I should say that I’m okay, that I’m not lightheaded and dizzy and on the verge of passing out at all. But I can only shake my head miserably, unable to keep myself together anymore. My strapless shirt is soaked through with blood, and my frayed shorts feel way too tight. What was I thinking, going after a target on my own like that?
I deserve this.
Horrifyingly, tears start to form in my eyes, brimming over onto my face. I turn my head away, trying not to break down completely. I can’t do this in front of Alpha. Not again. It’s just going to push him even farther away than he already is.
But instead of leaving, he reaches over and turns on the shower. His hands moving steadily, he pulls off my strapless shirt and undoes the button on my frayed shorts, glancing at me every now and then to make sure I’m okay with it. It’s not sexual, or romantic, or anything like that, even though it’s a little tempting to think about this turning into something else. I’m in too much pain to even consider it right now.
Instead, August lifts me up and braces my body against the wall, waiting for me to step out of my shorts. I have to lean on him to keep from slipping in the bathtub, but eventually I’m down to just my bra and panties. I went to the Woodland Castle prepared to go at least part of the way with Jamie, so they’re black and lacy. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that they’re not sheer underneath the water. It probably doesn’t matter either way. I mean, August has X-ray vision. This can’t be anything he hasn’t seen before.
And then, unbelievably, he just holds me in the shower for the longest time, the water hot and soothing, the blood washing away from my skin. This is the hug I’ve always wanted, even though it’s coming far too late to remedy all those missions where I had to kill without it. It’s enough, though, that I can almost pretend none of it ever happened. Reese and the safe house. Jamie and the treehouse. The butler and the silenced gun.
But I can only pretend for so long.
I find myself crying into August’s shirt, my tears disappearing into the shower, my body clinging to his with blind desperation. I cry for who knows how long, the water turning from hot to warm to room temperature again. But eventually, I realize that our bodies are aligned closely together, that my hands have slipped underneath the back of his shirt. I’ve never let myself notice it before. How achingly handsome August is. How right it feels to be around him. How endearing his disheveled hair is. How incredible his skin feels against mine.
Without thinking, I spread my fingers across his back, wanting to feel even more of him. But I brush against something hard and ridged instead.
His scars.
Alpha flinches away from me, a flash of pain crossing his face.
No, no. This is the last thing I wanted to happen. My worst nightmare is finally coming true, the fear I’ve held onto for so long resurfacing after all this time. August just saved my life and removed a bullet from my side and held me as I wept in the shower. And how did I repay him?
By touching him where it hurts the most.
His dark eyes emotionless, Alpha turns away from me and steps out of the shower, reaching for a clean towel. He sets it on the counter, next to the bullet, and then walks out of the bathroom without looking back.
I sink down into the bathtub, feeling as if the best dream I’ve ever had is slipping away from me. I desperately want to follow Alpha, to run my fingers through his drenched hair, to call him August and not have him react as if I’ve stabbed him in the heart. But I can’t, because whatever moment just happened between us is gone, and there’s nothing at all to let me know if I’ll ever get it back again.
It’s all I can do not to scream.
fourteen
My eyes fly open in the middle of the night to find an IV in my arm and a clean bandage covering my side. I’m lying on a bed underneath a woven quilt, and there are wooden carvings and framed sketches all around the room that make it feel cozy, like I’m in an isolated cabin, even though I can hear the sounds of the city outside. I passed out in bed after getting out of the shower, and August must have inserted the IV and applied the bandage while I was asleep. I can only hope that he’s still here.
“Hello?” I call out. There’s no answer.
Ignoring the ache in my side, I rip the IV from my arm and climb out of bed. I stumble into the bathroom and examine myself in the mirror, confirming that I look pretty much as bad as I feel, as if I’ve been partying all this time only to wake alone in a stranger’s home. I’m wearing one of August’s T-shirts over my bra and panties, and the beer Jamie gave me is still on my breath.
I splash cold water onto my face and drag my fingers through my knotted hair, then squeeze some toothpaste onto my finger and try my best to brush my teeth. Eventually I manage to make myself somewhat presentable, at least, and clean.
In the living room, August is asleep on a lumpy yellow couch. He’s wearing the same T-shirt as me, and it looks like he fell asleep while watching a news report. But it’s only another second before he jerks awake, his eyes finding me instantly. I flush as I remember what happened between us in the shower. Don’t make a fool out of yourself, a voice in my head warns me, but I have the feeling that it’s too late by now.
It’s hard to hide all your faults from someone with X-ray vision.
“You’re awake.” August gets to his feet, dragging a hand through his hair. Why am I expecting him to hug me? It’s ridiculous, that just because he brought me here and dug a bullet from my side and held me as I cried against him in the shower, that I think something between us has changed. Everything is seemingly back to normal, personal space and lack of emotion included.
He was just doing his job. That’s all.
“Where are we?” I ask him.
“My safe house,” he says. “I set it up years ago. The Executive doesn’t know about it.”
“Seriously?” I almost find myself laughing, even though it isn’t funny. “But you never break the rules.”
“I’m breaking all of them.” His dark eyes are focused and intense, like he’s about to reveal something of utmost importance, and I know what he’s going to say before he even says it.
Something has changed between us after all.
“Mongoose.” His voice is steady but wary, as if he’s afraid of my reaction. “I was wrong to keep you in the dark. I was wrong to forbid everyone else from telling you about it. I should have known they’d go to you anyway.”
“So you really are involved—”
“I’m their leader,” he says. “Which means I’m a target for anyone looking to bring down Mongoose. When I realized you were getting close to Jamison Hart, I couldn’t figure out what to do. I didn’t want you to get caught in the crossfire, and I didn’t want to put you in danger by asking you to spy on him. I thought I could avoid all this by keeping you as far away from Mongoose as possible. I was trying to keep you safe.”
I swallow hard, struggling to keep from tearing up again. “That’s why you asked for a new partner?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation. “It is. I’ll cancel the reassignment.”
So this is why Reese and the others weren’t supposed to tell me about Mongoose. August has been secretly working against the Executive for years, and I had no idea, not even when all the operatives around me were involved. I’m not exactly happy that he’s been lying and distancing himself from me, but I understand it. He wanted to protect me. And we all lie all the time, to our targets and the people around them, to each other, even to ourselves. That’s what a cover story is, after all. An entire web of carefully crafted, totally not lethal lies.
But if August is the leader of Mongoose, I have to help. It’s not even a question in my mind anymore. Because I’m realizing that the one thing I want more than anything is to keep him in my life, in any capacity, even if it means joining Mongoose.
“I can do it,” I say immediately. “I can get the manifest.”
August understands that I’ve assessed the situation and
this is where I’ve ended up. He can’t stop me from spying on Jamison Hart or working with the other operatives in Mongoose. And we both know I’m never going to back down from a situation in which he needs my help.
The safest thing for him to do is to bring me on board himself.
“All right,” he says at last. “But we’ll do it together. And if anything goes wrong, you have to tell me right away.”
“Okay,” I say. “But I need to know what’s in the shipments to Ophidian.”
August is silent for a moment, and then he says, “You don’t want to know. Romeo was a member of Mongoose. Ryan, the one at our Executive. He found out what was in those shipments, and he killed himself because of it.”
“I wouldn’t do that—”
“Maybe not,” he says. “But it would hurt you more than anything has before.”
At this point I know for sure that August wouldn’t still be keeping the truth from me unless it was absolutely necessary. So it has to be something bad, really bad, enough that he truly believes I might kill myself, the same way Ryan code name Romeo did. I’m starting to feel weak and dizzy again, to the point of swaying on my feet. What if I’ve been part of something terrible by killing all those targets for the Executive?
Maybe I will puke after all.
“Hey,” August says suddenly, moving forward to pick me up again. He’s holding me the same way he did earlier, with his skin bared against mine, but he still doesn’t flinch away as he carries me into the bedroom.
God, how I wish it was for some reason other than this.
He sets me down on the bed and rearranges the quilt over me. His touch is so gentle that I almost start crying again. Partly from the rush of emotions from being cared for, and partly from the weight of everything falling on me all at once. August disappears again, but I can hear him rummaging around in the kitchen for something. After a few minutes, he returns with a packet of saltines and a can of tomato soup, then climbs into bed next to me. There’s something else in his hands as well.
A comic book.
The cover features a drawing of a young woman with short white hair and green eyes, wearing a ballgown and high heels to die for. Her dress is hiked up on one side, revealing a pistol strapped to her thigh. Her lips are cherry red, and she’s blowing a kiss to the reader. Next to her is a man with black hair and sunglasses shading his eyes, wearing a camouflage uniform and carrying a sniper rifle. His arm is wrapped protectively around her waist.
The title of the comic book is Code Name Alpha.
It’s professionally printed, the same as any other comic book, like The Amazing Spider-Man or The Batman and Robin Adventures. But I don’t recognize the writer or the artist or even the name of the publishing company, Aberration Comics.
“What is this?” I ask.
The ghost of a smile appears in August’s eyes. “Query and India make these. He writes the story and she draws everything, and then he hacks into a publishing company to print and distribute it. It’s how we send messages to operatives in other Executives who are working with Mongoose.”
I recognize both of the code names as Executive operatives. Query is the hacker who can get into any computer system, and India is the librarian who can find the answer to anything. They aren’t partners, but they’re both in the computer lab all the time. I didn’t realize they knew enough about comic books to do something like this.
“Wow,” I say, biting into a saltine. It tastes crunchy and dry, but I’m so hungry I don’t even care. “So they’re also in Mongoose?”
“They are,” confirms August, flipping to the first page. Unlike the cover, the rest of the comic book is drawn in black and white, with color used only sparingly here and there. “Kilo and Tango are the other members in our Executive.”
“So how accurate is the comic?” I ask him.
He shrugs, his bare arm brushing against mine. A flood of heat instantly sweeps throughout my entire body. I glance sideways at him, but he hasn’t seemed to notice. “You tell me.”
As I eat the saltines and sip from the can of soup, August reads to me from the comic book, the same way he used to, before Jamison Hart and Mongoose and everything else that’s been happening. Even though the templates of the characters are recognizable, most of the details are different from what we’re actually like in real life. His name is September, while mine is January, and our code names are derived from the Greek alphabet rather than the NATO phonetic alphabet. Usually it’s our disguises that are colored in: my wigs, his tinted sunglasses, my high heels, his leather gloves.
And we have superpowers, actual superpowers, ones that allow us to accomplish so much more than we can in reality. Epsilon has the ability to generate poison from her lips and do anything with it, including blowing a poisoned kiss to a victim or leaving behind an apple covered in poisoned kisses. Meanwhile, Alpha has the ability to see through absolutely anything with his X-ray vision, including the Earth itself.
But the most different of all is the relationship between the two of us. We’re not only partners but also lovers, frequently calling each other by our real names, especially when we’re alone. But August doesn’t flinch away from reading any of it to me, not even the intimate love scenes.
In one panel, my character asks, “Are you sure you love me as January? Or is it Epsilon that you love?”
“Both,” September says, and then there’s a panel that takes up an entire page, showing different moments in which Alpha has watched over Epsilon to protect her: while she’s brushing her teeth, while she’s flirting with a target, while she’s in a limousine on her way back to headquarters, while she’s in a safe house, while she’s on a plane up in the sky, and while she’s all the way on the other side of the world.
In this issue, we’re on a mission to kill Dr. October, a criminal mastermind who’s going to blow up the Empire State Building on New Year’s Eve. His superpower is the ability to make anything explode by pointing at it and saying, Bang. It’s clearly a ridiculous premise, but in the context of the story, there’s almost no way to defeat him. He’s actually dangerous. So he has to die, obviously, for the sake of the nation.
“But what if I don’t want to kill him, Sep?” reads August. “Sometimes it makes me feel cold inside.”
I’ve finished the saltines and tomato soup by now, and I’m lying on my side, burrowed underneath the quilt, gazing at the black-and-white panels. Listening to my partner read to me from the comic book has brought me back to a place I didn’t think I could reach ever again. I feel calm and centered, his stability easing my turbulent emotions, and I can see it now. It’s not just that I can be myself around August.
It’s that I can’t ever be myself without him.
He’s slouched down against his pillow, still sitting up but more relaxed than before, and I’m curled up next to him, my knees barely grazing his leg. This is the closest we’ve ever been while in a bed together.
“You aren’t killing him, January,” he reads. “We’re killing him. I will share your burden. I will bear it for you when it becomes too much.”
On the next page is a close-up panel of the two characters kissing passionately. The only color in the image is a crystal blue teardrop on January’s face. I’m too drowsy to think about what this means for the two of us, if it even means anything at all. These story beats, this romantic plotline, even the backstories... They’ve all just been created for the purpose of the comic book. It’s all been glorified, the stakes higher than in my own life, and I don’t know if this could ever be us in reality.
August reads to me until I drift off to the sound of his voice, sinking into the mattress next to him, the warmth of his body closing over me like a gentle cocoon.
When I wake in the morning, I’m still curled up on the bed but turned the other way. But August is nestled behind me, his arm around my stomach, his body aligned closely to mine. The beat of his heart echoes through my blood and bones until it overlays with the sound of my own heart pulsing
inside my chest. He’s holding me close, as if he’ll never let me go, and we’ve been like this for the entire night. If only I could stay here forever. It’s only now that I’m starting to realize Jamie and Reese were merely pale imitations of the one thing that’s ever felt right in my life.
If I had to quit everything, the Executive, the missions, the code name Echo, I would do it in an instant, if only it meant I could keep August.
But there’s a burner phone already buzzing on the nightstand, and Alpha wakes up and pulls away from me a moment later. I watch silently, aching from the loss of his warmth, as he reads through a series of text messages. When he finally looks up at me, his eyes are dark with anger.
“Kilo’s dead.”
fifteen
At a meeting in the briefing room, Agent Novenine and several other handlers address the twenty-four operatives still alive at the Executive. Everyone has been temporarily recalled from their missions to be briefed on the situation. Last night, Kilo and Juliet killed the owner of a major tech company. After returning to the Executive, she went to her dorm while he retrieved his cell phone from the parking garage. By the time he entered the elevator, all the security cameras in the building had been disabled.
When the doors opened again, there was a knife in Kilo’s heart.
No one knows if it was an intruder or someone inside the Executive. But whoever did it not only deactivated the security cameras, but also managed to overpower a man who had the strength to crush a person with a single blow. Kilo could have been killed by someone who found out he was in Mongoose, but I have no idea what to think. The only thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t me or August who did it.
Juliet is beyond drunk, and she’s sitting way too close to Fox for everyone not to notice there’s something going on between them. Meanwhile, Tango has been slumped in a corner of the briefing room, her eyes puffy from crying. She’s the entertainer with many talents: singing, dancing, juggling, and acrobatics, to name a few. So even though she seems shocked, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for her to be acting right now. I don’t know her at all.
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