by Zoe Chant
The bed was right there in front of them, but his blood was running too hot and his pulse pounding too fast to take the time to lie down. Nor could he imagine taking the time to get undressed. He needed to be in her now, merging their bodies until all barriers between them melted away.
Fiona gave him a nudge forward, and his back met the wall. In a voice low and husky with arousal, she said, “I can’t wait.”
“Me neither.”
She pushed his pants down to his hips, and slid her palm along him as she went. He groaned, thrusting into her hand. His whole body felt like it was on fire. His hands were once again shaking as he reached up her skirt, feeling the heat of her thighs, and pulled down her panties. They fell around her ankles. Fiona stepped out of them, then kicked them away.
He put his hand under her skirt and slipped a finger into her slick folds. She cried out aloud at just that brief caress, and he knew she was as close to the edge as he was.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Just like this.”
She stood on her tiptoes, pressing herself against him. Justin put his hands under her thighs and lifted her. She gripped his shoulders and kissed him hard as he slid into her like a key into a lock.
He gasped at the intensity of the sensation. She was so hot and wet and tight inside, gripping him from within. Fiona too gasped, her eyes opening wide. As he began to thrust, she kissed his lips, his throat, his cheeks, his eyelids. As his pleasure built within him, his love for her burned hotter and hotter until it exploded in an ecstatic white-heat, like the heart of a sun.
Justin leaned against the wall, holding Fiona in his arms. She lay as boneless and content as a cat in the sun, her head resting on his shoulder. He felt like he could stay like that forever.
After a while, she lifted her head and nudged him. “Aren’t you getting tired?”
“Never.” Then he admitted, “But my feet might be starting to fall asleep.”
She laughed. “Let’s take a shower.”
He carried her to the bathroom, where they took off their masks and undressed. Fiona unpinned her braids and Justin helped her unravel them, her hair sliding through his fingers like silk, before they stepped into the shower. The hot water washed away his sweat and made her hair seem to flow like liquid. She might have been a water spirit risen to pull him into the depths, not to drown but to find a new life in a strange new world.
When they left the shower and dressed again in their regular clothes, Justin sat down on the bed.
You’re not brave if you’re not scared, he thought. It only feels like telling this story will hurt so much that it’ll actually kill me.
He still felt exactly like he had that first time he’d stood at 13,000 feet above ground with a parachute strapped to his back. But he beckoned to Fiona. “Come here. I’ve got a story for you.”
She curled up beside him and put her arms around him. Stroking his back, she said quietly, “We haven’t really talked about it, but I do know what you’ve done. Way back in New York City, you told me Apex forced you to become an assassin. But that wasn’t your choice. I didn’t blame you for it then, and learning the details isn’t going to make me blame you now.”
“That’s not what I’m going to tell you. Like you said, I didn’t just up and decide to become a hit man. I’d never have done it if I’d had a choice, but it’s not what’s keeping me awake at night.”
“Then what is?”
As he began to speak, he hoped her love would be his parachute.
Chapter Eleven
Justin’s Story
There were eight of us on the mission where we got captured by Apex. There was a team of four PJs, me and Shane and two other guys, and the crew of the helicopter that was transporting us.
I hadn’t met the helo crew before, but it was a pretty long flight and I’m a chatty guy—at least, I was then—so I knew them a bit by the end of it. Not that we were best friends or anything, but we talked some about movies and some about their families and some about sports. Me and Elizabeth, who was one of the door gunners, made a bet on the World Series. She seriously thought the Cubs were going to win it this time.
I already knew the other PJs. I’d worked with Armando a couple times, just enough that I liked him and trusted him to have my back. Mason was a buddy of mine. I’d baked one of his kids Hunger Games cupcakes for her last birthday. They had white chocolate arrows and raspberry jam blood splatters. Her mom thought they were way too gory, but Mikayla loved them.
Other than me, Shane wasn’t close to anyone on the mission. He doesn’t get close to many people. He’s choosy. If you’re his friend, that’s a big deal for him. He’ll be loyal to you forever. I don’t know if he ever mentioned his own nickname. It’s Comeback. It’s from this old cowboy movie called Shane that a bunch of us watched on the base. It was mostly a joke about this one part where this kid starts screaming, “Come back, Shane! Come back!” But there was also a part that wasn’t a joke, which was that Shane would always come back for you.
The details of the mission aren’t important. All you need to know is that we were in combat and I was hit. It felt like someone had taken a swing at my chest with a baseball bat. It didn’t hurt at first, it was just this tremendous impact that knocked me down. I knew I had to get the hell out of the line of fire, but I couldn’t get up.
Shane ran out and dragged me to the nearest cover, and that separated us from everyone else. At first I didn’t realize how bad it was. I was wearing body armor, so I thought I’d just had the wind knocked out of me. But it was an armor-piercing bullet. By the time he got my body armor off to take a look, a pool of blood had already started spreading out beneath me.
That was about the first time I’d ever seen Shane look scared. And that scared me as much as the blood did. My chest started to hurt, and it got worse and worse. He gave me a shot of morphine, which helped with the pain, but he couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.
Shane had been trying to keep an eye out for the enemy at the same time he was helping me. But he finally put down his gun, put his palms on my chest, and leaned his whole weight on them. He was telling me I’d be all right and to stay with him, but I’m a paramedic too. I knew he was getting desperate, and that if I didn’t get medevaced ASAP I’d bleed to death.
Then Shane collapsed on top of me. I thought he’d been shot too. It was about the worst moment of my entire life. Then I saw this little black dart sticking out of his hand. I was just barely conscious at that point, so I didn’t understand what it meant until later. Then I passed out too. I don’t even think they had to tranquilize me.
I woke up in a hospital and saw everyone, and I thought we’d been rescued and we were back on the base. It was a while before I realized what was really going on. Shane told me later that at first I was in such bad shape that nobody wanted to stress me, and then when they did try, I was so out of it that I just said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” and fell asleep and then didn’t remember anything about it. That one armor-piercing bullet did a hell of a lot of damage. It was weeks before I could even sit up in bed.
What had happened was that Apex had taken advantage of Shane being distracted by taking care of me and everyone else being distracted by being in combat, shot us all with tranquilizer darts, and imprisoned us in an underground lab.
I was in an intensive care unit, and everyone else was put in barracks attached to that. They were allowed to visit me as long as they didn’t make any trouble. Shane moved in with me. He slept on the floor until they put in another bed so they could stop tripping over him. Doctors and nurses and scientists could come in and out, but whenever they were in our rooms, a bunch of guards with dart guns were too. There were more guards outside the doors, and the doors were always locked.
They’d captured us as test subjects for a process called Ultimate Predator. It was supposed to make you into a super-soldier, but mostly it just killed you. By the time I’d recovered enough to understand what was going on, Elizabeth and Neil, the helo co-pil
ot, were already dead.
Shane knew I was afraid—afraid I’d die of my wounds, afraid Apex would decide I was too much trouble to keep alive anymore, afraid of being helpless and alone. He kept telling me anyone who wanted to hurt me would have to go through him first, and he’d never leave me. But that was the problem. The reason Apex was keeping us all together was so they could use me as a hostage. As long as no one was willing to leave me, none of us could escape.
I told them to go anyway. I said once they were gone, they could get help and come back and rescue me. But I only said that to talk them into leaving, not because I thought they really could. I thought my only value to Apex was as a hostage. There was no point in experimenting on me when there wasn’t even a chance that I’d survive it. If everyone else got away, Apex would probably just kill me.
Shane said, “You’re right, someone has to go for help. But not me. I’m not leaving you.”
They came up with a plan for some of them to fight and distract the guards while some of them tried to escape. Shane was one of the fighters, of course. If I could’ve gotten out of bed and fought, even if I knew it would kill me, I would have. But all I could do was lie there and watch.
The plan failed. They knocked out a few guards, and then everyone got tranquilized. After that, Apex increased the security.
They kept taking people to the lab. Putting them through the Ultimate Predator process. Every time, the doctors said they’d learned so much and they were improving the process and the next time would work.
It never did. Everyone died.
Everyone.
Finally Shane and I were the only ones left. I’d recovered a lot, in the sense that I could get up and walk slowly around the room. But I couldn’t run. I couldn’t fight. If Shane and I tried to escape, he’d have to carry me, and then he couldn’t fight. I told him to leave me. I begged him. I told him I’d rather die than live with knowing that he’d thrown his life away to save someone who couldn’t be saved, and I meant it. But he wouldn’t leave me.
I thought for sure they’d take Shane next and save me for last. But they didn’t. They took me. I was glad. At least I wouldn’t have to die alone. And then I felt terrible for thinking that, because it meant Shane would.
Shane went berserk when they came for me. But it didn’t make a difference. They shot him with a dart gun, and that was that. It was a two-step process: first they made you into a shifter, and then they used Ultimate Predator to try to give you powers. I didn’t realize until I became a shifter why they did that first. I hadn’t known shifters had healing powers. But once I was one, I started getting much better, much faster.
I realized that Apex could have done that any time, but they’d let me suffer to keep everyone else in line. But I was so happy to be strong and healthy again, I didn’t brood too much about that. Shane and I planned to jump the guards and fight for our lives when they came in to do Ultimate Predator, which was the part that killed you.
Only Apex was too smart for that. They didn’t send guards in at all. They drugged our food instead. I woke up in the lab, and it was already done.
I felt fine. The doctors were all excited. They thought they’d finally gotten it right. They put me back in with Shane, who was glad as hell to see me walk in. And then, all of a sudden, I was on the floor with Shane holding me. I couldn’t breathe. I thought that was it for me, that the process had killed me after all.
But it hadn’t, quite. Just nearly. I woke up in another ICU. Apparently I’d been there for weeks, and I’d barely pulled through.
I was alone. I thought that meant Shane was dead. But the doctors said they’d finally perfected Ultimate Predator on him. They said he’d come out fine, he’d gotten powers, and he’d used them to escape. At first I didn’t believe it. But they described how he’d done it, and it sure sounded like a Shane type of plan. So I thought, ‘He finally took my advice. He escaped, and he’ll get help and come back for me. I just need to stall for a couple days. A week, max. And then we’ll both be free.’
Only he didn’t come back. I thought, ‘Well, maybe he’s run into some trouble. I’ll escape and go looking for him.’ I was under tight security, but they obviously wanted me to do things for them, so they had to let me out sooner or later. I figured the moment they did, I’d slip whatever leash they had on me and go looking for Shane.
It turned out that they had one hell of a leash. My version of Ultimate Predator—the flawed one, the one that had nearly killed me—made it so you needed to do a treatment every ten days or so, or you died a slow, horrible, painful death. I didn’t believe the doctors when they told me that, so they said to feel free to not do the treatments and see what happened. It was horrible and painful, all right. I gave in and asked for the treatment before I got to the ‘death’ part.
And then they had me. If I escaped, I’d die. But they said they’d improved it after me, so that wouldn’t happen to Shane. He didn’t have to come back unless he wanted to. And he didn’t.
Time passed. I finally realized that he wasn’t coming back. After that, I pretty much stopped caring about anything.
Of course, it was all a trick. They’d had Shane all along, in a different base. They told him I’d died and they told me he’d abandoned me, so we wouldn’t go looking for each other. They’d lied about Shane not needing the treatment, too. When he finally did escape, he almost died of it. I thought he’d abandoned me, when he’d actually given up his own chance at freedom to stay with me. He didn’t hold it against me, but it’s hard to forgive myself.
It’s hard to forgive myself for any of it.
Chapter Twelve
Fiona
When Justin had started his story, Fiona hadn’t thought he’d be able to get through it. He’d choked up every time he said the names of the men and women who’d died, and every time he told her how Shane had refused to leave him. By the time he finished, he was shaking and drenched in sweat.
But he did finish. And Fiona loved him for it. Stroking his wet hair away from his face, she said, “I know a lot of brave people. But you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
“I didn’t do anything brave. Shane and Mason and Elizabeth and...” He shook his head, unable to get the rest of the names out. “They fought like hell. I just lay there.”
“You ‘just lay there’ because you’d been shot in the chest,” Fiona pointed out. “Same as Shane did when he got shot. It’s not like you were having a fit of the vapors because a bat got tangled in your hair!”
Justin let out an amused huff of breath. “That’s certainly a vivid image.”
“So, was it easy for you to tell everyone to save themselves and leave you behind? Was it easy for you to tell Shane to leave you imprisoned by the enemy, wounded and helpless and alone? And how about telling me this story now—was that easy?”
“No.” He spoke so softly that Fiona could only hear him because they were pressed so close together. “No, none of that was easy. If you’re defining courage by how much something scares you, then yeah, it took some.”
It took a lot, Fiona thought. She couldn’t imagine doing what he’d done. She’d have begged them not to leave her. But she kept quiet. It had been hard enough for Justin to admit to even that much.
He went on, “I’ve wondered whether the Ultimate Predator powers we got were influenced by who we were and what we wanted. Shane was always kind of intimidating and stealthy, and he got that turned up as far as it could go. Catalina loved cats, and she got the agility of one.”
“Catalina used to have a hard time getting men to take her seriously,” Fiona said. “And her other power is super-strength. Hard to sneer at a woman who can throw you across the room with one hand.”
“Right. And as for what I wanted, it was to get up from that fucking hospital bed and stop holding everyone up, even if I dropped dead as soon as I got outside. And that’s what invincibility would have let me do.”
“It also takes the pain away,” Fiona said quietly
. “I imagine you wanted that, too.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I know that’s mostly why I’ve been using it. But that’s not why I can’t promise to never use it again. As long as I’m invincible, I never have to be a burden for anyone. And nobody else will ever die because they had to take care of me.”
“Oh, Justin...” The hurt in his voice was so raw, Fiona couldn’t imagine anything to do or say to make it better. All she could do was hold him tight. But he relaxed in her arms, so maybe she had done something.
Then her thoughts returned to what he’d said. She’d been so caught up in how painful it was for him that she hadn’t considered whether it was actually true. But the more she considered it, examining it with the same objective eye she’d bring to bear on a broken machine she needed to repair, the less convincing it seemed.
“If I’d been invincible when I was hit on the mission, I’d have kept on fighting,” he said. “And then Shane wouldn’t have been distracted by me, and Apex wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him.”
Like that, Fiona thought. That can’t be right.
“What would’ve happened if you’d been invincible, and you’d kept fighting?” she asked.
He sounded baffled by her question. “I just told you. Shane wouldn’t have been captured. Maybe none of us would have.”
“No, I mean literally, what would’ve happened? Talk me through it. You were all fighting, Apex agents were sneaking up on you with tranquilizer rifles, you were hit with an armor-piercing bullet, and your wound was bad enough that you ended up flat on your back for weeks. What would’ve happened if you’d been invincible at the time?”
She could see from his expression that he’d never thought past, If I’d been invincible, none of the rest would have happened.
Slowly, he said, “I would’ve kept fighting. So I would’ve kept bleeding. And running around would have made it worse. I’d have been dead in about ten minutes. Maybe less.”