“Really?”
“Yes.” He turned and ran. Devil met my gaze and rushed after him. If Corbin was going, then Devil was, too. I sat down in my chair. Another minute had passed. Damn it.
“Anders?”
“Stop bothering me.” The response sounded rightly annoyed. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the man who couldn’t wait an appropriate time for a rushed job to get done.
Wade ran into the room. “Put this in your ears. It’ll stop that blast.”
Now that was some good news. “Fuck, Corbin and Devil went after her.”
Wade paled. “Tell them to hold off. I’m coming. Tell them.” He turned to run after them. Everyone had something to do, somewhere to go. For me, I had to make sure it all got done. Rushing forward, going first—that hadn’t been me since I’d taken command. And I’d never felt less in control of anything in my life than I did right then.
Sienna
They put me in an office and went to get help. Okay. Here I was. Now what? I’d managed to hide the fact that, for now, I was strong and full of nanos that were keeping me that way. I stared down at my arm. It still read zero. Maybe there would be a time I could count on that, but I wasn’t there mentally yet.
Through the thin wall, I could hear people talking. What they said was muffled, but this area had thin enough walls that I could make out the sound of annoyance. Whoever was talking to each other in there, they weren’t happy.
I whirled around. What on Earth did I think I would find in this office? I had no idea. What did people put in their offices? Was this one even active or just an empty place Johnny and Not-Johnny put me in?
I wasn’t going to stand here and wait to be caught by someone who actually knew what was going on. I didn’t know what the men who had found me did, but I didn’t get the feeling that they were very high up in this organization. I’d place credits on the idea that the higher executives had seen women. Also, if they’d known much of anything, they’d know that the Super Soldiers were castrated to the point that they wouldn’t have been a threat to me. At least not sexually.
None of that mattered. I had to concentrate, and that was easier said than done. I was tough. I was tough. Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe it. There was a building full of people here who could hear my heartbeat and tell things about me that even I didn’t know how to do yet.
I swallowed and steeled my back. There hadn’t been people when they’d brought me to this room outside. If I was lucky, maybe there still wasn’t.
I rushed through the door. It wasn’t locked. I almost felt bad for Not-Johnny who hadn’t latched it. But his loss was my gain in this case.
The space I came out into was a big open room filled with desks and lots of machines I couldn’t identify. That was okay. I could use the lights. The thought brought up Corbin, which really made me grin. It was like he was with me, showing me how to do basic things.
Whoever was in the other room continued to shout. They were really not happy. But now I could hear the words. Deal. Negotiation. Losing. They hated Evander. My heart sped up, and I tried to force it to calm. I bet it was someone from that other company yelling.
Could I really do this? Yes, I could. I was going to stop Evander. They’d never see me coming. I opened that door and walked in.
Devil
I broke the neck of the next one who came at me. Those fuckers had tried to board our shuttle. No one boarded my shuttle if I didn’t want them to. This was my ship, my people, and they were going to give me back my girl. They’d tried to use that device again, but our doctor was as good as theirs. Probably better, although Wade had no fucking confidence. We’d work on that. After we got back Sienna and eliminated these threats.
That’s all they were. A temporary setback in what would otherwise be a wonderfully completed mission. I could always tell when things were going well and when they weren’t. This was an all-go finale. I felt it in my bones. Just like I’d woken up knowing the day I would be taken prisoner by Sterling and the others who delivered me to Chen would be a loss. My first L in years. But it turned out to be a big one and the best L to ever happen to me. Yes, it brought me to Sienna. Taught me to be human.
I hadn’t known I wanted to be that.
But I did. Badly. First, because it had seemed the thing to do to get out of my situation in prison and then after for her. I wanted to be the kind of man she could love.
And somehow—fuck—she had.
Now, however, I had to be my old self. I had to end everyone here until I got to Sienna.
“I can’t hear her.” Corbin spoke, and it jarred my attention. I hadn’t been listening, I’d been too busy ending.
My stomach tightened and fear, an emotion I never had time for, struck me silent. It was almost hard to speak. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t know.” Corbin stormed forward. “But I’m going to find out.”
I should have known she’d be dead. I’d done too many bad things in the universe to have something as beautiful as Sienna. I was never going to get to keep her. The Chens had taught me about energy, that it could be moved, manipulated, heard. It was about frequency, but they had a spiritual edge to them that was impossible to deny. What you put out, you got back. And Sienna had just died because I was such a bad fucking person.
I was taking all of these sheep with me. Every one of them would know pain before they died because…
“She’s not dead.” Corbin held an executive in a choke hold. It was a lethal maneuver. Sometimes you could keep them alive, but that was clearly not his intention. I looked around. There were dead bodies on the floor all around me.
Wade stared at me for a long second. “Were you even conscious when you did that?”
“Not sure.” I shrugged. “If they hurt a hair on her head, that was better than they deserved.”
Wade smiled at me, a slow one that spoke of pain. “Agreed.”
He wasn’t like any doctor I’d ever known. But then he’d had pain at the hands of these turds, too. They’d taken him, held him hostage, abused him. Wade was as dark as the rest of us. She brought out the only light we had.
“Where is she?” Because I couldn’t hear her, and unless they had wrapped her in one of the devices that hid her, then she wasn’t here.
“He put her in the machine Blaze talked about.” Corbin dropped the now dead body onto the floor. “He sent her to Evander.”
I’d been so lost to all of this that I hadn’t even heard that conversation. Talk about a blackout state. This was a new phenomenon for me. Maybe I had to be careful how many people I killed in the future. Oh well, I’d deal with that later.
I grabbed the communicator. Time to tell Blaze what was happening. “Hey, it’s me.”
“Got her?” Blaze answered, and I shook my head. I’d have answered the same way.
“No, it seems that—”
“Hey.” Wade ran forward, but it was too late. Corbin had stuck himself inside of the machine. In seconds, it had gone from off to on, and with a loud boom, Corbin was gone.
I laughed. “Well, it seems that Evander has her now thanks to that machine. But Corbin went after her, and that was that.”