Authors: Chanel Cleeton
Tonight the streets of London are mine.
I walk through the quiet neighborhood, past the rows of stately homes in this part of Primrose Hill. I’m dressed in black, blending in with the night, my gaze alert.
It took Oscar two hours to comb through the property records, to discover that the Academy still owns this plot of land, an unfamiliar house erected over the spot where my family home once lay.
The best that we could tell it’s kept vacant, perhaps used as a safe house of sorts.
There’s a beautiful, terrible symmetry to this, too.
I glance down at my watch, slipping in between the shadows with ease.
Twenty minutes.
I’m walking to my execution or my salvation, but either way this ends tonight.
“Talk to me, Oscar.”
His voice comes through my earpiece with a crackle of static. “Everyone’s in place. Waiting on your go.”
“And the others?”
“Reports are trickling in from the other academies. It’s starting.”
If everything goes according to plan at approximately nine p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, twenty minutes from now, every single academy in the world will be attacked. There wasn’t time to coordinate much beyond sending the information out; the longer it lingers on the Dark Web the higher the chance that Ares will find it, that they’ll prepare for what’s headed their way. It’s fast, but we were trained to be the best. I hope it’s enough.
I swallow, my palms sweating beneath my gloves.
“And Luke?”
“He’s in position. Everything looks fine.”
I pull out my mobile phone, turning on the camera, taking a picture of the house in front of me. I open my email, my fingers trembling slightly as I type the message.
Fifteen minutes. Bring Grace. I’ll give you what you want if you let her go.
I attach the image and send it to the email address they used when they sent me the picture of Luke, a sliver of fear sliding down my spine.
What have I just done?
They’ll come. Even though it’s on my terms, they’ll come because they’ll think I’m desperate to get my sister back, impulsive, ready to risk it all to save her. They’ll come because they’re arrogant, because even as they’ve monitored me, tracked me, trained me, at the end of the day I’m just a nineteen-year-old girl. Hardly a worthy adversary.
Aggressive mimicry. It’s a beautiful thing.
I slip back into the shadows and my gaze scans the perimeter, the knowledge that he is out there somewhere watching my back calming me somewhat.
Still—it’s the longest twenty minutes of my life.
They won’t have much time to mobilize a team, to get from the Academy to the place where one life ended and another began. Even with all of their training, all of their skills, they’ll be rushed, giving us the shot we need.
I count in the dark, steadying my nerves, my heart pounding.
“Incoming.”
I glance down at my watch at the sound of Oscar’s voice in my ear. Eight fifty-eight.
They come in black SUVs with tinted windows—one, two, three. They position themselves strategically, blocking the street to oncoming traffic, clogging my escape route.
I wonder how long it will be before we draw a crowd. They must think this will go quickly and easily, or else they’re so connected they don’t care.
The doors open and men dressed in black, heavily armed, step out, weapons drawn.
What have I done?
My heart races as I count the men—nine total. They form a perimeter around the vehicles, creating their own zone of power. And then the final door opens.
I see Grace, her tiny body hunched over, her hands bound in front of her by black cords. Anger, panic, fear flood me. I take a breath. Another. I can’t charge in there as much as I want to. Not yet.
My father exits the car next. He looks much like he did in the photo in my room— just a bit older and entirely too much like me. Whatever his role was when he was younger, I doubt he was an assassin. His gaze sweeps his surroundings, but it’s more cursory than anything else. He believes that the men with guns will protect him. An assassin protects him—or her—self.
I look down at my watch.
Nine o’clock.
I step out onto the street, and in an instant nine guns are trained on me.
Grace shrieks my name, her body shaking as our father holds her back, as bile rises in my throat. I shut it down, lock it away into the place where I keep all of the dark parts buried.
I raise my arms out to the sky, showing that I’m not armed. I’m not scared of the guns; they won’t kill me. I’m far more valuable to them alive.
I am their monster; they are my Frankenstein.
They’ll want Luke, of course, but no doubt they’re aware of how close we’ve grown. No doubt they’ll try to use me for bait just as they’ve used Grace.
We face off, the three of us, the unholy trinity that’s left of our family at the place where we lost it all. Grace looks terrified, and by the way her limbs appear sluggish, they drugged her just like Luke.
For a moment I can’t do anything but stare at my father, at my sister, searching for something…some connection or recognition. A sign that he sees me as something other than an asset, that we are still somehow his children. It never comes.
“Search her,” my father snaps.
This is it. In a moment, they’ll find the earpiece and I’ll be completely cut off from everyone else. Alone.
I step forward, the men matching my movement.
“Let her go first.”
My challenge hangs suspended between us, and then my father shrugs, pushing Grace forward until she stumbles.
His gaze meets mine. “She wasn’t nearly as promising as you were.”
I am going to kill you.
I don’t react; for once I’m grateful for all of the training I’ve received, for the ease with which I can slip on the mask. He knows it, too. He wants to break me; I refuse to be broken.
Grace runs to me and I allow myself to slip for a moment, to wrap my arms around her and hold her, tears pummeling my insides.
If this is the last chance I ever have to see my sister, I’m not going to let him ruin it. Not going to let him take this memory of her away like he took away my memories of my mother.
“I love you, Grace,” I whisper, holding her as her body shakes from the force of her cries. “Go to Father Murphy. He’ll keep you safe.”
I untie the cords around her wrists, rubbing at the skin.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Promise me, Grace. Run.”
She hesitates, and I squeeze her arm, trying to send her a message to trust me. “Go.”
She takes off, her little body hurtling through the dark London night, and suddenly I can breathe again, each step away from me a chance at a better life. If I die here tonight, at least I’ll go with the knowledge that I kept my sister safe.
They let her go, but I see the gleam in my father’s eye, can read the plan there as easily as if he spoke it aloud. He thinks to recapture her; he knows she doesn’t have the skills to disappear.
My knees hit the ground, my arms pulled behind my head. Hands run over my body, divesting me of weapons I knew it was useless to bring. Fingers rip the earpiece from me, the microphone, severing the connection with Oscar.
I stare straight into my father’s eyes.
I’m counting again, have been counting all along, keeping time on the clock in my mind.
By our calculations, we’ve just divided the number of security forces at the Academy by sending this group after me. It’s a fighting chance.
Hands pull me up roughly and then I’m looking into the eyes of the man I stabbed in Knightsbridge.
His lips twist into an ugly sneer, a speculative gleam in his gaze. “Maybe I’ll see if I can play with you later.”
I laugh, the sound harsh in the cold London night. You don’t play with a vial of smallpox.
“Sure.”
“Bring her here,” my father snaps.
He’s definitely getting impatient. He may have the upper hand, but he knows better than to get too comfortable. It’s all about getting me to the second location, to the one that they control. If his plan is to take me to the Academy, he’s in for a rude awakening.
I need to stall. Just a few minutes longer.
“What are you going to do with me?”
He doesn’t answer me. Doesn’t react. I may as well have not spoken.
I want to scream at him. Want to make him pay for what he did to my mother, for the years I suffered at his hands. And then I realize that while this is personal for me, it isn’t for him. I’m just a job. I try another angle, speaking to him on his level.
“You want Luke, don’t you?”
His gaze sharpens; suddenly I’ve become very important. “What makes you think we don’t already have him?”
Please.
“You don’t.”
He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Either way we’ll have him soon. I have you. That’s enough.”
“You have me?” I mock. “Do you really think I’m just going to let you take me back to your sick little lab?”
His gaze lingers on me, kneeling in the street, and I see a flare of what he feels, of his enjoyment at seeing me defeated. Predator and prey.
“I do.”
I stop counting. It’s time.
Beeps fill the night air, the security personnel’s attention momentarily diverted as the Academy’s alert system sends out an alarm that the Academy is under attack. That our plan has worked.
It’s a sliver of hesitation, but it’s all I need. In my line of work, that sliver is the difference between life and death.
I’m on my feet in an instant, grateful that they failed to tie my hands, that they underestimated what I could do unarmed. That they failed to account for Luke somewhere out there in the dark watching all of this go down. And Oscar sitting behind his laptop, working his magic, coordinating a global strike.
Suddenly, the sound of cars and motorcycles fills the air. Moments later the street fills with people, assets I recognize from the Academy—Josh and Steph—over a dozen current and former assets coming to fight alongside us. And Luke leading the pack, armed to the hilt, his gaze locked on me as he heads toward the men surrounding me.
I attack.
I go for the man I stabbed, for his leg and the wound that I already know is there, the one that I put there. He strikes out, hitting me in the chest, knocking me back. I hear my father screaming in the background, telling his men that Luke and I aren’t to be killed.
And there’s our advantage.
Training and instinct take over, my mind shutting off. I fight with a speed that surprises me, my body kicking into a whole other drive I never knew I had. This is survival mode; for the first time I’m fighting for my life and those I love.
Everything is a blur. I hear shouts and cries, the sound of bones snapping, bodies hitting the floor, gunfire exploding, the scream of a siren. I know I’m hit; blasts of pain pummel my body before the adrenaline swoops in and everything else disappears.
Blood runs down my face. My ears fill with a ringing sound.
I fight. I fall. I fight harder.
I kick the man right where I knifed him before, and then he’s down, his body doubled over in pain as I strike him, raining blows over his body.
The sirens grow louder, people yelling in the distance.
I hear Luke shouting to me; our gazes lock, his eyes hard, blood oozing from a nasty cut on his face. The streets are littered with bodies—ours, theirs.
Five of their men lie on the ground. Dead. Four are unaccounted for. Luke has a gun pointed at my father’s head.
My father is pale; his skin is stained with blood. He doesn’t speak.
The sirens grow louder. We have a minute, tops. Maybe two.
“How long before the police get here?” I ask.
Luke says something through his mic. Whatever answer Oscar gives him, it isn’t the one he wants.
“Police incoming. We have to go. Now.”
Despite his words he doesn’t move, the hand pointing the gun at my father unwavering, his finger hovering over the trigger.
It could all end now. I don’t know if they’ve found the Director at the Academy, but my father is just as responsible for what has happened as she is. Perhaps even more so. This is our chance to stop them, to find the vengeance we’ve sought.
“What do you want me to do?” Luke asks.
And just like that, I’m back to being judge, jury, and executioner.
I don’t want to kill anymore, don’t want their eyes haunting me anymore. I want to be free.
“Give me the gun.”
Luke hesitates, his knuckles white around the grip. And then he lowers his hand, lifting the gun to me palm up, his gaze on my father.