Us Defiant Few (Us Dark Few #3)

1

You might not have been at the start, but I’m happy you’re at the finish.

Khalani Kanes had been defined by many words.

Orphan.

Criminal.

Forsaken.

But a single title wasn’t enough. Not anymore. Untethered rage boiled inside her. It was an endless type of madness.

All her life, she’d been lied to.

Love was supposed to be the defining characteristic that set her free. But with a cold dagger pressed against her throat, Khalani was painfully aware that love only leads to endings.

She’d just never thought it would be her own.

“Takeshi,” Khalani rasped, peering into his dark gaze.

His firm body was the same. His chiseled face and silky hair appeared no different. But Takeshi’s charcoal eyes held zero recognition of her. They were cold and utterly devoid of life, as if a stranger had taken over his body.

The blade bit deeper into her jugular. She flinched as a dribble of warm blood cascaded down her throat.

“I’ll only ask one more time,” Takeshi hissed. “How do you know my name?”

Khalani’s mouth parted, but no cries or pleas escaped. She reached for his face, willing him to recognize her.

Any minute now, he’d break out of it.

He had to.

But before she could speak and get through, a large figure slammed into Takeshi like a battering ram. She gasped as Brock tore him off her, but Takeshi elbowed Brock in the stomach and clocked him in the throat, easily dislodging him.

Takeshi turned back to Khalani, teeth clenched, but this time, something changed. His muscles coiled and shifted, and Takeshi’s eyes flared with fury. She slowly crawled backward, chills running up her spine.

He adjusted his grip on the blade. Without hesitation, he drove the gleaming steel straight toward her heart.

Khalani threw up her hands, instinctively shutting her eyes.

But the pain never came.

She looked up to find Adan and Serene grappling with Takeshi. They grunted and heaved, desperately trying to hold him back.

“Stop it, Takeshi!” Serene cried, struggling to hold his left arm with both her hands wrapped around it, her full weight dragging against him. But Takeshi surged forward, his deadly focus zeroed in on her.

“Snap the fuck out of it, man,” Adan barked, holding on to his other arm desperately, but Takeshi snarled, shaking off their grips.

Brock suddenly appeared from behind and wrapped his thick bicep around Takeshi’s neck, choking him out.

Takeshi’s face turned purple, his limbs shaking.

“Don’t kill him!” she yelled, but the others ignored her, struggling to pull his raging form back.

Khalani could barely breathe, let alone think.

She scrambled to her feet as they continued fighting, his feral gaze locked onto her, fists clenched like she was the cause of the world’s endless suffering.

Takeshi suddenly squared his shoulders and charged ahead.

Even with Brock, Serene, and Adan holding him back, they were no match for his rage.

Crash!

A barstool slammed on top of Takeshi’s head.

He stumbled, losing focus as Winnie stood behind him, chest heaving, her eyes bulging wide. Brock immediately took advantage and grabbed the stool from Winnie and brought it crashing over his head again.

They all jumped as Takeshi slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Brock’s hands trembled as he dropped the stool. The chair clattered to the ground, the piercing sound echoing throughout the decrepit alley.

No one moved, like the slightest shift might wake Takeshi and send him into another murderous rampage. But Khalani rubbed her aching chest, feeling like she was about to topple over.

Emptiness would’ve been a reprieve.

In fact, anything would’ve been preferable to the bellowing grief inside her.

“How do you know my name?”

That’s what Takeshi had kept repeating.

Did he truly not remember her?

Khalani shook her head, wanting—no, needing—to deny it.

Maybe he couldn’t recognize her in the dark alley and was simply confused?

She searched for any other explanation, but Doctor Strauss’s smiling face flashed in her mind.

She remembered him sawing her leg open like a bloody slice of cake. Flaying her arms. Amputating her limbs. He’d used a special medicine to heal her wounds at a remarkable rate.

And the last time she saw Takeshi, he’d been shot trying to escape the prison camp with her. They could’ve used the same medicine to heal his wounds.

But would that make him forget her?

No. It had to be something else.

The only thing she kept coming back to was the chip. The one Doctor Strauss had wanted to insert into her brain.

He’d said torture was necessary to induce memory loss and make the chip function. In the lab, she’d felt her mind begin to splinter. Her memories. Her poems. Everything was slowly slipping away. The only thing Khalani could do was repeat her own name over and over, so she wouldn’t lose everything.

But Takeshi had been gone for days. Alone. Suffering. Waiting for her to return.

A tear rolled down her cheek as her regrets piled higher and higher.

She’d left him behind. Takeshi had put his life on the line to save her, and in return, she’d abandoned him.

She gazed at him on the ground, wanting to lie down beside him and say how sorry she was.

“Where did the chair come from?” Serene’s numb voice broke the silence.

“Winnie didn’t really think.” Winnie ran her trembling hand through her gray, frayed hair. “She ran back into the bar and grabbed the first thing she could. The men inside were too busy fighting to notice.”

Khalani’s eyes flickered to the Black Heart. One second, they were in the Aces’ headquarters, discussing plans, and the next, the Dealers had barged in, hunting for the prisoners who’d escaped the camp.

The clamor of fighting had faded. The alleyway they stood in was eerily quiet. But they had no idea who’d won.

The Aces might all be dead.

The Dealers could burst into the back alley, searching for survivors, at any moment.

“We have to move.” Khalani spoke rapidly, her thoughts going haywire. “Brock, can you help me grab Takeshi? We need to hide.”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Brock snapped, keeping his voice low to not attract attention, but the words sliced her apart. “He tried to kill you!”

“No, you don’t understand. He’s not himself,” she argued, meeting their incredulous stares. “The Dealers did something to his memory. We have to help him.”

“Khalani…” Adan hedged. “Maybe we should talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” she roared. Her face was pale, the whites of her eyes showing, like a cornered creature lashing out.

But she didn’t care who was standing against her. She’d die before leaving him again.

Brock clenched his jaw, about to argue some more, when the back door to the Black Heart flung open. Jack stormed out with a murderous expression on his blood-smeared face as he supported Ryder’s waist.

Ryder’s pale cheeks were streaked with dirt as he heaved in ragged breaths, one bloody hand pressed tightly against his ribs. Raziel and Spade followed close behind, their black clothing disheveled and splattered with specks of red.

A couple other men staggered behind them, gripping their weapons with frantic gazes.

Khalani’s mouth flew open when the last figure to stumble out was Elise.

Her blond hair hung in disheveled knots, her expression completely lost and shell-shocked as she hobbled down the stairs, nothing like the fiery girl Khalani had met in the prison camp.

When she hit the ground, Spade slammed the door to the Black Heart shut. His chest heaved, and he braced his back against the wood, like he could somehow contain the violence left behind the walls.

“We need to get out of here,” Jack ordered, tightening his hold around the injured Ryder. “He needs a doctor.”

“Fucking Dealer stabbed me,” Ryder hissed, blood seeping deeper pools into his gray shirt.

“What happened to the other Dealers?” Brock asked.

“Dead,” Raziel stated unforgivingly, wiping a bloodied arm across his nose, clutching a handgun close to his side. “I counted seven in the raid, but more will come when they don’t report back.”

“And the rest of the Aces?”

Jack and Spade exchanged grim looks. Raziel muttered expletives too deadly to list under his tongue. Khalani careened at the silent answer.

Elise swayed side to side, her gaze glassy, looking like she’d keel over at any moment.

“Still don’t know how the hell they found us.” Spade banged a heavy fist against the door.

“Someone must’ve talked.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Jack snapped, scanning the alley, but his murderous gaze landed on Takeshi.

He froze, his mouth opening and closing multiple times, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

Jack was with them when Takeshi was shot. He’d witnessed the tunnels sealing off his escape.

He, like everyone else, had thought Takeshi was dead.

“How is he alive?”

None of them spoke. Not even Brock.

Raziel was perceptive, though. He took in the discarded knife on the ground, their lowered eyes, and the thin line of blood trickling down Khalani’s neck.

In the next millisecond, he cocked his gun and aimed it at Takeshi.

“NO!”

Khalani didn’t think.

Pure instinct overrode her as she dove over Takeshi, shielding his body with her own.

“Get off him,” Raziel hissed.

“I won’t.”

“You have three seconds to move, or I’m killing you both.”

“Raziel,” Spade cautioned, “hold on.”

“No!” Raziel snarled. “I saw him get shot with my own two eyes. If the Dealers saved him, he’s the one who led them to the Black Heart.”

His trigger finger twitched.

“That’s not true!” Khalani cried, holding up a hand to stop him. “You can’t hurt him. He doesn’t remember.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“When Doctor Strauss took me into his lab, he told me their plan,” she explained, struggling to get through the words. “They’re torturing prisoners to erase their memories. They’ve been implanting chips to take control over everyone.”

Shocked murmurs echoed throughout the alley, but Adan, Serene, and Winnie closed in around her.

“Khalani…they tortured you down there?” Serene’s voice trembled as she took another shaky step forward.

“Don’t move,” Raziel snapped, shifting the gun to Serene.

“If you don’t put that gun down, we’re going to have a bigger problem,” Brock growled, the deep timbre and wrath in his voice sending shivers through her spine.

“I will do no such thing. He’s the reason they found us and killed several of our men. We have no choice but to exterminate the threat.”

Exterminate.

Like a roach that needed to be vanquished.

Over her dead fucking body.

Raziel shifted the gun in her direction. Khalani tensed, ready to tackle him and draw blood.

“Wait!” Winnie’s panicked voice cut through the air. “He’s better use to you alive than dead.”

“How is that?” Jack whipped his head.

“If what Khalani said is true, then who knows how many camps the Dealers have and how many people they’re controlling?”

Jack’s lips formed a grim line, and Khalani latched onto the hesitation in his eyes.

“Doctor Strauss said they were going to distribute the chips throughout Hermes.” She raised her voice, imploring him to listen. “If you help us remove his chip, you can study it. Maybe even find a cure. Isn’t that what you want? To protect Hermes? To help your people?”

The corner of Raziel’s lips turned down as Jack considered her words. The silence stretched on, and she prepared for the worst, but Spade was the one to break it.

“I think she’s right, Jack.”

Raziel spun in his direction. “You can’t seriously agree with this!”

“He might be our only lead to find out what’s happening in the camps,” Spade countered. “And we need to get off the streets, Raz. Your brother needs a doctor.” He gestured to Ryder, whose skin was turning ashen, his eyes fluttering closed.

Khalani blinked. Brother?

She hadn’t known Ryder and Raziel were related, but now that she was looking, she noticed the similarities in their dark hair and sharper features.

“I don’t like it either, Raziel. But I agree,” Jack stated.

The vein in Raziel’s neck throbbed as he studied her and Takeshi. Everyone held their breaths, waiting, but he slowly lowered the gun.

“Tie him up,” Jack immediately ordered. Spade nodded, quietly slipping back into the Black Heart.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Brock cut her off.

“We have no choice, Khalani. Until he gets his memory back, Takeshi can’t be trusted.”

Khalani knew they were right.

She also hated that they were right.

Her bottom lip trembled as Spade emerged through the door with thick black rope looped around his hands. She reluctantly moved, her muscles tightening as Spade bound his wrists.

“Where do we go now?” Adan asked, his eyes sweeping over the shadows in the alley, like he expected a Dealer to jump out at any moment.

“We have another safe house not too far from here. We’ll take the transports in the back. Raziel.” Jack jerked his head. “Contact Lane. Let him know the situation. We’ll need his help for Ryder…and him.”

Everyone’s wary gazes drifted to Takeshi, who now lay on his front, hands tied behind him, his cheek pressed firmly to the concrete.

She silently stared, willing his eyes to open. Praying for his deep voice to speak her name.

He would wake soon.

Khalani felt it.

But what further terrors awaited when he did?