the counter while he drank. “Two bedrooms upstairs,” he said, voice steady. “Comms are in the basement.”
He lowered the bottle and finally looked at me.
We stared at each other across the small kitchen.
My attention dropped to his mouth without permission. My body reacted immediately, a familiar mechanical response that had started happening every time Caleb Shaw entered my field of vision.
See Caleb.
Get hard.
Want Caleb.
Get hard.
The pattern was becoming predictable and enjoyable.
I broke my six-foot rule without thinking.
Distance meant options, angles, and exits. But the space between us suddenly felt like an obstacle rather than a precaution, and before the calculation finished in my head, I’d already stepped closer.
Caleb froze and watched me. The kitchen light caught the line of his jaw, the slight stubble there, the shape of his mouth when he lowered the bottle again. My fingers itched with a strange, unfamiliar impulse—an urge to touch.
I could see the pulse in his throat, and if he lifted his hand, he could reach me as easily as I could reach him.
The air between us tightened, the moment balanced on a thin edge of something neither of us had named yet. I watched his mouth again, cataloging the slight hitch in his breathing, the faint tension in his shoulders that said he had noticed the change in distance even if he chose not to react.
See Caleb.
Step closer.
Want Caleb.
Closer still.
He didn’t shift his weight or reach for the gun on his hip. He didn’t straighten away from the counter, and the lack of reaction pulled me in another inch.
Then another.
Now the distance between us was nothing. I could feel the heat coming off him, could see the moment his breathing slowed deliberately. He knew what I was doing and he wasn’t stopping me.
My fingers flexed once at my side, the urge to touch sharpening into something almost painful.
Caleb still didn’t move.
I lifted my hand slowly and deliberately, the way I approached anything that might react badly if startled. My fingers rose between us, closing the last inch of space until they hovered near his throat, just under the line of his jaw, where the pulse beat against his skin.
I didn’t touch him.
But if I moved my hand half an inch, my knuckles would brush the roughness of stubble along his jaw.
Caleb’s eyes tracked my hesitation. He didn’t step back. He didn’t point his gun at me.
My fingers hovered there another second.
Then I stopped myself.
“Are you done, Arnie?” Caleb asked in a dead tone. The words were quiet, but the edge in them was unmistakable. He’d not called me Arnie for a few days now, and I’d been waiting for his next nickname for me—he’d cycled through Robot, then Freak, then Arnie, and back to Freak, and now Arnie again.
I liked them all because he used the words, and that meant he thought about me.
He glanced at my hand, still too close to his throat, then back to my face. “Fucking personal space,” he muttered.
I stepped away.
I was learning, and I wanted Caleb.
Distance snapped back into place, and I turned without answering and headed back outside to the truck, gravel crunching under my boots as I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat. When I returned, Caleb was still in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as if nothing had happened.
I crossed the room and took the stairs two at a time, and upstairs, a narrow hallway split the space in two. The bedroom to the left was already claimed. Caleb’s bag sat on the bed, laptop case beside it, charger cable trailing across the comforter.
I took the bedroom on the right.
The room was simple—a bed, a dresser, and a view out toward the front of the cabin. Functional. Temporary. Good sight of the driveway.
We’d be sharing the bathroom at the end of the hall.
I set my bag on the bed and stared at the closed door for a moment, thinking about the line of Caleb’s throat, the steady pulse under his skin, the way he hadn’t moved when I stepped into his space.
At some point, he would take a shower.
I wanted to see him naked.