One Breath, One Bullet(The Borders War book 1) (5 page)

“Do you plan to win today?”

The rifle competition would be the first of the games, held immediately following the opening ceremonies as an homage to the treaty and how the world had laid down their arms against each other. If I achieved what I was supposed to, that competition would never happen. “I’ll be keeping the gold medal on States soil,” I answered instead. That was merely a lie by omission.

Then I was asked the question that was inevitable.

“Who’s your biggest competition?”

I gave a brilliant smile, meant to disarm. “You need to ask?” The press corps laughed, their metallic voices joining together into a low hum that sent a shudder through me I had to suppress. “Armise Darcan, of course.”

“You fought against each other in the Borders War?”

“Yes. We know of each other,” I deflected. Wasn’t that an understatement?

“What would it mean to you to be chosen to take the shot?”

My eyes began to mist over. I didn’t have to fake this emotion, but I did. “This is the first gathering of the world since the treaty. To be on the opening ceremony stage representing all of humanity and the change we want to see in this world… It’s overwhelming. Honoured doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what it means to me.”

We passed through the soundproofed metal doors into the building that housed the shooting range. It was a large triangular arena with softly shaped curves erected entirely of metal and the synthetic composites necessary to keep the fetid, and sometimes poisonous, outside air from seeping in. We emerged through the break in the stands, rows of crimson cushioned seats slanting towards the gilded ceiling. I restrained any physical reaction to the sheer waste of resources surrounding me. Only the wealthiest citizens would be able to afford seats for this competition. At least they wouldn’t be going hungry for forking out money to a competition that would never happen.

The press corps followed at my heels, continuing to ask questions, but I’d already answered the ones that were the most important. So I responded, but only with part of my mind engaged in the back-and-forth.

The other part was searching the arena for Armise.

Chapter Four

I saw Armise as soon as I located the rifle course. He was impossible to miss. He was wearing the black and tarnished silver of the People’s Continent of Singapore, his uniform tight across his shoulders—shoulders that should have hindered his ability to shoot the competition Terfiner XMP. But his country had used all the allowable modifications and Armise’s aim was the most reliable on the range.

I had no qualms admitting it—Armise was a better sniper than I’d ever be. Even though he was only four years older than I was, thirty-nine years to my thirty-five, Armise had been a sniper for Singapore since he was a child. His rifle wasn’t a possession, it was an extension of his body. Unlike the States, Singapore had had no issues with the conscription of children in the Borders War, especially if they showed a natural talent and temperament for battle. From the classified files I’d seen, Armise had been drafted somewhere around the age of six, when he took out an entire Dark Continental Republic unit that attacked his village. Talent, meet temperament.

Armise was born to hold a rifle. He could stay unnaturally still for hours at a time and he had an innate gift for mathematics and physics, which allowed him to work quickly and without the burden of a partner. He had been built by his country to be strong. Unflappable. And where I saw death as a means to achieving the goals given to me by my superiors, Armise got a kick when he took another person’s life.

Yet I’d never been afraid of him. Maybe it was because fear had been drilled out of me during my years in battle. Maybe it was because we were almost evenly matched. But my lack of fear was most likely because, even with as many times as I’d been at the end of his rifle, Armise had never been able to shoot me. I couldn’t begin to reconcile that reality.

The man was a machine of death, but complicated in very human ways I didn’t have the time to unravel.

Armise towered above the other shooters, in height and width. I was as tall as he was, but not nearly as wide. Not nearly as muscular. I’d had to spend years in training to build my physique into something that could match his. Years more after the DCR to rebuild what I had lost so he wouldn’t have an insurmountable advantage over me. He was still stronger than I was, but I was faster. Two thousand years ago emperors probably would have paid for the privilege to watch us fight to the death. Although that thought was perilously close to what we were doing anyway.

I felt that familiar churn of desire coil in my groin as I watched him prowl the course. Wanting him in my bed was a dangerous drive. But I’d let him get closer to me, year after year, regardless of the consequences.

Armise had been the one to break that first barrier between us—kissing me in a dilapidated warehouse in Singapore—thirteen years ago. And I wasn’t any closer to understanding what this drive was between us.

I’d been with men before Armise—Coach and Simion were included on that list—but whatever snafu this was between Armise and I was the closest I’d ever been to a relationship. Every connection in my life was one formed of violence, propelled forward for mutual strategic benefit, and this one was no exception.

I didn’t try to pretend that Armise needed anything from me besides a rough fuck and the opportunity to dig for information when my brain was too shorted out to remember my training. Yet somehow we always ended up at that point—discussing our work as if what we did on a daily basis was the same as any ration shop operator or water purification tech. Sharing body counts in an unofficial, cross-continent competition. But the tensest days were the ones where one of our superiors would give a direct order to kill the other.

Somehow it never happened.

Right.
Somehow
.

I knew exactly why Armise and I danced around our orders and continued to seek each other out. I just didn’t like to acknowledge the reality of our continued, and blatant, insubordination.

It was as simple as undeniable attraction. As complicated as an instinctual tether that should have been too theoretical and hokey for either of us to believe in, but that neither of us seemed to be able to free ourselves from. It was as base as the primal force of having your release gripped with a firm, commanding hand that straddled the line of agony, urgency and necessity. As existential as our one desperate claim to freedom in a life that was predetermined, years in advance, by men in uniforms who would never see the real-life implications of the orders they gave.

Armise and I, in another world and another time, might have been inevitable. Inseparable.

I just couldn’t imagine what that would even entail.

Even after the disastrous standoff in the DCR, I’d been unable to deny him. And I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, regret one moment of that time. The hours—days?—spent with him hadn’t knocked me off the course of my life. I was steadily working towards my final mission. Step by coordinated step.

Because nothing in my life would ever be more important than the mission.

It was hard to think of anything else. I knew there were people in the world who, while survivors of the war, had never fought in it. I realised there were people who didn’t consider tactical arrangements when they left their house. People who had a
home
.

People who had never killed.

I didn’t understand that level of innocence still existing in this world. My morality had long been wiped away.

Maybe that was another harsh truth of my relationship with Armise Darcan.

He and I were searching for a connection to humanity that we would never be able to rediscover. Because it had never existed within either us.

We were soldiers above all else. Living, breathing weapons set loose on our targets.

It wasn’t in either of our natures to give up.

I’d fucked Armise more times than I could count, yet he’d never submitted to me willingly. He fought me for control every time.

It was this fight that kept me engaged—no, addicted—too.

I never sought him out. But just when enough time had passed for me to think that I had him out of my system, he would find me, like wildfire blazing through my front door and burning my resolve to ashes. I would use his body to wipe all sense from my brain and we wouldn’t stop until both of us were sated enough to remember this could never happen again. But it always did.

And our encounters were quickly becoming too frequent, moving too close to the emotion of need, for me to deny that our relationship was still only about release.

Never love though.

Even the thought of it made me want to burst out in hysterical laughter.

That
emotion didn’t exist in our world.

Armise caught my eyes across the arena and I kept my expression disinterested and clinical. He sneered until all I could read on his face was contempt. One thing had always been clear between Armise and me—no matter how much time we spent in each other’s beds, in competition and in battle we were enemies. There was no middle ground.

I scowled and tipped my head back in a greeting of sorts. Armise’s lip turned up in disgust and he put his back to me.

The press corps went unnaturally quiet and I worried that my emotions had played too obviously as Armise and I postured, but then I noticed that the entire arena had gone silent. The mass of people on the course and in the seats came to a halt and heads turned towards a figure descending the arena steps. The President of the Continental States had appeared in the stands.

President Kersch’s physical appearance gave no indication of the unassailable power he commanded in his seemingly delicate hands. He was a small man in stature. Middle-aged, greying, just on the cusp of paunchy. But I knew better than to be fooled by his innocuous image. And if I was reading the undercurrent of fear threading through the crowd well enough, everyone else saw through it as well. Or at least knew enough about his brutal reputation to understand that staying out of his focus should be their primary goal. It was survival instinct at its basest—the hunted recognised the hunter when he appeared in their midst.

Everyone in the artfully designed range waited to see what the President would do, the silence spreading and dragging on for an uncomfortable amount of time. The President wasn’t oblivious to the stir he was causing. Everything he did was calculated to spread fear and keep his opponents guessing what he was going to do next. It was the only way he’d stayed in power for almost three decades.

And not just as the leader of the Continental States. President Wensen Kersch was the also the commander of the Revolution. That an underground movement existed, completely separate from the formalised power structure, was the inevitable result of the Borders War.

There were only five countries in the entire world. In response to that extreme consolidation of power, the Opposition had arisen almost a half century ago. The Revolution formed a decade later as counter to the aristocratic inclinations of the Opposition. In other words, class warfare.

Some things in human history never changed.

Then there were the Nationalists. People who were the most vested in seeing the five countries remain in control of their territories and keep their citizens under strict rule. Of course, most Nationalists also tended to play the ambitions of Opposition and Revolution against each other.

Opposition, Revolution, Nationalists. It felt like no one had a true loyalty to any one of them—country, people or ideology. My life had been about orders, as long as I could remember, and I was confident in where my loyalty was owed. Not only that, but also what ideals I fought for.

I didn’t understand the wringing of hands. Those who couldn’t take a side in the War—even if we were in a truce.

And I knew the President had no doubt in his own path either.

President Kersch didn’t react outwardly to the absolute stillness filling a building crammed with athletes, coaches and press. Instead he took a seat on the stands and talked with a man at his side, an aide most likely from the simple grey suit he wore. The President threw back his head and laughed, the high and tight sound ripping through the chemically cleaned air. The sharpness of the sound made people jump and served to set everyone’s nerves on greater edge.

No one knew what to expect when the President made an appearance and this time, only hours away from the start of the first Olympic Games in over three centuries and the first major public gathering since the treaty, they appeared to be even more unsure. President Kersch’s gaze slipped past the man at his side and went to me without hesitation. He dropped his chin in a quick nod and, just as abruptly, went back to speaking with his aide.

Armise’s words from weeks earlier rushed back to me.
They’re too wrapped up in pomp and circumstance to notice us. We’re a decoration, Merq. Nothing more.

No. Armise was wrong. He didn’t know this President the way I did. President Kersch had survived this long because he didn’t rely on any one person to protect him or his agenda. The President knew everything that happened within the boundaries of his country. He was either in control of every moving piece or aware of where they were headed next. There were no decorations in President Kerch’s world, only pawns at the ready to serve his interests. That the leaders of the five countries controlled every aspect of our lives was the harsh truth of our world, whether we wanted to acknowledge it or not.