Powerless (9 page)

I searched Simion’s face. His eyes were clear, mind sharp, completely free of the dullness and incoherent fog he’d fought through in the weeks after emerging from his coma. But I’d been able to glean enough information from my conversations with Feliu to know that he was concerned about the lingering effects of Simion’s brain injury.

I could see the fear in Simion’s eyes as the same realisation dawned—he was a liability. And we both had intimate, insider knowledge of how liabilities were dealt with.

I was going to be tasked with recovery, so I could fight once more. But Simion… He knew too much to just be left to become a civilian again.

I had to protect him and I couldn’t do that here.

I grasped Simion’s biceps. “It’s time to go, Sims.”

“What? No,” Feliu sputtered, standing. “Merq, I can’t let you walk out of here.”

“You will. Come on,” I urged Simion.

Feliu stepped in front me, blocking my path. Completely ineffectively, but his intent unquestionable.

“I don’t want to hurt you, doc. You’ve been good to both of us.”

“Then don’t.”

I lowered my head and balled my fists, my right one still weak, but strong enough to take him down if I had to. “Don’t make me.”

Feliu took a step back and raised his hands, palms facing me, in a sign of surrender.

I shook my head. “This isn’t our fight anymore.”

I slung Simion’s arm over my shoulder and didn’t stop until the skyline of the capital was indiscernible black tips against the horizon.

Chapter Five

August, Year 2559

City Unknown

It was raining in the city, and I was unsure of when—or if—this had become a normal occurrence. The hot droplets pelted against my overly sensitive skin in waves, washing the sweat away momentarily, only long enough for the thick, humid air to raise the fine sheen on my brow and above my lip before another pelt of raindrops assaulted me again.

But I couldn’t really feel the heat that pressed down upon the poorest of the citizens swirling around me in a haze of determined movement. I knew the heat was there because of their lack of clothes, tattered scraps skirting the edges of modesty. Because of the sluggish, weighted movement of their steps through another unnamed tent city. I could smell the overwhelming fetid stench of bodily fluids mixing with the torrents of water that rushed down grooves worn into the dirt roads.

I instinctively knew the heat was there.

But all I was was cold.

If I hadn’t noted the passage of time before—I did even less now. Time scattered. An amorphous concept I was wilfully and blissfully unaware of. Months, seconds, weeks, days, years… None of it held any meaning. I registered the passage of time by the deepening chill of my skin. By the determined search for black market surge that drove me into the tent camps over and over again, regardless of the position or lack of the sun. I listened for the gurgle-click-hiss of syringes, that freeze settling into my bones, dragging me further and further under until I could take that needle in hand and inject the warmth back into my soul.

Sometimes Simion came with me. Sometimes he was there and I couldn’t remember us hunting for warmth together. Sometimes I found his hands injecting me. Sometimes it was me he balanced on when the high became too all-consuming to make his synth operate smoothly enough to walk. Sometimes he begged me to remind him of the time when we were teenagers and he was still Ricor to me—a whip-thin child with the agility, speed, and strength of the super soldier they were making us both into.

Sometimes he told me today was the day he was going to stop.

I never believed him.

But more often than not, Simion remained in whatever hovel we slept that night, shaking with the need for more surge while I battled through the claustrophobic press of alleys and tent camps in search of it. Tonight—midnight? Early morning?— I hunted alone.

I sought out the warmth of surge to become oblivious to the pain that still racked my body from the damage done by the grenade in the bunker. That Simion had had the unfortunate fate of transporting into the bunker in the split second before that reverb—and in the heartbeat before I’d pulled the pin—had left me with an emptiness that would have been filled with guilt if I cared anymore.

I would have said I was trying to escape, but I had no existence left to go back to.

I would never fire a rifle again.

I shivered and pushed through the crowd, stuffing my hands into my pockets trying to stave off the freeze settling into my bones.

The cold that dampened my spirit chilled me, reminded me of Armise. And I couldn’t bring myself to think of him for long. Of the lack of his presence and how it shouldn’t have affected me, but it did. I’d maintained the ability for years to walk away from everything without thought. Until Armise. He was the only baggage I carried, and my mind and body were too weak to hold onto him anymore.

Simion and I injected because we didn’t want to remember. He, all of the things he had lost—his leg, contact with his family, the purpose of life. Me… At one time, I had been driven by the same frenzy for the cause as Simion. At one time, my mission had been my life. And while I’d been moving away from that identity since the revelation of Armise’s defection to my side, it was my rash but necessary choice of Simion over the Revolution that had finally severed that final tie. If my tattered body wasn’t enough of a reason to keep from fighting, walking out of that medical facility without authorization was.

I was stopped by a wandering group of soldiers who scanned my identification chip and moved on without comment. These roving checkpoints were standard now, but I didn’t worry about being recognised anymore. The removal of Simion’s chips had been a more arduous process than mine, but necessary. The fake chips we’d had implanted months ago safeguarded our slide into oblivion.

“Freedom from tyranny!” someone called out above the fray and I recognised the call for what it was—a thinly veiled code for surge that had been tainted with a chemical that made it more potent, more addictive. More deadly.

I cut through the crowd towards the voice.

The man was huddled underneath a scrap of plastic, his eyes glazed over.

“How much?” I asked without preamble.

He surveyed me, his head tipping listlessly to the side as if he didn’t have control over the movement. “How many?”

I held up two fingers. It was all I could afford today.

“Hundred each.”

I leant down and got in his face, using my size to intimidate him. “Hundred total.”

He tried to inch back but hit the edges of his tent, making the ramshackle structure sway.

“Two hundred for three. The barricades are taking their toll.”

I snorted in disgust. I’d been hearing that same line of bullshit for months. But no matter how thoroughly the war raged, the black market would never be empty-handed. Especially in the illicit items that commanded a price that, no matter how seemingly prohibitive, citizens would find a way to pay.

I held out my hand and gestured for him to give me the syringes. He dropped three onto my palm and swiped a reader over my wrist, taking my payment from my identification chip. “You need a safe house?” he offered.

Regardless of how long this had been my daily routine, I still struggled to remember that the words I had associated so closely with my life as a Peacemaker now meant severely different things. I wasn’t a soldier seeking protection anymore. I was a man looking for an empty bed to lose myself in the heat of addiction.

I looked around and tried to remember where Simion and I had holed up for the day. It could take me hours to find him again. And I wanted that hit. Now. I nodded my agreement.

He lifted the tent flap and gestured for me to enter.

I instinctively touched the pistol at my side when I pocketed two of the syringes, making sure the weapon was hidden but within reach, then ducked inside.

There were five beds in this first room, all occupied except for the one closest to the street. It was a location most people equated with vulnerability and the fear of getting caught, so they moved into the depths of surge dens, boxing themselves in. I may not have been a soldier anymore, but I still preferred to keep my escape within reach.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled up my sleeve. The rain dripped down from the sagging ceiling onto the mattress and I scooted back, away from the water.

I clicked the syringe open and pressed it to my flesh, the hiss of the automatic plunger sending my heart racing in anticipation.

The warmth came as a pinprick first, then a rush of pain followed quickly by a torrent of heat that blasted through my body within seconds. My head swam and my eyes shut as I collapsed onto the mattress.

My mind went blank and I felt my body ease. Muscles unknotting, joints loosening as the surge laid waste to my consciousness.

I slipped freely into that black hole, my mind retreating in time, sinking me into the ocean water of Lim2 training and that Singaporean island. But this time I could inhale the blackness, suck the contaminated burn into my lungs and revel in the loss of pain.

Here I wouldn’t have anyone forcing me into the harshness of thick air. Here I could drift down, surrender my body to the swaying currents and drown.

The mattress dipped and I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Not interested,” I whispered into the darkness of my blissful descent.

“Even for an old friend?”

I laughed, but still didn’t look at who was encroaching on my personal space. I didn’t have friends. A hazy memory of Exley telling me as much flitted through my awareness.

Exley may have been one of the only people who had never lied to me. But he was gone, too.

The presence next to me kept me from sinking into the most intense part of my high. This hit wouldn’t be enough to drive the freeze completely from my bones. I tried to curl into a ball, to drop back into the void and let the warmth of that illusive water envelop me, because the cold always crept back in—faster and more insistent each time—and if I was forced into taking another shot of surge too quickly there was a risk I wouldn’t emerge from the water at all.

But maybe I would finally be warm again.

A hand reached out and gripped my chin, my neck cracking in protest as the fingers forced my head to turn. “Merq,” the voice said simply.

I hadn’t heard that name in… I couldn’t remember the last time. Maybe the bunker? Maybe from Armise’s lips? The thought brought me physical pain despite the haze of surge flowing through my veins. Even Simion refused to utter my name, as if giving it voice was a curse. Perhaps it was.

I blinked, trying to bring my vision into focus.

That hand gripping my jaw tightened its hold and shook my head, making the face in front of me ripple, a trail of flashing lights following the viscous flow of paunchy facial features, making the man in front of me appear spectral and surreal. And that face couldn’t be real. Because there was no way the President would be sitting on a filthy mattress beneath a ragged blue tent surrounded by the mess of the poor in fuck knows where. I didn’t know where I was, how could he?

My eyes shut again of their own will, and that hand slapped me lightly against my cheek, then stayed there, warm against my skin.

The touch reverberated through my body in waves. I hadn’t been touched in what felt like an eternity.

“Where’s Simion?” the President’s voice urged me.

I croaked out another laugh and forced my eyes open. “He wants to be found even less than I do.”

The rain fell hot through a tear above me in the tent. I stared past the rent and into the churning grey clouds, silently willing the man to disappear like the ghost he had to be.

And still, that hand didn’t move.

I forced my fingers to flex, to slide into my pocket and seek out another syringe. I couldn’t close my fist around the device, so I used my thumb to flick the guard off and expose the needle. I didn’t have the strength or the focus to inject the surge into the abused vein in the crook of my arm, but if I angled the needle just right I could pierce through the fabric and shoot it into my thigh. Normally it wouldn’t have been enough, but with the first dose still thrumming through me, maybe, maybe it would be enough.

Another hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled the syringe free from my weak grasp, and I cried out, desperate, wrecked… And so damn cold.

The President sighed. “Neither of you has a choice anymore.”

Chapter Six

The ocean was wild.

I sat on the bow of the boat curled into a thick sweater to protect me from the whipping wind, and refused to move from my damp seat even though I sat in the only part of the boat that wasn’t protected from the elements.

I’d been separated from Simion since the President had forced me back to the capital and eventually onto this boat. But I wasn’t alone. My father and mother—Lucien and Tallitia Grayson—sat behind a door of swirling glass, their faces morphed into something that looked more like a surge-induced delusion than reality.

But this was beyond real.

My body shook with the need for surge. It had been days since that last hit when the President had found me, and there was little else I could think about besides devising a way to get free of them again and disappear. Where they were sending me, escape was going to be nearly impossible. But I’d lived most of my life achieving the impossible. May as well use my skills for something that would benefit me for once.

My mind was dangerously focused on disappearing and nothing else. Even as this boat took me away from the mainland and to an isolated island that no human being had stepped foot on in over fifty years. To the home of my great-grandfather. They were taking me as far away from modern life as they could. Forcing me to get clean because none of them trusted that I had enough restraint to not be hunting the streets for surge at the first opportunity.

They were right. But only partially.

It wasn’t the rush of surge or the release from pain that I craved, although both were a definite side benefit. As I started the long, forced trek back to sobriety, I was overwhelmed with the need to forget. Thoughts of Armise crashed into me unbidden. It didn’t matter how far they took me away from anywhere I physically associated with him, I carried his absence with me wherever I went.