by Anderson, S
If I didn’t know better, I might suspect he’s an agent, too.
I follow him to the master suite at the end of the hall.
He removes his coat and drops it on the floor of the entryway. “You thirsty?”
I really wish he’d stop speaking with Nick’s voice. He stands next to a well-stocked bar, holding a bottle of Grey Goose in his hand.
Vodka. Of course.
I don’t feel right as I stand here, nodding for him to fix me a drink. Maybe it’s because I got rid of the gun. I look around the room and assess at least six different ways I can kill him with just the tools in my immediate surroundings.
It’s not the lack of a weapon that has me feeling off.
It’s me. It’s my emotions. They were already on the surface because of the importance of this mission. Because of what I felt this mission might help me get over.
Junior takes a big swig from his glass as he walks mine over to me.
“Damn,” he says with a cringe. “That shit’s harsh without something mixed in it.”
I take my glass and toss the contents back with one swallow. It burns all the way down to my uneasy stomach. “It’s not so bad if you shoot it quick.”
He nods, taking a small sip from what’s left in his glass. “I prefer to let things linger.”
I don’t have words for the sensation that flares inside of me as he smirks and takes another sip. He’s teasing me.
And I like it.
Kill him, Poppy.
I walk past him, shoving him a little so I can refill my glass. “Don’t you know lingering leads to misery?”
He shrugs. “I have a pretty high tolerance for pain.”
I slam another shot. I’ve come to appreciate alcohol in the past six years. It deadens the rest of me to match my heart. I never drink on the job, though. And that’s what I am, right? Still on the job. But this kid inspires me to sin a little. My head’s already growing fuzzy, my shoulders relaxing.
High tolerance for pain. Nick used to tell me I confused pain for pleasure.
Nick’s dead.
This kid should be dead already, too.
I refill my glass again, walking away from the bar. Away from him.
My eyes continue to sting. I thought avenging Vix would ease this ache in me—the need to find the one who took him. I hoped killing that guy out there would help me move on.
No, Poppy, you hoped it would bring me back.
I’m standing in front of a large window, watching the snow fall, and I catch the sight of his reflection in the glass.
He’s not Nick.
He’s not.
But he is.
“Whatever it is,” he says. “Whatever you’re running from, I don’t care.”
“You should.”
I hear him set his glass down. I test the weight of mine in my hand. If I brought it down with enough force on his head, in the right place, I can knock him out, maybe even do some real damage. I could choke him with his tie after he’s unconscious.
Warmth seeps into my back as he steps behind me. His hand closes around my glass, and I relinquish it to him.
I’ll find another weapon. The glass would’ve been too bloody, anyway.
He steps away for a second, and I’m cold until his warmth returns. I don’t recognize the me I see in the window. She’s relaxed and calm—complete opposite of how I feel inside.
I’m all chaos and fear.
Those long fingers of his work the front of my coat open as his lips tease my neck.
“You got a death wish, Junior?” I don’t mean to say it out loud. Until he stops what he’s doing and glances at me in the window, I’m not sure that I did say it out loud.
“Maybe.”
He sucks on the skin just below my ear, his hand sliding into my coat.
It’s been so long since someone touched me like this. So long since I let anyone get close enough to try to touch me like this.
He’s not Nick.
He is Nick.
I don’t care anymore. I just need Nick.
I let him take my clothes off. I don’t stop him when he gets naked. We stand there, in that same spot. I’ve turned to press my back to the glass of the window.
Not the best way to go unnoticed, Poppy.
“You okay with this?” he asks, standing a foot away from me in all his naked glory.
My eyes travel down and back up every toned, virile inch of him, lingering on his erection. “More than okay.”
We fuck. It’s not what I’m used to. There’s no emotional connection between us. There’s lust… God, yes there’s plenty of that. But it’s hard and deep. He shoves me against the glass with a force that takes my breath away.
Nick was always gentle with me.
He never got like this.
I lose myself, lose focus of what I’m supposed to be doing here. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m saying I’ll kill him after. I’ll break his neck. I’ll drown him in the bathtub.
He pounds into me until I’m a squealing, crying mess.
When we’re done, he steps away, breathing hard. It’s weird… or at least, I think it should be. Nick always pulled me close afterward. He would hold me so tight I’d feel like I was melting into him.
“Wow,” he says. “Where have you been all my life?”
I roll my eyes. “How long have you even been alive, Junior?”
He grabs our glasses, strutting back to the bar without any shame. “I’m old enough, Grandma.”
Grandma? Why, this little shit…
I stomp after him, stalling when he holds a refill out to me.
“Marko,” he says.
I snatch the glass, glaring at him. “Polo. You weren’t that hard to find.”
He snorts as he takes a sip of his drink. “Marko’s my name, not the game I want to play.”
His eyes trail over me as I shoot back whatever’s in my glass. The burn is little more than a tickle now, but the heat of his stare is scorching.
“What game do you want to play, Marko?”
God, his smile is sinful.
What am I doing with this kid?
“How about you tell me your name.”
Kill him. Kill him right now, Poppy.
My thumb slips along the beveled edge of the glass in my hand. I could still do it. I could kill him with this.
“Poppy,” I say, handing my glass to him. “Call me Poppy.”
“Poppy.”
The way he says it, the accent… six years instantly sweep away, and I’m with Nick again.
I’m crazy.
I’m selfish.
I’m stupid.
I can’t leave him alive and hope to walk away from this still breathing myself.
His hands are on my body again. His lips. His tongue. I don’t know how I end up in his arms, why I keep giving into this need. I just know he makes me forget. I’m not wound up anymore. I’m not dwelling on the destruction I just caused.
I’m not mourning Nick.
I’m free.
He passes out just before sunrise, and I slip out of his bed, dressing quickly. I don’t debate it, don’t turn around to rethink it. I just leave.
It might come back to bite me in the ass.
It might not.
I don’t care anymore.
For the first time since I lost Nick, I feel like I can breathe. It’s temporary, I know. I doubt it will even last the day.
But it’s what kept me from killing him.
Whoever that Marko kid is, he’s something special.
And for that, I’ll let him live.
14
I remember.
The first time I was kidnapped, I lost myself in the fear. Every time after that, the fear lessened more and more until the last time we ran the drill. I was so clear and calm that they didn’t even make it to my bed. They never laid a hand on me.
I neutralized the threat long before I was ever in danger, and I had Nikolai to thank for that.
&
nbsp; It wasn’t just that I knew to sleep light, or to put precautions out to warn when someone was close. Those aided me, but they’re not what gave me the upper hand.
He taught me how to read people.
I knew from the way Ace and Claymore sat at dinner that night that they’d come for me later.
I remember smiling when I went to bed that night. Claymore told me I looked like the damn Joker from Batman.
I hit him first.
It’s funny how memories fade and then return at the oddest times. Strange how the mind utilizes moments in your life to throw back at you when you least expect it.
I didn’t anticipate this. I didn’t put down precautions, didn't strategize how I would take apart this threat before it got to me.
Heinrich’s right. Maybe he’s been playing me all along. I don’t know when he started using Nikolai. Maybe Nikolai has been taking part of me hostage since I met him. A part of me that Heinrich knew how to walk right in and corrupt.
I’m not clear anymore.
I’m not afraid, either.
I’m numb. Empty.
I’ve killed Nikolai so many times I’m not sure if he was ever even alive. That time on the run with him and Claymore feels more and more like another one of these tricks.
It’s insane—me, an assassin? I’m Penelope Nobody. My one skill is pissing off my parents. I’m no hero saving innocent lives. I’m no secret agent with a set of special skills.
“It must be Monday,” Heinrich says.
I close my eyes. I take comfort in not seeing his face.
“Subject B is always more morose on Mondays. Interesting.”
“Fuck off,” I say. I’m numb, but I’m not complacent. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to think the things he makes me think.
I just want it to end.
“I want to run some variables today,” he says not to me but to the others in the room. There are so many others in this place. Men and women of all sizes and races. All of them wear white suits, white gloves, white masks over their mouths, and white paper booties over their shoes.
They leave no trace of their presence behind.
“Prep her and move her to the questioning room once she’s ready.”
The questioning room. The little white box that he shoves me into to watch as my mind falls apart.
“I don’t feel like dancing for your enjoyment today, asshole."
“I appreciate your emotions, Subject B,” he says, “but I don’t care how you feel.”
I wonder if I should have a comeback for that. I usually have something sarcastic to say when the bad guy has me against the ropes, don’t I?
“Doctor, your visitors have arrived,” a female over my left shoulder informs him.
Heinrich seems torn between relief and frustration. “Very well. Prep her, anyway, but don’t begin any of the psycho-stimulants until I return.”
“Aye, sir,” a male voice says on my right.
I’m surrounded by faces covered in the same white masks. I don’t bother looking into their eyes, don’t bother trying to tell if one is a woman or another is a man. What does it matter? They think of me as nothing but a test subject.
I think of them as nothing but the Devil’s minions.
“The boys down the hall said the room needs a cleaning,” the one on my right says to the one on my left. “Why don’t you go help with that, and I’ll finish her up.”
This confuses the one on my left. I can tell from the way their eyebrows flex and pull. “Was the room used without my knowledge?”
The one on my right shrugs. “I was sent in here to relieve you so you could sort it out.”
The one on my left makes a noise that I feel describes my current mood as she storms out of the room.
“Bloody hell, I thought she’d never leave,” the one that stayed behind me says.
I glance to my left. Are we alone?
“Look at me,” the nondescript mask-covered face commands, forcing me to turn that way.
A light shines in my eyes. I resist, blinking, feeling tears well at the corners of my lids.
“This isn’t how you prep me,” I tell them. “You stick the needle in my arm and drag me down the hall. Then you leave me alone to let my brain tear me apart.”
I hear the person swallow and see the color drain from what little patch of their skin that is exposed. “What have they done to you?”
You should know, I want to say. You’re one of them.
I can’t get the words out before I feel a warm hand touch my forehead. It brushes my hair away from my face in a soothing motion that doesn’t make any sense.
“It’s alright,” they say. “It’s going to be alright now.”
I’m not able to be afraid anymore. What’s left to fear? Death? I welcome it with open arms if it means I get Heinrich out of my head.
I hear the door open and close.
“It is clear,” a new voice says.
“Aye.”
That word. The one standing closest to me said it earlier to Heinrich. Three little letters that are worming their way through my ears and into my system. My muscles jerk as I tug against the restraints.
“No,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says. His hands on my forehead again in reassurance.
“No.” I moan the word. I was wrong about fear. I do fear this. I’ve feared this from the moment I realized he could make Nikolai appear in these dreams.
“Shade, it’s me,” Claymore says, tugging the mask from his face.
God, he’s a sight for sore eyes. For a second, I let myself see him, let myself believe this is real. He unties my restraints, and I sit up, allowing myself to touch his face.
He feels so real.
“My God,” the other voice in the room says.
I don’t have to look to know who that is.
Hassan.
Heinrich has come up with some outlandish scenarios for me to survive, but the idea that Claymore and Hassan would work together to break me out is almost laughable.
“Are you alright, daughter?”
I press the top of my head to Claymore’s chest. I miss my friend. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on him over the years. Maybe that’s where this dream is coming from. Claymore always knows when I’m in trouble, always finds me before I even think about sending out the SOS.
I need him to find me now.
I hear Hassan move closer. “What have they done to her?”
“You know better than me,” Claymore says. “Whatever it is… she ain’t herself.”
She ain’t herself. He doesn’t know the half of it.
“Listen, Shade,” he says, wrapping his arms around me as he leans closer. He even smells like Claymore. Old Spice and some sort of oil that I think he uses to polish metal like his knife. “We don’t have much time before the distraction runs out of ideas to distract.”
“You can’t break me out of this,” I say, my voice muffled by his shirt.
He shoves against my shoulders until I look up. “The hell I can’t.”
I tilt my head to the right as I stare at him. “Where were you? They found me. They took me. Where were you?”
I hate myself for the tears in my eyes. I’m not a child who needs protecting. I can’t blame him for my shortcomings.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sincerity in his voice. “By the time I found out what was going down, they already had you. I had to work this angle. I couldn’t risk them killing you.”
That makes me laugh, loud and long and with hysterical glee. “I’d really rather they killed me, MacNeal.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Hassan says. “The boy is not skilled in deception or politics. Our window is shrinking by the second.”
“Aye,” Claymore agrees. “Can you stand, Shade?”
Can I stand? My legs dangle over the edge of the high medical bed I’ve been strapped to for who knows how long. I stand a lot in my mind. I run… in circles. I jump, but the
walls are too high.
“I don’t know,” I say in all honesty.
He braces his hands under my arms and helps ease me to the ground. My legs stay strong under me. Claymore is excited by it while, for me, it confirms even more that this isn’t real.
“I will go ahead of you,” Hassan says. “The transport will be waiting at the rendezvous point. Have her there, or I will do what I warned from the beginning.”
“Why are you even here?” I ask.
Hassan doesn’t stop to explain. He just gives me the same look he always gives me when I see him. He returns his mask to his face and leaves.
“Why is he here?” I ask as I follow Claymore to the door. “I don’t get why he would be here.”
“Look, I know you have a billion questions about all this.” I honestly only have one—what’s Heinrich’s end goal of this illusion. “All I can tell you is this thing goes deeper than we thought. Deeper than anyone could imagine. And your father—”
“He’s not my father.”
He sighs. “Hassan has a lot of the answers we need.”
Of all the dreams he’s cooked up, nothing has been this spot on to my current world. I usually see Nikolai, usually see memories or scenarios that regard to just this place.
I don’t know how he knows Claymore would be the one to come get me, or what we were looking for before I was taken, but this feels authentic in context.
My hands start to shake. “I want this to end. Give me a gun.”
Claymore stops next to the door, eyeing me like my head just fell off. “No.”
That response confuses me. They’ve always given me a gun. Every simulation of reality has offered me the ability to end the dream whenever I want—all I had to do was kill Nikolai.
He’s not in this one.
Why?
Claymore puts the mask back over his face, wrapping his arm around my waist. “Keep your head down and follow my lead.”
I do as I’m told, feeling a strange sensation in my mind as strategic reasoning takes over. If I’m not allowed to shoot him, how do I end this game?
We work down a bright white hallway that I know well. This leads to the rooms where I’m watched and inspected. He turns down a second hall I’ve never seen before. More white. Oddly, it strikes me that everything’s so clean and clear.
