Powerless (14 page)

“On me?”

“As you would so eloquently say, who the fuck else? You will be a soldier again. In truth, you never stopped being one.”

“What do you want from me?”

The President tapped his fingers against the desk, the sound grating at my nerves, frayed from not sleeping in almost a day and from the abrupt change to my circumstances.

But the President’s next words brought me back to full attention. “I need you to hunt.”

* * * *

“Who is Av Garratty?” Feliu asked as he ran a handheld scanner over my body.

I furrowed my brow. “I don’t know.”

“Then why is his tracker in your wrist?

I snorted. “I forgot about that.”

“You want me to take it out? I can put yours back in.”

“Leave it. It may come in handy. I don’t want any of mine back. Not yet. Or is that a request I should assume is going to be ignored?”

“Not at all. The President told me to do whatever you asked for when it came to your chips.”

“Just the three or the others you took out of me?”

Feliu grinned. “He told me you would be…thorough. Truth be told, there were no other devices taken out of you because we’ve never put anything else in.”

I knew I had to look as shocked as I felt. “Nothing?”

“You still have the auditory bridge implanted into your cortex, but that’s useless without a comm chip for it to link to. There are no other devices, chips or alternative means of monitoring your health or movements. Is that definitive enough for you?”

“You’ll excuse me if I take that information with extreme prejudice.”

Feliu shrugged. “It’s of no consequence to me either way. I should be able to complete all the procedures safely in about five weeks. We’ll leave you under for another two weeks after that to give your body time to catch up to the changes.”

“Wait. I’ll be out that entire time?”

“It’s safer that way. You’re more likely to emerge in fighting condition.”

“Which is the ultimate goal.”

Feliu huffed his displeasure. “It was all along.”

“You know I’m not allowed to have surge?”

“I’ve been told. We’ll still use nanoparticles to speed your healing, but we’ll use another method besides surge to deliver them.”

“How much can you fix?”

“You’ll be almost back to normal. Barring a few weaknesses that are unavoidable. I can’t do anything with your ribs or the previous injuries to your shoulder since we can’t use titanalloy. We’ve been experimenting with the bones of cadavers, but I’m not confident enough yet to employ that tactic on a high value asset such as you.”

“Cadaver bones…”

“Dead people. It’s promising.”

“Sounds archaic.”

“It is. A discovery off the infochip.”

Fuck. Chen.
How had I forgotten about her?
“Chen’s still alive?” I asked him.

Feliu smiled. “And eager to see you.” He leaned over my torso, probing at the scarring on my right shoulder. “How much of that can you feel?”

I shook my head as much as I could with his lips almost at my neck. And as confused as I’d been lately about whose lips belonged where, I could confidently state that I had no interest in Feliu. At all.

“Not much,” I admitted.

Feliu sat back, grabbed a needle off the table next to him and inserted an IV port into the back of my hand. “We’re going to be able to remove and graft over all the scar tissue. Just be happy you’re going to be asleep for that healing process. It’s gruelling. Well, you’d know that from watching what Simion went through.”

I swallowed. “How is he?”

“You were right. His brain is fully recovered as far as I can tell. He’s back on active, but limited, duty.”

“Thank you,” I offered.

Feliu gave me a sidelong glance, as if he didn’t know whether I was fucking with him or not. Whatever reservations he had, he left them silent. He went back to work on preparing me for surgery. “You know, we’ve had several successful trials with what we’re calling a stitch mod—accelerated healing rates for soft tissues. You don’t have to inject anything. It’s a permanent genetic modification. If you’re interested I can add that to the list.”

I laughed darkly. “I don’t need any more fucking modifications to my DNA.”

Feliu stared at me as if he wanted to say something, but I needed to talk to him about more important details before I was put out of commission for two months. “I’ve been advised to speak to you about the PsychHAgs.”

“What about them?” Feliu asked calmly as he injected a golden liquid into my port. Way too fucking calmly. And his first question hadn’t been who had advised me to seek him out.

The warmth of some sort of drug pushed through my veins, relaxing my muscles. But my mind was still clear. “They have anything to do with the experiments you’ve been running?”

Feliu shook his head. “I’m only involved with my scientists.”

I listened more to what he wasn’t saying than what he was. “You’ve been approached by them, though.”

“I still have my ethics.”

“Just tell me, doc.”

Feliu pressed a syringe to the crook in my arm, sending a hot rush through me that immediately started to force my eyes closed.

“I can’t,” I thought I heard him say.

But I was already gone.

Chapter Nine

I was violent death reawakened from months-long slumber.

My body was stronger than I remembered and I wondered if Feliu had made more genetmods to me while I was asleep. I didn’t care if he had.

The training Neveed tried to put me through after I woke up was time wasted. I ravaged every sparring partner they set on me. I shredded every target they placed in front of me, no matter the distance.

So I set out on the hunt for the remaining nine Committee members.

I was a finely tuned weapon. A sword that had been thrown into the fire decades ago and was only now refined to a sharpness that couldn’t be blunted. I was unerringly balanced. My emotions existed solely to stoke that fire and forge me into something more resilient. Unbreakable.

Priyessa would have been proud.

It wasn’t just that my body was strong. I wasn’t afraid to feel. To live with my emotions, study them, breathe with them, and understand how they connected me to something greater than physical power.

My mind wasn’t just clear, it was crystalline. A prism of colours and sights that spun in front of me and I could follow every facet, every shining movement. I used it all to drive me forward in the hunt, manipulating the most powerful to bring them to their knees and beg for mercy.

Mercy that I didn’t give.

I was that bullet.

I was that knife.

And I was bound to nothing but my desire to see them all dead.

That they were all using the new shields was of no consequence. I gutted them, snapped their necks, fighting through bodyguards while Chen disarmed what should have been impenetrable security systems.

I took my aggression out on the Committee members as I took them out one by one, then fucked my hand to the memory of Armise until I couldn’t think.

Blood and lust. A haze I didn’t want to break free from.

I lost myself in the echo of that decimated stadium. The image of Sarai’s head blowing open haunted me. If I couldn’t protect the innocents in this war then I’d failed.

But no matter how viciously I tortured them or how many family members I threatened, no matter how many of them went screaming into their deaths, I couldn’t get any closer to Ahriman.

Or to the wraith that was Armise Darcan.

I’d never been more aware of my own vulnerability than I was with each life that I ended. With each country I stormed into and tore apart, I sought out the ripples my presence caused, the vast reach and layered consequences that occurred with each kill. I’d always known there was an aftermath, but I’d never cared enough to see what it entailed. I lingered after each kill, telling the President it was because I hoped to catch some of the leadership unaware and unprepared. But it was my curiosity that kept me hidden for days longer than I should have remained anywhere.

I was joined by nameless operatives when another set of hands was needed. But it was always me that delivered the fatal blow. Their sojourn into oblivion was my responsibility and mine alone to bear.

I forced myself to look upon the moment of death and understand what it was I was taking from them.

And I realised it wasn’t just breath and life. Movement and thought.

It was hope.

I watched families and communities mourn.

I understood sorrow in a way I never had before.

My body was strong but mentally I was reforming every lack of emotional reaction I’d ever had.

I hurt, and I didn’t attempt to stop or dull the pain.

After four months I’d ticked eight of those spineless Opposition members’ names off my list. Culling my way through the most powerful as if they were as vulnerable as newborn animals. They weren’t human.

But, for once, I was.

* * * *

“Five minutes out.”

The radio crackled with Simion’s voice in my ear. He was tracking the movements of the last remaining Committee member via a hack into his tracker. I still didn’t have a comm, but Chen had worked with Feliu on a device that combined radio waves and the device implanted in my cortex that tied to my auditory system. Old technology meeting new.

I still couldn’t receive transmissions from across the globe, but it meant that I could communicate with someone from a distance of miles instead of metres and I didn’t have to use my hands to activate it. I wore a thin strip of polymaterial over my throat to carry my end of the transmissions back to Simion who was stationed in a Revolution safe house in a nearby village.

I looked through the rifle scope, keeping the rest of my body completely still. I didn’t worry about being sighted—I was nearly two kilometres away from the elegant, oversized house, built into the mountains of the Wildes of the UU. I’d been outfitted with a suit that masked my vitals and heat signature and I was set up with my sonicrifle for the first time in over a year.

This Committee member knew I was coming for him next and I had no way to get close enough to slit his throat. But his hamartia would be his insistence on living as a part of the natural world. He didn’t use shields, transport or any form of modern food or medicine. I agreed with him when it came to genetmod food, but otherwise the guy was asking to have his brain exploded in a very unnatural way.

Lucky for us, he’d been forced into having a tracker chip implanted or it would have been nearly impossible to locate him at all.

“Did you hear what Chen uncovered?” Simion asked over the radio.

“The encryption key?” I replied snidely.

Simion chuckled. “I’m prone to think that doesn’t exist.”

“Me too. What did she find?”

“The location to a store of books supposedly hidden underground on the coast of the AF. Jegs is putting together a team to investigate it. Still don’t know if it’s real, but it’s pretty fucking amazing to think about.”

“You ever seen a book?”

“No way. Don’t think I’d want to touch it even if I did. My leg may be fucked up, but my hands are still more likely to crush and kill than savour.”

I remembered that book in the UU and how I’d thought the same thing in that moment. I snorted. “Please tell me you’re not fucking anyone right now.”

Simion scoffed. “Uh-huh. Crippled, with a death wish, and likely to strangle anyone in my sleep who tries to cuddle me. I’ve got a queue of men a kilometre long. Three minutes out.”

“Chen will crack the infochip wide open someday,” I said with surety.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Not sure if it matters as much anymore.”

I rested my cheek against the stock of my rifle as a memory of Armise came slamming back to me. “Someone once told me that we fight for love. I say we fight because we don’t remember. That infochip matters. It is more than the words and images contained in it. It is a shared history and a common soul. One we’ve forgotten we have. I believe in the Revolution because of that. Evil comes individually, hope comes from the many. And I’ll do whatever I must to protect that future.”

“So we’re making speeches today, huh?”

I gave a derisive snort.

Simion laughed, and I realised how good it was to hear that sound coming so freely from him again. “I’m fucking with you. I hear you. Ahriman will do whatever he has to to ensure his future is the only one that exists.”

“We’ll get to him.” A flash came from the inside of the house and a group of men appeared in the main room—one of them whose black hair and thin, angular features I recognised immediately. “Fuck. Maybe tonight. Blanc is here.”

“Where the fuck is here, Merq?” Simion’s panicked voice came over the radio. “Next to you? Fucking answer me, man. Are you there?”

“Breathe, Sims.” And I took my own advice, taking in a full, long breath, relaxing my body and keeping my eyes locked on the group. “Shit. You sound like Exley. Ahriman’s in the house.”

“Where is Exley anyway? Whatever, like that fucking matters. Anyone else with the Death King?”

My breath caught as I surveyed the men, focusing immediately on the mammoth man pacing at the back of the room. “Yeah.”

“They’re lighting up my screen now. Five total.” Simion hesitated, and I knew his equipment was showing him what I could see through the scope. “Including Armise.”

I didn’t reply.

It had been over a year since I’d last seen Armise, and seeing him with Ahriman—in the home of a Committee member—set my teeth on edge. If I’d had any doubt before about his betrayal, I shouldn’t have now. Him being here, let alone Ahriman being present in the home of the sole living Committee member, made me suspicious. Yet I couldn’t tamp down the instinct that I didn’t have the whole story.

Armise wore that same black watch, banded around his right wrist. But each wrist was also circled with bracelets. Stone and wood pieces that looked like relics or physical reminders of ritual.

“Hey, Merq. Armise isn’t shielded.”

“You’re sure of that?” I took stock of Armise’s form, prowling, on edge, and even from this distance I could see the muscles of his jaw twitch. His beard was back, but merely stubble. I tried not to think about the rasp of his coarse hair on my cheek or between my thighs. I had to fight the urge to move. It didn’t matter I’d committed to taking his life—my body remembered him.