I shimmied the second piece of clothing—a slinky red slip—over my head. The silk hugged every curve, the back dipping low to display the wound on my spine.
After I dressed, he tied my wrists with rope, then bound my ankles so I could walk, but not run. “Now you look like what you are. All you need is a little correction.”
I met his eyes with all the hatred coursing through my body, but he only smiled. I gathered he was taking me somewhere, but couldn’t summon the energy to dread whatever came next.
He pointed at the door. “Walk.”
I hesitated, and he drove his knuckles into my bleeding back, forcing me forward. Crying and tripping, I tried and failed to detach from the fiery torture on my spine.
Bloody footprints followed me through the house to the garage. He popped the trunk of his car and forced me into it. I was locked in darkness as we took a drive, every jostle a hot poker against my skin. When the car stopped, the trunk unlatched, and fresh sunlight in a clear winter sky startled my senses. He grabbed me by my bound wrists and jerked me upright, banging my shins hard into the metal of the car. Once I was standing, I swayed, my head swooping with hunger and blood loss.
We stood in a parking lot dotted with cars, and he marched me toward a building of red brick. The tiny rocks on the pavement stabbed into my feet. The cold bit into my bare skin. A few other men headed toward the main doors.
Inside, several glanced at us, chatting in small groups before a day of work. Some wore black Hunter fatigues; others dressier uniforms. They stood at attention as we passed, saluting Miller.
They disregarded me.
We descended to a colder, windowless level, and an armed soldier stood guard at a large metal door. He opened it for us, greeting Miller with a salute, and we passed through it.
This wasn’t an office building, I realized. It was a jail. Or at least it used to be. The Hunters had commandeered it for their own purposes.
The cell was filled with people, about fifty of them. Another guard unlocked the sliding bars and Miller shoved me inside.
“Was fun gettin’ to know you, sugar.” He gave me a calm smile while I cursed his existence. The bars clanked closed and locked. He left, and the guard returned to his watch, ignoring us.
I stared at the people around me, all bound.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to a woman slumped nearby.
“Registration,” she said without looking at me.
In a flash, sweat bloomed under my arms. Butterflies swirled to life in my stomach, kicking up a mixture of hope and dread. My body went slack, and I sat hard on the floor.
Registration.
Lucas washere.
What would he do? What wouldIdo?
He might snap. He might give himself away. We might both die today.
And what if it wasn’t him? What if another colonel registered me?
I ignored everyone around me as the minutes stretched, imagining the horrors that awaited me. Panic rose from the very depths of my soul as I envisioned myself being marched with a line of prisoners before that bloodstained wall in Unity Square.
Just like Mahmoud.
When the camera panned over the condemned that day, and he stood at the end of the line, my heart stopped. I thought he’d died on our last mission, but no.
He’d been captured.
His head was high, his gaze straight ahead. His ankles and wrists were tied like the rest of the prisoners. His mouth moved, just barely, and tears had filled my eyes when I realized he was praying. Before I’d accepted his fate, a Blood Colonel I hardly recognized stepped forward and read the executive order like always.
He left the podium. He accepted the weapon. He aimed the gun.
Bullets soared through the air, finding purchase in bodies that had been fully functional only seconds before, bodies that were born to grow and heal and flourish.
And then Mahmoud was hit, and he crumpled like the rest, wasted.
