Dominant Predator (14 page)

I was only one step away from him now.

My anger churned within me, driving the accusation out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Why did you destroy the stadium?”

Ahriman smiled—all teeth and vengeance—a cold sneer that stopped me short.

“Because I could.”

Ahriman had his gun in his hand before I could react. He popped off a shot, effortlessly placing the bullet between Sarai’s eyes and propelling her head violently backwards, taut against the restraints then sickeningly slack.

I froze. Watched her blood drip down the window behind the chair, heard the wet sound of shredded flesh dropping onto the floor.

“You are not in control,” he roared, pointing the gun at me, inches away from my temple. “
He
is not in control.”

I held my ground.

“Neither are you,” I replied with steely calm.

Ahriman uncocked his pistol and put it back into his holster, that demonic exterior slipping away just as easily as it had taken him over. He shook his head. “Don’t think you can trust him. There’s much you don’t know about the Mongol Giant.”

My body nearly vibrated with the need to take him down. Saving Sarai was out of my control. I had failed her and the President. I would never let him have Armise. To accomplish that I would have to make it out of here alive. Or kill Ahriman first.

“And you do?” I retorted.

“It’s my job to know, as it should have been yours.”

“You’re lying to me.”

Ahriman chuckled again, the low unearthly sound jarring me. “Have you asked him about the key?”

I started. “Chen?”

The corner of Ahriman’s lip tipped up, exposing his teeth in almost a snarl. “The other key.”

I stepped up to him, putting us almost chest to chest. I ground my teeth together and balled my fists.

Ahriman didn’t retreat.

“In case you’re considering making an assassination attempt here and now, it would be good for you to know that I implanted a reverb in your father that will easily take out the President’s bunker. I die and that bomb goes off. Counterstrike, I believe that’s called. I assume that’s where they were taken?” He tipped his head and studied me with inhumanly detached eyes.

“If you’re going to allow me to just walk out of here, then we have nothing left to discuss.”

Ahriman took a step back and swept his hand towards the door in a polite bow. “It’s my only option now.”

I turned on my heel without a word.

“Don’t be complacent, though,” Ahriman said, stopping me. “I don’t need technology to track you. No matter who dies, this is war. They’re all disposable eventually. Inconsequential. And I won’t be satisfied until I have it all. I’ll go through them all to be the one left in control. And I mean one.”

The fucker didn’t know when to stop talking. His arrogance would be his eventual downfall. I would be his death.

I started for the door again.

“Merq,” Ahriman called out, as I turned the corner. “I wouldn’t stray too far from home.”

* * * *

I was seething as I descended the stairs.

I whipped out the in-ear radio device Neveed had given me and switched it on. Static crackled over the earpiece and I pushed the button to open a communication channel.

“I need Neveed on the line,” I gritted out.

“I’m here, Merq,” Neveed’s voice came out roughly from the other end.

“Ahriman put a reverb inside my father. Disarm it and make sure there’s nothing else inside them. Either of them.” I hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then, “And D3 this place. It doesn’t need to exist anymore.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I ripped the device from my ear and stuffed it into my pocket.

By calling for a D3, I’d just given an order to detail, ditch and decimate this hellhole so it couldn’t be used against us again. As far as I was concerned, everything having to do with the PsychHAgs had lost its credibility and effectiveness long ago. These former headquarters—these sun and pollution-bleached skeletons of buildings—weren’t serving any purpose for the jacquerie or for us, so it was time for them to be ground into the dust.

Jegs was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs but I didn’t stop to acknowledge her. Her presence on this mission wouldn’t have made a difference, but I was loath to give her any forgiveness for disappearing to take care of her own business while the rest of us were putting our lives on the line for the cause.

I stormed out the front door of the PsychHAg facility and back into the dilapidated tent city. Jegs kept pace with me, remaining silent.

The Underground was still abandoned as we passed through it. The sun beat down relentlessly and the dust kicked up around us with a wind that was hot and made my skin itch.

I needed Armise. There were too many moving pieces for me to track them by myself anymore. We needed to talk. To have it all out, and make sure there was nothing unsaid between us. Everything—even the concerns the doctor had shared with me—needed to be discussed so we could figure out our next move. I hadn’t decided what I was going to share with Neveed and the President in my debrief. If they could hide information they believed I didn’t need, then I had to consider doing the same.

Ahriman was after Armise. He’d been unafraid to let me in on that plan, so sure that I would willingly choose the President over Armise. That I had hesitated at all in making a decision between Sarai’s life and Armise’s had likely surprised him again.

I sighed.

Sarai. If it had been Simion or Jegs in that room Sarai would still be alive. And I had to consider that General Neveed Niaz would have done the same—giving Armise up without thought if he believed it would spare us any more bloodshed. But that was not an option.

“Why did he let you walk away?” Jegs said, her brusque tone betraying her belief that maybe it was me who had turned traitor this time.

I turned on her. “You get all your loose ends tied up?”

“Yes,” she replied with a cold stare.

“Good. Then I assume your brother is either dead or he will be keeping the Nationalists in check.”

“They’re not going to engage us. And Grimshaw is meeting with the jacquerie leadership.”

I stilled. If Jegs’ brother Grimshaw was willing to meet with the jacquerie then there was hope that the Nationalists would swing to our side. It was an unlikely scenario, but more progress than Jegs had been able to convince her brother of before. “Maybe some good will come out of this clusterfuck of a day.”

“He also gave me intel on the locations of some of the Committee members. As a show of good faith. Chen is working on it now.”

“Right,” I snorted and started walking again. “A show of good faith.”

“Listen, Merq. You should know better than to question my loyalties by now.”

I gave a loud, derisive laugh that cut her off.

“Should I?”

“We all have our connections that operate outside of the Revolution. Grimshaw is a Nationalist, but he is a populist at heart. He just believes that the power shift should come from order instead of chaos.”

“Chaos is our order,” I pointed out, not slowing my steps as we tramped through the dust of the camp.

Jegs grasped my biceps and yanked me back, stopping me. “But maybe it doesn’t have to be. Look, he only wants peace.”

I ripped my arm out of her hold. “And he believes the destruction of the infochip will bring peace?”

“He wasn’t even alive then!” she protested. “The attack on those servers was done without spilling one drop of civilian blood. The Nationalists are seeking common ground, a righting of the fucked-up upending of our world. That was one tactic, put into motion over a century ago. They know we have the chip and they’re not going to seek to take it from us or see to its destruction. Grimshaw has promised me that.”

I took a deep breath, planted my feet and stared her down. “Is he talking to the Opposition just as readily as he is to you?”

Jegs froze, giving me my answer without her needing to say one word.

I stalked away from her and let loose a string of expletives that echoed through the empty camp. “He’s working both sides, Jegs. You have to come to terms with that. And I have to know that if it comes down to him over us you won’t hesitate.”

“I could say the same of you,” she replied with an expertly restrained calm.

I balled my fists and ground my teeth together until I could feel pain radiating up my jaw and into my cheekbones. “Armise is with us now.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Colonel. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He is in this fight for you, not the cause.”

“And I am in this fight for the Revolution.”

Jegs shook her head and put her hands to her hips, looking away from me. Her fingers tensed on her hips and she pursed her lips before turning back towards me and saying, “I’m not so sure of that anymore.”

Chapter Ten

“Where are they?” I said to Neveed as I barrelled into the control room, my frustration having rocketed to anger on what should have been a short, uneventful walk back to the bunker.

Armise and Neveed were hunched over Chen, looking at something she pointed to on her screen.

Neveed’s head snapped up. “The cells in the lower level.”

I purposefully kept from looking at Armise, knowing that he could already read enough off me as it was. I wasn’t ready to have it out with him. I needed to talk to my father before that happened, to see if he had any other information I could use.

“You’re holding them?” I asked.

Neveed nodded. “Until we know more.”

“Good.”

I stalked out of the room without another word, even as Jegs pushed past me into the room.

It didn’t take me any time to locate the barracks this time around. I wound through the hallways, formulating my questions as I walked. Filtering the conversations around me at the same time, listening, taking information in, processing and analysing it—my own internal monologue and the dozens of snippets of conversations I encountered. I did it without thought, without prompting or the need for orders. Maybe it was my training, maybe it was more. I’d never realised just how many different threads I was able to follow in my head and still keep them all straight while simultaneously dissecting how they wound around each other.

I was in my element surrounded by noise—the chaos of battle, operations to gather intel, hostage negotiation and rescue, D3 details.

It was in the spaces where I was left with too few stimuli that my mind began to cut out—the bombs, or Ahriman, for example. One track, one overwhelming stimulus. As if my mind operated like a parasite, snaking its tendrils in and grasping onto control. The more connections it maintained, the stronger it became.

I clomped down the steps to the lower level, passed the gym and headed for the cells in the back of this level.

A soldier was stationed at each of the doors. They wouldn’t be new recruits, but if they’d been given this detail they wouldn’t be a high rank either.

“I need to see Lucien Grayson,” I said without preamble, not giving a shit whether or not he knew who I was. “Which cell is he being held in?”

The guard narrowed his eyes and studied me then activated his comm chip with a flick of his wrist. “General Niaz— Yes, sir.” The guard swivelled on his heel and unlocked the door without another word, holding it open for me.

I crossed into the room and took the seat across the table from my father. He was dressed in a fresh Revolution uniform, his wounds stitched and bandaged and his hair wet and slicked back from his face. I hadn’t had time to study him closely in the PsychHAg building. I took in as many details as I could without making it appear as if I was interested in anything more from him than answers.

He was just another man. I could find aspects of myself in his features—the cut of his cheekbones, the nearly impassive glaze of his eyes that were shaped the same as mine, but my eye colour was all my mother. He was shorter than me by a couple of inches and not nearly as wide. His muscles were defined but not battle-hardened. The lines around his eyes and mouth were deep, as was the crease between his eyes. He had a prominent chin and a jaw line that mirrored my own.

Besides that he was my father he was unremarkable. Maybe it was because he was my father that I found him unremarkable.

He tipped his head up in greeting to me and remained seated on his chair, leaning forward and steepling his fingers over his knees.

“Did you kill him?” he asked.

I slid out the chair across from him. I sat back, crossing my arms. “Aren’t you more interested in whether or not Sarai made it out?”

Lucien shook his head. “He was never going to let her go. She’d been in Singapore for too long.”

I frowned. “The reverb in your stomach was a minor issue to deal with first.”

“Thigh,” he clarified. “They implanted it into my thigh. Didn’t even know it was there.”

“Right,” I said, indifferent.

He looked away from me and tapped his chin with his fingers. I could almost see him formulating his words in his head. “Armise,” he finally said. “He isn’t from the States.”

“Singapore,” I answered, not giving him anything else.

He didn’t outwardly react, and I wasn’t sure if that meant he already knew the answer before asking it or if he had just as rigid a control over his reactions as I did.

“So this is going to be it between us? An information exchange?”

I choked out a laugh. “You’re joking, right? I don’t know you. I don’t know her,” I said, waving my hand in the direction of my mother’s cell. “We share base DNA. And I’m not even sure how similar mine is to yours anymore.”

Lucien leant back, mirroring my position. I recognised it as a strategy used to pacify the person you were conversing with. An old body language technique that played up to our primal human instincts. That he was attempting to find a way into my good graces or to put me at ease had the opposite effect, setting me on edge instead.

“You’re too young to remember a time when you could hunt anywhere around the capital,” Lucien mused. “Shit, I’m too young. But your great-grandfather was a hunter. You resemble him greatly, in fact. He lived in one of the minor outlying islands to the south, off the coast, and learned how to hunt and fish from an early age. Even then the fish stocks were dwindling, so he would take his boat to the mainland and hunt with his father. Anyway, point is, my father liked to tell me stories about his father’s experiences with apex predators. All the big game is gone now except in the Northern Territories and the Wildes of the UU, but at one time the apex predators were the animals that had no natural enemy—bears, lions, eagles. Those animals ruled their home territory. And, barring accident and injury, they were never hunted the way they themselves hunted. He was obsessed with the concept. About the hierarchy of the food chain, and our place in it. But his obsession was more than that as well. It wasn’t animals he discussed the most. Because to him, the dominant predator above all others was humans.”