One Breath, One Bullet(The Borders War book 1) (10 page)

If Armise had intended to kill me he would have done it already.

I still wouldn’t let down my guard, but if there was a time for him to strike when I was at my weakest it had passed.

We stood on opposite sides of the tunnel studying each other as we got dressed. The wildness and tension was gone from his body, but the tunnel was too dark for me to read the unsaid thoughts that flickered across his face and hung like a lingering cloud of Chemsense between us.

I pulled my lip ring between my teeth in an almost unconscious movement that betrayed my unrest and tried to piece together what this all meant. Why Armise had been chosen by the President. Why Armise had refused to follow through on the task of leaving me so bloodied that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the opening ceremony to fire that bullet.

I wanted to know why the darkness within me dissipated just a bit more every time Armise had me at my most vulnerable and yet offered himself up to me.

That was the answer I wanted more than any other.

Armise cleared his throat and my head snapped up.

“Your President seems to think that you’re part of the Opposition.” Armise barely looked up from smoothing his practice uniform as he made the accusation. We’d had this conversation before. Ten years ago in Bogotá. But this time, I didn’t have to bother deflecting him.

This was a lie I’d been living so long that it came the easiest of all. “That’s because I am,” I answered. Every tell I’d ever had was beaten out of me years ago by the PsychHAgs, but I wondered again if Armise knew me too well to recognise when I wasn’t telling him the complete truth.

Armise scrubbed his hand over his mouth, and itched at his beard, his brow furrowing in concentration. I could tell from the way his almond-shaped eyes narrowed and his lips pursed into a thin line that he was examining me and not finding what he needed. “You really are as good a liar as he says.”

“He?” I redirected.

“The President,” Armise supplied.

I nodded. “Ah. I thought you meant Coach.” I didn’t comment on how Armise was trying to prod me for intel. It was too obvious of an attempt to be genuine. He was playing with me. Why he was, I couldn’t be sure.

Regardless, this was when I had to be smarter than Armise. He was drawing me in, hoping that if he asked the right question that I would slip. But I’d been under deep cover my entire life. Even before I knew what the phrase meant. And the President was right—I was a great liar.

My training in the art of deceit had been brutal, actual torture at the hands of the PsychHAgs, but necessary for the protection of my identity and mission. My career had been carefully staged all along, with the intent of keeping me alive, solely for the purpose of the mission today. But that was one thing Armise, no matter how connected or deviously curious he was, wouldn’t know.

Rumour said I’d turned traitor to my nation. That I’d been bought by the Opposition. Each level of my betrayal had been carefully crafted year after year—the supposed death of my parents, my rise through the military ranks and my identity as the lone sniper whose loyalties were fickle and could be bought for the right price.

But I wasn’t Opposition. I was the front-runner for the Revolution.

Only Coach, the President and I knew this. I believed in where fate was leading me, and what the purpose of my life, and death, would serve. It was my duty to protect the President so he could lead the Revolution. I was destined to be the one who righted the wrong my namesake had created over two centuries ago.

And I wouldn’t be baited into a conversation with the one man who might be able to see the difference between truth and lies in me.

I started to walk away.

Armise called out after me, “Don’t you want to know what the President told me?”

I noticed the slip right away. Not “your” President but “the” President. I stopped in my tracks but kept my back to him.

“It’s going to be you, Merq. You’ll have the first bullet. And I’m the one who will make sure you’re able to kill the leader of the Opposition, the Premiere of Singapore, when the time comes. He told me that in a few short hours I wouldn’t have to lie anymore. If I survived. That’s what the President told me.”

Only Armise would find humour in that.

I sneered. Regardless, what Armise was telling me, it wasn’t possible.

I turned on him, invading his space until he had to take a step back. “What game are you playing with me?” I bit out.

“For once? I’m not.” Armise put his hands up in a defensive posture. It was a gesture that jumpstarted that flicker of memory of his palms facing me, my gun to his head and Armise leaning in to kiss me for the first time.

The familiarity in his gesture and the conviction with which he delivered his declaration almost gave me pause. But I wouldn’t be manipulated. Armise was my rival—by country, by the clashing colours we displayed on our uniforms, by history and by right. No matter how much I wanted things to be different, this was our reality. I couldn’t trust him.

“Bullshit,” I spat out.

Armise shook his head. “There are…things that have been hidden between us for too long. Unsaid but still true.”

True?
What place did truth hold in our world? I’d thought about truth so little in my life. I was built to be a soldier, to kill without thought. I was designed to listen, obey and act without question. Honesty only existed under the pretence of lies. The truth was subjective, and too grey to be useful in the hunt or survival.

“Don’t talk to me about truth like it’s something you understand,” I accused, fury building inside me until I could feel my racing pulse in my clenched hands. “Or hell, even something that you believe in.”

Armise wasn’t thrown by my sudden anger. He shrugged, his cool exterior firmly in place. “Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning. In our case, Merq, that reckoning is almost here.” He took a step back from me and ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it into place. “But there’s one thing about this mission that has always bothered me. You were trained to operate as a lone gun all along. You knew that…”

His voice trailed off and the set of his shoulders became more rigid. He looked away from me, his thoughts almost visibly skittering through his head. His eyes seemed to focus on a place that was distant and dark, removed from the present. He was standing in front of me, but he was gone. Emotionally withdrawn.

It was a look I knew all too well. I’d seen the same emptiness on the face of every soldier who was good at what they did. Humanity faded in the taking of life. Those of us who had made a career from death had to be able to shut that innate connection off. For the best of us it was a switch. And Armise was the best I knew.

He breathed heavily through his nose and took a step towards me. He was close enough that I could smell his sweat and the tang of sex. I had an almost irresistible urge to touch him, to bring him back to me. Because it was solely in the moments between the two of us that I saw any hope left in him.

Or in me.

He exhaled and I felt his hot breath coast across my face and down my neck. It raised goose bumps on my skin. I was aware of his proximity and how unprotected I was. My muscles tensed, and I realised my body was fighting the instinct to strike. But his next move stunned me into submission.

He lifted his left hand and traced the outline of my jaw with his thumb and then settled his palm against my neck. I couldn’t look at him anymore. This touch was too intimate. But without looking I could feel his eyes on me. My dream from last night came screaming back to me. Armise’s eyes were always on me. A judgement, I’d thought. But that wasn’t right. No, he was an anchor. But whether it was an anchor that would drag me under or keep me rooted to sanity, I was no longer sure.

Armise gently squeezed his hand, drawing me closer. “Without backup of some kind you had no chance of making it out of that stadium alive once you took the shot,” Armise whispered. The words sounded as if they’d been ripped from his throat. They were full of sorrow. It was an emotion I was surprised either of us was capable of anymore.

I tore my eyes away from the ground, from the spot I had been steadfastly staring at, trying to ignore the implication of his statement. When I looked up at him, the pain and uncertainty I saw there made my breath catch in my throat. As he studied me his emotions rearranged themselves on his face and that light returned to his eyes, that humanity. Something had brought him back from the brink.

The idea that that something was
me
gave me hope that I shouldn’t have dared to have.

“And?” I challenged him, as my mind reeled to find a way to wrest back control of this conversation. I couldn’t trust him.

Could I?

His hand squeezed my neck, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “
And?
You were going to sacrifice yourself weren’t you? Weren’t you?” He was yelling at me now, inches away from my face. I’d never seen him this angry.

I slapped his hand away and pushed at his chest with both palms until he staggered backwards. He had no right to question the decisions I’d made long ago to ensure the Revolution would succeed.

“Why the fuck do you care?” I yelled back.

“Because I didn’t turn traitor to my own country just for you to end up dead!”

I laughed darkly. I wasn’t going to allow my adversary to manipulate me so easily. “What? You’re a Revolutionary now? I never pegged you as a causes kind of guy.”

The unrestrained wildness returned to Armise’s body. He nearly shook with fury. “Fuck you. I could give a fuck about the Revolution and whether or not it succeeds. Opposition, Revolution, President, Premiere, it’s all the same shit, just a different name.”

I raised my eyebrows and hands in a sign that said ‘See?’ without me needing to say it out loud. “And that is why I. Don’t. Believe. You.” I turned his words over in my head. Traitor? Armise Darcan? It wasn’t possible. Then I realised the only reason Armise would ever even think of betraying his country. My voice went cold. “How much are they paying you?”

Armise was deathly still. “Be careful what you accuse me of.”

I stepped back into his space, crowding him. “Why? Your price must have a considerable amount of zeroes. Or is it citizenship in the States? Somewhere cosy like the Northern Territories where you can tide over your blood thirst with big-game hunting, pick up a surge habit and ignore that voice in the back of your head that reminds you you took the weak way out?”

He crossed his arms, standing his ground, and put us almost nose to nose. “
I
don’t have a side in this war.”

“That’s what someone who’s scared to fight says,” I spat back at him.

“So now you’re going to bait me? Fuck you, Merq.” He pushed me back a step. “You’ve fought against me. I know you don’t believe the shit you’re spewing.”

“I’d rather believe you’re weak than a mercenary. Fear I can understand, betrayal I will never forgive.”

“Fucking betrayal,” he muttered under his breath as he advanced on me. He pointed a thick finger at my chest. “You’re an idiot, you know that? I don’t have a side in this war because the only ass I care about saving is
yours
. Fuck my country and yours, they will continue fighting whether we live or die. But I can’t, and won’t, go on without you. Not anymore. How can I make that any fucking clearer?”

I froze. I repeated his words in my head until they didn’t make sense anymore. Because they couldn’t make sense. We’d been fucking each other for thirteen years but it had never been more. Could never be more. We saluted different flags, carried out orders from leaders with diverging agendas. I’d killed his soldiers and he’d killed mine. I hated him. Hated that I became weak when I was around him. Hated that I let my principles and my duty fade just so I could get another taste of him.

And yet, that wasn’t the totality of what I was feeling. If I was being honest with myself. I couldn’t give him up. I didn’t want to sever this drive that kept pushing us back together.

I’d been burying my need for him behind a relentless physical desire for years now. Even when it had become obvious to me that there was more between us, I’d pushed that consideration away. I didn’t understand the emotions he raised in me. I had no words, no experience in my life, that I could call upon to make sense of what Armise did to me.

Before Armise, my longest-standing relationship of any kind had been with President Wensen Kersch. As a mentor and a father. More than my own.

Even my dealings with the Coach—when he was still Neveed to me—had never been more than an outlet for me. The same with Simion or any other man I’d taken to my bed.

I wanted to know more. To understand. I thirsted for knowledge—that had always been a static aspect of my personality—and my time with Armise was no different. I thirsted for him unlike any other and I wanted to know why.

But I can’t, and won’t, go on without you,
he’d said.

I took in his words and tried to reconcile them with the man I knew—blood-thirsty, cold, violent.

Nothing fit.

Maybe that didn’t matter.

Because the Armise Darcan I knew was also viciously loyal. Fiercely protective.

I didn’t know when I’d come to respect him, but I couldn’t deny anymore that his words affected me because maybe it—
he
—was what I wanted too.