One Breath, One Bullet(The Borders War book 1) (11 page)

That dangerous hope flared within me again and all I could do was give him a clipped nod in reply. But I couldn’t just drop my guard. If Armise was lying to me this time then killing him would be easy.

We both retreated. I stuffed my anger and disbelief down, trying to clear my head. For a wild moment I let the idea of Armise’s words sink in and found my darkness being wiped away. Like a bank of thick fog clearing when the sun rises. But that thought was just fucking ridiculous. I sneered and retreated another step until I was leaning against the steel wall.

I pressed at my ribs and arched my back, testing my pain level and assessing just how bad the beating was. I was sore, but nothing felt broken. Internal bleeding was a possibility but not likely. I’d been fed enough surge in the last week to still have the benefits of rapid healing.

“How much do you know?” I finally asked, testing him.

Armise didn’t hesitate. “Everything. It seems more than you do. You’re just as loyal to the Opposition as I am to Singapore.”

“Is that right?” I replied sarcastically. “Who are you loyal to then?”

“You,” Armise answered, his voice even, his tone determined.

I swallowed and tasted blood on my tongue. Armise’s blood and mine.

My eyes widened as the disparate pieces of my life clicked together.

Armise.

Me.

My mission.

The Revolution.

And suddenly everything made sense.

The gathering storm of the Revolution—the one I’d been watching form into thunderheads on the distant horizon—sparked alive in dark waves, rolled without thought or care for whom was caught in its path. I’d thought it was my job to usher in the storm.

But Armise was right. If it wasn’t me, then it would be someone else.

My perception of my world shifted.

Just then a slamming of metal on metal echoed down the tunnel, shaking the ground beneath my feet. A single set of footsteps thundered towards us.

Armise swivelled on his heel, facing the sound, moving to stand guard at my right flank. The shoulder that he knew needed the most protection. It didn’t pass me by that this was the first time we’d stood together against a threat.

Neither of us was armed and my muscles were spasming from the effort of standing, but whoever was coming for us didn’t stand a chance.

Chapter Nine

A voice emerged from further inside the tunnel, a southern drawl that had guided me for more years than I wanted to count. “It’s me, Merq,” the voice called out before I could see him. It was the first time Neveed had said my first name since he officially became my handler, my coach, eighteen years ago. The Coach.

Armise relaxed next to me. The realisation that he recognised that voice as well as I did dispersed any doubt I had left.

As I listened to Coach walk towards us, I tried to remember who had set up the territorial lines—who was I kidding, they were outright battle lines—between Coach and me. When had I stopped calling him Neveed? And why? It all seemed so unimportant now. Childish and counterproductive.

Well, I had the power to start tearing down those barriers now.

When Neveed came into view I lifted my hand and made a cutting motion across my neck, signalling him not to say anything else. I couldn’t believe I’d let my training slip this much already. Armise and I had been talking about things that would get us killed without hesitation if the wrong people heard us. And I’d never once considered that the tunnel we were in could be bugged.

“The competition is going to be fierce today, Neveed,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to perform as you need me to. How does the field look to you?”

The last sentence was a code phrase, created to ensure we were in a place that was secure, free from any surveillance devices.

“It’s safe here,” Neveed confirmed and moved to stand in front of me. He looked between Armise and I, wincing when he took in my swollen eye. “I assume that’s not going to keep you from shooting?” he asked. I shook my head. “Good,” he replied. “I’m sure you have a few questions.”

I shrugged, the motion sending sharp pains down my shoulder and to my fingertips. I was more injured than I’d originally thought. But I wouldn’t let the pain stop me from firing that bullet. Or from being my usual insubordinate self. “Not really.”

Armise coughed, barely restraining a chuckle. Neveed glared at him.

“He’s told you that you’ll be taking the first shot?” Neveed crooked his head in Armise’s direction.

I nodded. “I didn’t believe him when he said it. But I’m inclined to now.”

Neveed shuffled his feet and put his hands on his hips in a determined stance. It was a posture I was familiar with. One he used to assert his authority.

“It’s been decided,” he confirmed. “The President’s blatant show of support to your enemy, to an enemy of the States, secured that right for you. The Committee announced the decision moments ago.”

“They still believe he’s going to take out the President?” Armise asked.

Neveed nodded.

All of the pieces were coming together just as we’d planned when this operation started to take form over ten years ago with the announcement of the games. Taking out the Opposition leadership had always been my mission. But with the speed of transports and a general distrust for the Revolution’s willingness to abide by the treaty—getting the Premiere in a vulnerable enough position that I could take a shot at him had taken much longer than any of us could have anticipated. I breathed a quick sigh of relief. “So my identity as an agent for the Opposition—”

“Still stands,” Neveed answered, with surety.

I looked over my shoulder at Armise and asked, “Your identity as a Singapore soldier?”

Armise’s lips curved into a wicked smile. “Is bullshit.”

I had to stifle the sudden urge to smile back. Instead I kept my eyes locked to his when I asked, “And the rest?”

Armise’s smile dropped and the fierceness of emotion I saw—painted in the determined, rigid lines of his jaw and the unflinching gaze of his silver eyes—was so raw I had no choice but to believe him. “We no longer have to face each other as enemies.”

Neveed shifted from foot to foot as he impatiently waited for us to finish. He cleared his throat, breaking the thread of silent conversation between Armise and I. I dragged my eyes away from Armise and back to Neveed.

Neveed looked at his watch and then over his shoulder, in an uncharacteristic show of discomfort. “Listen. I’m glad you two know you have each other’s back now. That’s great. Really…” He stumbled over his words.

I had to keep from rolling my eyes. The last thing Neveed wanted was to see me with any other man besides him, but he’d given up that right years ago. Repairing our disjointed relationship was going to take time, but at least I had that now. I motioned for him to get on with it.

“…but we have a Premiere to assassinate. Despite all of these revelations, nothing with your original training, strategy or method has changed, Merq. You, more than any of us, know why this mission is so critical.”

I expected him to break into the Revolution platform at that point.

The world needs to understand the real cost of war.

We’ve become desensitised to death. It’s too quick. Too easy.

We’ve forgotten that freedom has a tangible price.

We cannot be ruled by one when the real power is in the many.

The voices of every teacher I’d ever had who repeated those words on a daily basis ricocheted through my consciousness. But they weren’t just words to me. They were a call to action and the foundation I’d built my life upon. I knew all the reasons why the Revolution was needed now more than ever. Why the President was the only person who could lead us through the upheaval that would happen when the Borders War was reignited.

I didn’t have to be reminded by Neveed or by anyone else why what I did today mattered, because I felt the rightness of our course of action in my soul. But that didn’t change the fact that decades-old rhetoric was about to morph into reality.

Revolution meant strife and unrest.

Real bullets meant blood and the mess of violent death.

I’d been trained almost my whole life for a time when real bullets would be used again. But that was when the words of Revolutionaries were grandiose theory. The ramifications of how different tomorrow would be were incapacitating.

I would be the one to ignite the fires of Revolution.

In all my years of training and preparation I’d never considered whether this calling had ever been my choice. I knew I’d been a pawn all along, but I’d never wondered if there was another tactical strategy that would allow me to still achieve the end goal without me losing myself in the process.

I believed in the Revolution, but Armise was right—the Revolution continued regardless of me.

That was what I’d realised when I tasted Armise’s blood and mine mixing together on my tongue—my life had been a series of setups and strategic moves, but no one had seen Armise coming. Let alone that he and I would forge a bond that couldn’t be separated by conflicting allegiances or the terror of war.

I had been meant to die on the opening ceremony platform tonight and instead Armise would be there to protect me. Armise was changing my destiny, and I owed him more than my life for that. I owed him trust and loyalty above the cause I’d been working my whole life to achieve.

He was the one thing in my life that was still my choice.

And I chose him above the Revolution.

The realisation would have felled a weaker man.

It didn’t change that I would see this mission through or that the outcome of the Premiere’s death was going to be war.

It meant that when the Revolution arrived, my loyalties would be with the man standing at my side. Not to a cause, and no longer with a country.

I crossed my arms, mirroring Neveed’s pose. In this position I was a head taller than him and almost twice as wide. “I never had any choice in this,” I challenged him. The truth of my role in the Revolution had never been hidden from me, but it had never been spoken aloud either.

Neveed stood stock still and met my eyes. Obviously he wasn’t uncomfortable with the answer. “You were created for this moment. From before birth,” he admitted in a low voice.

I wanted to rail. To protest. To have just one aspect of my life follow a path of some kind of normality. That even my conception had been under the auspices of my parents’ work with the Revolution—a cosmic roll of the dice for me to be the heir that they desired for the Merq Grayson name—felt like a slap in the face.

No.

It was an insult to them to think that they owed me any explanations. They might have never offered, but I had never demanded the information either. Part of the blame lay solidly with me and my willingness to put on blinders so I wouldn’t be distracted from my end goal.

I couldn’t be angry. Not with my parents and not with Neveed or the President. Because I was finally going to see my purpose fulfilled. And I would have the only man I trusted at my side when it happened.

It was as if Neveed could read the set of my shoulders, my blatant look of defiance, and he knew what I was thinking. “Armise will be there to protect you,” he assured me, his eyes flitting to Armise for only the briefest of seconds as if it was physically painful for him to maintain eye contact with the Singaporean. Neveed coughed. “He’s there to make sure you get out once the shot is made. He’s been implanted with a transport chip that is connected to your tracker. As soon as you make the hit he’s to deliver you to the President’s bunker. The Opposition is going to mobilise fast. Ahriman will be ready to step in as leader. But this time we have a distinct advantage. One they won’t see coming.”

It was an advantage I was shocked was still hidden at all. The Revolutionaries had been able to unlock enough of the infochip to discover the location of a cache of weapons everyone believed had been destroyed long ago. They’d also been able to glean enough from the digital records to begin manufacturing and stockpiling real guns, bullets and bombs. And that was just the beginning of the information reportedly contained on the chip.

“The artilleries are prepared?” Armise asked.

I raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t been lying when he said he knew everything.

“With Revolutionary forces on every continent,” Neveed confirmed. “They are stocked and ready for Grayson’s shot.” Neveed held out a closed fist to me. “Take this.”

I reached out my hand and felt a capsule drop into my palm. I tossed it into my mouth and swallowed. Obeying without thought for once.

Neveed winced again as he looked at my left eye. He shook his head and said, “We can’t make you pretty for the opening ceremony, that would defeat the purpose of the beating. But the surge will take care of any internal injuries from the attack. We need you to be scruffed up. Obvious that the President tried to take you out, but that you fought back and made it out alive.”

I felt the nanoparticles travelling through me, easing the throb in my kidneys and my shoulder. My muscles unknotted and the particles surged through the now dilated veins, stitching me back together internally. The throbbing in my head ceased. It was disconcerting to no longer feel the pain of my left eye yet not be able to open it. It didn’t matter whether I had use of it or not though. I’d picked off targets in situations where my vision was even more impaired.