Dominant Predator (13 page)

I cocked my head in the direction of the other room.

Ahriman was here. I had no doubt about it now. And we—I—had walked straight into one of his sick games.

“That’s not your mom,” Exley said in a low voice from behind me.

The woman struggled against the bindings, her wrists raw and seeping blood over the arms and onto a pool on the floor. She bit at the gag, tried to force mumbled words around it. But I didn’t need to hear her voice to know who she was.

I lowered my rifle. No amount of firepower was going to get us all out of this situation alive. “It’s Sarai. The President’s dead wife.”

“Fuck,” Exley swore as he put his pistol back into the holster and ran to her, frantically working at the metal cuffs, trying to find a way to unlock them.

I could hear Sarai’s choked sobs, see Exley becoming more out of control as he tried to locate the release. But my training kicked in and I went cold inside.

“He knew,” Armise nearly spat out.

I nodded. “Yeah, he knew.”

It was the only conclusion I could come to. The President would have had her tracker taken offline when she died. And the identifying numbers could have easily been wiped from the database so that no one would be able to access her files. Her supposed death had come after an extortion attempt. There had been a very public funeral—a garish state affair that had put the President’s stone-faced lack of grief on display—but no one had seen the body. Now I knew why.

The President had known that whether or not she was actually dead, he wasn’t going to get her back alive. And he had publicly written her off so that no one could use her against him again.

As soon as Chen had brought the number of that unidentified tracker to him the President would have known.

That the President hadn’t made her recovery part of my mission or even told me about her presence here meant that he wasn’t planning for her to make it back to his bunker.

“Arrogant prick,” I ground out. “Fuck that. We’re getting her out of here, too.”

“Not quite yet,” a voice came from behind me.

Armise and I spun, trained our rifles on Ahriman where he stood in the door.

“How long have you had her?” I growled.

Ahriman leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. “Oh, it’s been a while. Although she’s in much better shape than your parents. You may want to get them to medical care soon.”

I pulled the trigger on my rifle at nearly the same time that Armise did. But the bullets exploded against an invisible barrier and clattered to the floor.

Ahriman gave a feral grin. “New shielding technology. I’ll have to let our scientists know it works.”

Ahriman pushed off the door and disappeared around the corner, the sound of a metal door screeching open coming from the room next to us.

Armise sneered. “
That
is bad news.”

“I really fucking hate complications,” I murmured. “Exley, stay with her. We’ll be back.”

Armise and I didn’t have to discuss it. I took point as we crossed into the second practice room to find a man and a woman bound and gagged, standing next to Ahriman.

Both of their faces were beaten—purple and green of old wounds, the bright red of fresh blood. The woman’s hair was matted, dirty, and it appeared that the man’s shoulder was dislocated. Their hands were bound in front of them at the wrists. Both of them were missing fingernails and they shook with the effort to stand.

Ahriman gave their joined bodies a shove in our direction and the woman stumbled and pitched forward. The man moved in front of her to keep her from falling to the floor. She was limping and I could only assume from the odd angle of her knee that there was serious damage to that limb as well.

I didn’t move.

Ahriman gestured to them as if he was presenting them to an audience. “Go ahead, Armise. Take them. I won’t stop you.”

“And?” I asked.

Ahriman sat down in the PsychHAg torture chair and crossed his legs, tapping his fingertips on his knee. “I need a moment with you, Merq.”

Next to me Armise tensed.

The man—my father?—looked between Ahriman, Armise and me. His face was clinically blank. I knew from experience that it took years of practice to detach yourself thoroughly enough from a pain-racked body to appear that unaffected. It was a skill I had mastered in the training room next to this one. It had come more naturally to me than some of the other students. And surveying the man in front of me I wondered if that was because I had a genetic predisposition for controlling my reactions and emotions.

I didn’t recognise either of them by sight, though. There were features I could pick out—the colour of the woman’s eyes, the pronounced cheekbones and jaw of the man—that I could place with my own. But it wasn’t enough. I had to be sure.

“Exley!” I called out.

I grabbed him by the arm when he walked in and placed him between Armise and me in a defensive position.

“That’s them,” Exley verified with shaky breath, his eyes flitting from my parents to Ahriman and back.

“Get them out of here,” I instructed Armise.

My parents were silent as they moved together across the floor, feet shuffling, their progress awkward from the severity of their wounds. My father tipped his head in my direction, but his focus stayed on keeping my mother upright.

“I don’t like this,” Armise said in a whisper next to me.

“You think I do?” I replied, loud enough for Ahriman to hear. “Our mission was to return them to the President. Make sure that happens.”

Armise gave me a clipped nod as Exley got my parents out of their bindings.

My father shook his head, wincing in pain as the gag fell from his mouth, and he stared me down but didn’t say anything.

Almost thirty years since I’d last seen them and I knew I should’ve felt something, anything, for the people who had given me life. But I was most relieved to know that Armise would be walking out of here alive.

I tipped my chin up, signalling to Armise that it was time for them to go. Armise scowled deeply yet followed Exley and my parents out the door.

Ahriman and I waited for the sounds of their footsteps to fade away, then Ahriman stood.

“Come, Merq,” he beckoned with his claw-like hands. “Let’s talk.”

Chapter Nine

“You recognise Sarai Kersch,” Ahriman opined as we walked into the practice room where she was being held.

I didn’t bother to answer him. I didn’t want to know the details of how long he’d been holding her or what had happened in the years she’d been missing. Those were details I didn’t want to have in my head, available for the President to access at his will. Because if the President asked I would answer. I wanted to be able to tell him honestly that I didn’t know.

Despite the President’s apparent view that Sarai wasn’t coming home, I was going to play this out with the intention of getting her out alive. I couldn’t see any other option or consider that I wouldn’t be able to.

Sarai was the President’s wife, but she had never been involved in the dark deals her husband made for the Revolution. My contact with her had been limited to the handful of social occasions when I was forced to attend for appearances as a Colonel for the Peacemakers. Regardless, I felt as if I knew her because of the President and how he spoke of her being his heart and his conscience. Of a love for her that couldn’t be replaced. I’d never understood it. I had no frame of reference to believe that that type of unselfish love—love without an agenda—was possible. And it was in my power to give that back to the President. To return his wife to him.

I wanted to pretend that protecting her was simply a part of my job. She was a citizen and my job as a soldier was to protect those who didn’t fight from the atrocities of war. I was willing to sacrifice just about anything or anyone—hell, even myself—for the President. But her life meant more than any ordinary citizen because it meant something to him.

I studied the restraints. I didn’t know where the release button was—if I had I wouldn’t have been trapped in that chair for as many hours as I had in my year with the PsychHAgs.

One year of physical and psychological torture. Of seeing my blood spilled and flesh torn from my body as they wore me down. Sleep-deprived, starving, at the hands of men and women who fought on the same side that I did. My anger towards them feeding my drive to survive. I’d watched other members of my class being ceremoniously carried out in body bags, or slung across shoulders in disrespect for the ones who had broken way before they should have. We were forced to witness each death, each failure, and taught to learn from their mistakes. From their weakness. With each failure, the number of witnesses dwindled until I was the only one standing in the practice room when my final classmate went into death with a howling wail that I could recall with perfect clarity.

I’d already been hardened, jaded many years before that, but my year here had nearly stolen the last of my humanity. I’d learned how to disconnect emotion from death. How to grasp at the last shreds of will left inside me and endure mind-bending pain. To focus only on the mission and protecting the cause above all else. I wasn’t a man. I wasn’t a soldier, or even a number in their roster. I was a tool, and they were going to throw me into the fire and beat me into the fatal-edged sword they desired or allow me to shatter in the blinding heat.

They hadn’t broken me, but they’d come close.

If the programme hadn’t been shut down that last day—the day I sat in this very chair, blaring music screeching in my ears, the whisper of a PsychHAg feeding me lies and taunts while my blood flowed freely over those restraints—I would have been dead.

I had been saved by fate instead of my own strength. And that had been the greatest lesson they’d ever taught me.

Everyone had a breaking point—even me.

“Remembering your time here?” Ahriman gloated.

I snapped my head up and glared at him. He was using this room to set me off balance, and I was allowing him to do it.

“I survived.”

And so will she
, I thought, glancing at Sarai.

She was silent now, her wide brown eyes surrounded by the red of burst blood vessels, her hair matted with sweat, fingers gripping the chair with white knuckles. I could hear the scratch of her nails over the metal as she flexed her hands, the restraints cutting farther into her ravaged wrists.

I took a step towards Ahriman. I couldn’t shoot him. Whatever shield he had would keep either a sonicbullet or a real one from taking him down. Which meant I was going to have to physically attack him. From years on the battlefield, I knew exactly how close I had to be to him to be within striking distance. I had no doubt that Ahriman expected it from me, though. The only leverage I had was that he wanted me here for some reason.

I took another step, bringing me within three metres of where he stood. His black eyes bored through me, unreadable as always.

“Where are we going with this?” I ventured, holding out my hands as if I was entreating an honest answer from him.

Ahriman tapped the gun at his side with those long fingers. I recognised it as a Colt—an ancient gun, not a replica. Where would he have got that?

“You’ve surprised me, Merq. And I’m not accustomed to being surprised.”

I smirked. “How did I accomplish that?”

“By beating me at my own game. I may have allowed you to take that shot and assassinate the rather uncooperative Premiere…” He paused, put his hands on his hips and waited for a response from me that never came. I hadn’t suspected that he knew about my real intentions, but now that he was verifying he had wanted me to kill the Premiere I realised his move only made sense. Ahriman was the type of man who would never be satisfied with being second-in-command.

Ahriman turned and stepped closer to the chair. He ran a finger down Sarai’s arm and she gasped, took in a long breath as her body shuddered from the touch. “Your exit from the stage was dramatic even for me. So many years in the planning, so easy to manipulate. And yet I couldn’t see it all.”

I kept my features and stance neutral as I worked his words over in my head. If I hadn’t seen Armise’s allegiance shift coming then Ahriman definitely wouldn’t have.

“Armise.”

Ahriman shook a bony finger in my direction. “Armise Darcan. The Mongol Giant. He won’t come without you. I’ve learned enough to know that. I need him, but you? You’re a side benefit.”

“You had him here,” I pointed out and took another step towards him. I was less than two metres away from him now.

Sarai’s eyes swept between Ahriman and me, her hands balling into fists.

“I need him in Singapore. And someone convinced him to take that pesky transport chip out. So I’m doing a bit of rearranging. Your parents weren’t enough leverage to garner your compliance. But Sarai—she’s an innocent. I’ve seen the lengths you’ll go to for Wensen Kersch. He is the one person you’re loyal to above all else.
That
is a weakness. One I’m sure you’re not proud of, but that exists nonetheless. Here’s my offer. Her life for Armise. Simple.”

“You’ll kill him.”

“He must be alive for what I need him for.”

“Comforting,” I snidely answered.

Ahriman chuckled at that. “Not in the least. You’ve served your purpose for them. They wanted a war and they have it. Now come to the winning side.”

I crooked my eyebrow and took one more step.

“If I bring Armise to you, what could you possibly offer me?”

Ahriman made a
tsk tsk
noise, the sound of his tongue clacking echoing off the walls. “I really hate repeating myself. She lives and so do you.”

“And Armise?”

“He lives.” Ahriman put his hand on his pistol, gripped the carved handle and added, “For a time.”

I dragged in the dry air, forced myself not to tense. Not to give away any physical tell of my intention to strike out at him. Sarai’s eyes were glued to where Ahriman toyed with the gun.

“Last chance,” Ahriman smirked.

Ahriman believed he was entitled. All-powerful and deserving of an unassailable right to decide who lived and who died. He didn’t see any value in life besides his own.