by Kit Rocha
Please let this be a nightmare. Please.
Her head swam. Groggy, like she’d been given drugs. Her breath came faster, stale and warm against her face with every exhale. This wasn’t a natural darkness—there was something covering her eyes. Not a blindfold, something large enough to cover her whole face.
Panic jacked her heart rate higher. She twisted her wrists again, hard enough for the plastic to cut into her skin. Her other senses clamored for her attention, a dizzying press of chaos battering her fragile self-control. Memories—nightmares?—surfaced in overlapping sensory flashes.
The crash of the door to the van flying open.
The crack of gunfire.
The metallic scent of Conall’s blood. The sound of his flesh tearing.
Oh God, oh fuck—no—
A sting in her neck. Tobias Richter’s smug face.
Darkness.
She dragged in a frantic breath, then another. It was the smell that convinced her she wasn’t dreaming. Subtle, but undeniable as she hauled in another shaky breath. Lilac. Vanilla. A subtle musk. Expensive perfume, achingly familiar.
But not from her nightmares.
Maya stopped struggling. She flexed each finger, working stiffness out of them, and forced herself to listen. An industrial air conditioner rumbled in the distance. The quiet hiss of cool air through the vent came from somewhere to her left. After a moment, she heard a soft whisper. Not a voice. Fabric. Silk, brushing against silk as someone moved. Then a barely audible metallic creak. A near-silent exhale.
Gray had been right. She knew what so many things sounded like. Now that she knew how it felt to make the connection between memory and her senses, it was effortless.
She straightened and turned her head three inches to the left. She envisioned what she knew was there. A pale woman with her long, red hair twisted into a tight bun atop her head. Brown eyes. Freckles across her nose. Professional makeup. Expertly tailored silk. Seated in a metal chair. Her legs crossed.
The perfect mental picture stripped away the fear of the unknown. Maya’s voice didn’t even tremble. “Hello, Cara.”
The chair creaked again, then the fabric on her head vanished. Maya blinked at the sudden light, squinting at the woman who resumed her position, her soft, brown eyes gazing on Maya with such tender sadness you’d think she was the one tied to a chair.
Cara Kennedy. DC-025. Maya’s first friend.
Tobias Richter’s data courier.
“Maya.” Cara leaned forward, that familiar floral perfume evoking such a violent sense memory that for a moment, time overlapped.
She was fourteen, sitting cross-legged and still on the end of her bed as a nineteen-year-old Cara held her chin in one hand. “Your skin is flawless,” Cara murmured, using a steady hand to apply eyeliner to Maya’s lash line. “You don’t need makeup. But sometimes it can be fun. Just because we’re silent doesn’t mean we have to be invisible.”
Maya squeezed her nails into her palm, grounding her in the present. Cara’s makeup was still perfect. Effortless and elegant, as it should be when she could afford the best of literally everything. Her expensive perfume was a custom blend. Her silk blouse was unbuttoned to reveal a massive emerald on a chain at her throat. Emeralds studded with diamonds sparkled at her ears. Her pants were clearly tailored to her narrow hips and long legs, ending perfectly before the heels of her sensible but fashionable boots.
As a display of wealth, it was meant to awe. Maya mostly wondered how many people in Five Points she could feed by fencing those earrings.
“I grieved for you, you know.” Cara’s voice remained soft and sad. “When they found you dead, I wept for days. I’d begged Tobias to let me talk to you after Birgitte’s treason was uncovered. I told him you couldn’t be blamed. I know you, Maya. I know you better than anyone. You would never hurt people.”
“I was hurting people,” Maya countered, her voice scratchy. Her mouth tasted like cotton gone bad, thanks to the drugs. “Every day on the Hill, I was hurting people. You’re hurting people. That’s all the TechCorps does. You of all people know that. You know his secrets.”
“Oh, Maya.” Cara lifted a hand, and Maya jerked her head back before her fingers could make contact with her cheek. The wounded pain in Cara’s eyes deepened as she let her hand hang there for a moment before settling back in her lap. “Birgitte damaged you so badly with her lies. I wish I’d seen how she was abusing you. I should have done something.”
It was like falling backward into a mirror reality. The fervent conviction in Cara’s eyes was so earnest. She was a true believer because she’d never been given a chance to be anything else. Tobias Richter had been manipulating her from the age of five, patting her on the head like a puppy when she performed, showering her in affection and then terrifying her with the threat of its removal to make her work even harder.
Cara probably thought it was love. Maya had, for all the years they’d been friends. Even knowing what she knew about Richter, even knowing he was evil, part of her had always thought, At least he loves Cara.
Tobias Richter didn’t love anyone.
“Let me go.” Maya leaned forward, locking gazes with Cara. “Do you know what he did to me? Did he tell you how he tied me to a chair for twenty-three days? How he cut pieces off of Simon and then healed him so he could do it again?”
That stung. Maya could see it in Cara’s eyes. The brief hesitation, like a tiny crack had opened up. She was probably remembering how she’d been the one to point out that Simon had a crush on Maya. How she’d encouraged them. How she’d clapped her hands and laughed at Maya’s blushing admission of her first kiss …
“You knew Simon,” Maya whispered, trying to wedge the crack wider. “He was sweet and he was good and he didn’t deserve to die like that. No one deserves to die like that.”
Cara’s serenity faltered. Maya could see her desperate need to believe in the world Richter had built for her battling the memories of their friendship. For one heartbeat, Maya thought she’d gotten through.
Twenty-five years of training rushed in to fill the cracks in the wall. Maya watched her oldest friend slip beyond reach. “Simon was a traitor.” Cara’s voice held a shivering intensity, as if making up for the momentary lapse. “He betrayed you as much as Birgitte did. If they’d cared about you at all, they wouldn’t have dragged you into their treason.”
“It’s not treason if the people don’t deserve your trust and loyalty to begin with. Look what they did to you. Ripped you from your parents. Fucked around with your brain. Gave you to a monster to raise—”
“He is not a monster,” Cara snapped.
“You know his secrets. You know all the terrible things he’s done.”
“To protect everyone! Honestly, Maya, the world nearly ended. The entire Southeast was on the verge of starvation. Someone has to enforce order. Someone has to do the horrible things so the rest of us can live our lives.” Cara leaned forward, her brown eyes burning with the fire of a true believer. “Birgitte always hated him. She was jealous of his power. But she couldn’t have made the hard calls that keep us all safe.”
Us. Maya clenched her jaw, knowing better than to argue. Cara had never come down from her sheltered tower and walked the streets of Southside. She didn’t know that safe ended at the base of the Hill, and for most of Atlanta—hell, most of the Southeast—the only safety to be had was what you and your neighbors could scrape together. Not because of the TechCorps, but in spite of them.
Cara wouldn’t believe it without seeing it. She might not even believe it if she saw it. There were a dozen excuses for people’s poor circumstances, and the TechCorps had practically set the litany of blame-passing to music.
“Fine,” Maya ground out. “It was nice catching up. Love that smoky eye, and your boots are killer. Now run along and get Daddy so we can start the torture.”
Oh, it was like kicking a puppy. All shock and big wounded eyes, and Maya wondered for a moment if Cara was going to cry
. But she just reached out again, her hand hovering by Maya’s cheek. “Don’t make us do this. We don’t want to hurt you, Maya. We want you back with us, where you belong. You’re our family. You’re my family.”
It was a tragedy because it was true. Cara loved Maya the only way she knew how, with conditional affection and unspoken threats of violence. For so many years, that had been enough. Maya hadn’t known that love could come without ultimatums or threats until she met Nina and Dani.
And now she had Gray. Gray who would destroy himself before he hurt her.
With quiet sadness, Maya slammed the door on the past. “Thanks, but no thanks. I got a better offer.”
And her family was coming for her this time. Maya just had to hold on.
TECHCORPS INTERNAL EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATION
From: RICHTER, T
To: SKOVGAARD, B
Date: 2067–01–04
Congratulations, Birgitte. Now you can be an executive pain in my ass.
From: SKOVGAARD, B
To: RICHTER, T
Date: 2067–01–04
I certainly intend to be.
TWENTY-FOUR
They didn’t drag Gray far, just to a mostly bare room near the far end of the locked-off hallway. The room was rectangular in shape, roughly three meters by six, with blank, gray walls. A table had been placed in the exact center of the room, flanked by two chairs and a rolling stool.
Gray was seated in one chair, his wrists bound behind him with a zip tie. A second one secured his bindings to a rung on the back of the chair’s frame. The other chair was identical to his, precisely placed at the other end of the table.
Everything about the room was precise, surgical. From the furniture to the harsh, naked lighting overhead, it was all designed to evoke fear. To unsettle.
And the show hadn’t even started yet.
With the basic layout of the room committed to memory, Gray began to look more closely. Finally, he spotted the tiny camera wedged between the pitted tiles of the drop ceiling. No doubt it had audio capabilities, and there were probably more microphones scattered about.
He took a moment to steel himself. At least they hadn’t bashed him in the head on sheer principle. The blow alone could have killed him, and then Maya would have to go up against Richter alone.
Gray stretched his neck and locked away all the panic and dread someone in his precarious position was duty bound to feel. Then he spoke. Calmly, carelessly. “You can let me stew in here, sure. But it won’t work, and you know it.”
He silently counted off the seconds. After precisely sixty, the door opened, and Tobias Richter walked in, flanked by two guards. As the guards took up their blank-eyed posts on either side of the door, Gray studied Richter.
He looked so normal. He wore black slacks, a white dress shirt, and a silver-on-silver tie woven with a delicate paisley pattern. Somewhere outside this room, he’d already discarded his jacket. His auburn hair had been neatly trimmed into a conservative executive style, framing a nondescript but pleasant face and piercing blue eyes.
Average height. Medium build. You’d never guess that he could—and did—routinely murder people with his bare hands.
Those deadly hands now carried a titanium hardside case. Gray tried not to look at it as Richter spoke.
“That’s what I always liked about you, Sergeant Gray. You’re indomitable. Unflinching. Brave to the point of foolhardiness.”
He even sounded pleasant, and a genial, real smile curved his lips. And why not? He had the upper hand and was well on his way to turning that advantage into his best day ever.
“However.” He set the case on the table. “While I have historically admired those qualities, they are, at the moment, incredibly inconvenient for me.”
“How tragic.”
Richter’s eyes tightened, and his smile vanished. “Do you know why I’m here, Sergeant—?”
“Gray.”
“Pardon?”
“Just Gray. I’m not a sergeant anymore.”
“An understandable misconception.” Richter smiled again. This time, it completely lacked any warmth or sincerity. “But you are still a Protectorate sergeant. You will be one until you’re promoted, demoted, or dead.”
It wasn’t a threat, merely a statement of fact. It brushed against that secret fear, the idea that Gray would never be rid of them. That the Protectorate was more than his past, present, and future; it was part of him, like his blood and his bones and the goddamn implant in his head.
“Now.” Richter said it like, that’s settled, moving on. He used his palm to release the biometric lock on the case, but he didn’t open it. Instead, he sat down on the rolling stool close to Gray’s position. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“No.”
Richter chuckled, the sound devoid of mirth. “Yes, you do. But what if I’m bluffing? Of course.” He nodded, satisfied. “It’s a solid interrogation strategy, feigning ignorance.”
Gray tracked the beats of Richter’s performance. He had attempted to establish rapport, asserted his dominance, and asked his leading questions, the ones meant more to make his captive nervous than elicit answers.
Right on time, he unlatched the case. It held, as expected, an assortment of tools—blades and pliers alongside things Gray didn’t even recognize. But he didn’t need to. Everything lovingly packed into that case shared a single common purpose.
In Richter’s hands, they were meant to cause pain.
“Fuck, you’re good. Not a flinch.” Richter’s eyes gleamed as brightly as the instruments as he began to lay them out on the table. “I wish we had you on telemetry. I bet your pulse didn’t even budge.”
Gray lifted one shoulder. It gave him an excuse to test his range of motion—which turned out to be pitiful. “I’ve seen worse.”
“You’ve done worse.” Richter clucked his tongue. “But it’s not a competition, is it?”
Bullshit. For an organization like the Protectorate of the TechCorps, for a man like Richter, everything always was. They called it a lot of things—survival of the fittest, the law of the corporate jungle—but it always boiled down to not giving a damn about anyone else. Getting ahead at any cost, and staying up no matter who you had to step on.
Gray shrugged again.
“Mmm.” Richter turned his head and barked at the guards. “Leave us.” As they silently obeyed, he lifted a scalpel from the case, held it up to the light, and rubbed at a spot with his thumb like he was polishing Grandma’s silverware. “Marjorie Chevalier.”
Good thing Gray wasn’t on telemetry, after all. “Don’t know her.”
“Don’t insult me. You two seem to be … quite close.” Richter placed the scalpel precisely five centimeters away from a wickedly curved pair of pliers—probably meant for yanking teeth. “It’s fascinating, really. The woman who raised her wanted you dead, you know. Probably would have put the bullet in your head herself. She thought you were a monster, a sociopath who tortures kittens for fun.”
Gray remembered the endless evaluations. The fact that Birgitte had seen something lurking behind his carefully cultivated facade only proved that her instincts had been pretty damn good. It was hard to hold a grudge—especially considering the woman’s fate. “Was she wrong?”
“Sadly, I think so.” Richter stared at him hard, the sheer weight of it pressing Gray back in his chair. “I chose you for a reason, Matthew. Handpicked you out of that hellhole of an orphanage because I thought you’d be a team player.”
His brain tripped over the words so abruptly he lost the script. “Wait, what?”
“Do you have any idea how many people I had to lean on? How many carefully worded warnings I had to hand out?”
The full import of what Richter was saying clicked into place in Gray’s head smoothly, like a well-oiled bolt on a rifle. He hadn’t been overlooked, passed over. People had wanted him.
Richter kept spitting out his angry words. “One guy was so persistent I had to pay him off
and threaten to conscript his kid. All because I thought you had what it took to serve the TechCorps.”
It was the answer to the biggest question that still lingered like a cloud over his life—why wasn’t I good enough? He had been, the whole time. He’d just had the profound misfortune of catching Tobias Richter’s eye. The man had seen the blank mask that Gray had worn like camouflage, that he had relied on for his continued survival, and he’d not only bought it, he’d coveted it.
Gray couldn’t help it—he laughed. “I guess you made a mistake.”
Richter stood and regarded him with cold fury, all pretense of charm and guile gone. “The rest of your squad is dead.”
His helpless humor evaporated. For all Gray knew, it was true. Sorrow tried to sink its inky-black talons into his heart, but he brushed it away. If it was the truth, he’d either have time later to grieve or he’d be just as dead. Either option was better than giving in to the burgeoning triumph in Richter’s eyes.
“If so, how come I’m not in a ditch somewhere with crows pecking out my eyeballs? You could be in a TechCorps boardroom by now, getting a shit ton of commendations along with your piles of credits.”
Richter said nothing, but the tight muscle in his jaw ticked as he ran his fingers over a slim, silver rectangle. It looked like a generic rechargeable battery pack … except for the electrodes extending from one end.
But Gray understood. “Ah, right. You’re not exactly in their good graces right now.”
“Bring her in.” Richter leaned closer to Gray—though not close enough to attack. “I’m going to find out everything Birgitte’s data courier knows. And after I’ve cracked her head open like a melon, I’ll drag her back there to get all those commendations. And you’ll be far too dead to help her.”
Gray’s hands clenched in his bonds. “She’ll never talk to you.”
