Dominant Predator (8 page)

That was the mission I was prepared for. Looked forward to. I was at my best in a fight, whether undercover or with a team. Assassinations were also Armise’s speciality, and I had no doubt that Armise would be eager to undertake the search for Committee members as well. I waited to see if he was going to add anything else, but when he didn’t lift his eyes from his screen, I stood to leave.

“And Merq?” he called out, stopping me. “As usual, try not to die.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and gave the President’s guidance the one second of consideration it deserved. “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

He shook his head, smiling, able to read right through my sarcasm. “You do that.”

The President leant down over his screen and didn’t make any further comment.

I shut the heavy wooden door behind me and headed back towards my quarters.

The layout of the bunker was already feeling familiar. I took the branch-off towards my room without encountering anyone else in the hallway as I walked. I slipped into the darkened room and back into bed, stripping only my shirt off before climbing under the sheet.

Armise stirred next to me, turned over to face me. “What dastardly deed have you been asked to commit to now?”

“Us, not just me. We go tomorrow to scout the location where my parents are being held.”

“When do we move on them?” he asked in a mirror of my question to the President. He was just as mission-oriented as I was.

“When the President vacates to the DCR.”

“Anything else interesting come up?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, remembering the President’s comment that I needed to talk to Dr Casas about Armise being genetmod. But I couldn’t find the will to have this conversation now.

Armise stared me down. “You going to tell me? Or—”

“No way in hell,” I interrupted him. “Not now.”

Armise turned back over without a verbal reply, inching his body closer to mine. I threw an arm over his waist and burrowed my nose into the back of his neck. The chill coming off his skin began to wipe all thought away. Just how much knowledge Armise had of his own genetic modifications was a conversation I’d been holding off on for so long that there was no way one more night could make a difference.

The room was silent except for our breathing, the fighting up top still at a lull. Armise was in the bed next to me. I had six hours until my next mission commenced. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d known the length of time I was going to have off before I was called for duty again. I had six free hours. It had been years, if not decades, since I’d had this level of freedom.

I slipped my foot between Armise’s calves and drew him closer.

I didn’t know what I was doing or why. But it felt right. Human.

For once, I let the rest go.

Chapter Five

An alarm blared—screeched in my ears and ricocheted through my head—and I was awake, shooting up in the bed, grasping for awareness, trying to remember where I was. It didn’t take me long—I was trained for quick response. I flung the sheets off and stalked to the closet, throwing the doors open and sorting through the hangers to find my uniform.

“We’re not being attacked, what the fuck is the alarm for?” Armise’s voice came from the bed.

I looked back at him. He hadn’t moved from the relaxed position on his side of the mattress. Exactly where he’d been when I’d curled into him and fallen into a dreamless sleep.

The closet was filled with copies of the same all-black outfits with the sunburst symbol of the Revolution on the shoulder. I ran my fingertips over the emblem, and snagged one of the sets off the hanger. I crossed the room and swiped my hand across and up, raising a BC5 screen on the desk. It was well after dawn and past the time the President had stated Armise and I would be called up to begin the scouting trip.

“How do you know we’re not being attacked?” I asked incredulously as I flipped through status reports.

He gestured towards the ceiling but didn’t move any farther. The alarm continued to blare. “No bombs. No gunshots or sonic pops. Or yelling. That’s usually a good tell.”

The alarm abruptly cut off, the sudden silence ringing in my ears.

“Fuck this,” Armise ground out and pulled the covers over his head.

I pulled the uniform shirt over my head and shifted it into place. But it didn’t fit as tightly as my uniform traditionally would. I pulled it off and looked at the tag. It was Armise’s size, not mine.

I frowned and stalked back to the closet. A quick rummaging through its contents revealed that the right side held uniforms in Armise’s exact size and the left was lined with uniforms in my size—one step below Armise’s massive width. I tried not to think about why the closet would have been stocked with clothes for both of us even though two rooms had supposedly been prepared for us. I knew it was likely the work of Neveed. Regardless of whether both rooms were stocked similarly—prepared with the idea in mind that Armise and I would be sharing a room instead of sleeping apart—it unnerved me that Neveed knew me well enough to anticipate this outcome.

It was neither welcoming nor helpful.

“I’m going to the control room,” I said to Armise over my shoulder.

He grunted in response and sat up, wiping the sleep from his eyes. I smoothed down my uniform, tucked the shirt into the tightly fitting trousers and pulled on socks then my boots.

Armise leant forward, putting his elbows on his knees and watching me with a predatory air.

I recognised that look immediately. But there wasn’t time for any fucking around this morning, as much as my body protested the idea.

“You coming with me?” Surprised myself that I even bothered to ask the question.

“Yeah,” he huffed in response and got up from the bed.

“Right side,” I directed him, cocking my head towards the closet.

“Same fucking side of the bed I sleep on,” Armise murmured under his breath just loud enough for me to hear.

I hadn’t considered it, but he was right. When had we become this predictable?

“Any reports coming through?” Armise asked as he dressed.

“Status reports are vague,” I answered tersely, the need to be in action making me tense.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he ground out.

“Besides that we’re at war?” I deflected.

“Good morning to you, too,” he replied with a sarcastic tone that sounded much more like me than him.

I didn’t know how to answer his question. Yes, the alarm had been a shit way to be woken up. But there was nothing imminent as far as I could see from the status reports. I’d got a full night’s sleep for the first time in years. The bombs weren’t going off and I had a new mission. So why was I so uneasy?

It only took one look at the way Armise’s uniform stretched across his powerful frame as he tugged it over his head to catch on to the obvious fucking conclusion.

I had spent the entire night with Armise in my bed. We hadn’t fucked. I had slept like the dead. I hadn’t worried once about what would happen if we were discovered.

And I didn’t know how to handle that.

Armise didn’t turn when he said, “I’m not in the mindset for your piss-ass mood. Take off. I’ll see you there.”

Armise finished dressing and walked around the corner, shutting the door to the en suite.

I didn’t wait for him.

I should have known exactly how to get back to the control room, but I took three wrong turns, relying on soldiers passing through the corridors to point me back in the right direction. Before I approached the doors I took a deep breath and tried to clear my head of everything that didn’t have to do with the Revolution or the mission to rescue my parents.

I walked into chaos.

The control room was jammed with soldiers and analysts scurrying around the enclosed area, sharing whispers over hunched groupings then others blatantly screaming information across the small space. The air was stifling, hot, cramped, with the scent of sweat. And fear.

I searched the room and found Neveed huddled with Simion and Jegs. They parted, letting me into their cloistered group.

“What’s going on?” I asked, keeping my voice pitched low.

Neveed surveyed my uniform with a twist of his lip before he answered. “Casualties are out of control.”

“How many?”

“We’re collecting intel now. It’s in the thousands. The Opposition rallied much faster than we expected.”

“As if they had some kind of a heads-up about what we were doing,” I noted.

“Maybe. No way to know for sure.”

“They sabotaged the shield stations in the DCR,” Simion added.

“We’re refocusing attacks on protecting the remaining power stations and battery stores,” Neveed continued. “We have to maintain our advantage as long as we can.”

“How are the artilleries holding up?” I inquired.

“Still solid. We’re prepared for the loss of shields on every continent.”

“But?” I could hear there was something left unsaid by Neveed.

“They’re going after transport stations, too.”

I caught on immediately. “We have to get the President out of here now before he’s stranded.”

“Already in process,” Simion answered before he broke away from the group.

“What’s our backup if the transports go down?” I asked.

“We’ve got a store of Thunders, but not many. Commercial airliners are grounded. We can take possession of any of them. But anything airborne will be a target. A targeted reverb will take them down without hesitation.”

“What do you need from me?”

Neveed shook his head. “Your mission hasn’t changed.”

“No, Neveed,” I growled in a low voice. “No. I won’t be focused on rescuing two people when the President is heading into an area where thousands of our fighters are being slaughtered. Where he is at risk.”

Neveed stepped up to me. He was a head shorter than me, and couldn’t match my bulk no matter how hard he worked out, but his position as the President’s second-in-command was undeniable. “You have your orders.”

I ground my teeth together in frustration. “How secure is the bunker?”

“Chen!” Neveed called out without turning to face her.

“Does it look like I have time to talk right now?” she yelled back.

“How long?” Neveed asked, even as he refused to cede any authority to her.

“They’re breaking through our systems right now,” she replied with a cool surety that sped my heartbeat.

“Any way to keep them out?” I asked her.

Chen cracked her neck and stared me down. “Nah, I’m just letting them through.”

Neveed swore under his breath but didn’t challenge Chen.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and found the President standing next to me and Armise and Simion steadfastly stationed behind him to his left and right.

“Simion is trying to push me into the transport room,” the President interjected. “Could I perhaps have a moment of your time to figure out why he’s so insistent?”

I could see the rough grinding of Neveed’s jaw as he answered. “The transport stations in the DCR are being attacked. This may be your only opportunity to get to the front lines.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. I think they’re trying to draw me there.”

I scoffed. We were operating in a defensive instead of offensive mode. Did it really matter if my parents were being used as bait? Or if the President was being drawn to the DCR? He couldn’t—and wouldn’t—stay in this bunker forever. So we had to move him at some point. And right now Neveed and the President were making tactical decisions based upon the actions of the Opposition. Reacting instead of decisively acting. “You sure you’re not just being paranoid?” I questioned the President, knowing that I was pushing the limits of how I should be communicating with him in front of his subordinates.

The President stared at me, unflinching. “I am being paranoid. It’s the only way I’ve lived this long. Exley is ready to take you into the Underground.” He motioned between Armise and me, the meaning clear.

“Sir—” I began.

“He’ll meet you in the weapons room,” the President said without hesitation and turned away from me while calling for Chen.

“I’m with you,” Jegs said, eyeing Armise.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to dissipate some of my tension as I watched the President walk away. Then I turned my attention, and frustration, onto Jegs. “If you’re there for protection I don’t need it,” I accused, making it clear that I didn’t need her along to make sure Armise didn’t turn traitor on me.

“I’m only going part way with you. I have personal business to attend to.”

“Jegs,” I started, seeing the set of her shoulders and knowing from years of working with her just where her personal mission was going to take her.

She held up her hand. “Don’t. We all have our loose threads.” She shot a glare at Armise. “I’m just tying mine off and cutting it loose.”

“Fine,” I answered, even though it was far from fine. I cocked my head in the direction of the door. “Let’s go.”

* * * *

Exley pushed the heavy metal door open, blinding me momentarily with the harsh rays of the midday sun. I slid on my glasses, shielding my eyes from the brightness. The air was hot, heavy and dry. It burned with each inhale, making me much more aware of my lungs than I wanted to be.

We hadn’t brought any respirators with us—Exley had warned us that our standard-issue military gear was too conspicuous—but I worried about getting caught somewhere without access to the filters. Initial fighting in the capital had waned, contained to localised skirmishes. All our intel pointed to the Opposition rallying for an ambush on the city. I had to laugh at the analysts who considered it a surprise attack when we knew it was coming. I was more concerned about what was occurring that we didn’t know about.

This mission fit soundly into that category.

I was sure there was someone within the President’s inner circle who was feeding information to the Opposition—possibly directly to Ahriman. The sabotage of the shield stations and transports in the DCR could have been coincidence, strategy or merely a knee-jerk reaction to the sheer number of Revolution forces who had popped up on the continent, but I was inclined to believe it had more to do with the President’s desire to be on the front lines. Just as we were seeking the elimination of the leaders of the Opposition they would be planning the same for us.