The Devil You Know

by Kit Rocha

  Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust me. Trust—

  A silent snap was followed by sudden give. She stiffened her muscles to keep from revealing that her wrists were no longer bound together. A tiny movement clipped the bracelet back together, and she exhaled and checked the guards. One was watching the torture with a blank expression, the other seemed kinda into it.

  Neither were paying Maya the slightest bit of attention.

  She waited until Gray was sprawled in his chair again, breathing hard. She inclined her head in a tiny nod. The left corner of his mouth twitched up in silent encouragement.

  Maya flexed her fingers. The pins and needles were already fading. She shifted her weight forward and relaxed her mental grip on her senses. Every detail of the room locked into place, a replica she could repaint across the backs of her eyelids. A chess board waiting for her opening move.

  So she took it.

  Her metal chair was solidly constructed but light enough that she could heft it easily in one hand as soon as she’d gained her feet. She didn’t have super-speed or super-strength, but she had something more vital when it came to fighting overly trained soldiers—she was easily dismissed. A nonentity.

  The guard on the left was the one who seemed to be enjoying Gray’s agony. He didn’t realize Maya had moved until the chair crashed into his stomach. She’d been aiming for his face—maybe she would have to start lifting weights again—but the stomach was good enough.

  Time expanded. Maya got to enjoy every detail of the chair crashing into him. The thud, his sharp exhale. The shocked confusion twisting his face, swallowed by pain as he doubled over. The hilarious bafflement on the other guard’s face as his gaze darted around the room, looking for a threat he could comprehend.

  Richter spun to face her, his smug pleasure evaporating. In that single second that stretched for a lifetime, she could see his thoughts scrambling to make sense of all the things he couldn’t have anticipated. Her resilience. Her inexplicable freedom. Her brazen defiance. Her Dani-given ability to turn literally anything into a weapon, including the chair he’d tied her to.

  Underestimating her would be the last thing he did.

  * * *

  Gray was running out of time.

  He didn’t need a medic to tell him this. He knew it, the same way he knew his own name and designation, his reflection in the mirror, the trigger weights on his favorite rifles.

  The way he knew the scent of Maya’s hair.

  All he could smell right now was blood. It dripped into his eyes, slid slickly over his skin. He was bleeding, but he couldn’t tell how or why. The pain was far away, buried under …

  No, not buried. Frozen. He’d watched a pond freeze over once, tiny crystals forming and then reaching for one another until they locked together in a thin shell that obscured the water beneath.

  That’s what this felt like. Something was under the ice. Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Then Maya sprang from her chair and launched it across the room, and Gray remembered what it was—purpose.

  He had a mission, one that was as clear to him now, in his admittedly altered state, as it had been when he was lying naked in Maya’s bed. Shield. Protect.

  Love.

  Gray moved.

  The chair clattered loudly to the floor, the sound covering the snap of Gray’s bindings as he surged up and toward Richter. With the element of surprise on his side, he managed to wrap one bloody arm around Richter’s neck. He jerked him into a chokehold so vicious that his muscles strained and burned.

  But Richter wasn’t a fool. He still clutched that fucking silver box in his hand, and he jammed the prongs against Gray’s arm. The burning spread over Gray’s entire body, his muscles contracting as the current flowed through him—but it also kept his arm locked tight around Richter’s throat.

  The man quickly realized his mistake. The electric pain ceased as he tossed aside the stun gun, and Gray went down in a heap of quivering muscle, dragging Richter down with him.

  Richter’s face was turning red. Gray tried to count the seconds, but it seemed like it took an eternity for Richter to grope for the pistol in his shoulder holster. Gray caught his wrist in a punishing grip, grinding the bones together—

  But the effort was costing him. Richter slammed his elbow into Gray’s side and managed to dislodge the chokehold. He broke free, gasping, and reached again for his gun.

  The guards were still standing there, stunned into inaction. They barely reacted when Maya shot past them, screaming an incoherent denial. She kicked at Richter’s hand, and Gray heard some of the bones in the man’s hand shatter—

  thin ice on a pond

  Richter snatched at Maya’s boot, but she evaded him, dropped to her knees, and grabbed the gun from his shoulder rig. She lifted it and fired at the single naked bulb. It shattered, and darkness exploded through the room.

  Glass rained down on him, and Gray laughed.

  Richter had no fucking idea what he’d unleashed.

  Gray grabbed at Richter, came up with a handful of shirt and leather gun holster, and used it to drag the man closer. Richter struck out at him, finding the wound on Gray’s upper arm and digging his thumbs into it.

  It didn’t hurt. Gray felt it, a strange sort of pressure that made him tense in anticipation, but the waves of agony never came. He slammed Richter’s head against the floor to dislodge his grip, then did it again as his opponent raked his nails viciously across his face.

  Gray ignored it all, grappling with Richter until he managed to get his forearm across his neck again. Richter rained blows on him, but Gray shrugged off every one in his single-minded pursuit of his goal.

  If this was what Dani felt like all the time, no wonder she thought she was bulletproof.

  A gunshot followed by a heavy thud rang out in the tiny room, momentarily distracting Gray from Richter’s struggles. If Maya took out the guards—

  Two more shots, and the other guard went down, slumping to the floor to land on Gray’s legs. He kicked free of the corpse and bore his weight down on Richter’s neck. His struggles were weakening …

  But so was Gray. The lack of pain didn’t feel so magical now. It only felt like spiraling down into a numb void.

  Maya called out to him. “Gray?”

  “Go!” It was an order. “Get out of here, Maya. Now.”

  Shield.

  “No,” she shot back. “I won’t leave you.”

  Protect.

  She didn’t have to. He would be leaving her, and no amount of anger or struggling could change that.

  Love.

  End of the line. All he could do now was make sure he took Richter with him.

  NINA

  By the time the last Executive Security guard fell, Nina felt like she’d been fighting for days.

  It had been a long time since she’d been in a battle this vicious, with waves and waves of indefatigable enemies that kept coming, no matter what. It reminded her too much of the failed mission years before that had taken Zoey’s life and torn her and Ava apart.

  She glanced at Ava. Their eyes locked, and she knew her sister felt it, too, that heavy drag of memory. Then Ava broke the contact, bending down to gather more ammunition from the fallen bodies.

  Nina locked it down, too. There would be time later to process. First, they had to get everyone home alive.

  She activated her comms. “Rafe? Did Mace and Dani make it?”

  “We’re here,” Dani answered with a tiny but telltale hitch in her voice. “They’re working on Conall.”

  Across the room, Knox swiped at one bloodstained cheek with his arm and only managed to leave even more blood behind.

  He raised one eyebrow, and Nina nodded. “Did Rafe say where he and Gray were separated?”

  “That long hallway on the first floor, but it’s sealed off. You’ll have to figure out a way in.”

  Nina started for the stairs, Knox and Ava hard on her heels. “Suggestio
ns?”

  “Windows would my first choice,” Knox replied.

  Ava frowned. “We could go through the floor on the second level.”

  Nina considered both options as they pounded down the stairs, but she knew they didn’t have time for either. Going through the floor required tools they didn’t have. And without knowing the layout of the building, it would take a tedious process of trial and error to find the correct set of windows to attempt entry.

  The only people who had a chance in hell of quickly pulling up the blueprints were either missing or bleeding out.

  Nina clenched her jaw as they hit the first-floor landing—and almost ran face-first into the heavy blast door. There was literally no way around it. She and Knox would have to physically force it, and they’d be sitting ducks for any potential firepower on the other side of it.

  She pushed up her sleeves and gripped one handle near the edge anyway. “Ava?”

  Her sister nodded and drew two pistols. “I’ll cover you.”

  Knox grabbed on to the door as well, worry creasing his brow.

  “We can do this,” Nina reassured him. “We will do this. On three.”

  She counted it off, and they pushed at the door with a strength born more out of desperation than physical alteration. Two people they loved, two members of their family, were probably on the other side of this fucking door.

  Failure was not an option.

  At first, nothing. They pushed harder. Knox grunted with the effort, and Nina opened her mouth, ready to scream her frustration—

  The door creaked, groaned, and began to move.

  Once they got it going, it went fast. Neither of them had time to check their force, so they stumbled and landed in a heap on the floor. Ava planted her expensive boots in the newly opened doorway, raised her pistols, and fired down the hallway.

  By the time Nina and Knox made it back to their feet, she’d killed the four guards waiting for them.

  Nina didn’t wait to clear the area. Nothing could have stopped her from dashing down the hallway, calling Maya’s name, not even an ambush. If anyone tried to jump out at her, she’d bear them down by sheer force of will alone.

  Instead of an answer, she heard weeping. She pushed open the door closest to where the guards had fallen, and light flooded into a dark room.

  It illuminated Tobias Richter’s dead-eyed corpse lying on the floor. Next to him, Maya wept bitterly, cradling Gray’s motionless head in her lap.

  “Help me,” she sobbed, her fingers buried in Gray’s hair. “He’s dying.”

  Nina knelt at her side. “It’s okay,” she whispered, tugging at Maya’s hands. “We’re here. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She could only hope it wasn’t a lie.

  December 15th, 2079

  I told myself I could never be her mother. I told myself she was a soldier in this war. I thought I understood the monster that I am. I accepted it. What I did was monstrous.

  When she was eight years old, I made this terrible choice, knowing it might lead to both our deaths.

  Now that she’s seventeen, I find myself unable to tolerate the idea of sacrificing her.

  I didn’t anticipate this weakness. I suppose this terrible feeling is love.

  It’s very inconvenient.

  The Recovered Journal of Birgitte Skovgaard

  TWENTY-SIX

  Maya couldn’t remember how she got outside.

  It was an odd feeling—not remembering. Her entire life was defined by knowing, knowing facts and statistics, languages and history, knowing precisely what had happened, and when, and how.

  It wasn’t really a natural state for humans. After Birgitte had warned her that her genetic modifications carried debilitating side effects, Maya had grown obsessed with researching the science of memory. Most people remembered the world through a constantly evolving filter, with everything they thought they knew growing increasingly blurry around the edges, shaped by their emotions and experience. The very act of recalling a memory could change it—and that was if they’d even remembered an event correctly to begin with. The human brain had an unfathomable ability to protect itself with gentle lies.

  Maya had never had the comfort of self-protective deception. Her memories were crystal clear and sharp enough to cut, with every foolish mistake she’d ever made wrapped in perfectly preserved agony and humiliation. Sometimes she thought that was what really happened to data couriers. Who wouldn’t eventually snap under the pressure of remembering a lifetime of mortifying fuckups and interpersonal conflicts and other people’s dark, terrible secrets?

  But Maya couldn’t remember how she got outside.

  She couldn’t hear, either. She knelt at Gray’s side and stared at Mace. His mouth moved as he checked Gray’s vitals, but all Maya heard was a hollow ringing. She watched Mace’s lips as they formed shapes she’d never learned to convert to meaning.

  Why would she need to read lips? She’d always heard everything.

  Pain twisted Mace’s features. He rested a hand on Gray’s forehead for a second, then shoved himself to his feet as if every movement hurt. Maya watched him move to Conall’s side in slow motion as the ringing sound vibrated down an endless tunnel.

  Tinnitus, identified a voice inside her head. Brought upon by significant emotional shock. And of course she could still hear that—the one thing she’d always wanted to escape. The endless ghosts echoing in her head.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye drew her attention. It took forever to turn her head, and even that gentle adjustment made the world swim.

  Rafe was striding out of the building, carrying a dazed child in each arm. Nina took one and carried her across the parking lot to where Dani was parking a windowless van she must have stolen from somewhere.

  The children would be fine.

  Gray wouldn’t.

  Maya looked back down. Gray was stretched out on a thin strip of dead grass, paler than death and just as still. She reached for his wrist, distantly terrified when she couldn’t find a pulse at first. She adjusted her fingers until she felt it—weak, too quick, unsteady.

  Mace couldn’t do anything for him. That was why he’d left and gone back to Conall’s side. It was simple triage. You didn’t spend time on people you couldn’t save. Instead, you moved on to the people you could.

  Gray was dying. But he wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  Not yet.

  We ran an op down near the Gulf once.

  Maya squeezed her eyes shut as Gray’s voice drifted up out of her memories. But closing her eyes only made it worse—her grip on reality was already so tenuous. She fell backward into the past.

  A shitty bar outside a shittier town. A cage fight. The sound of flesh on flesh. The panic—her panic—

  And then Gray had been there. A solid wall. Her protector. Cutting a path through the crowd, guiding her out into a night pulsing with the promise of a vicious storm.

  His voice. Soft and warm, curling around her to speak of nothing more demanding than the weather. He’d soothed her panic with his words, and in doing so he’d slid beneath her defenses. It had taken her months to admit the truth, but she’d fallen a little in love with him that night.

  While we were there, a hurricane hit, and we had to hunker down.

  His pulse fluttered under her fingertips. So fast, so weak. The ringing in her ears felt like the roaring of violent winds.

  A hurricane had slammed into Maya’s life. Not so many hours ago, she’d been in bed with Gray, breaking apart under the bliss of letting herself feel. So vulnerable and yet still so safe—Gray had given her that.

  In the middle of the storm, everything got quiet. The whole sky was the strangest green I’ve ever seen.

  Gray had given her peace.

  She had given him pain.

  She’d given him torture at the hands of a monster, because that was the lot of anyone who got too close to her. Did it matter that Richter was dead now? There would always be another TechCorps exec
utive who wanted the secrets in her head, because Birgitte had left so many. So many.

  Maya’s love was poison.

  She’d be the death of Gray, just like she’d killed Simon. Just like she would no doubt kill Dani and Nina someday. Knox and Conall and Rafe, too. Probably even Mace.

  Maybe Maya should have died with Birgitte and her revolution. Maybe she never should have crawled off the Hill, trailing peril and death in her wake.

  I thought it was all over, but Mace said no, it was just the eye of the storm. The middle.

  The world spun on around her.

  The world spun on without her.

  She felt a thousand years old, a million miles away. Nina drifted into her field of vision, her lips moving, her arms gesturing. Confident and strong, directing the rescue mission because that was what Nina did. She saved people.

  She’d taught Maya to save people.

  Instinctively, Maya rejected the thought, clinging to her broken numbness. But it drifted up again, nagging and insistent. Forcing her to remember.

  She had saved people. Sometimes it was big and obvious—rescuing kids or shutting down bullies or arranging medical help in the nick of time. But the little stuff mattered just as much. The food she helped preserve. The knowledge she shared. Every heater or air conditioner she fixed, every generator or engine. The books and the music and the tools and the hope.

  Nina could have done some of it without her but not all of it. Maybe not even most of it. Five Points would have been colder and darker and sadder if Maya had never been a part of it.

  Maybe it was a good thing she’d crawled off the Hill, after all.

  And Tobias Richter had been the worst the TechCorps could throw at her. He’d hurt her. He’d bruised her. Maybe he’d even broken her a little.