by Nalini Singh
His Navajo-Japanese father, too, would say the same: Strength is control. Control is power.
Zaira had heard Naoshi Ayze say that at least a hundred times during the past five, going on six, years. Marjorie and Naoshi had settled in Venice after their "deaths" in an explosion at sea two decades past, and the compound there wouldn't have existed without them. But while the squad owed them a great debt, Zaira had come to realize the two Arrows no longer understood the son they had created and shaped to be an avatar of rebellion.
Aden was stronger, better than both of them, and he followed his own path.
Throwing aside the laser when it burned out, he picked up another one from the kit, worked on her. There was pain, but it was the burn of the laser, the deep ache of being gutshot fading slightly.
"I think I've cauterized the major bleeds," Aden told her, rebandaging both the entry and exit wounds using sterile gauze packs before making her drink two small bottles of a high-nutrient compound in the kit. Soon as she'd done that, he thrust a solid energy bar at her. "It'll increase your energy levels, stave off unconsciousness."
While she forced down the tasteless bar, he went looking for their boots. "Got them," he said a couple of minutes later. "Socks were on the floor but they're dry."
He'd also unearthed a green camo canvas daypack and, once he'd pulled on his socks and boots, started filling the pack with any food he could find, the remaining medical supplies, and technical equipment they might be able to jerry-rig. "We're in mountainous and heavily forested terrain, low visibility because of thick cloud cover and the fact it's full night," he told her. "A storm seems imminent. Strip the guards, put on as many extra warm layers as you can; ditch my jacket and find a rainproof one."
Already moving, though she was sluggish compared to her normal speed, Zaira went to the guard who'd taken a bullet in the skull and fallen forward on his face, leaving his clothing mostly unbloodied.
"Here." Aden threw her an olive green sweater from a small metal trunk he'd dragged over from around the corner. "Looks like their spare supplies." Shrugging off the lightweight jacket he was wearing, he pulled on an identical sweater over bare skin, though what was baggy and loose on her sat easily across his broad shoulders. "It's empty aside from a few more energy bars."
Having unzipped and shrugged off the leather jacket, she put it back on over the woolen sweater. She could easily fit a heavier waterproof jacket over it. "Do they have sleeping bags?"
"No. I found pallets in a small room down that corridor." He paused. "I think I saw a jacket that might not swamp you."
Zaira made her way to that room while Aden stuffed the daypack with the last supplies and extra ammunition. The heavy hooded jacket she found hanging on a hook on the wall must've belonged to the short, slight guard who'd run outside after Aden. It was still large on her, but not so large as to be unmanageable. Seeing another thick, weatherproof jacket crumpled in the corner, she picked it up and shook it out, then scanned the room until she located a pair of gloves.
Aden had just finished packing the supplies when she got back. Nodding thanks for the jacket and gloves, he snapped closed the clasps on the daypack and began to get into the jacket. Her senses prickled fifteen seconds later, while he was zipping it up. "Let's go. I hear a chopper."
Aden didn't argue, both of them aware her hearing was more acute than his--a simple genetic quirk that often gave her a slight advantage in stealth operations. Her father had once credited a long-ago changeling ancestor for that familial genetic trait. Zaira didn't know if that was a true assertion or not, but she appreciated the usefulness of it.
Slinging on the daypack, Aden led the way out. The bodies of the guards sent to find him lay on the ground outside, their eyes staring at the sullen night sky and their skin leached of color. Ignoring them, Zaira and Aden made straight for the cover of the dark green firs that spread out in every direction around them, birch trees with lighter green leaves scattered in among them. Right now, intel wasn't as important as survival.
Chapter 3
THE GROUND WAS uneven, rocky, as they ran, the air cold in her lungs but not knife sharp. Of course, that was now, right after she'd had an infusion of energy thanks to the drinks and the bar she'd eaten. The real test would come in an hour or two, when her injury began to make itself felt again. "Chopper's about to land." She could hear the jets that made it a high-speed vehicle. "Has to be a clearing nearby."
"Probably a natural one. Nothing to raise suspicion to anyone doing a flyover."
Shouts carried on the air soon afterward, but while this terrain might make for a good holding pen, it was so thickly forested that it also made for a very bad area to search. Especially when hunting two Arrows. Except one Arrow was badly wounded to the point that she was a liability.
"I'm slowing you down," she said, her breath coming too hard and too fast for someone with her training and endurance.
Aden's answer was to point down, to what she was just able to make out as flowing water. A river. Seeing his point, she headed in that direction, slip-sliding down the hill covered with small flowering shrubs and leaving a visible trail on purpose. Aden did the same. With luck, their pursuers would think they'd both slid right into the river.
Going in a straight line to the river once they'd reached the bottom, she and Aden scuffed up the dirt near the water's edge to further the illusion that they'd fallen in.
"If we get wet," she said, "we're dead." The water was a hard rush, as if swollen by rain upstream. Not even the strongest swimmer could fight that current, keep from being smashed up against rocks or into broken tree trunks caught in the torrent. That is, if the cold didn't stop the heart first.
"Rocks," Aden said, pointing out the jagged stepping-stones she'd missed in the darkness. If her hearing was acute, Aden's night vision was just as sharp. It had made them an excellent team on the rare missions they'd worked together.
"We get to the other side and we have a much higher chance of survival. They won't expect it."
"Because I can't make it." She knew her balance was off, her body weak; she currently didn't have the physical agility to cross the "bridge" of stones, especially when each stone was covered with a thin and no doubt slippery layer of wet green moss. "You go that way and I'll lead them left."
Aden took off the daypack, gave it to her. "Put it on." When she went to open her mouth, he said, "For once, Zaira, don't argue."
"I only argue when you're wrong." She put on the pack against her better judgment because time was their enemy. "You need the supplies and I can't go far."
He turned his back to her. "Get on."
"Aden, that's a bad decision. We'll both go into the water." The sounds of pursuit were getting louder. "Go. I'll lead them off."
Looking over his shoulder, he held her gaze, the deep, liquid brown of his irises so intense it felt like a physical weight anchoring her where she stood. "Either we both go or neither one of us goes. Choose."
"I'll challenge your leadership the instant we're out of here," she threatened, then jumped onto his back, locking her legs around his waist and sliding her arms up under his own to clamp over his shoulders.
She knew she was comparatively light, probably weighed around half of Aden's body weight, but she also carried the pack, and he was walking across a river in the dark on stones that weren't exactly meant to be used as steps. Focusing only on staying as relaxed as possible, so as not to throw him off, she breathed in the chilly air and thought about all the ways she would torture those who had taken her and Aden.
The guards had just been the brawn. Someone else was behind this.
Aden stepped onto the first stone, his muscles flexing against her as he maintained his precarious balance. A second step. A third.
Water frothed around the rocks, the river's passage rushing thunder around them.
Aden's body dipped and she held on though her training told her to let go so he'd have a better chance of survival. She knew Aden. He'd come for her
again. He'd dive into that dangerous water in a stupid, irrational, un-Silent decision and he'd come for her. So she'd stay with him as long as possible, until there was no other option and even he would agree with her.
Only she wasn't sure he ever would.
He really was a very bad leader in that respect--and it was why his Arrows gave him their unswerving dedication. All of them rejects from the world, from their families. No one else had ever come for them, ever would. Silence or not, it mattered that Aden would. Perhaps that exposed a flaw in the heart of the Protocol and perhaps it was simply a sign that even Arrows had a soul.
Halfway across the river and she could hear shouts that indicated their pursuers were heading to the ridge she and Aden had slid down. "I estimate they'll see us in another two minutes."
Aden didn't answer, but she knew he'd heard.
Four more stones, the other side starting to appear closer, but then Aden's foot slipped. Zaira would've released him and chanced the water except that he locked one hand around her ankle. A silent statement that if they went, they'd go together. Irrational, she thought again as they both almost fell in before he righted himself.
Two more stones.
The sounds so close now, flickers of light flashing on the ridge when she glanced over her shoulder.
Aden slipped and slammed down to his knees . . . but it was on the bank. He made sure his body tumbled sideways so she fell on the bank beside him rather than backward into the water. Pushing up on her hands, she looked up toward the ridge. "We need to get into the trees."
They made it barely in time; the chopper was in the air now and sweeping the area with a spotlight. Pressing themselves to the ground and covering their bodies in enough forest floor debris that they no longer looked people-shaped, Aden and Zaira waited.
Zaira breathed into her hands, the gloves she'd found in the coat's pockets too large but warm. She couldn't hear Aden breathing and for a second, her heart stopped. Alone, whispered the stunted, murderous child hidden in the darkest corner of her psyche, alone. A second later, she shook it off. He was being silent, that was all. Aden could be more silent than any other Arrow she knew, even the most capable assassin. She'd asked him once how he'd learned to do that. His answer was one she'd never forget.
When I was a child, my parents told me to be invisible, so invisible that no one would ever consider me a threat, so invisible that I would be forgotten.
Zaira didn't understand how anyone could have failed to see the relentless strength and raw power that lived in Aden, but they had. Ming LeBon had barely paid Aden any attention, until one day, their former leader suddenly realized someone else was holding the reins and that he'd been deposed. No more would Ming treat the Arrows as his personal death squad, using them up then putting them down as if they were lame dogs.
They belonged to Aden now. And they would follow him into hell itself.
She felt the spotlight sweep over her at that moment, the light seeping through her damp tomb with its smell of the earth and the musty wet of decomposing forest debris. The light didn't linger. The sound of the chopper grew more distant heartbeat by heartbeat as the search went downriver, the voices of the searchers on foot also heading in that direction.
"I think they're gone," she said at last.
"Slowly." Coming up from his prone position with painstaking care as she did the same, Aden picked up the pack she'd thrust under a tangle of undergrowth, then looked up at the smattering of stars exposed by a small gap in the cloud cover. "We're in the northern hemisphere."
Since it was spring in that hemisphere, they had to be either at a high elevation or in one of the generally colder areas such as Alaska. "Can you narrow it down further?"
"No, but this might." He retrieved a small device from the pack, stilled before turning it on. "It could have a tracker that could lead the search straight to us."
"Don't use it," Zaira said. "The risk outweighs the gain. In fact, leave all the tech behind. They may not have thought of it yet, but if there are trackers, they could activate them remotely."
Aden took out every piece of technology they'd carried this far, venturing to the river's edge to throw them in the water before returning. "How good is your knowledge of astronomy?"
"Bad. I've always had access to the PsyNet for reference." The psychic network overflowed with data. "And after my defection, I could telepathically contact others if I needed location data." Zaira had played dead for five years and eight months in order to provide a safe haven for "broken" or used-up Arrows for whom Ming had signed execution orders, but now the Net needed her alive and part of it. A large number of the Venice contingent had returned to the PsyNet with her, none of them any longer at risk from Ming's assassins and pet medics.
It had been a strange homecoming, the formerly stark night sky landscape of the Net now webbed with delicate golden threads created by the empaths whose presence protected the Psy race from a deadly psychic contagion, but it had been a homecoming all the same. In a heartbeat, her world had gone from a small, contained network she'd had to constantly remind herself wasn't a cage, to a vastness without boundaries.
It felt as if she'd taken her first real breath in years.
As a result of the work she'd done protecting empaths, thus interacting with them, one of those fragile golden threads had reached out to her and, despite her instinctive defensive reaction, she'd allowed it to connect. She had no desire to end up insane and foaming at the mouth as a result of the infection that had almost destroyed the Net before the empaths created the Honeycomb.
Thinking of the Honeycomb as armor helped her accept it. Knowing that on the other end was an empath with absolutely no survival skills whatsoever helped even further--Zaira had more chance of being eaten alive by scarab beetles than she had of coming under attack by an E whose gift helped create that protective web.
"Tell me when you start to flag," Aden said, pack back on. "We can't go far in the dark anyway, especially with no landmarks."
Zaira knew that had she been uninjured, they would've kept going. "I say we put more distance between us and our pursuers regardless."
They walked in silence, surrounded by trees on every side, with thick shrubs forming the undergrowth--which meant they unavoidably left a trail--and jagged rocks hidden beneath that they tried to avoid. Aden was the one who stopped. "Look."
Following his arm, she narrowed her eyes to see better. "A cave?" It was more a serrated slash in the rock face, but when they squeezed through, it proved large enough to fit them both. However, the instant they were inside, they shook their heads and moved back out. To be in that cave was to be protected--and to be trapped.
Instead, and keeping an eye on the increasingly ominous cloud cover, they eventually made a shelter at the tangled roots of a forest giant, breaking off branches from a nearby fir tree to create a carpet and then a kind of tent. Zaira ate the energy bars Aden gave her, made sure he ate his share, and forced him to drink half of one of the high-density nutrient drinks from the med kit.
"You're no use to me dead or hypothermic," she said when he told her to finish it. "Drink it."
Filling the empty bottle with water from a nearby stream, Aden put it back in the pack and lay down beside her. Snug against one another in the small space they'd deliberately structured that way to maximize heat retention, she said, "How did they take you?" Aden was as experienced as she was, and while she was the more deadly in one-on-one combat, he was smarter when it came to tactics. No one should've been able to outmaneuver him.
"Blitz attack," he said. "Four men hit me on a city street in the split second while I was out of public view--they came in shooting. I took a stun to the face."
That explained the spreading bruise on the right-hand side of his face. "They respected your skill more than mine."
"That's why you've always been so dangerous. People see you and think woman first and soldier second."
"I used to think my shape a hindrance before I realized th
e effect it had on males." At a height of five feet and two inches, she was relatively short, and while she was in lethal shape, her body tended toward curves rather than straight lines. "Now I see it as camouflage." The soft, unthreatening exterior hiding a razored blade that could cut your throat and not blink.
"Good." Aden put his hand on her forehead. "Your temperature is slightly elevated. Rest."
Tired from the continued pain in her gut and aware she had to become stronger if she was to function as his backup, she didn't argue. "Will you take first watch?"
When he said, "Yes," she closed her eyes and went to sleep. Because Aden was the one being on the planet she trusted never to harm her. He was too irrational to be sensible.
Chapter 4
"IT'S CONFIRMED? THE Arrows have escaped?" That was the last thing the organization needed.
"They won't get far," said the blunt-faced man who was the leader of the cleanup squad. "At least one is badly injured, from the report we received before it went to shit. Bandage we found inside was soaked with fresh blood. She'll die soon and save us the trouble of hunting her down."
"Arrows don't worry about camaraderie so she's probably already been dumped to survive on her own." The group of elite assassins was composed of piercingly intelligent and highly trained rabid dogs who'd do anything to complete a mission--or to survive capture. Leaving an injured squadmate behind wouldn't even be a question. "The retrieval of her body isn't a priority." Zaira Neve was no longer useful. "Concentrate on Aden Kai."
The human male on the other side of the screen chewed the tobacco he insisted on using, and spit out the yellow-brown residue in a disgusting display. "Yeah, well, he won't survive long, either. Massive storm front's about to hit the mountains and he's got nowhere to go."
That, at least, was true. The group had chosen the location in part because of the privacy afforded by its inaccessibility. "Continue tracking." The only way to be certain an Arrow was dead was to see the corpse.
"I will, but I need to know if I have authorization to take terminal action if necessary."
"Yes, but only if you can't contain him." Once broken, Aden Kai could be a critical intelligence asset. "Do not use the fail-safe solution. Not yet."
