by Amity Cross
I’d lost everything, so I let him go. He had a way to contact me if needed, but I didn’t expect to hear from him. I was now in this one hundred percent solo.
I had no leads of my own after the failed attempt at the warehouse, none but the protocol Weiss had shoved into my face before I shot him in the head.
If you want to know the truth about your identity, you will follow the protocol. It may be the only thing that can help you save Mercy.
I didn’t want to believe him, but I had nowhere else to turn. My past and future were colliding, and I could no longer run from it. I’d fought against my identity ever since I’d realized my conditioning was unraveling, and I’d realized Mercy Reid was my target. Now it was catching up with me, whether I wanted it to or not. This part was inevitable.
Stepping inside the phone box, I picked up the receiver. Mercy had stood right here, used this exact telephone… What was I going to find once I called the number?
Raising my hand, I pressed my finger against the number pad, dialing the digits that Weiss had given me in his last moments. Pressing the receiver to my ear, I listened to the dial tone, counting each beep as the number rang. One, two, three, four…
“Exeter Medical Clinic, how can I help?” The receptionist’s voice was chirpy, one hundred percent friendly without a care in the world.
I took a deep breath. “I’d like to talk to Dr. Jonathan Hancock about some test results.”
The pause stretched on a minute too long, and I realized they knew exactly who was calling. This was a dead protocol and I realized only one person should know it. Me.
“I’m sorry, but Dr. Hancock is currently with a patient. Would you like to wait?”
I closed my eyes. “Yes.”
Music began filtering through the handset, a soft classical piece that I found oddly familiar. Had I been an asset? Had I been working with them before I was conditioned? I supposed I was going to find out one way or another. I needed their help, but the more I waited, the more I understood that this would go one of two ways. I’d get the help I wanted to find Mercy or they’d take me into custody for a string of murders longer than my arm.
I had nowhere else to turn, so it seemed like a good idea. I could trade everything I knew on Royal Blood and The Watchman for Mercy.
When the allotted ten minutes was up, I set the handset back into the cradle and leaned my head against the glass. It was too late to go back now. Those ten minutes had given them ample time to trace the call and send a team. They’d be picking me up any second now.
Standing tall, I pushed out of the booth and stood on the side of the road, trying to imagine Mercy in the same spot. Fighting for her life.
There was a squeal of tires, and I glanced up as four armed men leaped from a dark van while a fifth jumped out of an SUV driving in front. Each leveled a semi-automatic weapon at me, the click of the safeties as they were simultaneously flicked off, echoed down the quiet street.
I raised an eyebrow, my hands wedged firmly in my pockets.
“Don’t move.”
It was the woman I’d followed the other night. The one I’d witnessed completing a dead drop outside that coffee shop in the city center. Of fucking course it was. I was no longer surprised at the things Weiss had led me into, even the parts where he was still fucking with me from beyond the grave. The asshole was probably laughing at me right now.
A man in a suit stood beside her, a handgun aimed at my empty heart, and I snorted. He should be aiming at my head.
I waited to see what they would do next, not willing to give away my position on the side of the road in front of the help.
The woman cocked her head to the side, her brown eyes drilling into mine. If I wasn’t mistaken, I was sure I’d seen a glimmer of surprise in them.
“Arrest him,” she declared.
The man that stood beside her strode forward and shoved me across the hood of the lead car, pressing my cheek hard against the bonnet. Hands yanked my arms behind me, and there was a click as I was cuffed. Really, what was I expecting? Confetti and a fucking parade?
He jerked me upright, and his friends patted me down, searching for weapons. They took the gun that I’d shoved behind my back into the waistband of my jeans and the knife in my boot, before leading me to the back of the van. I was shoved inside and fell unceremoniously into a seat, a gun held to my head.
What a nice welcome.
The door was closed with a bang, and the van started to move. The woman sat across from me with the tactical team around her. I glanced at each of them, then at the driver, then to the rear door. I couldn’t pinpoint a scenario where I got out of here without being zipped up into a body bag.
“Where did you get the protocol?” the woman asked as the van sped over a speed bump.
I didn’t reply, instead I appraised her up close, finding her to be cold, direct, and extremely professional. She was field rated, most likely working undercover…something to do with either Vaughn’s operation or Royal Blood’s.
“Why did you give yourself up?” she asked more firmly.
Since I was low on time, I decided to go the direct route. “I need your help.”
She narrowed her eyes as the men around us glanced uneasily at each other.
“You know who I am?” It was posed as a question, but it was rhetorical.
“Xavier Blood.”
“We can help each other,” I stated. “We want the same thing.”
“And what’s that?”
I smirked. “Royal Blood.”
The woman stared stonily back at me. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she snapped. “You are not in a position to negotiate. You are a wanted criminal.”
Looked like this was going to be more difficult than anticipated. “We’ll see about that.”
“There will be no seeing about anything. By calling that number, you declared yourself a walk-in, Blood.”
I’d handed myself in to MI6 custody, and now they had the legal right to charge me with whatever the fuck they wanted. I knew this was a gamble, but I knew I had information they needed. I was being forced into playing the long game with their red tape bullshit, but I didn’t have time. I needed to get Mercy out.
“I had nowhere else to go,” I snarled, pulling against the handcuffs. “I needed help.”
I wasn’t going to get any of it here… I was caged, captured… I was never going to see her again.
“We are going to help you,” she replied.
“I don’t want help,” I roared. “They have her!”
She narrowed her eyes before looking away.
“I came to you because I need to get her back,” I said, pulling desperately against my restraints. “You need to let me go.”
“You are in federal custody…there is no letting you go.”
The thing about telling a man who was always on the verge of a psychotic break that he couldn’t have what he desperately wanted, was that he was unpredictable. I knew I shouldn't try to fight them in such an enclosed space. I was one man, skilled though I was, unarmed and outnumbered. But I still rose to my feet, my body searing with rage. My elbow cracked into the face of the guard beside me and I kneed the one in front to my left in the balls. The woman stood, drawing her weapon, shouting to her men to stand down, but it was too late.
The butt of a semi-automatic collided with my temple, and I fell, stars bursting through my vision.
I was out before I hit the floor, the darkness of my own mind swallowing me whole.
Eighteen
X
I came to somewhere between our arrival at some nondescript building and an equally bland interrogation room.
Two heavy-set men, who had been in the van, handcuffed me to a chair and locked me inside. The chair was bolted to the floor, as was the table in front of me. The room was gray and empty with a large one-way mirror that took up half of the wall to my right. They left me for what felt like hours with nothing and nobody to break the monotony. I could feel
their beady eyes watching me through the mirror, waiting for me to slip or to fucking blink, but I gave them nothing.
I sat placidly, my head hanging and my fingers curled around the arms of the chair…waiting.
Finally, the door opened with a soft click then closed, followed by the footfalls of a person crossing the room. From the sound, it was a woman, and the spicy perfume that hit my nose confirmed it.
I glanced up and found it was the agent from earlier. The Japanese woman who’d arrested me with such fanfare.
“Xavier Blood,” she declared, staring at me impassively. “I am Agent Mei Akiyama.” She rifled through her papers then looked back at me. “We’ve learned a lot about you these past weeks.”
She placed a photograph in front of me, and instantly, I felt anger begin to well. It was a photo of me sitting at a cafe, the one Mercy and I had lingered at while we watched Lafayette’s wine bar in Paris. She wasn’t in it, just the edges of her hair, but it was a full faced photograph of me.
“We know of your involvement in the assassination of the Necromancers’ leader, Sykes. We know of your involvement in at least a dozen others just like it.”
I stared at the photograph. If I could go back to that moment, could I have changed all of this? It didn’t matter what MI6 did or did not know about me. Not anymore.
“There’s no record of you ever existing,” Mei went on. “No birth certificate, no National Insurance number, no dental records, nothing.”
I glanced up at her, and she faltered. She wasn’t saying something.
“But you’ve seen me before,” I murmured.
Her gaze flickered down to the pile of papers in front of her. After a moment of internal thought, she leaned forward and placed another photograph in front of me. This was different to the first…much different, and the sight of it pushed against my guard, unsettling me to my very core. How did they get this?
It was a photograph of me from my time with The Watchman. I had no marks on my torso, my chest clear of tattoos. I looked…dead. The photo showed a corpse, and perhaps that’s what I’d been until I was recreated. I was an even more twisted version of Frankenstein’s monster.
“We thought you were dead,” Mei said. “But there were whispers…then…” She trailed off and fingered another photo on her pile.
Sliding it across the table, instinct took over, and I stared down at it, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was a portrait of a man and woman and they looked familiar. An image flashed through my mind. One bullet too many… Sloppy...
“I’ve seen them before,” I said, remembering my dream. The dream where I was in their home in the dead of night and shot them both in the head. “I—” I bit my bottom lip, not sure if it would get me into more shit if I admitted that I’d killed them.
“You killed them?”
My gaze snapped up to Mei’s.
“We suspected, but there was never any evidence left behind. No trail, no leads… It was like they’d been murdered by a ghost.”
A ghost.
“Who are they?”
Mei’s gaze held mine, and I prepared myself for the truth. From the look in her eyes, it must be fucked up.
“They were your parents.”
It was the ultimate test of loyalty. The only way they would know that the conditioning had taken. If I could kill my parents without hesitation, I was truly theirs.
I’d killed my own parents and didn’t even know it. I didn’t even care.
“You are a victim, Xavier.”
I focused on Mei, my sanity beginning to slip. Mercy… “I’m a monster,” I hissed, shoving the photos back across the table, the chain that hooked me in place, clattering.
Her expression didn’t falter, and she peeled a new photograph from her pile. “Do you recognize this man?”
It was another surveillance photograph, but this time it was of a man, maybe twenty, twenty-one. I’d never laid eyes on him before.
I glanced up at Mei and shook my head.
“That is Phillip Cassel.”
My eyes widened. “But—”
“He was your brother.”
I could already see where this was going, but I couldn’t change the past, only how I handled the future, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“We found him a few days before we found your parents. He left was in a room—a cell—the walls covered in markings…” My throat began to tighten. I felt like my world was tearing apart. “He had a hood over his head…”
“Stop,” I whispered hoarsely.
“He’d been shot.”
The man in the hood.
“Stop!” I roared, pulling hard against the handcuffs that held me in place. “You’re lying. This is all a fucking lie!”
Mei shook her head, her expression faltering. “I wish it were…” Her brown eyes met mine. “I wish it were, Oliver.”
I tried to form words, but nothing was working. I stared at her in shock as everything I knew crumbled around me. I was nobody. I was everybody.
“Your name,” she said, “is Oliver Cassel. You were an MI6 agent. Missing, presumed dead for the past eight years.”
Her voice came back into my head, the woman from my dream. No… Please, no!
“I knew it the moment I saw the surveillance photograph of you in Paris.”
What have they done to you?
“You’re saying…” I began, tightening my grip around the arms of the chair. “You’re saying I killed my entire family?”
The silence stretched on into infinity. She didn’t have to say it. I already knew.
Weiss’ last words came back to me with sharpened clarity.
See you on the other side, brother.
It was his last chance to take a dig at me, knowing that I would eventually follow the protocol. He’d known the truth the entire time we worked together. He knew.
They took my identity and made me shoot my brother in the head as a test of loyalty, then murder my parents in cold blood.
I knew I was a monster all along, but it was far worse than I could have ever imagined.
I was the devil himself.
“Oliver…”
“Get out!” I roared, jerking to my feet as the metal handcuffs dug into my skin. I pulled as hard as I could as Mei stumbled to her feet. “Get out with your fucking lies!”
She bashed her fist against the mirror, and a second later, the outside door burst open. Thrashing, I tried desperately to break free. Even if I had to saw off my own hands, I was getting out of this place. Getting away from their filthy, poisonous, lies.
I was a monster, so I better fucking act like one.
Two men grasped me around the shoulders, hauling me back down into the chair. I was bleeding, my wrists cut deep, but I couldn’t even feel it.
“I need her…” I cried. “I need to get her…”
There was a sharp jab as a needle pierced my neck, and it set me off for round two. I jerked against them, trying to break free.
“Let me go,” I exclaimed, my movements becoming sluggish as I struggled to my feet. “I have to find her… I have…”
My vision began to blur around the edges, and my body felt heavy. They’d given me enough to knock out a fucking racehorse… Assholes…
“He’s tapping out,” one of the men said.
“Don’t let him hurt himself,” Mei replied from someplace far away.
I fell, hitting the chair hard. “I have to… Mercy…”
Then darkness.
From nothingness to something.
My eyes cracked open, and all I saw was gray.
I was lying on a bed, my cheek pressed against a pillow. I could feel the hardness of the bed below—a slab of steel covered with a blanket.
My wrists felt tight and as my eyesight began to sharpen, I found them bandaged and resting in front of me. Groaning, I let my head bury against the flat pillow, trying to sink into nothing.
If I hadn’t dreamed then, then this was a dream now. Eve
rything from the moment I’d called the number at Mercy’s phone box, to right now. I was stuck in a horrible, endless nightmare.
So, that was what a full psychotic break felt like. Forced sedation, forced weakness…I’d been powerless to stop it, powerless to control myself.
Mercy… I was nothing without her. She was my anchor, and she was lost. I was lost in the chaos of my own mind.
There was a click and the sound of boots on the floor as the lights began to brighten in my prison. A pair of slender legs stopped in front of me, and I blinked hard, trying to focus my still groggy mind. There was a pause and then another click as the door was closed by persons unknown.
“We had to sedate you,” Mei murmured, leaning back against the wall. “You cut yourself up pretty bad.”
I blinked, staring at her boots. Black, leather, thick soles, scuff marks…her trousers were tucked inside. She’d obviously walked a lot of miles with them on her feet. Mercy had a pair just like them.
“We’re not trying to hurt you,” she said. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Was that why she called you?” I asked, focusing on her bootlaces.
Mei slid her back down the wall and crouched on the balls of her feet. Bending her head, she caught my gaze with hers. “Yes, it was.”
I closed my eyes at the confirmation of what I suspected all along. Of course it was.
“She was going to give you up to us,” Mei said and I opened my eyes. “Mercy. The day she was taken was the day she called it in to us. To me.”
That explained the crime scene by the phone box, but it was then I realized the day Mercy and I had argued at the distillery, they’d approach her while she was alone. They’d waited for their chance and pitted her against me. We’d fought bitterly that night, I’d used her, pushed her away, and she felt she had no choice. I felt anger begin to bubble, but I pushed it aside. She only did it because she believed she was trying to help me. There was no doubt about it in my mind. She’d believed she was doing the right thing.
However, I was angry that they’d approached her at all.
“Did you follow her?” I asked, my lip twitching.