The red-haired Hero held out his palms as his shoulders rose to his ears. “She locked the door before she left, I had to break it down. Honestly, my ankles hurt, you should bring me to the hospital.”
“You’re so damn dramatic,” Leo glanced down at me, his eyes hesitating on my bare legs. “And so are you. We’re getting you changed, and you’re coming with us. Make me run after you again, and I won’t go easy this time.”
My irritation flared. “Excuse me? First of all, youbroke down my door?Do you know how much that’s gonna cost me?! And you can’t kidnap people off the streets, I’m apersonwith achoice,the VIA can kiss my ass if they think?—”
Leo deadpanned before unzipping the top of his suit, ignoring my rambling as he shouldered himself out of it, leavingonly a black tank top underneath. Endless small scars littered his muscled arms, trailing all the way up to his neck and across his collarbones. There were a few along his forearms that were bright red, spots of blood dried on his skin. Joon told me at the academy that Leo’s coolant had to be injected—I never thought about it too much, but the sight made me flinch.
Ouch.
He tied the arms of the top around my waist, the length of it running down to my knees. My muscles went rigid, nervous about the needles that were likely hidden within the fabric, attached to those orange tubes. Even the jacket was cool to the touch — a special material for temperature regulation, no doubt. I opened my mouth to ask, but Leo scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder without warning.
“Hey!” I shouted as I began to pound on his back. “Put me down!”
“You can keep talking,” he drawled as he began to walk back toward my apartment. “But we gotta get moving. I’m tired, and you’re annoying.”
The moment I started to kick my legs, he latched a strong arm around them and pinned me down. Reed trailed behind us and held up a hand in front of his mouth, stifling a laugh.
“Relax, take a nap or something,” Leo huffed. “But if you kick like that again, all of Nightmyre is going to see those striped panties of yours. Not into the sexy lace stuff, are you?”
My face heated, and I went still, embarrassment crawling through me. “Panties? Gross, they’reunderwear. Grow up. I hate you with an intensity I can’t even explain. You’re a child, a big fucking man-child that doesn’t?—”
His skin started to heat underneath me, and I nearly yelped again from the steam that started to rise. “Alex, do me a favor, andshut up.And stop squirming; it’s distracting.”
My mouth gaped, and Reed nearly danced with joy behind us.
“Oh, this is fun,” he chirped. “Glad to have you on the team, Alex. You’re doing great.”
I’m in hell.A personal, specific, Alex-tailored hell that I will never escape.
“Any questions?” Dahlia, the VIA coordinator Leo had dragged me to, asked.
We sat in a pristine office, with dark wooden furniture and white walls with flashes of green and gold to decorate the space. I’d been forced to dress, but put in minimal effort with a pair of dark joggers and a crop top—just to really drive home the disrespect in a corporate setting, you know?—and had guzzled down about a gallon of water before Leo let me leave my apartment. Now that I sat across from Dahlia, insecurity snuck in.
I’d brushed my teeth and thrown my hair up into a messy ponytail before calling it good, but my reflection in the mirror stuck in my mind. My skin was more sick-pale than porcelain-pale, and the bags under my eyes had turned a harsh purple. This woman had been carved from marble by a Greek artist. Perfect graying hair pulled into a tight bun where flyaways didn’t exist, and a tailored blue suit that hugged her curves in the professional-sexy way. She was put together, not a hair or piece of lint out of place. Even her glasses were completely transparent, not a single smudge to be seen.
I was a gutter monster. Which, considering my hangover, was fair. I didn’t want the VIA to see me as functional, didn’t want to give them a reason to drag me back. But they could do asthey pleased, or lock me in a cell for disobedience. I just wanted to remain unimportant. Was that too much to ask?
“Yeah, uh…” I glanced over to Leo and Reed, who sat with straight backs, trying their best to behave. “Can’t you get, like,literallyanyone else to do this job? I’ve been out of work for three years.”
Dahlia opened a large binder, every detail of my history in the file. “You’ve done contract work through the hospitals and police departments, with glowing reviews. You’re far from incompetent.”
Okay, rude.
“What I’m saying is I’ve been out ofHerowork for three years,” I pleaded. “I don’t think my help is necessary. There're other Heroes?—”
“Four years ago, Project Tundra,” Dahlia began reading, as if I’d forgotten the past seven years of working as a Hero. “Villains started to organize a unit that would decimate their competitors and threaten every branch of the Variant Intelligence Agency. You managed to get their captains to talk, and we were able to locate their training grounds.”
And you guys bombed the place while I was still inside, you bastards.
I remembered escaping that day; it was sheer luck that I’d befriended a teleportation Variant. He was only nineteen and had a talent for weaving, but was forced into his family’s business. When we went through the recorded deaths, I’d listed his name. Hopefully, Mikhail opened that rug shop he always dreamed of.
“Okay, but?—”
She turned another page, and I sensed a pattern forming. “Five years ago, Project Sandman. There were mass disappearances of Variant children being reported, and none of our agents could track down the source. Your ability notonly assisted in locating the doctor, but helped rehabilitate the children that were being experimented on.”
I rolled my eyes. “All I needed to do was create an illusion of myself as his perfect victim;hefoundme, not the other way around.”
Illusions were far more tedious to create and took more brainpower than I could handle anymore.
