Space Invaders (43 page)

If I’d been at all unsure about my mission, dread would have started to creep through me at the President’s unscheduled appearance and his public recognition of me. But I’d never been more sure about what I was meant to do.

The President lifted his head again, searched the packed room, and smiled when he saw who he was looking for. The smile—thin, crooked and otherworldly—leeched any last pretences of the President’s humanity away. “Armise Darcan,” he called out over the silence. The President’s tone was neutral, hovering on bored.

My stomach dropped from anticipation. I took in a ragged breath. This was the next moving piece that needed to fall into place for me to end up the sole front-runner for that bullet. But I couldn’t have anticipated that President Kersch would pick Armise for this role.

Armise shouldered his rifle instead of leaving it with his coach. It was a small act of defiance, but enough to make his point.

This
President wasn’t his.

Armise sauntered towards the stands, his steps slow and unaffected. His eyes gave nothing away. But I could see the slight tic in his jaw, nearly hidden by his greying beard, and I knew he was nervous. That tic was Armise’s only tell. It was the same one that had told me it was time to attack when we’d met last in battle and he’d ended up with one fewer finger.

The crowd didn’t clear for Armise. He had to manoeuvre around the slack jaws, bated breath and downcast eyes of those occupying the space between him and the President. The guards unlatched a door on the field level allowing Armise to climb into the stands. He took the time to nod to both of the guards as he passed by without handing over his weapon. It was exactly what I would have done were I in his place. And for the briefest of moments I felt a connection to Armise that was more than an all-consuming need for release.

I saw the soldier in him and respected that.

The President didn’t stand when Armise approached him. He beckoned Armise with a waved hand, and Armise bent at the waist, putting his ear almost to the President’s lips. From my vantage point I could no longer see the President’s face, just the profile of Armise as he listened.

Armise dwarfed the President. The guards that surrounded the States’ leader shifted uneasily, watching Armise with careful eyes. With one word they would be on him, but Armise didn’t look threatened. Emotions only I could recognise played across Armise’s face—a tipped lip of curiosity, his almond-shaped eyes wrinkled with focus.

The President gesticulated, and Armise stood stock-still. After a long moment—the room eerily silent and with every eye transfixed to the conversation happening in front of us—Armise breathed deeply and started to laugh.

A low, guttural chuckle.

Genuine.

I knew it was real because I’d heard that same laugh only once before.

And that was when my gut clenched.

Chapter Five

Seventeen years ago—Year 2541

Bogotá

Armise and I met through the eye of a rifle scope.

I was eighteen years old. A Peacemaker new to the war but not new to death. I was shipped off to the front lines in the American Federation with the assignment to locate and eliminate the general who had just taken over operations for the continent.

I wasn’t part of a team. I had little to no communication with my superiors and handlers. But that didn’t matter. I was confident in my tracking ability. I knew the language, and not yet as muscled as I would become, I could disappear into the ranks of soldiers who were waterlogged and on the verge of exhaustion. The AF was on its last legs. It had taken almost everything they had to drive the United Union forces from their sodden continent. But the analysts had learned the new general wanted to make a push into the Continental States territory. It was my job to make sure he never got around to giving the order.

I was transported into the cloud-covered mountains outside of Bogotá. It took me only hours to locate the safe house where the general was holed up. Watching his routine, to make sure it matched up with the background information I’d been given, and finding a suitable place to set up my sniper rifle, took more time than locating the man had. Not even twenty-four hours later I lay on the top of a crumbling concrete building in the heart of the war-ravaged city, my respirator filtering the errant clouds of Chemsense that drifted down from the mountains, ready to push the button on a shield disruptor and fire my sonicbullet. It would only take one shot directly to the heart or brain to explode either organ and leave the general’s body whole but irreparably damaged. There would be nothing to outwardly mark the violence inside.

But fate had other plans for me. No. Technically, Armise Darcan had other plans for the general and me.

I was doing one last sweep of the area—a fading neighbourhood on the outskirts of downtown—preparing to set off a shield disruptor, when I heard him.

A deep, confident rattle of laughter that shattered the silence of the dark city.

I put my eye to the scope and scanned for the source of the sound. It took me only seconds to train my sights on him. He was less than two hundred metres away, set up on a rooftop almost directly across from me. How long he’d been there or how I’d missed his presence until this pivotal moment I didn’t know. Even though I didn’t know
who
he was, every instinct within me recognised him for
what
he was—a soldier, a sniper and a threat to me and my mission.

Even then he was massive. Broad-shouldered, muscles flexing as he subtly shifted his aim. I’d never forget the image of his silver-blue eye, magnified in the scope, trained directly on me as his finger went for the trigger. I rolled without thinking, moving out of position, surrendering my shot to the silver-eyed man. His sonicbullet whizzed over my head, the blast whining past my ear, so close that I could feel the sound waves against my skin. Even then I was faster than him. I didn’t see him take the shot that eliminated the general, but I heard the chaos that followed.

That general should have been my first kill as a Peacemaker.

Instead Armise Darcan claimed another life and almost took mine.

It would be another year before I found out who he was. Three more years before he kissed me for the first time.

I’d now known him for almost half my life.

Armise and I had met through the scope of our rifles and sometimes I wondered if that was also where we’d end.

In other moments, like this one, with Armise’s laughter rumbling through me like an aftershock, I was sure of it.

* * * *

The President finished speaking and Armise stood, his shoulders snapping proudly back, drawing himself up to his full intimidating height. He found me in the crowd immediately, as if he was always aware of where I was. A dangerous grin stretched across his scarred face. That was when my anticipation moved into dread.

The President quickly moved on to other tasks. He stood, glanced past Armise as if the behemoth next to him didn’t exist now that their conversation was finished, and moved up the stands, stopping to greet other dignitaries. The whole encounter had taken less than five minutes, but in that time I’d gone from a front-runner to prey and everyone knew it.

The press corps swarmed Armise as soon as his feet touched the arena floor. They asked him what the President had said to him. Why he appeared so confident.

I was forgotten in the rush.

I’d known this moment was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier. The President wasn’t going to kill me outright. That solution was too suspicious even for a man as powerful as the President. Not devious nor cruel enough. He was going to have me beaten into submission, my fingers crushed, so there would be no way I could fire the first bullet. That he was choosing Armise to take the power from my hands was fitting in more ways than I could count.

Throwing Armise into the mix was going to make my mission that much more difficult. My own President had just publicly turned his back on me. But it only made sense. If rumour was true, I was the hired gun of the Opposition. The same Opposition seeking a permanent end to the President’s rule and hoping to deliver a fatal blow to the Revolution.

And, unfortunately for the President, the rumour was true.

I just hadn’t expected for Armise to be the one standing between my target and me. Or expected him to be so gleeful at the prospect.

But it was a scenario I was more familiar with than not.

Armise ignored the press as they crowded in against him seeking a soundbite. He crossed the space between us in wide, determined steps, his uniform showcasing a body that projected strength and dominance.

For a moment all I could think of was the taste of sweat on his skin when he’d showed up unannounced in my room last night. The curl of my fingers into hard muscle as I dragged him close, thumbs digging into that defined line that ran from his waist down to his uncut cock. His hot breath at my neck while he demanded that I fuck him.

To hold that power in my hands, to challenge it, consume it and have control over it, was my addiction. One that I knew was killing me, but I hadn’t been able to combat. And with my death only hours away, none of that mattered anymore.

Armise’s black hair was slicked back, his beard neatly trimmed and professional. The grey streaks in his hair and beard glinted against the arena lights. His eyes were bluer today than I’d ever seen them, reflecting back the cobalt panels of the People’s Continent of Singapore, as if he had been born to be inexorably tied to that country.

I watched the President stop in the stands to greet the Premiere of Singapore—the leader Armise was sworn to protect. Armise noted the exchange, too, and stopped to recognise the Premiere. He took the sonicrifle from his shoulder, placed the stock next to his right foot in the at-ease position and then bowed deeply. Both the President and Premiere acknowledged him with a nod.

The press corps swarmed around Armise like a hive around its queen—at a respectful distance that recognised the power before them. He handed his rifle over to a trainer that appeared at his side and disappeared just as quickly. I was thrown when I didn’t notice the sign he gave to make that happen. I couldn’t afford to miss anything. Not now. Armise knew me too well. Knew my fighting style almost as well as he knew his own. If I was going to survive to complete my mission then I had to be stronger than him. Faster. Smarter.

Armise didn’t offer his hand when he stopped in front of me and I didn’t offer mine. We’d been in this situation before. Face to face or rifle to rifle, the location and the time changed but never the circumstance.

Our skill sets were synchronous. Together we would make the perfect team. And yet neither of us would be considered successful until the other was dead.

He waited for the press to gather around us before he spoke. The horde hushed itself in expectation, their disguised faces swivelling between Armise and me, waiting to document our every word. Armise stepped into my personal space, tried to crowd me back, but I held my ground. His silver eyes bored into me, amused and resilient. This close to him, I could pick out every line that etched the corners of his eyes. Lines that I’d watched appear, and deepen, with each passing year.

When Armise finally chose to speak his voice carried through the still deathly silent arena. Even though his speech was formal and practised, his accent gave away his upbringing in a mountainous Singaporean peasant village. “Your President wishes for me to extend good luck to you in the competition this evening and to tell your Coach that he is grateful for the information provided to the Olympic Committee this morning. He eagerly awaits the official announcement of you as front-runner. Of course, as a new friend of the States,” he gestured to the stands where the President and Premiere were hunched together talking in hushed tones, the dynamic between them one of ease, “I will be ready to stand in should you be unable to attend the opening ceremonies.”

Armise’s threat was neither thin nor veiled.

The press corps hummed behind us, recording each word. If I listened hard enough I imagined I could hear the footage being transmitted across the globe.

Before I could open my mouth to respond, the President’s guards surrounded me. Armise moved off to the side, his arms crossed, a smile playing on his lips. There were five guards boxing me in. Two behind me, three in front, and it was the one directly in front of me who spoke for them. “The President wishes to see you in his quarters.”

I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder at Coach. He knew this wasn’t going to end well for me, considering it was the counterstrike we’d been waiting for. I saw the President exiting out a door behind the stands. But no matter what the guard was saying, the President and I were not headed to the same place.

I didn’t have to readjust my posture or bring myself up to my full height. What the press corps, and viewers across the world, would see was a man who was fearless.

I made a point to keep my face neutral until the guard finished speaking and Armise focused his attention back on me. Only then did I let a slow smile go. I pulled the piercing in my bottom lip between my teeth, thinking about the taste of Armise’s cock in my mouth last night. The movement was quick and deliberate. Armise had once told me there was nothing more sinful than my lips around his dick and I knew he was thinking about that moment right now. He didn’t move or respond, but his jaw ticked and I knew I’d got to him.

Today I would end this dangerous addiction and sever the one connection I had allowed to make me weak for too long. Armise had no idea who the players were, let alone what game we were all playing. He was disposable and would be even more so when he failed to keep me off the opening ceremony platform.

I rolled my head on my shoulders, cracking my neck, and made a motion for the guards to proceed. I followed them without hesitation, leaving Coach, Armise and a buzzing press corps in my wake.

Chapter Six

I was being led to an isolated spot, and they wanted me to believe I was powerless to stop it. Adrenaline coursed through me, making me twitchy on the inside, steely calm on the outside. I’d been trained by the best soldiers, weapons experts and tacticians the States had to offer since the government had taken custody of me at the age of five. Sonicrifles, hand-to-hand combat, battlefield operations, I’d learned and excelled at them all. Violence and war had become my second and third languages.