Powerless (2 page)

“If any of them had been strong enough, they would’ve survived, too,” I answered without hesitation.

Neveed physically cringed and pulled away from me.

It should have been me with the survivor guilt, not him. But guilt and denial came much more naturally to him. As did their polar companions—freedom and forgiveness. I didn’t understand what he had seen or experienced to be so invested in life. He should have been too smart to be infected by such extreme notions.

I sought out the clarity that came with balance. With detachment.

I would be—had to be—better for the effort.

Neveed sat on the edge of the bed, his back to me. He ran his hand through the loose black curls at his nape.

I thought about reaching out to him, but I didn’t.

The mattress dipped and Neveed moved away from the bed—away from me—as he spoke, “I don’t think it will happen tomorrow, but President Kersch is probably going to make me your handler. He has an assignment for you. Long-term. Dangerous. And vital to the success of the Revolution.”

“I’m ready,” I answered without hesitation.

“I know you are, Merq. But what do you want?”

I noted his inability to look me in the eye, the almost imperceptible shaking of his fingers as he buttoned his shirt. He was waiting for an answer, was apparently anxious about what I would say, but I could only give him the truth. “Is there anything more important than the mission?”

Neveed anchored his feet, threw his shoulders back, finally locked eyes with me. “You’ll never want more from life,” he observed. It was neither a question nor an answer.

I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.

He gave a disdainful scoff. Shook his head.

And with that I knew. Neveed was ending this. Us.

He didn’t say that this encounter—whatever version of us that existed in bedrooms and backrooms but never publicly—was the last time. But I read the inevitability in the tentative, sad gaze of his golden brown eyes over my body.

That I wasn’t interested in this having an end was a thought that surprised me. I didn’t know why it had to end at all. Sleeping with Neveed wasn’t about getting ahead for me. But it wasn’t solely about getting off either. I had no idea what it was for him, but I had thought it was more than something he could cast aside with a flippant commentary on my jaded view of life.

None of that mattered now, though.

Neveed projected his strongest emotions, as if he were unable to contain their magnitude and depth within the thin, vulnerable walls of his skin.

If he looked defeated then he was defeated.

Which meant what he was doing now was pushing me away.

I didn’t give a fuck if I was rushing into judgement—if he and I should have spoken about what we were or where we going with this. If he wanted to end it then I wouldn’t fight. It was easier to separate myself from him than it was to keep him around.

I repeated my mantra in my head as he dressed and left without another word.

One breath.

Inhale.

Hesitation is my enemy.

Solitude my ally.

Death the only real victory.

Exhale.

If I had to be solitary to be safe, then that was how I would stay alive.

I wouldn’t allow someone else to be my fatal flaw.

* * * *

April, Year 2546

Singapore—The Outposts

Seven years after the training class that had introduced me to Neveed Niaz, I stood on that beach once again, the echo of ‘hamartia’ ringing in my ears.

This time I was a witness instead of a participant. A teacher and not a trainee. This class was older and more prepared for the harshness of what they were experiencing than any of my classmates—all of them dead now—had ever been. But, I considered as I surveyed the men and women who would soon become Peacemakers, perhaps that knowledge also brought with it fear. We had been too young to fully grasp our own mortality or the inherent weakness of our minds and bodies. These students, most well into their twenties, had lived long enough to know that they too would die someday. And that date could be today, or this moment, and not some fuzzy date in the future.

The ocean was no longer as acidic as it had been back then and students could enter the water without protective gear, but that just meant they were facing the rigors of Lim2 with one fewer shield between them and the elements. It was them and the vastness of the ocean and only their single-mindedness keeping them from freaking out.

I didn’t feel sorry for them. Unlike me, they had chosen to pursue a career as a soldier. If they couldn’t survive Lim2, then I didn’t want them. Also unlike me, they didn’t have to face the hell of the PsychHAgs as their next step.

I had no amount of pity for them.

One of the other trainers pulled a limp body from the water and I fumed, turning on the shaking, wet forms standing behind me in an arc. “We’re done,” I growled. “Tomorrow we do this exercise twice. And anyone who has to be rescued will be left to drown.”

The class slipped silently away without a response, moving as a group to the humidity-drenched barracks carved into the volcanic rock farther inland.

“Rather harsh, don’t you think?” Neveed challenged as he stepped up next to me.

“No,” I replied without hesitation. I could only vaguely recall how Neveed and I had broken the student/trainer barrier the first time. But I knew exactly why I had been so willing to give in. I studied my former lover and remembered what had attracted me to him in the first place—that brash confidence, the calm surety of self I wanted to achieve. The sheer, genuine joy he was capable of when excited.

We’d spent two years together, half of which was lost in the fog of the psychological and physical torture I’d endured under the PsychHAgs. Although much of that year was hazy, my connection to him had been one of the only things that had kept me from going insane. That I was the only person who had survived that training class had to be partially attributed to the steadying presence of Neveed Niaz.

The man standing in front of me wasn’t the same Neveed I’d known then.

We were long over at this point. My relationship with him had been replaced with a cold detachment that seemed forced on his side. Professional, but with a vindictive streak. As if it had been me, and not him, that had ended things between us when it had become clear he was going to become the only contact who knew what my ultimate mission was. When he’d accused me of apathy—that no man would ever mean more to me than the Revolution would. When I’d told him he was right.

He didn’t know about Armise. Couldn’t. And yet, I still wondered if he did.

I surveyed the defiant set of his shoulders and his piercing gaze. The warmth of his burnished brown eyes was dull, gone, as it had been for years. And the subtle laughter lines around his eyes and mouth were creased in frustration instead of the joyful grin I could conjure from memory too easily. My frown matched his. “You and I know what’s coming next. They don’t. And if any of these soldiers are going to end up under my command then I have to be sure they’ve conquered every fear they still hold onto and just fucking listen to the orders they’re given instead of fighting it.”

“Ironic,” Neveed replied with a twist of his lip, those lines deepening in a sardonic smile.

I tried to shrug off the meaning behind his sarcasm. This group of trainees would never be tasked with my ultimate mission for the Revolution. Therefore, they needed to be broken down into unthinking weapons of war if they were to have any chance of surviving to see more than one battle.

I turned away from Neveed. “Rest up,” I instructed the other two Peacemaker trainers remaining on the beach. “We begin distance training in four hours.”

They nodded their assent and retreated to their rooms. Neveed offered me his back as a response, following the other trainers without another word. His silent departure left me alone on the beach.

The chemical lights in the barracks switched off quickly, plunging the shoreline into darkness that would have been complete save for the light of the moon, and still I stood with my back to the ocean, running through the events of the day and estimating just how many dead soldiers I would be transporting back to the States by the end of tomorrow.

But it wasn’t the stillness or my thoughts that kept me rooted to the spot.

“You going to come talk to me or just lurk in the darkness?” I asked out loud, turning to face the ocean. And Armise.

He pulled himself out of the shallows and sat on the edge of a rock outcropping, water dripping down his muscled frame. His face was hidden in shadow, but I swore I could see the flash of his tongue, licking at his lips. I’d spotted him early this morning and had waited for him to make a move. But until this moment he’d stayed out of sight from the rest of the Peacemakers and students. If I hadn’t been trained as a sniper then I would have missed his presence just as they had. But I knew how to pick apart the landscape and search for details that matched the surroundings yet hinted at a disturbance that was more human than of nature.

I had no doubt he was alone, and not just because he had a reputation for working solo. If there were any other Singaporean forces here then none of us would still be alive.

“Quite the settlement you have here,” he remarked, lifting his frame off the rocks and approaching me.

“Reconnaissance or a target?” I asked without preamble.

“I’ve been ordered to kill you,” Armise unceremoniously replied.

I felt the weight of the sonicpistol on my hip and mentally reviewed the locations of the knives hidden on my body before answering him. “Just me or all of them?”

Armise chuckled. “Just you, Merq. It is always you.”

I grimaced. I’d first noticed his presence before the sun had risen and before any of the other soldiers had been awake. He’d had plenty of time to strike at me if he’d had any inclination to do so. “You could have taken me on hours ago.”

Armise flipped the knife in his hands, studying the barracks. “Watching you was infinitely more interesting.”

“A day wasted,” I quipped.

I could barely see the movement of Armise’s lips in the slant of light from the waning moon, but it was enough to tell he was frowning. “You said you knew what was coming.”

I flexed my hands into fists then straightened them again, keeping my fingertips within reach of my weapons. “You’re going to have to try harder if you want me to give up any secrets,” I goaded him.

Armise re-sheathed his knife and stepped up to me, his chest only inches from mine. He tilted his head and licked his lips. “If I let you fuck me can we cuddle afterwards and talk?”

“Fuck you,” I spat at him, even as my hands ached to move away from my weapons and touch him.

It had been over a year since Singapore and that first kiss. Maybe I would’ve been more surprised to see him here if we hadn’t kept appearing in the same isolated and war-torn areas of the world at the same time over and over again.

But this was becoming a pattern.

“So your boss has officially decided I’m such a threat that I’m worthy of the great Armise Darcan’s lethal skills? What was it this time? The Dark Ops officer I took out in the AF?”

Armise’s face was blank. Unresponsive.

My pride got the better of me. “Or is it that my team is closer to the infochip than you will ever be?”

Armise’s lips tugged into a dark smile. “I’m sure there are better reasons you could come up with if you thought long enough.”

His breath coasted over my cheek, raising chill bumps. “Or is it that there is no mission this time? You just couldn’t stay away.”

Armise’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed.

“You won’t hurt me. Let alone kill me,” I challenged him, taking one step closer so I was flush against him.

“You sure about that?”

I tipped my head forward and brushed my lips against his. “Yeah. I am.”

I set my hands on his hips and thrust up against him, taking his bottom lip between my teeth in a movement that was now automatic, well-practiced, and dangerous.

Armise swept his tongue into my mouth, but left his hands at his side. He drew back before I could deepen the kiss, his eyes black despite the moonlight.

“I’m sorry, Merq. This time you’re wrong,” he answered and lunged at me, his blade swiping in an arc towards my neck as my feet shifted in the sand and I tried to fall away from the oncoming strike.

A strike I had been unprepared for because I had believed he wouldn’t actually attempt it.

I didn’t think his blade had hit its mark until warmth seeped down my neck followed by the agony only a cut from a serrated knife could bring. I stared at him for a heartbeat, then two, each thud of my heart bringing a fresh spurt of blood from the gash. I tried to speak, tried to move my feet, to rally and draw my pistol to take him down, but my mind couldn’t force my body to respond. I dropped to my knees, my eyes still locked to his and I saw him wince, the muscles of his jaw straining. He stumbled as he backtracked to the ocean, sliding into the water with ease and lighting the darkness with the electrical burst of a transport.

I fell to my back and clasped my hand over the wound, the grit of the sand on my palm rubbing harshly against the raw, exposed nerves.

It was Neveed that found me on that beach an indeterminate amount of time later, dropping to his knees and pressing his criss-crossed fingers onto the shredded slash gurgling a steady stream of crimson into the sand.

I was relatively sure I wasn’t going to die, but Neveed’s contorted features gave me pause.

“Just hold on, Grayson,” he whispered to me.

And I had the mad thought to laugh, because even under the threat of death he couldn’t say my first name.

I gasped to take in a full breath and Neveed’s grip on my neck tightened. He swore, his voice echoing off the rocks of our encampment, but sounding dull and removed to my ears.

One word repeated in my head over and over again, like the familiar chant of a mantra I should have been able to recite without thought. Only those three syllables would come to me as I felt my limbs growing cold.