Conall’s voice. Rafe’s. The sounds flowed over Gray, past him, without penetrating his consciousness. Every single cell of his being was focused on the impossible, bleeding man beneath him.
Gray’s stomach lurched, and his lips formed the name in a barely audible whisper, one that ricocheted through his chest like a low-velocity bullet tumbling around inside his rib cage.
“Mace.”
KNOX
The cool edge of metal biting into Knox’s fingers was the only thing that felt real.
He tightened his grip on the dog tag, holding it until he swore he could feel the raised text on it burning its way into his palm.
James Mason. MD-701. Silver Devils.
A memento of a dead man. A dead man who was currently zip-tied to a chair on the far side of the room, enduring Rafe’s patient interrogation with a blank expression. Dani hovered nearby, her body coiled with readiness. At Mace’s slightest twitch she’d pounce, protecting Rafe from attack.
Mace didn’t look like a man planning on twitching.
Hell, Mace didn’t look like a man planning on surviving.
“I don’t get it,” Conall whispered fiercely. He had a tablet gripped in one hand, his fingers a blur as they danced across its surface. “We have a back door into Security. I have read everything that mentions us. There’s nothing about Mace still being alive. Or even some plan to impersonate him.”
“Richter has a shit ton of latitude inside the TechCorps,” Maya replied, her gaze fixed on Mace. “Sometimes he runs projects off the books. They don’t care as long as he gets results and doesn’t exceed his budget.”
In an uncharacteristic explosion of temper, Conall pitched his tablet into the wall. The screen cracked as it crashed to the floor. “Then what the fuck good is it?”
“Hey.” Maya squeezed Conall’s shoulder. “You knew this was a possibility. That’s why people like me exist, to keep track of the secrets they won’t even put in their own systems. This isn’t your fault.”
Knox stared at the spiderwebbed cracks on the tablet’s face, his thoughts every bit as fractured. He should be the one comforting Conall. The pain in the younger man’s voice cut deep, but not as deep as the guilt.
Mace was alive. Mace was alive.
And while the rest of the Silver Devils—his brothers—had been settling into their soft life of freedom, tiling bathrooms and building a clinic in Mace’s honor, he’d been locked in some dank, forgotten hole in the depths of the TechCorps, tortured and alone.
Tortured and abandoned. Knox had left a man behind.
Nina wrapped her fingers around his hand and squeezed firmly, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Don’t. If Richter’s behind this, this is part of his plan. You, blaming yourself. So don’t.”
She was right. Knox knew she was right. But the only thing worse than the guilt gnawing him from the inside out was how easily his brain still clicked over into clear-eyed assessment of the situation.
It shouldn’t be so easy to view a friend as a security threat.
“Conall.” He used his captain voice, and it worked its subconscious magic on Conall. He straightened, ready for orders, and Knox provided them. “Get your equipment so you can scan him again for tracking devices. Make sure we didn’t miss anything. And see if you can connect to his implant and verify the serial number.”
“Got it.” Conall picked up his shattered tablet and stalked from the room.
“Let’s run it down,” Nina said quietly once he was gone. “Number one question is obvious: is it even really him?”
“It’s Mace,” Gray countered. No hesitation, no doubt.
Nina eyed him with gentle sympathy that almost hurt to look at. “I know you want it to be. We all do. But everyone in this room has been bioengineered, Gray. You know what the TechCorps can do with cosmetic surgery—”
“It’s him.” Gray turned to Knox. “When we were fighting, even before I realized it was Mace, it felt … familiar. He was using moves you taught him, Knox. Stuff I watched you teach him.”
Like Conall, Mace hadn’t come to the Silver Devils with the same basic combat training Gray and Rafe had received. As a medic whose augmentations tilted toward the mental over the physical, he’d needed a different style. Devious. Abrupt. Brutal. So Knox had taught him how to end a fight fast and dirty.
“Assume it’s him, Maya,” Knox said. “He showed up trying real hard to kill Gray. What would you guess?”
Maya tilted her head, her gaze growing distant. “I don’t know. Brainwashing, maybe?”
“Brainwashing?”
“Reprogramming.” Her voice had taken on that slightly detached tone, sliding from her usual warm drawl to clipped enunciation. “Even with the advances in neural reconditioning, success rates have been limited. Anyone can be broken with sufficient application of pain, but the results are unpredictable and the process is time-consuming.”
“So why bother? It’s a gamble, at best. If Richter suspects you’re all still alive…” Nina shook her head. “There are easier ways to remedy the situation.”
“Because it’s not just about killing us anymore,” Gray rasped. “He wants it to hurt like hell. It’s personal now.”
It always had been. Knox’s knuckles ached with phantom pain, a reminder of those brutal days when Richter had kept them locked up in a forgotten TechCorps basement.
How carefully he’d designed that prison and its five cells. Unbreakable polycarbonate walls. They’d all watched in horror as the kill-switch hidden in every Protectorate implant kicked into gear and Mace began to decline. Without biochemical adjustment, his death had been too fast, and still so agonizingly slow.
Knox had shattered his hands against the wall between them, unable to tolerate the agony of watching his soldier—his friend—die alone.
“It’s more than that,” Knox said quietly. “He’s the only weapon Richter knows I would never destroy.”
Maya’s eyes tightened, her body tensed as if in remembered pain. “Fucking with your head would definitely be a bonus. Richter’s the kind of sadist who goes all in. Especially if he feels like you made him look stupid.”
“Psychological warfare,” Nina whispered.
“You have no idea.” Her voice trembled, just a little, and Knox didn’t want to know what Richter had done to put that dread in her usually warm gaze.
Knox didn’t have to know. He could imagine. Richter’s reputation for brutality was unparalleled, even in the relatively coldhearted ranks of TechCorps executives.
And Mace had been in his hands for months.
A chair scraped across concrete on the far side of the room. Rafe rose, his expression too relaxed, too easy. He strode toward Knox with Dani stalking at his side, a perfect foil of barely contained agitation.
“Well?” Knox asked when they reached the group.
Rafe exhaled roughly. Up close, Knox could see the stress lines creasing his forehead. “It sounds like him, but he’s not really talking.”
Dani snorted. “And when he does, he’s not making any damn sense.”
Rafe winced but didn’t disagree. “You’d think if someone was impersonating him, they’d have shown up armed with enough knowledge to answer basic questions. But he’s not even trying.”