by Amity Cross
“It’s X’s MI6 personnel file,” I replied absently, scanning each page.
I’d read all the mission reports before, back when Mei had first given them to X, but there was a great deal of information in there. X had been prolific during his time as Oliver Cassel, and there’d been a lot to take in.
Since he’d left to chase Moltke, I’d been thinking more and more about his past. There was so much he would never remember, and there was the possibility he’d crossed paths with Moltke and Vesper before. Maybe even the mysterious Banshee, who had all but disappeared after her appearance in Berlin.
As I scanned the mission reports, I saw a great deal of repetition. One name in particular kept cropping up time and time again—not that I was blindsided by it, I’d read these reports so many times they were now familiar to me—but the repetition stood out more in the wake of the attack on Section Seven.
Mei Akiyama.
I knew X hadn’t truly accepted the loss of Mei yet, and when he allowed himself to feel it—to actually feel the profound loss of someone he cared about—it wouldn’t be pretty. For a man who hadn’t felt any emotion for much of the life he actually remembered, it would hit him hard. I hoped I would be there when it happened because he shouldn’t have to suffer alone.
I really wished he hadn’t gone at all.
“How did you get that?” Jackson asked, sounding rather interested. Not that I was going to let him look.
“Who do you think?” I replied with a sigh.
“Oh,” he mumbled. “It’s weird, you know…”
I glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. “What’s weird?”
“Things have been so crazy that I haven’t had time to stop and really take in the fact that they’re all gone.” He shrugged, his eyes beginning to look a little misty. “It was so close. If I hadn’t decided to go out, I would’ve been in there with them.”
“It’s no use dwelling on circumstances out of your control, Jackson. It is what it is.”
“I know. It’s just my head spins when I think about it…” He paused, his gaze dropping to my chest. “Um, Mercy?”
“What?” I asked with a frown. He’d already seen me naked one time too many. Did he want a bloody rerun?
Glancing down, I saw the red laser dot. What happened next was purely instinctual.
I dove to the side, papers flying everywhere, as a bullet crashed through the window and slammed into the material at the back of the couch, tearing it apart and exposing the cheap polyester stuffing within.
“Get on the ground!” I shouted at Jackson, gesturing for him to move.
He dropped to the floor, his palms resting on either side of his head as sweat began to bead across his forehead.
The remaining shards clinging in the window frame were kicked in, and a man emerged, a nasty looking automatic pistol in his hand. He was dressed in black from head to toe, his mean face split by a scar that ran over his right eyebrow all the way to his chin. A shaved head topped off his butt-ugly exterior, but it didn’t matter what he looked like. The only thing I gave a crap about was that he was here to kill us.
The ugly asshole with bad fashion sense was an assassin.
He turned and fired, spraying bullets wildly in front of him. I twisted, my body moving out of range of his sloppy aim, and brought my fist and forearm down hard on the back of his neck. The blow forced him to buckle, and I reached for the gun I kept down the back of my jeans, but before I could grasp it, the assassin’s fist slammed into my stomach in an upward motion, forcing the air out of my lungs.
Pushing through it, I grabbed the lamp from the table beside me and swung, the cord pulling out of the wall. It smashed into the assassin’s head, and he stumbled to the side. I took the chance to fumble for my gun, but his hand came hurtling back, a decorative ceramic dog grasped in his palm.
I dodged, ducking low, but I wasn’t quick enough. The ceramic cracked against my head, and I slipped, falling flat on my back, my gun squashed beneath me. Fuck!
The man drew his firearm, aiming at my heart, and I steeled myself to roll. I wouldn’t be able to get out of the way, but I’d move just enough that I’d only suffer a flesh wound if I were lucky. Then I could reach my gun and finish this asshole off.
From somewhere far away, a gun went off, the sound echoing loudly through the enclosed space. A bullet slammed into the assassin, making him gasp in surprise. I didn’t even blink as I rolled and drew my own gun. Pulling the trigger, the bullet embedded into the guy’s head, opening a hole in his forehead, but I didn’t lower my weapon. I wouldn’t until I was one hundred percent satisfied the fucker was dead.
His eyes glassed over, and he dropped, his gun falling to the floor with a clatter. Pushing to my feet, I glanced at Jackson, who was still standing in the far corner of the room, staring at the pistol in his hands. The same pistol X had given him the day of the attack on Section Seven. The same pistol he’d just fired and saved my life with.
“Jackson?” I prodded.
“I… I…” he muttered, his hand beginning to shake.
“It’s over,” I said, bending to check the assassin’s pulse. Dead.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I crossed the room, curling my hand around his and prying the gun from his grasp. “You can let it go now,” I murmured. “He’s bit the dust.”
He let me take the gun without complaint, his gaze set firmly on the dead man in the middle of what used to be our safe house. Not anymore. We’d have to make ourselves scarce after this spectacular sound and light show. Moltke had declared outright that he knew I was still alive after the incident at the wharf, and this had been his attempt at striking me and Jackson off the list once and for all.
Avoiding the spread of blood that was beginning to pool on the floorboards, I knelt beside the body and searched his pockets. Not surprisingly, I came up empty handed…until I found the crumpled photograph in the pocket inside his leather jacket.
Unfolding it, I felt my heart stop beating. For what felt like a lifetime, my heart actually stopped beating, the shockwave sending ice running through my veins…
It was a photo of X…and his face had been crossed out. I ran my fingertips over the marks, the paper rough against my skin where it had been torn.
No… No, I couldn’t believe it.
I stared at the photo, my hands beginning to shake as shock set in.
“Mercy?” Jackson asked. “What is it?”
This couldn’t be right. It was a lie. Another of Moltke’s games. He was trying to trick me into believing X was gone… X was the best in the business. He couldn’t let a fucker like Moltke kill him. He couldn’t die…
“Mercy?”
Jackson was kneeling beside me, his gaze on the photograph. “What… That’s X… What’s he doing with a picture of X?”
“It’s crossed out…” I began, a void of darkness opening inside my chest. “X used to cross out his marks when… Oh, God.”
The photo slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the floor, sticking to the pool of blood that had spread from underneath the assassin.
“Mercy…” Jackson reached for me, but I couldn’t see him anymore. I knew we had to leave this place and go underground, but I’d lost all ability to see straight.
I was dying. I was dead. I was nothing without X.
“He’s dead,” I wailed, fisting my hands into my hair. “X is dead!”
Chapter 19
X
God fucking damn, my shoulder ached.
It was an annoyance more than anything else, the wound still fresh in the wake of Hawkes’s poking and prodding. I was sure I’d probably been shot once or twice in the line of duty, I had scars that reminded me of bullet holes, but there was no way of telling for sure. They could be marks from a hot poker for all I knew.
Thinking of the words that had been hardwired into my brain by The Watchman, the words only Mercy knew, I snorted. My whole life was a case of erase and rewind. The three second memory of a goldfish.
>
When I tied her to that bed, she could have used them against me, the words…but she didn’t.
I was currently sitting in Hawkes’s car—the same car he didn’t give me permission to use, so I’d stolen it—by the side of the road in an industrial estate south of London.
A passenger train zoomed along the tracks to my left, the silver and yellow carriages marking it as a Eurostar train bound for Paris. I wondered how St. Germain was getting along. I supposed it had been almost a year since I turned Lafayette’s wine bar into a pile of matchsticks. There was a trip down memory lane…and one I would actually remember into old age. That’s if I made it through the next day. Just what I wanted to be…a decrepit old man.
Pulling out my phone, I turned on the Wi-Fi hotspot and hooked it up to the laptop that sat on the passenger’s seat. Jackson really had some nice toys at his disposal, and that brain of his could do just about anything, but sometimes, the basics were just as good as the space-age tech.
The Dark Web was a version of the Internet, as the general populous knew it but not. It existed at its fringes, weaving in and out of the mundane social media sensationalism, its sole purpose being the sale and trade of illegal goods. I’d purchased some really fantastic weapons there over the years. Knives, guns, explosives, drugs… All kinds of things.
Opening up a chat program, I typed in the code word and waited. One didn’t operate in a business like I did without forging some questionable contacts, and WolverineCyclopsWarrior69 was one of them…despite the fucking stupid name. Hackers were a useful sort but could never be underestimated.
WolverineCyclopsWarrior69 had gotten information for me in the past when it was too difficult to procure on my own, and I’d paid him, or her, handsomely for it.
It didn’t take long for the shark to bite, and I rolled my eyes. Like blood in the water, these fucks always smelled a big wad of cash and came with their wallets open and waiting.
WolverineCyclopsWarrior69: Got a hit on your baby
WolverineCyclopsWarrior69: 51.4454 0.3054
Guest00973: What’s there?
WolverineCyclopsWarrior69: Your baby
WolverineCyclopsWarrior69: You know what to do
The chat screen froze, and I thumped the keyboard. That was it? I guess I couldn’t be disappointed considering I got a set of coordinates. The rest was up to me.
Hackers were a unique sort, lashed to their computers and talking in slang only other code-culture nerds seemed to understand. They were just another reject of society, pushed out because nobody understood, using their skills for survival just like the rest of the disenchanted arm of humanity the world forgot.
Taking care of WolverineCyclopsWarrior69’s chosen form of payment, untraceable bitcoin, the currency of the Dark Web, I got to work on the task at hand—tracking down Moltke’s baby. Meaning, his stash of Veltium-34.
Pulling up a search of the location, I found the coordinates landed in the middle of a suburb to the southeast of London. I wasn’t too far away. Looked like an industrial estate just south of the Thames.
It was vague, the longitude and latitude didn’t point to anything specifically, so it meant I had to do a lot of legwork to track down where Moltke had stored the Veltium-34 in preparation for its weaponization. I may be walking into something low risk, or I might be crashing right into the fucker’s living room. It was too soon to tell.
Snapping the laptop shut and turning off the burner phone, I leaned underneath the steering wheel and struck some wires together, kick-starting the engine of Hawkes’s car.
Massaging my shoulder, I lifted the neck of my T-shirt and checked the bandage. No blood. Letting the car idle, I downed a couple of the codeine tablets Hawkes had given me while I thought on the route I was taking to track the Veltium-34.
My thoughts briefly went to Mercy, an image of her naked and enraged appearing in my mind’s eye. I’d be with her soon. She’d see.
Pulling the car out onto the road, I flipped the radio on, some random rock song blaring from the speakers.
Time to get busy.
Rule of thumb when searching for a bad guy’s hideout. Look for the muscle.
The dude who stood out the front of the warehouse with a semi-automatic firearm was a dead giveaway. He leaned against the wall by the loading bay with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the tip flaring every so often as he took a drag.
Darkness clung to the building like a heavy cloak, masking my presence from the inattentive bouncer on the door. Was Moltke so cocky he didn’t think more of an armed presence would be an asset? He had a God complex big time if he thought he could try to manufacture a biological weapon under the nose of MI6 on their own turf.
But that was the loophole, right? MI6 couldn’t operate on British soil, so they would have handed the investigation off to MI5, the domestic division of Military Intelligence. Anyone with a brain knew they were useless against a threat like Moltke. Ex-MI6 black ops with an axe to grind.
Which was why the late Agent Alexander Folsom had palmed the task off to Mercy, Jackson, and me in the first place. Shit, what a mess that had become. The only way this was ending was in a big fucking pool of blood. Darkness against darkness.
While the guard was daydreaming, I slipped through the open chain link gate and ghosted along the side of a shipping container that had been dumped haphazardly in the yard. My boots thudded softly against the asphalt, hardly making enough sound to warrant any more care on my behalf.
Eyeing the guard around the edge of the container, I waited until he’d finished his cigarette. He straightened up as he inhaled the last of the foul smoke, flicking the butt onto the ground. I darted across the last open space between me and him as he scuffed his boot on the lit filter, extinguishing the smoldering flame. Before the fucker even knew I was there, I wrapped my arm around his neck, capturing him in a chokehold. He struggled, opening his mouth to call for back up, but my hold was too firm. The words died in his throat as I squeezed the life from his body, and then I twisted his head to the side. Short and sharp. A dull crack signaled his neck had snapped, and I let him go, his limp carcass flopping to the ground.
Stepping over him, I disregarded the gun. Too noisy and flashy. I moved through the loading bay and into the interior of the building, scanning every nook and cranny the place had to offer, my search coming up absolutely empty. No Veltium-34, no light, no movement…nothing. There had to be something or someone here. Otherwise, what the hell was that guy doing out back?
All that was left was the factory floor.
The space would be open with no cover, so if anyone was there, I’d have to be quick about it. Pick them off one by one in a blaze of glory.
My head snapped to the side as the unmistakable roar of Moltke’s deep voice echoed through the dark warehouse. That, I was not expecting. I just wanted to steal his toy like a poltergeist to begin with and mess with his mind. The spirit of Xavier Blood reappearing like a reaper, weaving a trail of death and destruction in his path… That would fuck him up real good. Right until the point I stood before him and took his life in retribution.
I was going to play the master at his own game and win.
Edging toward the service door that opened onto the main floor of the factory, I eased it open and peered through the gap, my gun heavy in my hand. My shoulder stung as I applied pressure on it, but now wasn’t the time to bitch and moan.
Scanning the area immediately in front of my position, I made five armed men, one of which was Moltke. He was holding a gun to a woman’s head, her dark hair hanging limply around her face, obscuring her identity. At first, I wondered if it was Banshee—the mysterious mercenary who had all but disappeared in the wake of our encounter in Berlin—but there was something familiar about her…
“Get in,” Moltke snarled, forcing her to her feet.
The woman’s hair fell away from her face, her chin jutting out defiantly as the light from the halogen lamps illuminated her features, and my heart stopped b
eating. For what felt like a full minute, it stopped.
Mercy.
The last thing I expected to see was the love of my life being forced into a pine box. A box that looked exactly like a coffin.
Quickly, I assessed the situation, my gaze running over the assembled group and the lay of the factory around them. There were too many… I couldn’t kill them all without Moltke putting a bullet into Mercy. Whichever way I ran the numbers, she’d wind up dead at the end of it. I couldn’t get her out.
I couldn’t save her. Not here. Not now. Then how? How?
God fucking damn it, Mercy…
Chapter 20
Mercy
X was gone.
Ripped from my soul. Taken. Stolen. Just…gone.
“Mercy?”
I opened my puffy eyes, and Jackson came into focus. He didn’t call me Miss Reid. When he saw the photo, he didn’t call X Mr. Blood, either.
Shit, X.
Another wave of anguish rose in my stomach at the thought of him. He was gone.
“I know it hurts,” Jackson said, kneeling beside the bed. The bed in the seedy hotel he found in central London after Moltke’s assassin almost ripped us to shreds. The assassin who had a photo of X in his pocket… I was useless, so Jackson had led me to this place. Jackson.
“Mercy,” he said again, and I swallowed, my throat feeling like sandpaper. “We still have a mission to complete.”
“He’s dead,” I murmured, trying to keep as much of the pain at bay as possible because once I was sucked under, I’d never surface again “I can’t… I can’t survive without him.”
Jackson frowned. “You can, and you will.”
My gaze sharpened. “What?”
“Don’t you want revenge? I know I do.”
Revenge? My whole life had been about retribution. Sykes, Greggor, Weiss, The Watchman…the entire fucking world needed to burn. And Moltke… Did I need to end him to avenge X? X left to protect me, but it had all been pointless. Even if I could kill Moltke, what peace would that bring me? X was dead, so I was dying. It was that simple.