“Nate?”
He doesn’t turn around. “Don’t look at him.”
“Too late for that.”
His head goes back as if to ask the ceiling for help and I hear him swallow. “He was running. He was going to call Paragon. I had to?—”
I reach him, touch his arm. The muscle jumps under my fingers. “You did what you had to do.”
Even if you literally tore him limb from limb like an animal.
“Did I?” He finally turns, and his eyes are haunted. “Or did I just do what they programmed me to do? Kill on command. Follow orders. Be the weapon they built.”
“You’re not a weapon. You’re a man who just saved my life.”
“After I almost ended it,” he cries out softly.
“But you didn’t.” I grip his arm harder. “Youdidn’t, Nate. That’s what matters. You had their voice in your head, their commands, their bloody programming, and you still chose to stop. That’s not a weapon. That’s a person. You have your own free will and you chose it. You’re free from this now.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll never be free as long as…” he trails off, looks toward the room.
I give him a gentle, somewhat apologetic smile. “She won’t be a problem anymore. You’re no longer on her leash.”
That’s all I want to say, all I need to say. I know his relationship with Julia was complicated, sometimes familial. He doesn’t need to know the details.
He nods and I can see him pushing that info away to face later, the same thing I keep having to do. “We need to move,” he says. “Marsh got a message out before I—” He glances at the remains and doesn’t finish the sentence. “Paragon’s coming. And security.”
As if on cue, alarms start blaring
Red lights strobe along the corridor and doors slam somewhere in the distance. Underneath it all, I can hear footsteps—lots of them, getting closer. From both directions.
“Can you walk?” Nate asks.
“Yes.” I test my legs. They’re shaking, weak, but they hold. “Running might be ambitious.”
“Can you fight?”
I look at him. At the blood on his hands, the determined set of his jaw. Then I look at what’s left of Marsh, at the corridor stretching in both directions, at the red lights painting everything the color of emergency.
“Give me a weapon,” I say, “and watch me.”
He raises his chin and something like respect flashes across his handsome face, but he doesn’t argue. He crosses to the nearest fallen guard, the one he threw against the wall, and strips him efficiently. Pistol first—a Glock 19, standard issue—which he presses into my hands. Then a combat knife from the man’s belt.
“Backup,” he says.
I tuck the knife into my waistband and check the Glock’s magazine. Full. Fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber. Not a lot, but enough to make a difference.
The weight of the gun feels like coming home.
“They’re coming from both ends,” Nate says, tilting his head slightly, listening to something I can’t hear. “Twelve from the east. Eight from the west. More behind them.”
“Then we go through them.”
He gives me a ghost of a smile. “Stay close to me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”
The first wave hits us thirty seconds later.
