Page 56
I crossed my arms over my bare chest, trying to hold myself together. “The Symbiosis Drill. The one where I didn’t pass to you. I threw it on purpose.”
Leander stood up and walked toward me with a slow, deliberate gait that made my pulse hammer.
“Why?”
I took a step back. My spine hit the wall.
“Anatol knew about the bio-gel,” I whispered. “He figured it out the morning after I used it on you. He saw you walking without a limp and did the math.”
Leander’s jaw clenched. “And?”
“And he cornered me in the hallway outside the locker room. He said if I didn’t make you look bad and sabotage the drills, he’d make sure you’d get a full scan on your ankle injury.”
I forced myself to meet his eyes.
“They would have seen the enhanced healing. They would have known someone used restricted State property on you.”
My voice dropped even lower.
“Unauthorized enhancement is a liquidation offense, Leander. You would have been on a transport to the Front before the bloodwork finished printing.”
Leander stared at me, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
“You let me think you were a selfish prick,” he said slowly. “You let me think you sabotaged me because you couldn’t stand the idea of me succeeding.”
“Yes.”
“You let me hate you.”
“Yes.”
“Instead of just telling me the truth and letting me decide how to handle it.”
My throat tightened. “If I told you, you would have confronted Anatol. You would have gotten yourself eliminated trying to defend me. So I made the choice for you.”
“You didn’t make a choice, Felix.” Leander’s voice dropped. “You made a sacrifice. And you made it alone.”
He turned away, pacing the small room like a caged animal, his hands raking through his hair.
“Do you have any idea—“ He stopped, shaking his head. “Do you have any fucking idea what it was like? Watching you pull back every time I got close to the goal? Watching you pass to everyone except me?”
He broke off, his voice cracking.
“I thought you couldn’t stand the idea of me succeeding. I thought you were so obsessed with being Number One that you’d burn the team down to stay on top.”
“I know.”
“You let me think that.”
“I had to.”
He laughed, one short, ugly note with nothing in it.
“You ran a play on me.”
“I ran a play on the entire building. You were the only part of it I couldn’t stand.”
His jaw worked. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped somewhere below anger, into a register I had never heard him use.
