All of them gone.
I’m alone.
“There it is.” Julia pockets the phone, satisfaction curling at the corners of her mouth. “That’s the look I was waiting for. The moment you realize just how thoroughly you’ve failed.”
I spit blood in her face, aiming for her mouth, aiming to get that one drop of saliva needed to make her convulse and drop dead.
She flinches just in time, the bloody wad landing on her chin.
She gives me a look of cold disgust and carefully wipes it off with a handkerchief she takes from her pocket, while taking a few steps back. Now she remembers what I truly am.
“Thank you for that,” she says, tucking her handkerchief away. “I’ve wanted a sample of your saliva anyway. See if we can somehow duplicate what was done to you, create some new soldiers with this ability. Would come in handy.”
She turns her back to me and slowly starts walking to the back of the room, while Keller stands at the ready, fists flexing.
But all I can do now is feel exhausted. Feel defeated.
Feel the sudden weight of what I’ve lost.
Bayo. Sweet, smart Bayo, who listened to awful dance music from the ’90s. Who made terrible coffee, and always burnt his toast, and refused to apologize for it. Who told me once, after a mission that went sideways, that I was the best operative he’d ever worked with and he was proud to be my handler.
Kat. Who taught me how to kill anyone by using a garrote when I was barely an adult and new to the game. Who never talked about her past but sometimes, late at night, would listen to Chopin and talk about how much she missed her mother back in Russia. Who saved my life many times, without any fanfare.
Gone.
Because of me.
Because I got too close to Nate. I let this mission get personal. And I was arrogant enough to think I could play a giant tech conglomerate and win.
The odds weren’t in my favor.
“Now then.” Julia grabs a folding chair and drags it across the concrete, the sound grating my ears, then stops a safe distance away before settling into it, crossing her legs, perfectly at ease. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Let’s talk about him.”
I force myself to focus. To compartmentalize the way I have been taught, to push the grief down into that box again, wrapping it up in chains.
“Nate,” Julia says. She doesn’t sound so bored anymore. “You’ve spent quite a bit of time with my asset. Tell me, what did you think of him?”
“He’s a good fuck,” I say, knowing that’s something she’ll never have. The words come out slurred through my split lip. “That’s about it.”
“Don’t be crude,” she admonishes me, and from the way she’s holding her mouth, I can tell I hit a nerve. “He’s not some plaything for you to use and discard. He’s a masterpiece. Mymasterpiece. Ten years of work, Ms. Reeves, even before I laid eyes on him. All those years of selecting, shaping, perfecting. Every aspect of who he is, I designed. His values. His loyalties. His desperate need to protect.” Her eyes glint in the fluorescent light, looking almost feverish. “Do you have any idea what it takes to build a man from nothing? To create something that powerful and keep it under control?”
There’s a fervor in her voice now that wasn’t there before. The mask slipping, just a little. Enough that I can see the obsession underneath, a place I can poke at.
“He didn’t come from nothing and you didn’t create him,” I say. “You just broke him and rebuilt the pieces.”
The lady is fast. In a second she’s out of her chair and her palm is cracking across my already ruined cheek. The pain is almost secondary to the shock of seeing her lose that perfect composure.
“He was broken when I met him,” she hisses, her face inches from mine before she realizes she’s too close and backs up. “I saved him. I made him. Every part. And you think you can just waltz in with your tight dresses and your poisoned lips and take him from me? You think because he looked at you with those sad eyes and fucked you that it means something?”
“I think it means more than anything he can ever give you,” I say.
She sneers at me, that lip curling, and then suddenly, like she realized I’m getting under her skin, her face goes blank. She straightens up, smoothing her blouse, reassembling her mask piece by piece.
“That’s what Marsh wants too, you know.” She says it like I’m her confidant now, like we’re just two women gossiping about bad boyfriends over drinks. “To take my asset. Use him to expand Prometheus.” Her jaw tightens. “As if I’d let that happen.As if I’d let anyone take what belongs to me. He’s already trying to loan Vanguard to the US military.”
Interesting that she doesn’t want that to happen.
“I know about the trafficking,” I tell her, hoping she’ll say more. “The consciousness transfers. That you’re trying to build an army but you’re not having much success, other than Paragon.”
