Falling One by One Read online

  “I can’t argue that.” I put my palm to the back of his neck and drew his forehead to mine, the heat of his skin burning against mine for only a fraction of a second before I was torn away from him in the familiar dispersal of transport. Just before my existence flashed out—for that cut of a second—I realized I’d never been more afraid of this process.

  Wherever my atoms and cells ended up, I didn’t want to come out on the other side without Armise.

  Chapter Two

  The air smelled of ash and rusted metal. It was bitter on my tongue as I inhaled and it made my chest ache. It was as if the air was sharp, filled with particulates I couldn’t see that were ripping minuscule tears into the vulnerable flesh of my lungs as I gasped for breath. I hated transporting and doing so unwillingly made me fight the process. All of that should have added up to more pain…and this time it didn’t.

  Perhaps the lack of pain was because I was so on edge—unaware of the location where our cells were coalescing yet prepared for the violence that was to come. I recovered from the shock of transport within seconds.

  Armise was still kneeling in front of me, his muscles bunched, head bowed as he gritted his teeth, but otherwise he showed much less distress than he had before we were forced into transport. Maybe his ease compared to the other times I’d seen him use transport was because he’d used this method of travel much more often than I had.

  Or maybe—it occurred to me with the cold shock of slamming awareness—it was because this transport tech was Singaporean and this was the more advanced experience Armise had spoken of.

  “You’re home,” I stated to Armise, ignoring my parents as they loomed behind us—or attempted to loom as much as they could, since both of them were significantly less in presence than Armise and me. If it wasn’t for the direct threat they’d made against Armise’s life and the device they supposedly had that could incapacitate him, I would have cut them both down without thought. But I wasn’t going to do anything that would cause Armise further harm.

  “This is not my home.” Armise’s lip twitched in distaste. There was an irrational part of me that wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the motion. Whether he meant we weren’t in Singapore or that the country of his birth was no longer his home, I didn’t know. Armise appeared to be sure about where we were or were not.

  I grasped his hand and lifted us both to our feet.

  Once we knew what Ahriman had inserted into Armise to be able to control him, I would disable it so we could get out of Nationalist territory. I needed Armise ready to fight. It was our job to observe. Stall. Protect each other. To survive. We’d done it before—apart if not together—and we would do it again.

  My parents led us to the transport room door, where two teenagers stood guard. Both of them were much too young to be soldiers, yet they carried themselves with an air of official capacity that matched their advanced weaponry. I had no idea what to do with what I saw in front of me, and from the screwed-up furrow of his brow, apparently neither did Armise.

  These kids weren’t victims. They didn’t appear downtrodden, in pain or in any other way negatively affected by any genetic experiment. They were comfortable in their surroundings. Well fed. Healthy, if not completely sane. Because no matter what my parents tried to tell themselves, there was no fucking way it was sane to have any child escorting prisoners of war.

  The sun was rising as we left the industrial building that the transport rooms were located in, which meant we were somewhere near the opposite side of the world from the capital. We were met with an audience of more kids and teenagers. It wasn’t my first time being paraded. Armise’s either. I glanced at him and saw the same anger mirrored in his face as he watched our guards. We both knew enough about the public walk from the transport room to wherever we would be interrogated and beaten—or if we were lucky, simply subdued—to know that the walk we were on now wasn’t normal. Nothing about this situation was normal.

  We trod a deep-grooved dirt path to a smaller outbuilding. I didn’t bother to turn around to see how closely my mother and father followed us. I didn’t want to see their satisfaction at my apparent acquiescence. I ground my boots into the rocks that we stepped into. The field of crushed stones surrounded the perimeter of the building and extended into the distance as far as I could see.

  At the edge of the wasteland stood Grimshaw Jegs, the leader of the Nationalists and Holly Jegs’ brother. His bold, green tattooed lines of ivy shimmered as he turned to us, moving with the curve of his neck and the crossing of his arms as he watched us approach.

  I had last seen Grimshaw in that bunker when the Nationalists attacked, and just like that day I recognized him immediately by those distinctive, living tats. We weren’t familiar with each other. I hadn’t spoken to him. Ever. I had no idea what to expect when he opened his mouth to speak. Well, other than what his sister sounded like.

  I could hear the rasp of Jegs’ voice in my head. Her voice was a quiet force that demanded to be listened to.

  From outward appearances Grimshaw had the same surety Jegs carried with her, but none of the distance. None of the callousness. I reminded myself that he was a leader, a politician for all intents and purposes, while his sister was a soldier. His persona would have been practiced and perfected over the years as he climbed higher up the ranks of the Nationalists until he forced the former leader into handing over power. Unlike Jegs, whose communication skills were likely to be used for barking out responses and freaking the fuck out of her enemy.

  “Thank you for bringing them in.” The words leaving his throat were raspier than Jegs’, as if they grated over his larynx as they escaped in deliberately formed sentences. But he wasn’t addressing my mother and father, he was looking at and talking to me.

  “What the hell?” I heard my father say behind me, then his and my mother’s knees were crashing to the ground, bone crunching on unforgiving stone as their bodies curled into themselves, much as Armise’s had in Priyessa’s apartment.

  I glared at Grimshaw. “You do that to Armise and I’ll kill you.”

  Grimshaw tilted his head. “I have no doubt.” He waved his hand and started to track away. “Follow me.”

  I didn’t spare one second of pity for the sight of my parents clutching themselves in pain. I eyed Armise and we took to our usual defensive positions next to each other before following Grimshaw into the heart of the encampment.

  * * * *

  Grimshaw shut the door to the outbuilding behind him, sealing Armise and me into a room that contained a small, square table with four wire and cloth-strip chairs. I didn’t sit, but Armise plopped down on a straining chair and leaned back, testing the limits of just how much weight it could suspend without sending him pitching to the floor.

  Armise didn’t appear concerned—about the tensile strength of his seat or our would-be-captor and supposed enemy sitting across from him—and neither did Grimshaw. He took the seat next to Armise and leaned just as far back, running his fingers over his shaved head and letting out a protracted sigh.

  There was a resemblance to Jegs in the roundness of his face, in the sloped curve of his nose and the dominant chin that he pushed forward in a gesture much like what Jegs did when she was frustrated. His skin was lighter than hers and his eyes were just as black. I couldn’t have called them soulless, not now as I studied him, waiting for him to speak. His lips were drawn into a frown, the crease between his eyes pronounced with anxiousness or deep thought. He wore his vulnerability externally, in an unguarded show I’d never witnessed with Jegs, even after her capture and near death in that warehouse in Singapore.

  Armise either had less patience than I did or was willing to be the one to break the uncomfortable silence. He likely didn’t feel the same need to posture that Grimshaw and I did since, by his own admission, he didn’t have a formal stake in the war. He took his blunt approach, as usual.

  “You have chosen a different side?”

  Grimshaw leaned forward, kept his pal
ms locked to the side of his head as he considered the floor with a weight, and for a length of time, that made me wonder if he was ever going to speak. I leaned against the wall, the chill of whatever country we were in leaching through the cobbled bricks of the earthen wall and whispering around me in cold waves. From my position I took stock of both Armise and Grimshaw. While I kept my gaze locked to the Nationalist leader, I saw Armise out of the corner of my eye. He was watching for my reaction to whatever Grimshaw said next.

  Grimshaw finally spoke, his voice rattling uncertainly over his response. “I’m human. Mistakes were made.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my disgust. “Your forces killed more Revolution soldiers in that bunker than had died in months previous. You almost killed me. Choosing the wrong side of history is more than a passive mistake of circumstance.”

  Grimshaw met my eyes with a stripped-raw gaze. “I know. I’d like to give excuses, but there’s not much I can say about it other than I was wrong.”

  I scoffed. “Where’s the bravado? The man who stood in that hallway in the bunker and let opposing forces take shots at him? The man who led his forces into a slaughter of Revolution soldiers—”

  Armise cut in. “Those are wrongs that cannot be righted. Lives that cannot be returned.”

  I lifted an eyebrow and looked to Armise. That was a statement I never would have expected to come from the man Ahriman called the Mongol Giant. He had taken way more lives than I. Had taken many of them in much more violent and vicious ways than I was capable of. But I had seen and heard things from Armise in the last two days that fifteen years with him couldn’t have prepared me for.

  Maybe the fault of interpretation couldn’t be placed at Armise’s feet. Maybe I’d never really paid attention to what he’d said to me.

  I pointed to Armise. “What he said.”

  Grimshaw tipped his chin up. “Which is why I used your parents to get you here.”

  He raised a BC5 and flipped it for Armise and me to view. The screen showed an aerial angle of a location identical to Exley’s footage of the camps the jacquerie kids had been taken to.

  “You’re aware of what I’m showing you?” Grimshaw asked.

  “I think so, but let’s be damn sure,” I replied. “This is a live feed of one of the genetmod experimentation camps?”

  “The first,” he confirmed. “There aren’t many subjects left in this one, but enough for you to get a full view of what Ahriman’s been doing with the help of your PsychHAg Tiam. I’ll take you into the camp as soon as you want to move. I also have the locations of all the camps across the globe. Let me know how many people you want to mobilize, when and where, and I’ll add Nationalist numbers to that so we can destroy them all.”

  “That simple?” I questioned him.

  “Yes, Colonel. That simple.”

  He was taking more than a simple risk by providing us this intel and offering his backing. That he didn’t remark upon the powerful enemies he was provoking meant he either knew what the implications were and didn’t care, or that he was making a play we hadn’t anticipated. Both options came with complications.

  I stared him down. “Where the hell are we anyway?”

  “The DCR half of Kash.”

  Not in Singapore, but pretty damn close. The Kash region was split, half controlled by the DCR and half by the States. It was surrounded on three sides by Singapore-held lands that were empty for the most part. I had to wonder if the DCR’s President, Kariabba Tivvy, had any idea of what was occurring within the boundaries of her territory. “How close are we to the States’ portion of Kash?”

  Grimshaw pointed at his screen. “The camp sits on the boundary line of the two halves. A couple miles from here.”

  Ahriman had chosen to place his first camp at the only place in the world where his two greatest enemies shared a border. “He’s mocking us and the DCR.”

  Armise leaned forward and manipulated the BC5 screen to zoom in to a more detailed view. “How many in this camp?”

  “Upwards of fifteen full hybrids and twelve in various stages of development. We classify those children as pre-hys for lack of an actual term. You won’t get any resistance from that group. For the most part, those kids just want to go home.”

  “And the rest?” Armise prodded.

  Grimshaw frowned and scrubbed his hand over his shaved head again.

  I swallowed the bile building in the back of my throat. “Are we going to have to fight them if we go in there to D3?”

  “Maybe—” He stopped himself. “Yeah, you will. There aren’t many people who can control the full hybrids once they’ve completed the transformation. The ones who survive are usually yanked out of the camp and pushed into active combat training. That there are so many of the full hybrids remaining in the camp is problematic.”

  There was a whole hell of a lot about this that was more than problematic.

  Armise was staring at the screen, focused on a corner where some kind of drill was happening. “That is similar to the training I witnessed.”

  Grimshaw’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve seen the hybrids in action?”

  Don’t answer that, I thought, at the same time Armise chuckled and said, “You will not hear any details from me.”

  “Disappointing, but to be expected.”

  “So I’m supposed to believe—” I pulled my lip ring between my teeth and bit down. Hard. “I’m supposed to believe in a change of heart. That you’re not playing both sides somehow.”

  “I can’t expect you to, not yet. Time, action, all that rigmarole. Even then I don’t expect any trust from you. You have to be prepared to fight the hybrids either way, and you have Nationalist support on your side if you want it.”

  “I want Jegs here then,” I demanded. This was a time I needed her cold calculation. She would be able to see past the injustice of what had happened to these kids against their will and would be able to do what had to be done.

  “I do too. But I don’t think she’s going to be willing to transport over for her dear brother.”

  “Her dear traitorous brother,” Armise added without a hint of irony. But I knew his choice of phrasing wasn’t an accident. Jegs had called Armise the traitor once, now it was her brother flipping sides.

  “Is that irony or karma?” I muttered.

  Armise narrowed his eyes and chuffed with displeasure. I pushed off the wall and started for the door. “Let’s get Jegs here now. Chen can use my command override codes to crack into her transport chip and force her to your platform.”

  “She’s going to be pissed,” Grimshaw said.

  “Yeah, I know. Won’t be the first time.”

  I opened the door to an empty camp. None of the audience we’d accumulated leaving the transport room were outside anymore. And neither were Lucien and Tallitia.

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do with your parents?” Grimshaw inquired as we crossed the rocky path between his building and the transport station.

  I didn’t bother to look at him as I answered. “No.”

  * * * *

  Jegs burst into existence on the transporter platform, her back to us. She was outfitted in a Revolution uniform, her right hand hidden from our view, and despite the shock she had to be experiencing from the forced transport she didn’t move.

  “Jegs, put the gun down,” I called out to her, hoping that if she knew I was here then she wouldn’t go into full retaliatory mode without assessing the situation first. “It’s just me.”

  She turned her head, catching my eye then switching her focus to Armise. But when she caught sight of Grimshaw, she raised her weapon and aimed it at her brother’s head.

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  “If you were going to he would already be dead.” She glared at me and I held her gaze, refusing to back down. “Trust me and put it down.”

  I saw her eyes flick to Armise and I had to hold back a frustrated sigh. Was there ever going to be a time she wouldn’t be
wondering if he was going to knife her? Or me?

  She lowered the gun but didn’t step off the platform.

  “Was Priyessa on the level?” Jegs asked.

  I had been in battle and undercover with Jegs long enough to hear all the questions she wasn’t voicing by asking me that one as vaguely as she had. She was asking if it was true that Armise and I had been taken hostage by my parents. She was asking if Priyessa could be trusted. By choosing not to shoot her brother on sight, she was re-evaluating the status of Grimshaw and conceding that she was willing to consider an alternative to his narrative.

  Maybe that last logic jump was an unlikely hope on my part. But there was something keeping her from twitching her finger on the trigger and blowing his head open just for spite and an aftertaste of vengeance.

  It was her unflinching focus on me that unnerved me the most though, because it told me she was worried about my mental stability and my leadership capabilities. Scrutiny of either was wholly unwelcome. It wasn’t her job to look after me and I didn’t need her to care whether I was stable or not. It was her job to follow my orders. To be competent in her work backing me up. I needed her to be tactically vicious. I didn’t give a shit whether she felt anything in the process. Her ability to cut through emotion and home in on the mission was what I valued the most in her service and what I needed her here for. Armise and his newfound conscience could help me deal with the moral implications of what we would be facing.

  I processed it all in fractions of a second, all the pieces fitting together in a moment of clarity.

  “Completely,” I answered her. She still didn’t move.

  “Let us talk,” Armise stated in a quiet voice. I was surprised he was addressing Jegs at all, but then I looked to him and realized he was speaking to me.

  I scanned the faces around the room. “Who? You and me?”

  His features locked down as he clarified, “Jegs and me.”

  “What?”

  “Five minutes,” Jegs stated from the platform. She didn’t glance at Grimshaw when she added, “Just Darcan and me. Then I’ll decide if I’m sticking around.”