by Meli Raine
Fateless (Stateless #3)
Meli Raine
Copyright © 2019 by Meli Raine
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
“States are like men; they grow out of human characters.”
Fateless
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Also by Meli Raine
About the Author
“States are like men; they grow out of human characters.”
– Plato
Fateless
The future isn’t real.
The past isn’t real, either.
Only the present is, solid and full, flying at our faces, our bodies, our hearts and souls at breakneck speed as we work to take it all in.
As we work to protect others.
And, finally - ourselves.
We’ve started to break the bonds of Stateless, a system as rotten as the one it seeks to destroy. But systems are organisms with one brutal goal: to survive, whatever it takes.
Kina has to do the unfathomable to save a different system, one she created out of empathy and love for children we rescued from the only home they know.
She’ll use her mind, her body, her spirit — and her ultimate weapons: love, and —
Me.
Chapter 1
Kina
My heart is all I can hear.
Pounding hard, it's like the sun exploding every half second. Like the moon turning into a cannonball lobbed at my ribs. Like every molecule of hope and aspiration entering a world-sized lung and expelled out.
The deafening sound of my own blood crashing through my body overpowers everything else.
Even the children crying.
They're not in the car with us. It's just Callum, Duff, and me.
Then why do I hear them screaming?
The windows are closed. Tire tracks on the ground ahead of us show me we're following, not far behind but not close enough. Duff is in the front, driving, eyes narrow and focused entirely on gunning a compact car to go as fast as possible, pushing ninety miles per hour on a dirt road, in a vehicle built for staid speeds on paved streets. Callum's back here with me, fists balling and releasing, breath shallow and coarse.
We're racing through the woods, the ground familiar and new. Did Callum and I really do this so recently? Did he really find his brother? It all becomes a whirling dervish, memory just strands of silk flowing from my body, spinning in strips that turn to solid colors as I spin and spin and become nothing but movement.
Pounding movement.
And then Callum's hand, rough and cruel, moves to my waistband.
He yanks.
Hard.
“What are you doing?” I gasp, his other hand reaching for my knee, bending it as he pulls up and forces me facedown, my groin against his in his lap, my ass up, his hands wrenching my suit pants down. Wiggling doesn't help, his iron grip on me terrifyingly strong.
“Where's the birthmark?” he barks.
Birthmark? Does he think I'm Glen? Until the last moments of the escape, I was in disguise, pretending to be her. Maybe he's confused? Did he hit his head?
“I'm not Glen!” I shout, but I can tell he can't hear me, my words muffled by the engine's rev as we bounce and pull, fighting to outdrive the people chasing us.
My people.
“ANSWER ME!” Callum bellows, hands rough on my skin, his intensity amped up by the pursuit.
“Duff!” I choke out, suddenly terrified.
“What?” he snaps.
“Shut up!” Callum bellows at his brother, who slams his foot down on the accelerator, the car jerking in protest. My thigh hurts, ass muscle spasming as Callum's palm flattens and rubs against my now-bare hip.
“When did you have it removed?” he demands of me, as if my answer will justify what he's doing to my body.
“What? Stop it! Stop that right now!” I grunt, struggling, his rock-hard thigh hard to breathe against.
“When did you have it removed, Glen?”
Holy hell, he thinks I am Glen.
He really thinks I'm her.
We were taught that adrenaline and cortisol in the heat of battle can scramble anyone's brain, and how to use that to our advantage. I don't need to manipulate him in that way, but as sheer terror pumps blood through me so fast I fear I'll pass out, I wonder how I can de-escalate so Callum doesn't treat me like I'm Glen.
Because right now, she's the enemy. I don't want to be the enemy when Callum’s in complete control.
“I'm not Glen!” My muffled protest doesn't matter, the pure animal musk of him sending tendrils of panic through me. Years of hand-to-hand combat exercises trained me to know the scent of a man who has tipped over a violent edge.
I smell it on him now.
Impossible as it seems to my heart, this is my reality. Ass up in Callum's lap, being strip searched because–
Why is he doing this?
“You–you look so much like her.”
“Like Glen? Of course I do, you idiot!”
“Glen would call me that,” he growls.
“And she would be right!”
“Too much like her. Mannerisms, tone, the whole bit,” he continues, fingers pressing my naked flesh, my squirming triggering an arousal I can't believe is there.
“I'm her identical twin, Callum! And it was your idea to have me impersonate her! What the hell is wrong with you?” Twisting in his lap, I find his cock in his pants. It's mostly soft, but this is arousing him, too. Elevation may be my only choice.
My elbow, though, has other ideas.
The sharp point of it hits the mark enough to make Callum let out a whoof of air before my leg is pinned up, knee bent at an awkward angle, my breasts forced into the crevice made by his thighs, nipple trapped in a painful vise that makes my pulse go thready.
“Tell me something Glen couldn't possibly know,” he orders, authority oozing from him, voice cold. I can't elevate, but it looks like he most certainly can.
“I am not playing this game.” Willing myself to distill down, to curl in, to rise up, I try to activate my mental escape.
I fail.
“Tell me, or I kill you.”
“Have you lost your freaking mind, Callum?”
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON BACK THERE?” Duff roars.
“HE THINKS I'M GLEN!” I scream, the words buried until Callum lifts his legs up and dumps me next to him on the seat, his eyes like a beast before it strikes, all black pupils and instinct.
“Why?” Duff asks Callum sharply, eyes cold, no hint of emotion in them.
He would have made a great Stateless operative.
“She looks like Glen. Talks like her. Gave me an evil grin back there that made me realize I had to question her.”
“By rubbing my ass?” I snap at him.
No em
otion at all from our driver.
“Is she?”
“No.”
“I'm right here!” I say, leaning forward at the exact moment we hit a ditch. My shoulder slams into the door handle, elbow cracking on a thick piece of plastic. Electric nerve pain blooms up, like it's seeking to do as much damage as possible.
I welcome the distraction.
“Glen wouldn't save those kids,” Duff says matter of factly.
“She might,” I reply. “If she thought it would give her an advantage.”
“You still haven't convinced me,” Callum says, but I know there's no bite behind his words. “Tell me something Glen couldn't possibly know.”
“You kissed me right before we killed Jason.”
Duff's right eyebrow goes up.
“Glen could know that. She was there.”
“You know damn well she wouldn't know that.”
“Tell me something else Glen wouldn't know.”
“You didn't want to come when I gave you that blowjob on camera, but all I had to do was take my pinkie finger and–”
“OKAY! GOT IT!” he shouts over my pedantic description of exactly what I did to achieve my, er... goal.
“Are you done?” I hiss. “Because I have seven children I'm responsible for now, plus the trainees, so if you'd stop being an asshole and let me focus, that would really help.”
The car comes to a screeching halt, throwing me against the back of the front seat. We're at the edge of the woods, an enormous field before us.
And two large helicopters.
I jump out of the car and race to the black SUV, wrenching open the back door. Candace looks dazed, and Sela's arm is at a crooked angle, blood oozing down her wrist. “Hayley's in the Mercedes,” Sela says, starting to point but wincing. Candace has jumped out the other door and is reaching back inside the SUV, clearly pulling a toddler out.
“OH MY GOD!” Candace screams, a shriek that sounds like death pouring out of her tiny frame. “Thomas is bleeding from his belly!”
A buzz and a ringing fill my head, along with the boom of my heartbeat. Words don't make sense, unable to line up and be spoken. I can't think, can't organize coherent steps to understand the meaning of her outburst.
But Callum can.
Duff, too.
“GENTIAN!” Duff shouts as Candace holds Thomas away from her, the toddler limp but breathing, my own instinct moving my legs with bursts of muscle that make me sprint around the SUV, arms out, hands throbbing with urgency to hold Thomas, to see with my own eyes that he's–
Shot.
He's been gut shot.
Eyes glazed and belly red, his limbs are limp, fat dimples on the backs of his hands taunting me. Nothing matters except the spreading red across his torso as I grab him and smash him to me, as if compression alone, in the form of the world's fiercest embrace, could save him.
Stirring, he moans into my chest, hot breath coming at intervals steady enough to tell me he's alive but oh no no no please keep coming.
Please keep breathing.
Please stay alive.
Janice's torn body spreads like paint on a canvas before my mind's eye, a horizon of hell and pain and so much blood, all sacrificed to save these children. She did not die in vain.
I won't let her.
Silas Gentian appears, hair soaking wet and half spiked from a headset, a rifle in one hand, the other reaching toward me with a thick gauze pack. “Put this on him,” he says, shoving his gun behind him, the shoulder strap keeping it close. “Give him to me. Who else is hurt?”
“Sela's shot in the arm. And Jay–”
“KEEEEEEEEEN!” Jay shouts as he hears his name spoken, Philippa holding him, looking at me with shock coating her features.
Or she's elevating.
Jocelyn and Mary cradle little Jessie as if their four arms are two, the three of them embedded in an embrace of trauma. Their eyes are fixed on the little bleeding body in my arms.
“Tell me about Thomas,” Gentian says, one hand on my shoulder to get my attention, head pivoting to look at Duff.
“KEEEEENNN!” Blinking rapidly, Jay's face is a mask of panic. If the stress tips him into a seizure, what can I do?
“Jay's at risk for seizure and needs his blood sugar to be–”
“Got it,” Silas grunts as he slides the gauze pad between us, Thomas starting to cry, the anemic sound making me sink deeper into despair.
“And he–”
“I'll take the injured in one chopper and the rest of you go in the other.”
“I'm going with you!”
“No. You need to stay with me,” Callum insists. “With the rest of the children. There are more of them. Silas can — ”
“I’ll remain with you only if you're coming with Thomas and Sela and Jay and–who else is hurt or at risk? Who else got shot?” Hysteria makes my voice rise, my mind unable to compartmentalize anymore. It unravels, the descent into a stricken madness so volatile, so swift.
So uncontrollable.
“Where is everyone? We need to do a head count. Sela, Thomas,” I sob. “Philippa, Jay. Tim? Where is Tim?”
“Here!” he pipes up from around the Mercedes, the helicopter blades starting their slow whirl, the wind blowing his bangs over his eyes.
“Candace. Hayley. Jessie. George, Ashton,” I mutter as I stroke Thomas's hair, his cries turning my arms to numb, useless pipe cleaners. Nothing in my body works.
Nothing in my life does, either.
“Kina. KINA!” Silas shouts, peeling Thomas off me, holding him tight and taking off at a careful canter to the smaller of the helicopters. The chill of wind turns my blood-soaked sleeves to ice sheets.
Philippa waves at Sela to go with him, her good arm wrapped around Jay as I try to follow.
Callum holds me back. I scream at him, clawing and pulling, using my legs as leverage, kicking his knee, his groin, anything that stops me. Powerful muscles top a frame I can't fight, his voiceless authority demonstrated cleanly and clearly through brute force as I watch the helicopter lifting. I can just see Thomas inside, someone with medical equipment using gauze pads, handing Silas a pair of gloves.
And all I can do is scream.
Scream at the man who thinks I'm a liar.
Chapter 2
Callum
In what world does a one-year-old get gut shot?
This one.
During all our training, we were taught that mass society is a brutal, violent place where children are abused, treated like cannon fodder, shot and killed in gang warfare, and neglected by parents more concerned about drugs, drink, and fun than stability, order, or decency.
And yet here we are, my arms and one leg twisted into Kina's body, holding her in place so she doesn't follow the injured.
Among them a baby.
A baby.
“Why?” Kina groans, dropping to her knees, dead weight in my arms, my hold on her reflexive. She doesn't know how badly she's needed here. Thomas's gunshot wound is grave. I understand why she wants to go.
But there is so much more where we're going.
“WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME?” she screams.
Moving my lips close to her ear, I ignore the scent of blood, breathing through my mouth as I whisper-shout, “Because there are three injured kids and eleven more here who need you, Kina. And Gentian can get objective medical help faster if it's all done quietly. There's already a doctor on that chopper. Thomas is in the best hands possible.”
“The injured ones need me the most!”
“GET IN!” Duff shouts as he waves the kids and teens toward the larger helicopter, a crew of men in black on board, each helping to belt a child into a spot, everyone's eyes big as moons. Candace and Tim look at us, uncertain, their eyes jumping to Kina for direction.
For orders.
For assurance.
“Come on,” I say, sympathy gone, emotions drained as I fulfill my mission: to get her on that chopper. To get the rest of us out of here.
“Not like this! I can't, Callum. I can't!”
“You will.”
And she does. She just... does. Her resistance ends, muscles going slack, face taking on a blank look. It's the disappearance of emotion, the hollowing out of all attachment.
The ultimate blank slate.
Elevation is a double-edged sword. It thwarts our attempts to get closer to each other, but it's damned useful when you need it in a true survival event. We're close to being wiped out, a gut-shot toddler and Janice — poor Janice — more than enough proof of that.
“Once the injured are stable, they'll join us,” I assure her, pulling her like I'm yanking on a donkey's bridle. She doesn't budge.
In the moonlight, her profile reminds me so much of Glen again that anger floods me, the involuntary rush adding fury on fury. I'm angry at Glen, angry at my own anger, pissed off and ready to let some of the pressure in my head, heart, and limbs out through my mouth.
Eyebrows up in a stern expression I know will work, I make eye contact with Candace, then Tim. They scamper off, sprinting for the chopper, Duff's arm guiding them up.
Kina stares at them without expression, her head twisting back to follow Thomas's departure.
“GET. IN. THE. CHOPPER!” I bellow, grabbing her by the waist, slinging her over my shoulder. Silas is long gone, the smaller helicopter like a dragonfly in the distance.
I look down at my arm as she kicks me. We're coated in smeared blood.
Somewhere in the air, that helicopter holds kids who've been bombed and shot by their own people.
