by Regan Black
“Explain these appointments,” he demanded.
“I’ll need my glasses to read the calendar. Unless you free my hands so I can hold the device.”
He shocked her with how gently he placed her glasses on her face. “Explain these appointments I’ve highlighted.”
How long had she been out that he’d had time to break into her computer and study her agenda. “Yoga class, then juice breaks afterward with my friends.”
“You’re lying.”
She shook her head, emphasizing the truth she’d given him. “I go to yoga class as often as possible each week.”
“You are always working. You didn’t leave the lab until halfway through this class last night.” He tapped the side of the screen, glared at her. “You don’t have friends.”
She swallowed, resisting his harsh assessment of her social life. “No, not friends at the lab.” She didn’t trust any of her colleagues. “Friends at yoga. We gather at the juice bar after class.”
He bent at the waist, his unnerving pale gaze slicing right through the only lie she’d told him. “Give me names.”
She rattled off the names of the women who typically lined up at the front of the yoga classroom.
“Those aren’t your friends.”
He was pushing her. Testing her. He couldn’t possibly know the truth. “You’re meeting someone else. I followed you from the lab to the juice bar last night.” His thumb found that god-awful nerve in her shoulder. She couldn’t escape the immediate agony. “Why go for juice when you skipped class. Who is your contact?”
She shook her head, but it only exacerbated the pain. “I talk with my classmates at the juice bar.” Another partial truth she hoped would satisfy him.
He released her shoulder hard enough to send the chair rocking backward. He caught her before she crashed to the floor. “I will make you tell me.”
No doubt. “I’ve answered your questions. Let me go. Please,” she begged. “I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
“More lies.”
“I’ve been honest with you,” she protested, willing him to accept her sincerity.
He shook his head, his gaze drifting from her face to the computer. He turned his back on her again, making it clear she wasn’t a threat in any way. “It’s against policy to take classified documents out of the facility.”
“I’m hardly the only scientist to push that envelope.” If that small defiance warranted a death sentence the program would’ve folded long before the research showed results. If only she’d been brave enough to act sooner, even this man might’ve been saved.
He twisted back to face her, his lip curled in a nasty sneer. For a cold-blooded assassin, he was taking all of this rather personally. Maybe his programming was faltering. He couldn’t possibly remember her. They dosed him and the patients who’d followed to wipe out those memories.
“I don’t have any current work on my personal system. Any documents you’ve found are from previous studies.” From him, in fact, though she wouldn’t volunteer that detail. “All of my notes are scrubbed before they go on my personal system. Nothing leaves the lab that can implicate UI.” Nothing yet. Nothing at all if he killed her. “I know my responsibilities to the program.”
She’d been aware of responsibilities before she’d met this man, and felt trapped by them after watching him suffer and overcome only to suffer again for the sake of progress. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything helpful.”
“You can.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You will. Start with why.”
“Pardon?”
“Why me?” He closed her laptop with a firm snap. “The notes you most recently accessed were about me, right?”
“Yes.” Had her contact, her tentative ticket out of the program, double crossed her? It seemed to be the most logical conclusion.
“Why?”
She sighed, her shoulders slumped. He deserved to know the truth. More, he deserved to hear it from her as she looked him in the eye. She forced her gaze up to his. “You were my first patient.”
He swore quietly. “First guinea pig, you mean.”
She wouldn’t insult him by arguing semantics. He was so different now than he’d been. Everything about him had changed. Because of her. His eyes were sensitive to light, his physique indomitable. His hair had been thick and close-cropped, now he kept his head shaved. The researcher in her wondered if it was a side-effect or simply his new preference. She didn’t dare ask.
The rumors had started shortly after he’d been declared fit for duty and pulled into Messenger’s service. They claimed he was mute, the atomic bomb of field operations, a lethal reset button. She knew the rumors were nonsense and she’d followed his service as closely as possible, always regretting what her team had put him through. He’d trusted her as he woke up in that surgical suite and she’d systematically ruined the man he’d been.
“I believed Dr. Gerardi and the explanation of program goals. I believed we were doing the right thing by saving your life and testing new enhancements.”
His gaze narrowed, missing nothing. “And now?”
She was caught, trapped with no good answer to give him. How fitting that her life rested in his hands now as his life had once rested in hers. She’d abused his body in the name of science, giving him just cause to return the favor years later. “If you’re here for vengeance, just get it over with.”
“I’ll make it quick,” he replied slowly. “If you tell me what I did to end up in your lab.”
She had small hope anything she told him would earn her a quick and merciful death. While he clearly debated his options, she racked her brain for the details of the man he’d been, searching for words that might give him some measure of peace. He’d come into the facility wounded in both body and mind. “I asked for you,” she began. “You were nearly dead and your mind… you were lost, grieving over a mission you’d barely survived. I thought -” She stopped short, had to catch her breath when he pinned her with that strange gaze. “I thought you deserved a chance to heal. You deserved restoration.” In the beginning, she’d thought they were doing amazing, powerful, good work.
“Restoration?” His graveled voice was a low whisper, his eyes flashing with a scarcely leashed violence. “I was your toy. Some nameless thing you pumped up and down with one injection after another at your whim. You turned me into a monster.”
“No,” the protest was automatic, fueled by years of guilt-ridden nightmares. Nothing she’d pumped into him would’ve turned him into Messenger’s assassin. “The tests were brutal, I know, but the results -”
“You don’t have any idea. A print out or blood workup couldn’t possibly give you any idea.”
Did he actually remember those tests and experiments? He couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Her stomach clenched. She lowered her gaze to the plastic covered floor. She deserved anything he dealt out. “The goal wasn’t about testing your pain limits,” she said, hoping he’d hear the truth. “Pain was a temporary side-effect. Our intention was creating a better soldier who would suffer less in combat. Soldiers who’d overcome, who’d be faster, stronger, and smarter leaders. The goal was to take results from the lab and save lives in the field.”
Once more he lowered his massive body to look her in the eye. “What do you think, Doc? Happy with the results?”
She wasn’t. Not at all. And Last Strike was considered a resounding success. For a moment, captivated by his relentless gaze, she had the crazy idea he might help her if he understood she wanted to blow the lid off the UI program. But he remembered. Remembering, he obviously hated her, with good reason. Maybe, if she could do something to right that wrong, he would help her, give her a head start to escape. She didn’t have anything to lose by asking and taking any positive action was far better than waiting for a notorious killer to finish his assignment. “I can help you,” she blurted out suddenly.
He made a sound that wasn’t laughter, though his lips tilted in a faint resem
blance of his original smile. “I’ve heard those words from you before.”
She rolled her lips between her teeth and bit back the tidal wave of apologies and regrets. She had to get through to that honorable Marine she and the UI program had destroyed. His service record psych evaluations proved that he didn’t believe in following orders blindly, despite his stand-out success through his UI training. “Are you content as Messenger’s hired gun?”
He swore, coming at her in a blur as though he’d turned into a wild predator ready to rip out her throat. He could do it too, with hands or teeth. He’d been altered to strategize the right kill for any situation. “I ask the questions.”
She lowered her gaze to the plastic sheeting, too easily imagining her blood pooled around her defeated body. Wholly submissive, her nape was exposed for his lethal strike. “Thank you for saving me from Gerardi. I’d rather you killed me than him. At least with you I understand why,” she continued speaking to the floor. “It will never be sufficient, but I apologize for what the program did to you, Noah.”
Having meant every word, she was ready for him to take her life.
* * *
Last Strike had hardly registered her gratitude when the name she’d spoken rattled through him. Not familiar, not exactly. Yet something about the way it sounded in her angel’s voice landed with the force of a sucker punch, stealing his breath. Had that name once been his or was she playing more games with him? “What did you call me?”
“Noah. Your real name is Noah D’Cruz.”
She kept her head bowed and it was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides when he wanted to snap her fragile neck.
It had to be a lie. A trick. In her place, he’d be bartering for time too. Anyone would be. He understood the tactic. He rested his palm against that narrow curve of flesh and bone, felt her suck in a sharp breath. Her fear made him sick. After so many kills he should be resistant to this persistent weakness.
He took his orders and accomplished them swiftly. Swift meant less time to think about factors beyond the efficient resolution of the target, less time to endure that pathetic fear. Striking accurately and rapidly assured his sanity, especially at the beginning when he wasn’t sure of his long-term role within the program.
She’d given him what he needed personally, though the honest explanation hardly satisfied him. She’d taken a nearly-dead Marine and brought him back to life. More, she’d brought him back to life with significant differences in the name of science.
“How many times did I die for your amusement?”
Her head came up, the fine muscles around her spine shifting and flexing under his sensitive hand. Messenger wanted the doctor dead and the leak plugged. He only needed to know who had received her intel. He had most of what he wanted, enough to be satisfied. Her usefulness at an end, his job was clear: kill her and get out. Still, he waited for her answer.
“You never died!” She twisted against her restraints, trying to look him in the eye.
He didn’t want to admire that. “You just said -”
“Nearly.” She stretched out the word. “You had so many injuries they gave me carte blanche, certain I couldn’t make things worse and skeptical of my confidence in the formulas.”
He had no memory of what had put him into her hands, only that when his eyes had opened, she’d been there. She’d appeared as pure comfort with warm, earnest eyes, golden hair, and the voice of an angel.
Who dealt out pain as well as Lucifer himself.
“Your formulas and tests weren’t the greatest experience of my life.”
“You remember the testing?” Her golden eyebrows arched high, and her lips parted on a gasp. “That - that shouldn’t have happened. Oh, my God.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You have to believe me, you were meant to forget all of that.”
Well, lucky him. She wasn’t doing anything the way he expected. She didn’t behave like a traitor, other than her lies about friends at the juice bar. He couldn’t find the first shred of an actual intel leak from the doc. It had to be something digital beyond his grasp. Her honesty troubled him.
Once he’d proven his body could take her formulas and adjust to the enhancements, he’d been trained to think with the precision of a computer, always analyzing and adjusting. Always protecting the program.
Nothing added up as he’d expected from finding her trapped in Gerardi’s car, to seeing his old data on her computer. His every assessment told him she’d been marked as a scapegoat. With a shake of his head, he reminded himself it didn’t matter. He had his orders and he’d leave nothing to chance this time.
“Why do they want me to kill you?” Damn it. He couldn’t believe he’d voiced the question.
One tear spilled over her lashes, down her cheek. “I - I swear I don’t know. But I understand why you’d want to. Personally.” She sank her teeth into her full lower lip. Defeat blanketed her, dragged her shoulders down. “I have no right to ask, but could you… would you make it quick? Please?”
Damned if he didn’t want to accommodate her.
“He’s not going to kill you.” It sounded as if the wall itself had spoken.
Last Strike whipped toward the voice. He saw nothing, but he knew. “Chameleon.” Here was the leak, Last Strike thought, not the doctor. The ‘invisible’ agent could do practically anything he pleased. “Get out!”
Chameleon sighed loudly and Last Strike locked onto the sound, though he couldn’t see so much as a ripple of movement. “There had to be a better code name.”
Last Strike jumped. The voice was at his shoulder now. He threw an elbow, only brushing against the invisible agent’s body.
“Testy, much? Oh, maybe that’s a bad choice of words.”
“You’re the leak,” Last Strike accused Chameleon as the doctor’s bindings split and she was hauled by the unseen force out of the chair, her arm slung over an invisible pair of shoulders.
“End Game, for all they juiced you with smarts, you’re pretty slow. The doc and I will be going now. Have a nice day.”
He ignored the taunting nickname, focused on the phantom bastard heading for the back door with his target. His prisoner. He pulled out his gun, guessing at where the man’s back would be. “Don’t move!”
The door opened and Last Strike winced, flinging up an arm against a bright spotlight flooding the room. “What the hell?”
“Whoops, bet that hurts,” Chameleon jeered. “Good luck in the next round, End Game.”
“That is not my name,” he roared. He covered his eyes with his dark glasses and surged after them despite the pain in his eyes.
“Hey, you’re right.” The doctor’s steps slowed, her arm shifting. “You haven’t been the Last Strike or much of an End Game lately. Losing your touch, ma-”
His words were cut off with a sharp puff and a fine spray of blood. Last Strike twisted sideways, making himself a smaller target. The invisible Chameleon pushed the doctor behind the marginal shelter of the door as more bullets sought targets inside the house with professional three-round bursts.
The doctor kicked the door shut and huddled under the window, staring at him as if she expected him to do something helpful.
“Why send so many people to kill one lousy doctor?” Last Strike demanded.
“I’m not lousy!”
“Can’t speak for the sniper out there,” Chameleon choked out between short, tight breaths. “I’m here to save her.”
That made zero sense, but he wasn’t going to let some wispy voice figure out this problem first and further erode Messenger’s faith in him. He thought he’d understood the game, right up until the point when he found too many players on the board behaving erratically.
Time to get back to basics. He moved for the doctor as the sniper, clearly working off infrared heat signatures, blew out the window barely missing his head. Under a cascade of shattering glass, he dragged the doctor back toward the safety of the kitchen.
“Wait! He needs my help.”
“I’m not making any promises to you.”
“What did I tell you, Doc? He’s an ungrateful -”
“Shut up. Both of you.”
She tugged his sunglasses off his face and looked right into his defective eyes. “I met Ben at the juice bar after yoga. He was going to get me out of UI.”
“Aww, Doc. Telling him that puts my name on the kill list too.”
“It was only a matter of time before they figured it out,” she said to Chameleon. Her small, strong hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. Her eyes lit and she patted his chest, finding the wooden cross he wore tucked out of sight. It was his only connection to a past he couldn’t remember. “Get us out of here and I’ll tell you everything I know about your past. About this.”
“There’s an offer you can’t refuse,” Chameleon said.
“Shut up,” he and the doctor said in unison.
Last Strike appreciated the thin blood trail that allowed him to track the invisible man’s movements.
“Well who doesn’t want to know how we ended up as Messenger’s hand puppets? Just decide, man, before we’re outnumbered.”
“How many are out there?”
“Only one based on the angle of the shots fired. If he can see through walls I suppose it only takes one,” Chameleon added under his breath.
“Who else did you lead here?”
“As if.” The other agent scoffed. “They tracked one of you. No one can follow me.”
“It’s true,” the doctor confirmed. “Because of his gift, the tracking markers didn’t take. They thought his talent outweighed the risks.”
“Shows what they know, doesn’t it?” A dark sort of crazy hovered at the edge of Chameleon’s disembodied laughter.
Last Strike exchanged a look with the doctor, though he’d made his decision the instant she admitted to meeting with Chameleon.
He wanted to understand who was using him and how. She wanted to live, to escape the program she’d served for so long. What should have been a simple operation had become twisted, confusing. Being aware of her agenda, knowing what she was capable of, made her the closest thing he had to an ally in this particular moment.
