The whole thing had taken only minutes. The men who’d tried to jump Nina lay sprawled and exposed on the cracked asphalt, their pale skin washed out by the flickering metal-halide lights. They looked even sadder like this. Naked, abandoned.
And dead. Very, very dead.
Knox eased back from the edge of the roof and rolled to his feet, ignoring the warning ache in his muscles. He got a running start and made the leap between buildings. The impact of the landing stabbed through his knees, and he rolled to disperse the shock of the force—something he wouldn’t have had to do a week ago.
Time contracted around Knox. He could feel each second that slipped away. He swung out onto the rickety fire ladder and slid toward the ground, ruthlessly forcing his mind back to the job.
But he kept seeing those dead bodies. Nina had killed four armed men in the time it had taken Knox to draw a deep breath, then walked away from the encounter without a scratch.
Of course this job couldn’t be easy.
His safe house was a mile-and-a-half hike through the shittier parts of Atlanta. This far south of the TechCorps HQ, security was lax, and Protectorate forces wouldn’t venture out without a direct order. There were no checkpoints like the ones lining the streets that wound their way up the Hill, where the TechCorps sprawled like a brooding dragon sitting on its hoard. There, disciplined squads made regular sweeps amongst the posh high-rises that housed elite scientists and distinguished executives. Farther down the Hill, haphazard patrols guarded the more modest homes and businesses that catered to the fortunate families who’d found a way to make themselves useful to the TechCorps.
None of that existed here. The southern half of the city could be on fire, and the Protectorate wouldn’t stir itself to piss in this general direction in a feeble attempt to put it out. Sure, they swept in every few months to remind people that the TechCorps still had one boot pressed to their necks, ready to come down. But the rest of the time, they didn’t give a shit if the people in the poorer neighborhoods tore each other apart, as long as the TechCorps had enough warm bodies to fill their support staff jobs and their experiment rooms.
People so desperate for money they’d do damn near anything for it? That was the only resource no one was running out of any time soon.
Knox knew that better than most.
Still, he hadn’t realized just how bad it had gotten until the Protectorate had pulled them in to deal with the growing labor uprisings. For years, Knox and his team had been deployed outside of TechCorps’ territory, entrusted with delicate missions that required a certain amount of discretion and finesse. Knox had advanced corporate interests and forged connections in dozens of regions—from the fiercely competitive shipping clans in Florida and the Gulf Coast to the warring crime syndicates that had taken over Washington, D.C.
Not that the word crime had much meaning anymore. The only rules left were the ones you were powerful enough to enforce.
Knox had seen lawless places that had descended into swirling chaos, as well as cities with rigid laws that made military discipline seem lax. He’d even seen towns where people had come together, pooling their resources to restore comfort to everyone. The mountain communities dotting the Appalachians, the close-knit neighborhoods ringing New York City’s boroughs, the cozy communes in New England—all were places almost idyllic in their relative peace.
Somehow, Atlanta had become a combination of all three. Though the TechCorps held the city in its brutal grip, their control didn’t extend to support, so the outlying neighborhoods had fallen into neglect. But within those neighborhoods, you could find sparks of light. Communities coming together. Workers fighting for better pay, for better lives.
Hope. That was why the Protectorate had recalled the Silver Devils. Hope had been bubbling up through the cracks in the TechCorps’ power, and they’d wanted Knox to snuff it out.
In those orders, Knox had finally found a line he couldn’t cross.
He broke free of the final line of buildings and left the streetlights behind. Darkness wrapped around him, another layer of safety, and he relaxed slightly. No one was likely to be wandering out this way after dark. The Devils had set up shop in West End, in an abandoned warehouse overlooking the reservoir. The crumbling remains of the old interstate rose beside it, dwarfing the squat concrete building. A huge chunk of the overpass had caved in over a decade ago, wiping out the community below and discouraging resettlement.
After the Flares, weak infrastructure had been their downfall. The federal government had been held together by tissue paper by that point, unable to function effectively, and state governments had filled the void with varying levels of success. Atlanta had been doing better than most of the rest of Georgia, with strong citywide leadership that might have rallied, given time.
Except that the infrastructure was already so fragile. And the TechCorps were right there, a monolith of recently merged medical and tech companies with the latest and greatest of everything. How generous they must have seemed in those first dark days, reaching out with their seemingly unlimited supplies of solar power, water, food, and medicine.
TechCorps offers were always too good to be true, and the hooks they sank into you went bone deep. Atlanta’s swiftly displaced city government had no doubt learned that lesson as harshly as Knox had.
Knox approached the abandoned warehouse they’d taken over. It was truly off the grid, not even hooked up with power or water. They had to procure or process both for themselves. Not the most comfortable place to crash, but it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be here long.
Besides, the Silver Devils had stayed in worse.
Knox approached from the north and stopped precisely five feet from the back door. His embedded communicator beeped, and he activated it with a low command. “Knox here.”
“Gotcha, Captain. Disabling security.”
Conall’s reply echoed inside Knox’s head. They’d had the subcutaneous comms for almost a year, and Knox still wished they’d carved them out along with their trackers three days earlier. Conall swore he’d modified the frequencies to be unique and untraceable, but the things still creeped Knox the fuck out.
Implants to make him stronger and faster? Fine. To moderate his biochemistry to make him the perfect soldier? Okay.
Conall’s voice serving as his inner monologue?
Too far.
It took nearly a minute before Conall sounded the all clear. Knox crossed to the door, which popped open just as he reached it. Conall greeted him with a grin and an outstretched hand. “Glasses.”
Knox slipped off his glasses and relinquished them. “Pull the last thirty minutes of footage first and get it up on the wall. Everyone needs to see it.”
“So you caught up with the mark?”
“Yeah.” Knox eased past Conall and let the tech worry about resetting the security measures. The cavernous main room of the warehouse was well lit, with bright solar-powered LEDs hanging from the bare beams. Rafe and Gray sat at one end of the trestle table, the remains of a meal as well as one of Gray’s ever-present disassembled guns spread out between them.
Knox stopped at the other end and stripped off his tactical vest. “We have a problem.”
“How bad?” Rafe asked, his rice-laden spoon hovering in the air. “She got a security team or something?”
“She is a security team.” Knox shrugged out of his shoulder rig and dropped it on the table. His backup pistol followed, as well as the knife sheath strapped to his leg. “Watch the footage.”