Rohan joins Damon by the window, peering out. His mouth twists into a smirk when he sees who our incoming visitors are.
“Fuck me,” Rohan exclaims, darting a glance between me and Damon. “They probably got sent an alert when whoever is watching the feed for the safe-house cameras saw you.”
Christ. I should have thought more about the cameras in here. Most FISA safe houses are outfitted with a handful of stealth cams. I had hoped, since this safe house is currently unoccupied, that no one would be monitoring them, or at least not so avidly as to send out an instant red flag.
Damon heaves out a frustrated sigh.
“It’s my dad.” He makes a face, looking over at me with impending doom in his eyes. “And your aunt.”
Aw, shit.
CHAPTER SIX
JACK
I'm not used to waking up and feeling comfortable. It immediately sends an alert to my brain that I'm probablysomeplace whereI'm not supposed to be.The smart thing to do would be to stay still and try to listen, to focus and figure out what the hell is going on. But because I'm me, and becauseI've never claimed intelligenceas one of my virtues,my body immediately goes intoget-the-fuck-away mode. I'm moving before I can decide if it's a good idea.
Turns out, it is most definitely not a good idea. Big shock.
Ifall right offthe edge of something. My bodyinstinctively curls itself into a ball to lessen the impact of hitting what I fucking hope is gonna be the floor. It could very well not be. No joke, I once woke up in some arsehole supervillain's lab and got tipped off a table into a pond of eels. Fucking. Eels. I know I'm a cracked-out assassin working for an even more cracked organisation. But nobody needs that shit. Nobody. I had eelssoclose to my dick. Like so, so close.It was goddamn horrifying is what it was. I hate supervillains and all their freaky-ass love for murdering people with things only nature should be allowed to murder people with.
Message to the supervillain community: just stick to human weapons or go sit in the corner until you've sorted your sea-creature kinks out.
Thankfully, there are no eels this time. Just a normal stonefloor. Grey and cold and hard. Now, this. This is familiar. I uncurl slowly and move into a crouched position. After a quick scan of thesurrounding area,I see that I am in some kind of cell. It's small and completely bereft of anything other than the bed I just fell out of. Even the bed is nothing more than amattress laid out on topof a raised platform.
Still, I know this isn't an OI cell. I've spent most of my life in and out of OI cells, and they all look exactly the same. This one is unmistakably different. I'm guessing it's a standard agency containment cell.I know an enemy cage when I'm in one. By that, I mean the enemy of Obsidian Inc. Not me. My enemy is everyone, the organisation that employs me included.
I get up and start carefully searching the room,running my fingersalong the walls and flipping the mattress. After abouttwo minutes, I come to the dismal conclusion there'snot a single thingI can use as a weapon in here. The cell is so small there aren't even any corners to use for partial cover.
With little other choice, I sit on the mattress, right in the middle of it,and resolve to do what I always do when all I have left to use to fight is myself: kill every single motherfucker who tries to touch me.
It would probably be smarter to play dumb when they come for me. To pretend I'm a victim here and not the unrepentantmurderer I really am. But I don't go in for all that vulnerable-manipulation bullshit, pretending to be weak and scared and in need of protection. We were trained for it. We trained for everything.ButI could never quite pullofflooking saveable.Too emotional, they used to say. Too emotional to fake being overly emotional.
Sexual manipulation, on the other hand, now that I can do occasionally. With the right target. But even then the balance has to be just right. I can't turn it on and off like I've seen other OI agents do.
I keep my eyes trained on the large metal door at the far end of the room. I've been in situations like this before, too many times tocount. Sometimes getting captured is part of the job. It can be an easy shortcut to get into places. Dan always thinks it's too much of a risk, but I—
A flash of memory hits me then.
Dan laid flat on his back, held in place.
Me, holding him down like I mean it. A flash of green and rage. A burst of pain that barely registers as pain at all.
A grey room. Grey, grey walls. Desperation and sweat. And there's blood. On the floor. And not on the floor.
I’m so angry. So, so angry.
He let me kill him. Helet mestab him in the neck. I don’t think I will ever have it in me to forgive that betrayal.
My brother told me hewasn't sorry, and I was glad. Because sorry is an empty promise that swings in the wind like a corpse hanging from a rope.
He was protecting me, but.
But if you protect someone by hurting them that badly, then I'm not sure if it counts as protection at all.
I hear whoever it is coming long before they touch the door, instinctively shifting into a more offensive position, ready to do as much damage as I need to. My body quakes, a rumble of anticipation moving through me like wind across loose sand. Itry to banish the tension, even though I know full well it's probably a lost cause.
Sometimes Istruggle with waiting fora fight. I get too keyed up,andIfind myself suddenlyspringing outlike a tarantula trying to snatch a low-flying bird. When I was on a mission with Dan, he could usually stop me by touching my arm or saying my name. But I went on plenty of missions alone, and I always came back bloodier than I should’ve been. I think this is probably going be just like that. Bloody. And fast. Part of me, a large part I make no effort to shy away from, wants it, wants the fight badly enough to feel impatient for it.
