She gives me a curt smile. “So you do know something. Good. I guess you crashing the party at the warehouse wasn’t for nothing. That saves us time.” She stands, adjusting her cuffs. “I do align with Marsh on a few things. Prometheus is the future, Ms. Reeves, a future we are tweaking every day until one day we can create soldiers without weakness. Soldiers without mercy. Soldiers without the annoying tendency to fall in love with the enemy. Unlike someone I know.”
She lets that hang in the air for a moment, then her tone goes back to business.
“But enough about internal politics. Your little team is gone, but someone sent them. Someone in London is running this particular operation, and I want to know who.” She settles back into her chair, crossing her legs. “Your handler’s handler. The intelligence you’ve already transmitted. What London knows about Prometheus.”
I say nothing. I’ve already said too much.
“No?” She sighs as if I’m being tedious and looks at her heavy. “Keller?”
Keller comes at me with cunning smile and I know I’m the highlight of the day in his sad, pathetic life.
The next twenty minutes are a blur of pain. Keller works me over with methodical precision, targeting the spots that hurt worst, never quite breaking anything but coming close. He asks the same questions as Julia. I don’t answer. I don’t scream. At some point I start to float, my consciousness detaching from mybody, watching from somewhere far away as this broken thing in a chair refuses to give them what they want.
When it finally stops, I’m barely conscious. Blood is pooling in my lap, dripping from my face onto my thighs. One eye is swollen completely shut. My ribs scream with every breath. I spit out a bloody molar.
I am nothing but pain.
Julia is at the door. I can hear her heels clicking, receding, and then stopping.
“This was just the introduction,” she says. “A taste of what’s to come. When I return, I’m bringing someone who’s much better at extracting information than Keller. Someone you know well.”
I lift my head, blinking through blood and swelling, and see her smile before the door slams and the lights go out.
And I’m alone in the dark, bleeding, broken, with nothing left but the promise I made in the van.
I’m going to kill you.
CHAPTER 43
VANGUARD
I carryCal’s body to the roof of the hotel.
It’s the only place I can think of where no one will see us. The rain continues to fall, steam rising from vents, the skyline blurred with fog. I land on the gravel near the water tower and lay him down as gently as I can, like that matters now. Like anything I do matters.
His head is at the wrong angle. I can’t stop looking at it.
You did that. Your hands. Your choice.
I kneel beside him. He’s still warm. His eyes are open, staring at nothing, and I reach out to close them because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s what they do in movies. Give the dead some dignity. I’ve never given any of the dead dignity before, but I should have. I should have.
My fingers are shaking and his eyes won’t stay shut.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out broken. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
He doesn’t answer, he’ll never answer, not me, not anyone. He’s dead because I killed him, and no amount of apology changes that. He came back to bring her earrings. Replacement comms. He was doing his job, being her friend, loving a womanwho couldn’t love him back, and I snapped his neck like it was nothing.
Because Julia told me to.
No. That’s the coward’s answer and I know it. Julia sent the footage. Julia wound me up like a toy soldier. But I’m the one who flew to that hotel room. I’m the one who let jealousy chew through my insides until there was nothing left but teeth. I need to be held accountable.
This is what you are, Mia said.
Maybe she was right. Maybe this darkness isn’t programming at all. Maybe it’s just me—the thing I’ve been running from my whole life, the violence that felt good when I was a Green Beret, the cold satisfaction I felt in Red Hook when I killed those men.
Maybe they didn’t put the monster inside me.
Maybe they just took the leash off.
