by Meli Raine
“That's the hard way,” I tell her. “You're smarter than that. You know how this works. Expose us and you lose everything–your power here, your position in the White House, everything. Once people know you have an identical twin who broke into the president’s home, you're done for. And your side of Stateless is losing. It's all lose-lose for you, Glen. You know what you need to do.”
Her eyes widen.
“You're crazy,” she says without conviction. The mental manipulation is working. Kina looks at me, head tilted, trying to read what I'm saying.
“Not crazy. Either I kill you, Kina kills you, or you do it yourself.”
We're in a bathroom that's about fifteen by ten, long and luxurious by Middle America standards, but nothing special in a palatial home like The Grove. Seconds tick by, the three of us breathing hard, caught in a cage by every choice that brought us to this second.
One of us is dying within the next few minutes.
None of us wants to be the one.
Glen's outnumbered.
And I'm telling Kina's twin sister that the best way for this to end is for her to commit suicide.
Right before our very eyes.
“I knew in the days before The Test that you were weak,” she says, her words filled with a sparkling cynicism that make her a caricature of herself.
“I wasn't–”
She cuts Kina off. “Not you. Him.” Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. “You didn't want the kill. Didn't want the obvious glory that comes from it. You sickened me in that moment. Even more than her.”
“I don't kill for sport.”
“It's not about sport. It's about power.”
“Same thing when it comes to human life.”
“And that's where you just don't get it. Human life isn't something you hold up in reverence. It's just another thing. You don't hold back from killing a fly, or ripping up a rose bush.”
“Those aren't human beings.”
“They're no different. They are a means to an end. So are people.”
“Then why didn't you kill Kina?” I ask.
“I just tried! You interrupted.”
“Not now. Before.”
“I had orders not to,” she admits.
“Orders from whom?”
Diminishing before my eyes, she seems to shrink inward, her fate hitting her, eyes hollowing as the very real prospect of what we're all saying sinks in.
Uncertainty radiates off Kina suddenly. I can feel her emotion, the power of it forcing me to remember to breathe. Her expression turns to something deeper, compassionate–loving.
“Can't kill her. I can't, and – ” Kina’s throat sounds like it’s got wet tacks in the back of it. “Won't let you do it. There has to be a way out that doesn't lead to death,” Kina whispers, though Glen can hear every word.
“Or at least, that doesn't make you or Callum a murderer,” Glen adds, her voice smooth and cunning. “And Kina’s dead if I reveal her.”
Some piece of her calculates that escape is her best chance at survival, her hand going to the other doorknob. I throw myself at her, the thump of our bodies against the door a victory. It's not too loud, and I expect her to scream.
Nothing.
Why won't she scream? Would she really rather die than reveal us?
She rolls off me easily, using the bottom of her shoe to pivot off the shower door, and then she grabs my hair, digging her nails into my scalp, feral, making hushed noises that turn into nothing as one of her fingernails rakes my eye, coming close to slicing my cornea, shoving my contact lens deep into the side of my eye.
Then she goes for Kina's throat.
I'm behind her, a shadow cast on the door as my blurred vision sees only the lump of Glen before me, mortal fury in her eyes as she attacks Kina, hating her with an intensity that makes me feel like it's my fault.
None of it is, but that's the problem with emotions: They never make sense when the stakes are the highest.
Glen arches her back against my chest as I lift her up, my arm locked around her neck.
I close my eyes and elevate, the shockwave rippling through me as my arms turn to steel and my mind goes blank.
I make the move.
I hear the crunch.
The slack feels like eternity in my arms. Glen's dead weight is a mass of karma.
“No!” Kina whispers, her hand moving up to her own neck. “I feel it. Did you kill me, too?”
Like the bunny's neck so many years ago, I did it to save her.
Did it to save her the emotional pain of killing something she's attached to.
Elevation isn't supposed to be a time warp that swings from extreme to extreme, but it does, my muscles so tight. I tremor for a few seconds before it all ends and I drop Glen to the ground.
“Kina.” Rushing to her, I don't touch her. I know I've done the unspeakable.
I killed part of her. I had to do it to save her, but it's gone, nonetheless.
Dead because of me.
“Callum, how am I supposed to–”
Rap. Rap.
Two harsh, distinct knuckle knocks on the bathroom door make what's left of her disintegrate. Kina is threads of humanity in a pile, unraveled and torn, bits and pieces of string that can't hold shape.
“Glen? You in there getting ready? I spent a long time in Japan thinking about your hot little hole.”
I'm ready to strangle him, murder charge be damned.
“No!” Kina whispers fiercely, smoothing her hair off her face, turning on the faucet to drown out our voices, carefully avoiding looking at the pile of bones and flesh that is her sister. She turns to the door. “Just a minute!” she shouts.
“That's all it's going to take, sweetheart. It's been too long without you. Get ready for a few rounds today,” he calls back, chuckling.
“No way am I letting you go out there so he can–no, Kina. No,” I hiss.
“Yes. I have to. He’ll assume I’m her. And it looks like she had her birthmarks removed. You did! It makes sense that she did,” she says, hands shaking as she pulls her suit jacket on properly.
“You do not have to fuck the president of the United States!”
“I have to get him in a vulnerable position. My sister's body is right there.” A pained look floods her face as her eyes cut over, then quickly jump back, from Glen’s body. “We have to find a way out of this. If I stay in here too long, he'll get suspicious.”
“I don't care.” She’s an oil painting of features before me, blurred and unclear as my eye struggles to recover. Her voice, though — everything I need to know about her emotional state comes through.
“I do! I'm not letting them win, Callum! I didn't just–we didn't just kill my own sister so we could lose. So the kids could all die. So the people who stole us from our parents can triumph. I've come this far, damn it, and I'm not stopping now!”
“I'm not sending you in there to be some kind of training body for the president of the United States.”
“No, you're not,” she hisses, grabbing the doorknob, one finger pressed to her swollen mouth. “I am.”
The second she opens the door and slips through it, rotating the knob with a click, I know there's only one way this will end.
I have no choice.
I have to kill the president of the United States in his own home.
Chapter 20
Kina
I am not broken. I am not broken. I am not broken.
The words whistle through my mind like a bad wind, a nor'easter of pain and fear.
Why am I so afraid? I've faced my worst fear, haven't I?
“What happened to your face?” the president demands as I close the door behind me, my dead sister's body slumped at Callum's feet in the bathroom, my mind racing with the urge to scream the truth to a man who is at the center of all evil.
A man who expects me to have sex with him. A man who sees only Glen.
“What? This?” I reply, touching my cheek, playing the part. �
�It's nothing.”
I'm playing a dead woman. Pretending to be her. What was once a strategic move now seems grotesque and macabre.
“Marshall again? Damn it. I told him to save that rough stuff for his visits to sex clubs.” His hand, the palm soft and smooth, goes to my jaw, right where Glen hit me first. It pulses like it's dying, the beat hard and desperate.
“That's kind of hot,” he says, examining the base of my throat, turning my head like I'm a pack animal he's considering buying. “That bruise. I should have put that bruise on you. But we've always agreed the bruises stay under the clothes. You let Marshall do that to you?”
“He said you'd be fine with it,” I lie. I wonder what's under Glen's clothes. How badly was she treated by all these men in power? Empathy washes over me like a ritual bath.
Regret pours in like being waterboarded. It's so hard to breathe suddenly. I have to breathe for her. Have to.
Because she's dead.
Dead at our hands.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” the president rages, his hands unbuckling his belt, the movements snappish and frightening as he removes the leather strap with a thwack!
I don't answer, my face throbbing from Glen's assault. The fact that she's dead, a few feet away, is all my rat brain can think about.
That and the pair of scissors she tried to use on me.
Scissors I tucked into my pocket as I left the room.
“Desk sex. You know what I want,” he says, unbuttoning his pants like he's ordering a sandwich.
I freeze.
“Glen? What the hell? Get over there.”
I stay put.
He crosses the room, grabbing the back of my head like he owns it, and rams his mouth against mine, his tongue slithering into my mouth, my muscles screaming from the beating I've just taken. Everything throbs as blood rushes to try to heal the damage, but it's too much, his tongue choking me, the ridge of his palm shoved hard against my tender neck.
What little air finds its way into my lungs isn’t enough.
I have to think of the children.
Callum is one door away. Knowing this does not give me any relief from my paralysis.
There is no good outcome here. None.
We're all doomed.
The only question is how much pain I will experience before it's all over.
“This is like kissing a piece of sushi. What’s the matter with you? Give me more than that,” he demands, cupping my breast.
Elevate, I whisper to myself, whisper it in voices I don't even know, the strongest ones mine and Callum's. I try, desperate for freedom from the whirling pain inside me, but I can't.
I can't.
My mind fails me.
I'm too weak to handle this. Glen was right. I never belonged in The Field. I would have ruined every mission I touched.
The president looks at me with annoyance as he gropes me, hand sliding up under my skirt, then freezing.
“You're wearing panties. Who gave you permission to do that?”
“Uh–”
“Marshall? Again? God damn it,” he says in a husky voice. Every muscle in me goes tight, abs curling away from his movements, my mind scrabbling to escape.
I can't elevate.
Can't leave.
Can't reveal Glen and Callum.
I just... can't.
“Get those damn panties off. You know how I feel about those,” he says, face red with emotion, eyes blazing. This isn't a game for him, some sex farce designed to arouse. He's actually pissed that “Glen” is breaking some sex rule, and whatever's about to happen isn't going to feel good.
I have to get naked.
Stalling won't help me. Not strategically, and not in terms of whatever's about to happen with him. Quickly, I do as I’m told, pushing aside any modesty. If I could elevate, it wouldn't be present. Those emotions don't exist when we–what's the word Foster said?
Dissociate.
But if my jacket comes off, the scissors in my pocket will be of no use.
I pull down my panties and pretend to stumble, hopping on one foot, using the distraction to transfer the scissors into my bra. They're small, hardly a true weapon, but they're all I've got.
With my panties in one hand, I'm suddenly shoved against the desk, legs rudely spread far enough apart to make my inner thighs scream. My back is to him and I'm upright, hips grinding into the edge of the desk until nerves start pinging, the desperate need for relief making me rotate my hips enough to find a point of contact that doesn't hurt.
“You want it that bad, do you?” he says, fingers moving between my legs. “Damn, you're dry.”
His hand is splayed flat under my shirt now, my belly crawling with gooseflesh. I can’t let him find the scissors. I need to find the perfect time to...
To what?
To kill him?
Thankfully, his hand moves away from my belly, gliding up along my ribcage to the breast that doesn't have the scissors in the cup.
He strokes my neck. I feel his erection pressing against my ass, ready.
I'm about to be entered by the president of the United States, who thinks I am his executive assistant.
Who thinks I am my identical twin.
Who is dead a few dozen feet away from us.
“Say something,” he demands.
“What do you want me to say?”
“There we go. That's better.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you know the Stateless operation is being dismantled as we speak?” he hisses, fingers between my legs. “Your plan is working so well. You were right all along. Your sister compromised everything. Those children aren't worthy assets.”
He's talking about me.
“Mmmm,” I say, using the placeholder. It encourages him.
“Your mother would be very proud. You've accomplished so much.”
The hand that strokes my neck goes tight.
“Yes, sir,” I say reflexively.
“Your sister always said you were tricky. That you worked for the wrong faction.”
Squeeze.
He's squeezing so hard. Black spots form in my vision, a lightning bolt ringing both sides of the periphery of what I can make out in the room. I hitch and squirm, using increasing levels of muscle power to try to get away, but he's firm.
Hard as a rock everywhere.
It's a trap, one I should have sensed sooner, but as I work to gain purchase on the desk, on something to use as leverage, on anything, I feel his abs and thigh muscles behind me, his advantage too great, my weakened state after killing Glen too much.
“Ca!” I say, trying to call out.
Failing.
“I like it when you fight,” he hisses, his voice filled with a sick glee.
“Ca!”
“Now you understand how this all works.” His voice trails off, the words subsonic, but the chilling amusement is clear as he adds:
“Don't you, Kina?”
Chapter 21
Callum
The ringing in my ears makes it impossible to hear a damn thing.
Behind the door to her office, Kina's doing whatever it takes to impersonate her sister.
Who is expected to screw Harry Bosworth at his whim.
Shuffling sounds are all I have to go by. Elevation is needed.
And so I do.
The crystal-clear shift in me removes doubts and emotion, my senses attuned to instinct. I've killed Glen to save Kina.
In this state, I'll kill anyone or anything in my way.
In my mind, I retrace the steps that got me here, and I see how silly it all was. Someone primed the system for us. Someone wants Kina and me in here, in the president's inner sanctum.
Why?
Who doesn't matter anymore. It's immaterial.
My mission isn't about the whos or the whys or the hows. It's now about getting Kina out of there alive.
Which means I have to stay alive, too.
Everything else is ext
ra.
I press my ear to the door, listening.
A thump, then the distinct sound of President Bosworth's voice rises above the throbbing beat of my own eardrums:
“Don't you, Kina?”
Kina.
He knows.
He knows.
Training yourself to act without thinking is one of the cornerstones of how Stateless shaped us. My hand moves to the doorknob, my shoulder pushes on the door, my body moves across the carpeted room to grab the shoulders of the president. His pants are around his ankles, his dick hanging out. Kina turns, and as I shove him off her, an arc of blood comes off him, spraying like a red fountain. Every drop misses me, but the carpet is ruined.
And he's making a high-pitched rasping sound that makes no sense.
But suddenly, it does.
Because the two metal circles, handles from a small pair of scissors, are sticking out of his Adam's apple.
“Callum!” Kina gasps as she spins around, her lower half completely exposed, upper half oddly crisp and prim in a suit. “I...”
My fist makes contact with his face, the president dropping to his knees, fingers flailing at his throat, neck twisted from my blow. One knee lift and I jack his chin up, the scissors embedding deeper, his arms useless as he falls forward, his breath the keening of a distraught ghost.
Kina runs to the couch and hands me a pillow. I cover his head from behind and straddle him, legs twitching as I smother him.
It doesn't take long.
In fact, killing him is surprisingly easy.
The president of the United States lives in a bubble of his own making, men in suits tasked with the sole purpose of protecting him. But they can’t protect him from himself. From his baser desires.
From his own orders to be left alone in an unmonitored room with his lover.
“Did he rape you?” I ask calmly as he stills, the slow release of his breath from his body the signal I need to use less pressure. Why waste my energy?
And yet I remain in place to finish the job in full.
“What?” Kina’s eyes are glassy and jerky, jumping everywhere and nowhere.