Beyond Surrender (Beyond #9)

by Kit Rocha

  If it had been anyone else in the world—living or dead—she would have disconnected the call. Talking to him was treason, an offense severe enough to earn her an immediate bullet between the eyes. Helping him—

  That would earn her a trip to the empty white room beneath the tower. The place where they broke you and healed you just to break you again, over and over until you begged for them to stop fixing the parts of you they'd ripped away.

  She'd had a taste of it once, when she'd been brought in for hacking the City Center network and refused to tell them where she'd hidden the datacard with the dirt she'd stolen. They broke her fingers one by one, then left her there with a threat hanging over her head—give them the data, or they'd let her fingers heal like that and start breaking other parts of her.

  Nikolas pulled her out of that hellhole. He arranged for the regen tech to restore her fingers so perfectly that her knuckles only ached a little when it rained—but the nightmares never went away completely.

  If it had been anyone else…

  She tightened her fists until her fingers turned white and wet her lips. "What is it?"

  "I've recorded something—a message for the people." He tugged at the tie until the knot unraveled, then pulled it free and opened the top button of his collar. "The truth about what happened to me, and what's happening to them."

  "Propaganda," she whispered.

  "If you wish." He leaned forward, his eyes intense, and she could just make out an angry scar peeking out of the top of his collar. "My words are only part of the picture, and they need to see it all. Do you understand?"

  See it all.

  Penny had seen it all—an ironic feat for a girl who had once been tortured for stealing a few secrets. As the head of NetSec, she had them all at her fingertips—the foibles of councilmen, the indiscretions of their families, the hypocrisies of the wealthy men who formed the power structure directly beneath the Council.

  Most she'd been tasked with deleting, covering their tracks even as she exposed the less privileged. But a few bits of choice blackmail material had always found their way into Nikolas's possession as insurance. Just in case.

  He might be a hero, but he was a pragmatic one. And Penny had never cared much for laws or commands. Her loyalty began and ended with the man staring up at her from the vidscreen. She'd fight to protect her staff, but if she had to choose…

  There had never been a choice. She'd been his since the day he saved her.

  The doorknob rattled, and Penny jumped in her chair. When no knock followed, she knew it was Peterson before the soft beep of him overriding her lock sounded. She caught one last glimpse of Nikolas's worried expression before she shut the connection and pulled up the surveillance footage Leigh had sent her.

  Smith Peterson was an objectively handsome man, but it had been years since Penny had been able to look at him and see anything but danger. He strolled in, hands in his pockets, his sharp, assessing gaze at odds with his casual demeanor. "Good morning, Penelope."

  "Mr. Peterson." He enjoyed subservience and respect, two things he'd never earned and didn't deserve. Penny offered them anyway, rising from her chair and doing her best to look pleasant and accommodating, even if she couldn't manage a smile. "I was just reviewing the techs' work from last night. We might have a lead on Liam Riley."

  "Might," he repeated. His expression didn't change, but something in his tone raised the hair on the back of her neck.

  She spun the screen around and played Leigh's footage. "We know where he's been seen recently. We're going to deploy additional surveillance tech and narrow the blind spots—"

  "Five people," he interrupted.

  Penny stared. "Five people?"

  "I'm reassigning five people from your staff." He straightened the shirt cuff that extended below the sleeve of his jacket. "I think their infantry enlistments would be a better allocation of city resources."

  No one on her staff was remotely equipped for the infantry—and very few people left in Eden were qualified to replace them. It was petty cruelty, venting his frustration and disappointment on her, because she made an easy target—and fear would make the others work harder.

  She swallowed the pain, because she had no other choice. "Whatever you think is best."

  "Yes. Remember that, Penelope." He turned for the door. "Have their names on my desk by the end of the day."

  "Have—" Her composure cracked. "You want me to choose them?"

  Peterson didn't even pause. "It's your staff." He reached the door and flashed her a warm smile, though his eyes remained as cold as ever. "Your responsibility."

  She heard the warning beneath his pleasant words as he left her office. When you fail, they pay the price.

  She sank back into her chair and stared at her screen. Her own face reflected back at her—light brown skin, light brown hair, light brown eyes. Her uniform jacket was light brown, too. She was nondescript. Nameless. A cog in this machine she'd never wanted to be a part of, a machine she wanted to destroy until Nikolas brought her inside and promised her a chance to change the future with him.

  Hope had died with him. For weeks, Penny had been putting one foot in front of the other, doing things that turned her stomach to protect herself and the people who reported to her.

  Still not enough.

  Moving slowly at first, then with increased confidence, Penny navigated through the network until she found the hidden stash of files she'd set up for Markovic. She pulled them all down to her private network and decrypted them one by one before playing the first.

  Peterson filled the screen, as handsome as ever, but his eyes were as cold as his words as he leaned across his desk toward the camera—a clever device that had been hidden in Markovic's tiepin. "Fuck those lazy freeloaders. They're the ones who got us into this mess, with their incessant whining about wanting more more more. If they didn't want their illegal brats requisitioned and sent to the communes, they shouldn't have bred without authorization."

  The next video was at a different angle, not in Markovic's office. Peterson was pacing back and forth, a Special Tasks Lieutenant listening attentively. "The farms need more workers. They're threatening a fifty percent shortfall without five hundred new bodies to get crops into the fields. So you take your men, and you find them five hundred bodies. The first grubby peasants you can lay your hands on. And take their families, too, so there's no one left behind to sob about it."

  There were more videos, fifteen in all. A thoughtfully curated, carefully preserved collection of all the disdain, hatred, and loathing for Eden's residents that Peterson hid behind his fancy suits and polished smiles. The silver bullet Markovic had never gotten the chance to fire.

  Doing it for him would get her killed. And it might not change anything.

  She dithered about it for the rest of the afternoon while she performed routine tasks and added and removed names from her list.

  He just had a kid.

  Her mother depends on her income.

  She's taking care of her three younger siblings.

  He's seventy-five—he'll die in the first battle.

  She's seventeen—she'll die in the first battle.

  Before Markovic had dragged her into his ridiculous circle of heroism, she wouldn't have known their stories. She wouldn't have cared. She would have picked the five she needed the least and shipped their names off, knowing she couldn't stop it, couldn't help them.

  Frustrated, she deleted the list and went back to the IP address. It took her forty-five minutes to figure out where Markovic had been calling her from. The first forty, she wasted tracking and backtracking, digging through ridiculous layers of rerouting. It had to be that mysterious hacker in Sector Four, the one who seemed to know more about Eden's network than she did.

  He was good, very good. Maybe better than her. But she had better tools and more processing power. She could hand all this proof over to Peterson now and maybe spare herself.

  Instead, she typed out seven word
s and sent a message that had nothing to do with survival.

  Send me your video. I'll do it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryder told himself he had things to do in Four.

  It was a lie.

  He had things to do, but they were all solidly centered on Sector Five. The battle there had taken its toll not only on the men who had fought in it, but on the sector as a whole. The factories were still standing and operational, but some of them had been damaged. And even the citizens who had refused to involve themselves with the rebellion were now facing the realities of death and war—cleanup efforts, rebuilding.

  Burial detail.

  Sharp, stinging guilt raked him. They had won the battle, successfully defeated the largest invading force of troops from the city that anyone had seen so far, but at great cost, and he couldn't help but wonder whether they might have fared better with more training, more preparation. More of his attention.

  Dallas had insisted that Ryder's presence in Four was necessary to their success, and he didn't doubt it. Dallas didn't seem like the sort of man who would ever admit he needed something, even if he did, unless it was a matter of life or death. But Ryder hadn't exactly fought him on it either. He could have offered other solutions, like visits or encrypted video calls or traveling back and forth on a daily basis. But he hadn't, and that reason was now tangled up with his guilt and recrimination.

  Nessa.

  He had promised her he would come back. Not right away—he had too much shit to do to even think about it—but as soon as he could. And the fact that he'd been able to think of little else for days, even as he worked in the dirt and dust and blood alongside the frightened people of Sector Five, was almost enough to make him turn around and stay out of Four for good.

  He'd always excelled at self-sacrifice. But not this time.

  She wasn't in her office, or in the aging room, or the distillery, or any of the other places he could think of, and he almost took it as a divine sign that he should haul his ass back to Five. But weariness drove him to the apartment above the Broken Circle instead.

  Nessa was sprawled on his couch, her boots on the floor next to her and a tablet resting on her stomach. Sound spilled out of it—the crash of metallic sound effects while music worked toward a crescendo—but she was oblivious. Her chin was tilted down toward her shoulder, and strands of pink and purple hair had slipped over her cheek.

  Something lurched in his chest, twisting free a tightness that had been building for three long days—and even longer nights.

  He knelt by the couch, moving as carefully and quietly as possible, and smoothed the hair from her cheek.

  She jolted awake, her hands scrabbling for the tablet as it started to slide off her stomach. Then her eyes met his, and her lips curved up in a sweet, sleepy smile. "You're back."

  It took him a moment to find his voice. "Yeah, I'm back."

  "I broke in," she confessed in a low whisper. "I wanted to be waiting for you."

  "I'm glad." He saw the heaviness in his heart reflected in her eyes. "I'm sorry about Tank and Stuart."

  She swallowed and sat up before shutting off the tablet and tossing it aside. "It sucks. All of it sucks. All of it—"

  "Hey." He sank onto the couch beside her, but he couldn't think of anything reassuring to say. There wasn't anything. Later, maybe, they'd be able to say that Tank's sacrifice had helped win the war. For now, the only thing they had was senseless loss.

  "I know." She crawled into his lap, straddling his knees with her own resting on either side of his thighs. Tears glistened in her eyes and on her lashes, but she blinked them away as she cupped his face. Then she ran her hands down his neck and over his shoulders. "Dallas just told me you were in one piece, more or less. He didn't tell me if you'd gotten hurt."

  "Scrapes and bruises, nothing a little med-gel couldn't fix." He covered her hands with his. "If I'd needed stitches, I would have waited for you."

  She huffed before continuing her determined exploration across his chest. "I'd stitch you up crooked to teach you to take better care of yourself."

  Worry and fear tinged her voice, not irritation. "I didn't take unnecessary chances."

  "I know." Her hands stilled, one pressed over his heart. "I worry about the necessary ones. Then I remember you're a super-spy with a murder book. You got this."

  As much as anyone could—his mother and Jim had made sure of that—but life rarely offered guarantees. He couldn't bring himself to say as much, so he took a deep breath. "I may have to start spending more time back in Five."

  For the first time since he'd met her, Nessa's open expression shut down. Her fingers tensed under his, but it was the only physical clue she gave him. Her expression was so carefully, studiously blank, and when she finally spoke, it wasn't a cheerful babble. Just two precise words. "I understand."

  "No, you don't. I don't want to, but the damage—" He bit off the words. "How many people did Dallas lose from the militia?"

  Nessa tugged her hand free and touched his lips. "Ryder. I understand—"

  "How many?"

  "I don't know, nine or ten?"

  "Ten," he repeated, "including Tank. Sector Five lost forty-seven men."

  Her hand dropped to her lap. She wasn't good at holding that blank expression, and it cracked as he watched. First, she caught her lower lip between her teeth. Then her brows pulled down as sympathy and pain filled her eyes. "You have responsibilities," she said softly. "People depend on you. I'm trying not to be another burden, okay? So don't worry about explaining it to me. You have important shit going on."

  "You're not a burden." Not quite a lie, and not for the reasons she thought. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he wanted something—wanted her—as much as he wanted to tear down Eden, and it was dragging him in two different directions. "Just...don't act like it means I'm shutting you out. I'm not."

  "We didn't make any promises." Her right hand still rested under his, pinned against his chest, and she curled her fingers into his shirt. "I'll miss you when you're not here. I'll be sad. I'd hide it if I could, but I'm shit at hiding things, so I'll be here when you come back, every time. And I understand."

  He tightened his fingers around hers. "Do you really believe that?"

  "Do I believe what?"

  "That we haven't made any promises."

  She exhaled shakily. "It would be stupid. This isn't a good time for promises."

  "Selfish," he agreed. But some things couldn't be stopped. "I've never been selfish before. I think it might be time."

  She eased closer, until her chest pressed against his. She smelled like cinnamon and cloves today, with a sweet undertone of vanilla. Her lashes were thick and black, spiky with unshed tears. "You can be selfish with me."

  No, he couldn't. It was a luxury none of them could afford, not with Eden pressing in on them, becoming more and more desperate with each thwarted advance.

  But here, tonight, he would take it. The stolen moments, the chance to stop thinking about whether he'd done enough, or whether he was making the right decisions. With Nessa, she'd tell him if he did something wrong, and his focus was crystalline. Absolute.

  He touched her chin, lifting her face to his. "I missed you."

  "I missed you, too." She wrapped her arms around his neck. "I thought about crashing in your bed, but it felt weird. You haven't invited me there yet."

  "I can fix that." He slipped one arm beneath her legs, rose with her in his arms, and regarded her solemnly. "Will you stay with me tonight?"

  "Yes." Her voice was equally solemn, but her eyes ruined it. They glinted with uncontainable mischief as she gravely told him, "But only if you promise to do some really filthy stuff with me."

  "Count on it." He walked into the bedroom and stood her beside the bed. He wanted her naked before she touched the mattress, nothing between them but open space—empty, and yet full of possibilities.

  He started with her shirt, tugging the tight purple
fabric up until it bared just the lower curves of her breasts. He paused, slipping his fingers beneath the cotton to stroke her nipples. She arched into his touch with a moan, swaying on her feet. He steadied her, then stripped the shirt over her head.

  It left her hair in disarray, and Ryder took a moment to smooth it around her shoulders, combing the silken strands with his fingers. He brushed the hollow of her throat, and her pounding pulse made his blood throb in answer.

  "Ryder." She tilted her head back, her eyes drifting shut, trust evident in every line of her body. In the way she whispered his name. "Michael."

  "Just that look." Her belt buckle clicked under his fingers. "That's all I want you wearing tonight."

  "I can't control my looks." She traced up his arms to his shoulders. "Whenever you put your hands on me, I can't control much of anything. I think I have nerve endings that only exist when you're touching me."

  "Shh." He slid her patched jeans and her black lace underwear off her hips and down her legs, leaving her naked when she stepped free of the fabric.

  He tore off his own clothes in record time. There was nothing sensual in undressing himself, just a means to an end—flesh against flesh, feeling her skin heat against his as he captured her mouth in an open, hungry kiss.

  She went up on her toes, pushing as close to him as she could as her arms tangled around his neck. Her kiss was desperate, her noises needy. He spilled her back to the bed, never relinquishing the contact that felt like a lifeline.

  Even with the world crashing down around them, he could be this for her—safety, shelter. Protection.

  No waiting. He thrust inside her, then stilled with a low groan as she shuddered beneath him. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders, almost hard enough to break the skin, and she panted against his lips. "Oh God, oh fuck—"

  Ryder steeled himself against the delicious pain and soothed her with soft, grazing kisses across her jaw and down to her collarbone. He braced one arm beside her head and lifted his upper body, gritting his teeth when the movement drove his cock deeper into her grasping heat.

  But he didn't move, not yet. He touched her instead—tracing patterns on her skin with his palm, his fingertips, the back of his hand. Each one offered a different sensation, a new revelation of reaction. Nessa liked the softer caresses on her throat and shoulders, and a firmer pressure on her breasts. So he gave her those things, watching her intently as her face flushed and her body heated.