Deadly Genesis (Boomers Book 2) (17 page)

Go back to your room, Amanda.

The sprint left her panting and she raced around another bend and another and skidded to a halt at her room and walked inside. She stared at the blank walls as the door closed behind her and disappeared into the white nothingness. She spun to pound her hands against the wall, but instead walked over to sit on the bed again.

Trapped.

Now…

Amanda lurched upwards and threw up. Simon barely moved the trashcan in time and held her hair away from her face as she retched up everything she’d manage to eat the night before. Sweat slicked her face and dripped down her arms. Heaving finished, she looked at him—completely stricken. Pushing the can away, he dragged her close and held her tight. The tears came, and he could offer her no soothing words.

Their nightmare wasn’t over yet.

Five months ago…

Every day followed the same pattern. The doctor—a new one with four guards instead of two—took her vitals each day. Food was delivered to her three times a day and she ate. It didn’t matter if she refused to eat or drink. She did it anyway. She was a passenger inside RobotAmanda—or FauxManda as she’d taken to calling herself. Three weeks into her new hell, she dressed and walked out of the white hell and found herself in central New York. She strolled through the park. Went to the movies, bought popcorn and watched a hellish slasher flick.

She hated horror movies.

When the sun went down, she walked into a corporate building in Lower Manhattan and took the elevator to the thirtieth floor. She burned her way through three keycard-only locks and walked into a server farm.

She fried the machines and left as calmly as she’d come in. On the street, she walked toward the subway station, blending in with a thousand other commuters. The train arrived, and she let the press of bodies carry her inside. Turning around, she caught sight of him on the stairs. He looked up and down the platform, his hard blue eyes searching. Retreating back another step, she ducked her head down as though looking at her phone. He couldn’t see her and then the train moved.

He was a stranger, but her mind rebelled against that. She knew him.
Simon…

Shh.
Unlike the mechanical voice, Simon’s warm mental voice bathed away the icy ichor stabbing behind her eyes.
It’s a memory, sweetheart. You didn’t know me then.

Were you in there? In that room I destroyed?

A quiet negative eased the emotional chokehold on her throat. She was both in her body and not. Her mental vision twinned—with Simon’s.
See, we’re putting the pieces together.

Her rapid pulse calmed and she studied her own movements.
But I avoided you. Why?

Programming, I would imagine. I knew someone had just hit the company’s computers ahead of our planned information harvest. I caught a mental signature and followed it, but I lost it in the heavy crowd.
He rubbed her back soothingly. She had no idea if that was real or a mental caress. Trying to separate them all made her head hurt.

I’m glad I didn’t hurt you.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and she was once again trapped in the memory, but at least she recognized it as that now. A memory. She couldn’t affect her actions, so she concentrated on the journey.

Simon sorted through the memories as they trembled in his mental fingers, quivering and flopping around like a Jello slinky trying to escape. The next month followed the first, and she left for assignments and returned afterward—always to the empty little room. She ate, drank and slept there. She rarely saw anyone else, save for the doctor. But tension edged the memories…tension and anticipation. Amanda’s mind saw something coming, something it truly didn’t want to remember. He would have to go deeper, dropping all of his shields and immersing himself into the chaos to find the missing links.

Hiding the danger of the choice from her, he let go and together they plummeted down the rabbit hole.

Amanda performed mission after mission. She found no rhyme or reason to her assignments and, after the first six weeks, she stopped wondering. Nine weeks after her abduction, she refused an order to conduct surveillance. Her hair was half-blue, half-blonde and she hated it. They allowed her to color her hair. She went back to work. She picked up Michael’s trail a week after he started following Rory. She reported back on his activities.

Interestingly, she only answered direct questions in relation to the assignment. On several occasions, Michael wasn’t alone—he was in the company of one or all the other Boomers. Amanda kept those details to herself. The minute rebellion gave her a deep sense of satisfaction. Simon appreciated it. Some of her assignments were nothing more than her leaving, observing, and returning. Others included burning a barge in the harbor and flying to other countries to destroy computer storage centers. Simon made a mental note of the targets—he would have to research what information was stored in those server farms.

But she destroyed ten in all. That was a lot of backup data to remove from the equation. She hated planes, but refused to use her own flight. Another measure of her rebellion against the control exerted over her by the chip. She ached with the want to spread her wings, but she feared what they might do with her if she demonstrated the ability. When ordered to fly, she walked right off a fourth story ledge and would have died had they not caught her in netting.

Simon’s heart spasmed through that memory. She’d wanted to hit the ground and die. If she couldn’t break free of the chip’s influence, she would end it. He wanted to hold her hand and encourage her to keep the faith. She would survive this. They would find her and bring her home. But the Amanda enduring that hell didn’t know him. He wasn’t there. She was alone.

The loneliness ripped great bloody gashes in his soul. Josh flickered through her mind’s eye and he chased the elusive memory, capturing it and reeling it in. Somewhere along their journey, through the puzzle pieces, he’d learned to use her hair as a barometer for when an event happened. Four months in—Rory and Michael were together now. They’d found each other—that night on the docks, Amanda watched the entire showdown. Josh flew with Rory, sweeping her away and Amanda stared longingly up at the sky, but she didn’t rise up to follow.

Her gaze cut back across the blacktop and he saw himself, his concentration focused across the bay. He’d used Rory’s eyes and leapfrogged into Josh, taking control of his functions and forcing him to bring Michael’s love back. She was close enough to touch him and her hand reached out. Like a child seeking to tug his sleeve.

I never saw you…

Horror crept through him. She’d reached out to him, and he’d ignored the entreaty.

I’m so sorry.

A wave of comfort brushed his mind. Her hand squeezed his.
I couldn’t have done it anyway. I think I was programmed to kill anyone who recognized me. I don’t know why, but—that feels right. I thought if you knew Rory, maybe you could help me, but did I dare risk it? And no matter how much I wanted to reach out, I just couldn’t. My hand was frozen.

She watched the warehouse a long time that night, leaving only when dawn kissed the eastern sky. Troubled, she took the most circuitous route back and avoided her appointment. He smiled sadly at the force of will it took to overcome the programming, to deny it.

At her apartment, she sat down on the edge of a chair and refused to move. She willed herself to die. She wanted her friends and her life back. She wanted to help Rory, Josh, and Curtis. Dawn gave way to dark and then to dawn the following day, and she stayed where she was, lost in her fugue. A doctor entered and took her vitals. Fizz appeared in her periphery and spoke to her. They ordered her to shower.

She refused.

They ordered her to eat.

She wouldn’t.

They hooked up an I.V.

She pulled it out.

They threatened Rory.

She ignored them.

They threatened Ronan.

She remained unmoved.

On the third day, verging on collapse, they bound her in shackles and took her to R.E.X. labs. She fought the I.V.’s, melting them one after another. They knocked her out. She woke to a feeding tube down her throat and I.V.s. She broke free and attacked the guards.

They dropped her with drugs.

The closer to the day they found her, the more fragmented the memories became. His head and heart ached for her. But despite the chip, despite the orders—and the return to brutal methods like ice baths—she didn’t fold or back down. Every act of defiance short-circuited her chip and, eventually, it began a cascade failure, melting until they were forced to keep her in a containment room or risk their lives getting close to her.

And in that cell she remained, her mind shredding itself until the day Ilsa freed her.

Buried deep beneath the cataclysmic upheaval, he found the gratitude she experienced, because now she could die.

Tears scalded his cheeks for her. She’d thought they would kill her and end the torment forever.

Swallowing back a sob, Amanda blinked slowly. All the pieces were back where they belonged. Some remained fragments and dust, gaps still existed, but she didn’t care. They took her, they tortured her, they used her as a weapon, and they never explained any of it to her. She didn’t know much, but she could remember their faces. She would know those faces if she saw them again.

And by God she would burn them to ashes.

“You did it, Simon. You got it all back—” Depression threatened to swamp her, but she denied it. She wanted this pain. She needed it. The memories brought all of the agony back, but she embraced it. Remembering meant never repeating it and understanding that she willed herself away from their control. That it could be done. She squeezed Simon’s hand and glanced at him. “Simon?”

She expected to see his silent blue eyes regarding her with amusement or gentle humor. The patient expression on his face might have an infuriating effect on others, but she had grown to adore it. He was like her rock in the storm tossed sea. He was like a lighthouse shining a beacon into her confusion, and she owed him more than she could ever say.

But Simon wasn’t looking at her. His head tilted back, his eyes were closed and blood trickled from both nostrils and ears.

Simon!
She forced her sluggish limbs to move and pulled her hand free to press against his throat. His pulse was there. It was so slow though—too slow. She put her head against his chest and listened for the
ba-dump-thump
of his heart. “C’mon, Simon. Come back to me here.”

What could she do? She clambered off the sofa and fumbled through his pockets. His cell phone showed no bars. She glanced around the cabin. She hadn’t noticed a phone, but the man had a secret computer room in his Hamptons mansion, so surely they had some kind of equipment here. Nothing in the bedroom, closet, or kitchen. She pounded on the walls and jumped up and down on the floor.

Nothing.

Racing back into the living room, she checked his pulse again. Taking his face in her hands, she stared at him. “Come back to me,” she called with her words and her mind. “You do not get to sacrifice yourself for me, do you understand? I will be so pissed if you die. You have no idea what a bitch I can be. Don’t make me prove it to you. Wake up. C’mon, please wake up, Simon.”

She kissed his lips, taking small solace in the warm puff of his breath. She needed Ilsa or one of the other Boomers.
Why don’t you have a phone here?
She rubbed his arms, brushed his cheek, repeating all those little gestures he used to soothe her.

Dammit, Simon. Wake up.

His eyes opened, the blue almost bleached to pure silver, opaque and otherworldly. He stared unseeingly upwards, and she leaned in closer.
That’s it, wake up. You have to move, twitch your fingers, anything. Let me know you can hear me.

His fingers curled over hers and his lips pursed. “Shhh.”

Tears flooded her eyes, and she bowed her head to his chest.
Thank you. Thank you for not being dead.

He shh’d her again but, when she looked up, his eyes were closed. The color returned to his face and his breathing became more regular. Trembling, she snuggled up to him. Maybe he just needed nearness, something to hang onto. She didn’t know what else to do so she refused to leave him. Refused to let him go.
Do you hear that? I refuse. You have to rest and get better and wake up. I have lots of practice at being stubborn.

It was late in the day when Simon finally managed to rouse. His skull ached, as if his brain throbbed inside his cranium. A weight snuggled against his chest, blue hair fringed his vision and he allowed himself a moment to appreciate her nearness. “Amanda?”

She bolted upright and stared at him. Her expression vacillated between relieved and aggravated. He stroked her cheek, indulging his need to touch her. She kissed his fingers and captured his hand, holding it to her cheek. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Deep scans are hard.” He softened the words with a small smile. She didn’t need to know how hard or that for hours he’d wandered in silent blackness, cut off from the world. He’d known she was there, but it was like he’d fallen through one of the fragmented holes in her mind and drowned in the darkness of not knowing.

But she didn’t let him go. She called and called, like a siren summoning him to the shore. He wasn’t certain if he would doom himself on the rocks or make port safely, but he held on fast to the anchor she provided.

His stubborn, brilliant anchor.

“You’ve been asleep for most of the day.” She pressed a kiss to his lips, and he slid his hand into her hair, holding her to him. He wasn’t sure who ravished who, but he enjoyed dueling with her tongue. His body stirred and his dick hardened, and she didn’t miss it, rubbing along him like a cat. They needed to get up—eat, refresh—but he forgot all of it, lost in the taste of her.