“Who did this?” I ask, and my voice is quiet and controlled, everything that I’m not right now, the kind of calm that comes before the storm.
“An interrogation specialist,” Julia says, stepping into the doorway behind me. Her voice is calm. Measured. Like she’s discussing quarterly reports. “Very experienced with resistant subjects.”
I close my eyes for a moment. “Where is he?”
“Does it matter?”
I turn to look at her. Whatever she sees in my face makes her take half a step back.
“Where. Is. He?” I seethe, my breathing coming out rough and labored as the rage starts rippling through me again.
“Gone,” she says, straightening her posture. “His work here is done.”
I take a step toward Mia.
“She’s a spy, Nate.”
Julia’s voice cuts through and I look back. She’s composed again, that half-step of fear already buried, though she’s fiddling with something in her fingers, something dark.
I pause, as if I want to listen to her. I pause as if I can’t move.
“A foreign operative sent to compromise you. Everything she told you was a lie. Every moment of intimacy was calculated to extract information. She used your loneliness, your need for connection, your pathetic hope that someone might actually see you as human.” Her lip curls. “She played you. And you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.”
“I don’t care.”
“But you should. She was going to kill you if ordered. That was her mission—seduce the asset, gather intelligence, and if necessary, eliminate the threat.” Julia steps closer. “Do you understand? She was going tokillyou.”
“And I said I don’t care,” I snap.
“Then you’re more compromised than I thought.”
I manage to take another step toward Mia before I go still again. My body is screaming at me to go to her, to rip those restraints off, to carry her out of this place and never look back, but there’s something holding me back.
“Your mission is simple,” Julia says. “Kill her. Prove your programming holds. Prove your loyalty to Global Dynamix. Pass this test, and we forget the last few weeks ever happened. You go back to being America’s Hero. Everyone’s happy.”
I turn slowly to face her, unable to process her words.
“You want me to kill her?”
“I want you to do what you were designed to do. I mean, it’s not been for lack of trying.”
Everything seems to go still. “And if I refuse?”
“Then Paragon finishes the job while you get to watch.” She shrugs, a small, cold gesture. “And afterward, we’ll discuss whether you’re still useful—or whether you should join our other research subjects.”
I look at Mia. At the blood drying on her skin. At the way her chest barely rises and falls, each breath a fight.
She’s still alive. Barely. But alive.
Put her out of her misery.
The voice—thatvoice—comes from somewhere inside my skull. Not mine. Cold and mechanical, pressing against my thoughts like fingers digging into my brain.
Complete the mission. Eliminate the threat.
Generating directives.
“The activation codes work faster when you’re emotional,” Julia says, holding up that slim dark thing in her hand. It’s a remote. “This is what I’ve been finding with you, that your darkness is most easily corrupted when you’re in the thick of it. I’d hoped we wouldn’t need this. But you’re not making this easy for us.”
