Beginnings

by Sandra R Neeley

  Jackie turned off the overhead light and opened the blinds on the window to let in some sunshine, so Nina could see.

  “That’s as good as it’s going to get,” Jackie said.

  Lethal nodded. “Better than he was.”

  “I’m going to let her in,” Jackie said, walking toward the door.

  Lethal nodded and walked across the room to take a spot beside the window to stand out of the way. He watched as Two escorted Nina in and stayed at her side the entire time she stood there, crying and sobbing, her hands reaching out to touch Acker’s face and hair.

  “Why did they crash?” Nina finally asked, raising her eyes to Lethal’s.

  “I’m sure Roscoe knows more than I do,” he said diplomatically.

  “No!” she said forcefully. “You were there. You saw. Why did they crash?” Nina insisted.

  “Morrison said a piece of debris flew into their rotor and made them lose control,” Lethal said.

  Nina looked at Lethal with a confused look on her face. “What kind of debris is floating in the air?” she asked, her face still wet with tears as she struggled to take a deep breath through the sobs.

  Lethal shrugged.

  Nina knew one thing very well. She knew Lethal’s mannerisms. He never did speak much, so she had to learn his mannerisms to gauge his mood when she’d belonged to him. And that shrug… that meant he knew something he wasn’t telling her.

  Nina ground her teeth together and spoke very slowly to make sure Lethal understood that she insisted on an answer. “Why did they crash, Lethal?”

  Lethal held her gaze for longer than was comfortable.

  She watched as he swallowed, then, without looking away from her he gave her the truth as he believed it to be. “They tried to take off during a hurricane. They should have left earlier.”

  Nina looked down at Acker again. She had her answer. He’d been taking a chance he shouldn’t have taken, and didn’t that just sound like Acker? He thought he was bulletproof.

  She took in the bandages that had been hastily applied, and the blanket pulled all the way up to his chin. She could see the dark soot beneath his chin where Jackie or Lethal had missed it when wiping him as clean as they could. It was evident that he’d suffered trauma, and if this was an improvement, she was truly thankful that Lethal had insisted that she give them a minute before she saw him.

  “I want to be alone with him,” she whispered.

  Lethal gave a single nod, then walked calmly out of the hospital room, taking Two with him. When they stepped out of the room, Roscoe was the first to ask. “How is she?”

  “Dealing,” Lethal answered.

  “Somebody should be in there with her,” Roscoe said, trying to step past Lethal.

  “Nobody is going into that room until Nina says she wants company,” Lethal snarled, moving to block Roscoe’s attempt to enter the room.

  “She’s a hysterical woman! You can’t leave her in there with the body of the man she loved!” Roscoe insisted.

  “She’s stronger than you and me both. She asked to be alone with him, and she’s going to be alone with him,” Lethal answered with a rumble still to his voice, glaring at Roscoe.

  “Nobody’s going in,” Two said, standing in front of the door with his arms crossed.

  Lethal stepped back beside Two. “Not a single soul,” he agreed.

  Chapter 44

  Nina crawled up on the bed beside Acker and curled up against his body. Then she let herself go. She cried and sobbed. She asked him why he’d made such a stupid choice and raged at him with her frustration that this could most likely have been avoided. And just when she was all cried out, she found it in herself to scream her pain as loud and long as she could before dissolving into tears again.

  Some time later, Nina was aware of someone beside her. “Nina? It’s time to go,” a voice said.

  Nina shook her head.

  “You can’t lie here beside him forever. Everyone has gone away except for Roscoe, the General, Law and Brutal. It’s just them, and me and Lethal and Jackie. Let us take you home, so Jackie can do what she needs to do.”

  “No,” Nina whispered, her voice cracking.

  “Nina, I don’t want you to be mad at me, but if you don’t let me bring you home, I’m going to have to take you there anyway,” Two urged.

  “I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel,” she said softly, still lying against Acker’s body and refusing to even turn over and look at Two.

  “I’m so tired, Two. I don’t know what I did in my last life to be so miserable and have to endure so much pain in this one, but I’m done. I don’t want to breathe anymore. I just want to stop everything. I want nothingness, now. I want to die with him.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Two said. “You have so much to live for.”

  Nina shook her head. “Please let me die. Help me, Two. Just kill me. It’ll be so fast I won’t feel a thing. I know you’re strong enough,” she begged. The scary thing was she wasn’t crying anymore. She was calm. She’d truly reached the end of her desire to even try anymore.

  “That’s efuckingnough!” Lethal shouted from the open door.

  Nina didn’t even turn over to answer Lethal.

  “Did you hear me?” Lethal snapped. “Get your ass up! We’re taking you home and you’re going to live your life if I have to force you.”

  Nina didn’t respond. She just lay there with her eyes closed.

  “Get up!” Lethal shouted. He was getting seriously worried. Nina was giving up. She wasn’t fighting him. She wasn’t even bothering to look at him. Her emotions were simply gone.

  “Stop screaming at her, Lethal!” Roscoe said as he and the others filed into the room at the sound of all the commotion. “She’s just experienced a loss. Have a heart!” Roscoe reached out and touched Nina’s shoulder which caused Lethal to emit a snarl.

  Roscoe snapped his gaze to Lethal’s, and Lethal glared at him.

  Roscoe turned his attention to Nina. “Nina, honey, let’s go back to your place. We’ll get you something to eat and get you all settled in. Take as much time as you need to deal with this. I’ll be there taking care of you. No one is going to force you to move on until you’re ready.”

  Nina didn’t answer.

  “You have so much to live for,” Brutal said. “I still need your help, you know. You can’t just give up.”

  “Let me take you home,” Two said. “You’ll feel better in the morning, and the next day, and the next day. Before you know it you’ll be moving ahead, just like Acker would have wanted.”

  Nina’s voice could barely be heard when she answered. “Why? So I can pull it together for the next loss, and the next, and the next. My whole life has been a series of pain and trauma. I thought I could be strong again. I thought I could get through it. I was wrong. I’m done. I quit. Lethal, you want me to be strong? I will be. I’ll stand before you and smile while you rip my throat out. Kill me. If you ever cared about me in any way at all, kill me. It would be kinder than standing there with pity in your eyes for me. I don’t want pity. I don’t want compassion. And I can’t take the pain anymore — it’s too much. I can’t survive any more pain. Please kill me,” she whispered before she closed her eyes and let the tears slip silently from beneath her eyelids.

  Lethal was close to losing control. He didn’t know how to fix Nina. Losing Acker had broken her. He’d seen it before. Males who’d just given up and courted death. It’d happened in the testing facility more than he cared to remember, and he’d obliged those males. He’d given them death because he knew it was kinder than anything the doctor would have done to them. And Nina knew it, too. He’d told her of it, which was why she begged him for the same mercy now that she’d given up.

  “Please, Lethal,” she whispered again.

  “No!” Lethal shouted. “Get up! Get the hell up and fight back! You want to know what you have left to live for? Revenge! Revenge, Nina! Get the fuck up and hunt down every fucking thin
g that ever caused you pain. Get up and give it all what it gave to you — no mercy!” Lethal stomped over to the side of the bed Nina lay on and shoved Two out of the way before leaning in close to her body. He smoothed the hair out of her face and leaned so close his lips were brushing her cheekbone when he spoke again. “Get up, Nina. Get up, and I promise I’ll make you like me. I’ll teach you to kill. I’ll teach you to be the most dangerous female that ever fucking walked, and together we’ll hunt down every source of every pain you ever endured. You will be the stuff of nightmares. But you have to get up.”

  Nina’s eyes opened and she lay there, staring at the blanket right in front of her face.

  Lethal saw her open her eyes and knew he’d struck a nerve. “You’re broken, Nina. Losing Acker finished the job. I can rebuild you, the same way we were all rebuilt. I’ll teach you to be what I am. Get up, Nina. Let me teach you a new way to live. You will deliver the vengeance that each of us carries inside. You will become your own harbinger of justice. Get up, Nina. Join us.”

  Nina turned her head and looked into Lethal’s eyes. “You can do that?”

  “I can do that,” Lethal said.

  Nina sat up, sniffling, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. She focused on Lethal. “I need to be you.”

  “I won’t take it easy on you. You want to be me, you will train like I did. You will learn every single skill I learned.”

  Nina nodded. “Okay.”

  “It won’t be easy, and you’ll hate me, but it’s okay, you already hate me. When I’m done, you’ll be able to stand up to anyone. You’ll be the nightmare that slips in during the night and leaves silent death behind her.”

  “I’ll be an assassin,” Nina said, her jaw set firmly.

  Lethal nodded one single time. “Don’t let the pain win, Nina. Take hold of it. Own it. Master it. Make it the driving force in all that awaits your wrath.”

  Nina nodded. “I have a long list.”

  “Then come on, we have a lot to accomplish,” Lethal said, smiling coldly at her.

  Nina nodded and swung her feet over the sides of the bed, holding her arms out for Lethal to take her in his arms.

  “Walk on your own two feet, female. Assassins don’t lean on anyone,” Lethal snapped.

  Nina looked at him for a moment before sliding off the bed and giving him a single nod. Then she calmly walked out of the bedroom without looking back to see if Lethal followed. She knew he would at some point.

  “You can’t fucking do this!” Roscoe rushed out, stepping swiftly toward Lethal.

  Lethal looked down his nose at Roscoe. “Yes, I can.”

  “She needs compassion!” Roscoe insisted.

  “She needs purpose. She’s given up and the only driving factor that got her out of that bed beside her dead man is the idea of vengeance. She doesn’t want to feel anymore. She doesn’t want to think anymore. All she wants is vengeance. She’s completely fucking broken and she’s given up. We’ve all reached that point. It’s a starting point.”

  “I haven’t!” Roscoe objected.

  “You’re not Variant! We survived for one reason. We found a single focus to carry us through. We all wanted vengeance in some form or fashion. Nothing else mattered. Nina’s at that point. She wants vengeance? I’ll teach her to deliver it,” Lethal said.

  “How?” Brutal asked.

  “Every skill I learned, she’ll learn. She’ll learn hand to hand combat, she’ll learn to kill with just her bare hands, she’ll learn weaponry, she’ll learn to turn common objects into deadly weapons. She’ll learn stealth, she’ll learn everything necessary for survival.”

  “You can’t possibly plan to fight her,” General Ferriday said.

  “Not at first. I’ll teach her technique, I’ll teach her everything she needs. Then I’ll find her a suitable sparring partner.”

  “The female team that you brought in,” Brutal suggested.

  “Are you seriously helping him?” Roscoe asked Brutal on an outraged shout.

  Lethal glanced over at Brutal and smiled coldly. “To start. Then when she’s ready, she’ll fight me, and Scorn, and anyone else that can get the drop on her. She’ll train until she no longer makes mistakes. Then I’ll take her out and let her deliver her vengeance.”

  “You love her,” Roscoe said. “I have no doubt that you do. How can you even consider turning her into a cold sonofabitch like yourself? I will not let you do this to her!”

  Lethal glared at Roscoe considering his answer. Finally he settled on the truth. “I love her more than any male could ever conceive of loving her. I love her enough to give her the freedom to become the person she needs to be in order to survive a series of traumas most females would not have lived through. I’ll be the one standing beside the strength that she becomes once she’s overcome all the sorrow and pain she lives with. And I’ll be the one to bask in her successes. Stay the fuck out of my way, Roscoe. If you don’t, I’ll kill you, then I’ll take her away to a place nobody will ever find her, and there I’ll help her become what she’s asked to become.”

  “She didn’t ask for it! You offered it!” Roscoe yelled.

  “Because he recognized the place she was in. He was right, we’ve all been there,” Two said. “I don’t think she’d last much longer without us helping her be what she needs to be.”

  “You’re helping him, too?” Roscoe asked unbelievably.

  “Yeah,” Two answered.

  “You’re all out of your fucking minds,” Roscoe shouted.

  Brutal shook his head. “You just have no understanding, Roscoe. You think you understand what it takes to survive. And maybe in your world you do. But in ours, in what we’ve gone through to become who we are, in what she’s gone through over and over again, you have no clue. You just don’t understand. She’ll be okay one day. But you can’t help her with it. We can,” Brutal explained.

  Lethal shot one last glare at Roscoe, then at the General, daring him to interfere, then walked out of the room.

  General Ferriday hurriedly went after him. “Lethal!” he called.

  Lethal stopped and looked over his shoulder at General Ferriday.

  “Acker went after Nina’s husband. She told him that her husband beat her badly then sold her to the facility that you were in. She bears scars from her life with him before you ever met her. That’s why Acker was in Louisiana. She’s dealing with more than being in that facility. Her trauma started long before you met her.”

  Lethal listened to what the General had to say. Now he understood why Acker was in Louisiana during a hurricane.

  “Did he get him?” Lethal asked.

  “No. They waited so long to leave the area in the hopes that he would return. But he didn’t. They waited too long. It was too late to avoid the storm. You know the rest.”

  Lethal gave a single nod. “Nina will get him. It’ll all work out.” Then he turned and walked down the hallway, down the stairs, and out of the medical clinic. He saw Nina as she disappeared into her home and followed her.

  He opened the door to Nina’s house and walked right in as though it was his home.

  “Nina!”

  She didn’t answer but he could hear her opening and closing drawers in the bedroom.

  Lethal walked down the short hallway and came to a stop just inside her bedroom.

  Nina looked up at him. “I’m getting some clothes and shoes. I’ll be there shortly.”

  “You’ll be there now! Grab what you need and get the fuck where you’re supposed to be,” he snapped at her.

  “I'm coming,” she answered.

  “Sir! I’m coming, sir!” Lethal shouted. “And do it now, right fucking now!” he growled.

  Nina grabbed a handful of clothes and shoved them into the tote bag she was holding. Then she ran over to the closet, grabbed her sneakers and shoved them on top of the clothes. She spun and ran directly toward Lethal, squeezing past him where he stood blocking her doorway and ran out of her house as qui
ckly as she could. “I’m going, Sir!” she said. She didn’t slow down until she made it to his squad’s house. She didn’t knock there either, she simply turned the knob and ran inside the house. She came to a stop in the living room as four sets of eyes focused on her. All of them but Feral knew her as Lethal's woman. Feral knew they had a history but had not seen it develop while they were in captivity.

  “Lethal’s room?” she asked.

  Scorn raised an eyebrow and pointed toward Lethal’s room.

  “Thanks,” she said and sprinted in that direction. When Nina walked into the bedroom, she noticed immediately that both beds were taken. She was pretty sure that Lethal expected her to sleep in the same place he did, just like before. Not like his female, but close enough that he could keep an eye on everything she did. She didn’t see anywhere to put her stuff, so she leaned it against the wall just inside the door and stood in the middle of the room to wait for him to arrive. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “Nina!”

  “Yes, sir!” she answered.

  “Here, now!” he bellowed.

  Nina rushed into the living room and came to a stop in front of Lethal.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I thought you would want my things in your room, so I put them there, then I waited for you to get here.”

  “That’s your first mistake. You don’t think, you understand me? I think, I order — you carry out those orders. No thought at all,” Lethal demanded.

  “I understand.”

  “Good. You don’t have a room. Every bed here is taken. You’ll sleep on the couch, or the floor. I really don’t care which. If I find you with any of these males, or any other for that matter, our deal’s off and you can waste away into nothingness. This is an all in offer. You do it my way, all the time, or you don’t do it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Run.”

  Nina looked at him with a confused expression.

  “What’s the problem? Run! Now! Any fucking where. Run until I come find you and tell you to stop! We had drugs to give us stamina. You don’t. You’ll have to build it up the old fashioned way. Run!”