Project: Killer (Project Series Book 1) (3 page)

“It’s nothing. At least nothing different from the norm. You know why I’m here, Kandace. I want to get into the labs and see what kind of cures and drugs they’re coming up with,” I whispered to her, my eyes scanning the room. One would think moving up in the company would be something relatively normal, something that could easily be talked about in the workplace. Except it wasn’t. At least not here. Moving up to a new position was never something openly discussed. If you moved up, you just quietly disappeared.

Any promotion in the company was top secret. If you ever made it out of this sector of the building, then you knew something no one else did. I had to make it happen. I had to find out what was going on. If not for the families who were suffering from death, grief, and loss, then for Diesel.

“It’s been seven years. Seven years, Maggie. It’s time to move on. It’s time to let it go. He died. He’s not coming back, and if you keep thinking like you are, it’s going to get you killed.”

Kandace’s concern was cute but entirely unnecessary. I had it all under control. Maybe if I kept telling myself that, it would start to feel that way.

“He might be dead, but I made him a promise. I told him that I would try to help find a cure for his cancer. I wasn’t lying to him seven years ago, and I’m not going back on my word now. I understand your concerns, but I’m not doing anything wrong.”

The look of shock on her face astounded me. Did she really feel as if what I was doing was wrong? That wanting to stand by my word was wrong?

“Davis.” Roger’s angry voice met our ears. Everyone turned to see what the issue was, including myself.

“Sir…” Davis stumbled over his words as he got into a standing position pushing from his desk as if he had just been told to jump.
What the fuck is going on?

“Why don’t you tell the rest of the staff what happens when you try to make a fool of this company? Of the company my father spent years building from the ground up.” There was a glint of something I had never seen in Roger’s eyes. A need for blood—for death.

“Sir… Can we talk about—” Davis tried adding, but it did no good. Roger waved in security as his hand landed on Davis’s shoulder.

“No, we cannot talk about this. Once it’s found out you’re here for yourself and not the company, then it becomes a problem. You made us believe you had the company’s best interest at heart, but you didn’t. So, that means you lied, and I don’t do well with liars. We’re a team, Davis, but you aren’t a team player. If we all did whatever we wanted, for whatever reason, this company wouldn’t be what it is. Let alone exist.”

“I promise it won’t happen again…” Davis pleaded, sweat beading on his forehead as he clasped his hands together.

“I know it won’t, Davis, and neither will any of these people make the same mistake as you. Listen up. This is what happens to you when you disobey this company. When you think you can use it for your own benefits.” Every word that came out of Roger’s mouth was spat directly at me. His eyes drilled into mine as the guards came in, pulling Davis from the room as if he never meant a damn thing to them.

With a smile, Roger walked away… His eyes bore into mine, and his threat still rang in my ears. For once, it was starting to hit me. The good of doing this might not outweigh the bad.

Kandace was right.

I could very well be signing my own death certificate.

killer—the present

“When you think
about dying what do you think it will be like?” Her question rang in my ears. Her soft, delicate voice wrapped me in warmth like I had never felt before.

To say I wasn’t human would be true. I wasn’t. At least, not since they pumped me full of drugs. They morphed me into this killing machine, but now I was free. Free of the chains, the bars, and the people. Never again would I find myself in confinement.

My thoughts drifted back to the things that they made us do. The killing, the fights they caused between us. They wanted to control us, to make us into their own little lab rats. None of us truly understood the need they had for us. Some of us were injected with drugs to alter the human DNA while others were trained to fight.

“You were talking in your sleep again,” Jaxon, my right-hand man, said from his bunk. We were in hiding having just escaped the facility where they were holding us. They thought we were weak. They thought wrong. I remember wrapping my hands around the doctor’s throat as he tried to shoot me up with a tranquilizer. It almost made me laugh.

The memories of bones crunching, the gurgling of blood in his throat, his eyes popping out of his head from the pressure of my hand squeezing, and the way his face turned purplish blue from lack of oxygen as bruises formed from underneath my fingers—it all fed me. Fed me to find vengeance. The people that had created this drug and administered it to us would die. I would make sure their blood stained my hands one way or another.

“Sorry,” I offered stretching in my bed. Our beds were small, but they were beds. We had never been given anything as soft… let alone a pillow or mattress. Those things were lavish and unknown to even us.

“Don’t be. I know what you’re going through.” Jaxon offered his sympathy, even when he knew I wouldn’t take it. He knew what I wanted him to know, which wasn’t very much. Most of us had no recollection of who we were, what we were doing, or where we had come from.
Except me.
I had memories. I could feel the pain and hurt in those memories, which told me once I had been sick. Once I had been dying and there was no hope. Yet, here I was, breathing and living. How I had come to live and thrive was unknown. Something told me PGI knew more than they were ever letting on.

I grunted in return as I pulled my long brown hair into a ponytail. I had plans to get my hands bloody today. That wasn’t changing. I had one desire, one reason my heart was still beating, and it was to take out anyone I could who would have answers.

After all they had done to us, they deserved death. Fuck, it would be their last dying wish by the time I got done with them.

“My body’s itching for a kill, Jaxon.” I rolled my shoulders and cracked my knuckles. We had been at the secret compound for months now. The building was a brick structure built into the ground five floors deep. To the naked eye, it would be seen as a newer apartment building. If they entered it, they would have another thing coming. Behind its walls lay killers, genetically mutated males capable of far more than just death. One look could strike fear so deep some had lost their minds.

“Mine, too. It feels like it’s been days since I ripped that nurse’s fucking throat out as she screamed. My cock was hard the entire time I did it, too.” He smiled like a sick fuck. Society was made to think what he had just described was bad, and it was. What they were doing to us was just as bad, though. We had learned that an eye for an eye was how justice would be served. Do to us only what you wish to be done to you.

“Killer. Jaxon.” Gauge said our names with authority in his voice. Gauge was whom you could consider to be the President of the escapees. He was still in touch with his humanity for the most part. I had yet to see a time when he truly lost his shit.

“Gauge,” I greeted him, my voice gruff. I needed to fuck or spill blood.
Something.
Blood spilling quenched the thirst of the slaughterer I had become, and since fucking was an opportunity that wasn’t given to us often, spilling blood was my favorite.

Women shied away from us, and those who did want in on the sex couldn’t handle it. We were savages in everything that we did. Fucking and fighting were our best outlets for anger. Both always ended in blood.

“You look like a bear that’s been poked one too many times,” Gauge joked. I didn’t smile. Hell, I didn’t find it even remotely fucking funny.

“Want to hear a joke?” Her voice entered my mind as a flash of a memory hit me.
My fists clenched as I gripped at the bed sheet. The muscles in my stomach clenched as I forced myself to hold onto to every second of it.

She had brown hair that flowed down her back freely. Big brown eyes that sparkled as she smiled at something I had said. She was saying something to me, her mouth moving, but I was unable to hear it... She was fading out…

“Killer.” Gauge’s voice was the first I heard, and it only made my anger worse. Who was she, and why the fuck did I have memories of a life I didn’t remember living?

“Get the fuck away from me,” I growled. I was on the verge of ripping the whole fucking room apart. My body was shaking as I shot out of bed.

“Killer. Stop. Calm down.” Gauge’s voice rang in my ears, but his words meant nothing to me. It was as if my mind and body weren’t connected. I wouldn’t be able to stop the destruction I would cause until I found answers. I needed them. So fucking badly.

Blood. Bathe in the blood of your enemies,
the little voice in my head said. I smiled like the devil at the mere thought of killing—slaughtering.

I made my way up from the fourth floor climbing all four flights of stairs without a single bead of sweat forming. I was made this way. I was made to be indestructible.

Finding the nearest exit, I pushed out into the open alleyway that sat next to the building. It was time to hunt. To prey upon those who deserved it most. A piece of who I was, the one who clung to my humanity, the one who held onto the memory of that girl—disappeared. In its place was a man who would kill without even a thought. When I looked at the world through these eyes, I saw mass chaos and the need to rectify, to deliver my revenge. There was no mercy, compassion, or caring.

There was only death, revenge, and blood.

With my heart beating out of my chest, I lifted my nose into the air, searching for my next kill. In a city like this, rapist, criminals, and other disgusting beings, I could find my next kill without any effort.

I scoured the alleyways until I stumbled upon a man cornering a woman. Her shrill cries could be heard from a block over, yet everyone continued to pass by ignoring the problem. That was the issue with these people. They didn’t care about those who were being preyed upon. They just kept going on, minding their own business, acting as if they hadn’t even seen it. That’s how they were raised—to turn a blind eye to those being hurt.

A growl escaped my throat as the man who held the woman against the wall turned toward me.

“Want to join?” he asked, his hand slipping under her shirt. Tears had started streaming down the woman’s face, her lips swollen, and one of her eyes black.

“Yes,” I said with an animalistic sound now present in my voice. My body pleaded with me to snatch him up by the throat. To crush his windpipe, to make him beg for his next breath. His smile grew bigger in the dim lighting. He thought I wanted to join him in the raping of the woman he had taken captive. The very woman he was beating on.

“Roger, stop. Please stop.” Another memory hit me. The same girl crying and pleading with someone to stop. What were they doing to her?

Rage consumed me as I pushed the memory away and crossed the alleyway a second later. I gripped the man by his jacket pulling him into my face as the woman slumped against the building.

Then my hands were around his throat. My teeth were clenched like the beast I was as I squeezed with all my might. I had no need to punch or to kick. I had learned cutting off air supply was the best way to go. Fewer marks, less screaming, and it gave them a chance to stare into my eyes as I watched the life leave their body.

The man’s eyes bulged out as I squeezed tighter and tighter. I could hear the shattering of bones and feel the pulsing of blood through his still beating heart. My muscles burned as heat bloomed in my veins stirring the fiery beast within.

I closed my eyes as I felt his skin breaking. I felt his blood marring my hands, the warmth of his death radiated through me causing a europium of emotions to form. As I released his lifeless body to the ground, I focused on my breathing… rubbing the blood of my enemy into my hands.

The shallow cries of the woman could be heard in the back of my mind, but I hesitated. Making sure she was okay wasn’t something I should do. I was a monster. I could kill her. One kill was never enough.
Never
. I could feel it already, the need to deprive someone of life filling me to the brim. I needed to get away from this woman, and I needed to do it now before she became my next victim.

As I took my first step away from the woman, a voice entered my mind cutting off all movement.

“You’re so smart, Diesel.”

“Stop,” I screamed, my hands clawing at my head. I wanted to rip the memories from my mind. To throw them away. I was paralyzed, a victim to my own memories, my own body.

“Are you flirting with me?” She smiled as I placed my hand on hers. Her brown eyes were so warm and vibrant.

“
Stop. I can’t take it anymore.” I fell to my knees. The strongest most-indestructible man on the planet had one singular weakness that he wasn’t even aware of, someone he had no name for—just mere memories of his life.

Either I was going crazy, having been dosed one too many times or I was starting to remember small glimpses of my life before I became the man I am now. All I knew was that neither one was good for me. Remembering my previous life had the chance of pulling me into a deeper, darker world. Not remembering would drive me insane. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.

“Killer, stand in your cell or I’ll have to send someone in who will make you.” I gritted my teeth. I would love to see them try. Rage stirred inside of me, the idea of getting my hands on them again. I loved the feel of their bones breaking, the rage that would consume me at that moment.

“5…” He was counting down to his own death.

“4…” He had no idea what I wanted to do to him, but he was going to find out soon.

“3…” I cracked my knuckles and waited for them to enter…

“2… Back up…” His voice was shallow, almost not meeting my ears. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and a smile pulled at my lips.

“1…” The doors to my cell opened and in they walked with their tranquilizers and doping drugs. I had lashed out before they got the chance to touch me, swiping my hand across the chest of the man who was closest to me as I dug my fingers into his flesh. Blood sprayed from his wound, splattering against the wall and other men with him. I felt nothing for killing him. He would be replaced tomorrow by someone just as dumb as he was.

“Killer…” I could hear someone yelling just as a dart hit me square in the chest. I smiled knowing I, at the very least, had gotten my point across.