Dominant Predator (18 page)

He disappeared for hours at a time and I rarely woke up with him next to me. But all of this was more normal than not.

“Take a look,” I heard the man call out. I opened my eyes and got up from the chair.

The man flicked his wrist and turned the BC5 screen in my direction. On it flickered a black and white image of a bullet with a thick rope coiled around it.

“Perhaps it could go over your shoulder,” he offered, popping the screen up and manipulating it to arch over my scar and show me what the tattoo would look like.

I shook my head. While the design was perfect in a way that I could feel more than explain out loud, the positioning of it needed to be elsewhere. I turned my back to him. “Not over my shoulder. Ink it over this scar.”

The man gave a low whistle as he took in the jagged and dimpled slash that ran from my left shoulder diagonally almost to my spine.

I studied the drawing again, then followed an impulse I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. “And add a knife to it.”

“I can do that. Let me shift the image a bit.” He flicked the screen back down to the desk level, his brow furrowing in concentration.

I watched him work, his fingers dancing over the semi-transparent screen. As he enlarged the bullet, making it slightly thinner and longer, it hit me why the design had immediately felt right to me.

“Why did you use a .22 calibre rifle bullet?”

The man cracked his neck then wiped the screen off his desk, dismissing it. He hitched up his sleeve revealing the reddened skin of fresh ink and the image of the Revolution’s sunburst. He ran his finger over the tattoo then looked to Ezme. She nodded her agreement to whatever he was silently asking, and apparently that was enough for him.

He pulled his sleeve back down, then said, “Let me show you something.” He walked around me and beckoned for me to follow him into the back room.

We passed under the air filter pumping out that warm, humid air and the temperature dropped as soon as we crossed the threshold.

“I thought I recognised you when you walked in, but the scar on your shoulder was when I knew,” the man said with a smile. “That is the one you got in the DCR during the war, yes? I saw a profile of you for the Olympics and… It does not matter. There is another element I think we could add to your mark.”

We entered a cramped office and the man shut the door behind us, bolting it closed. I tensed and he retreated with his hands up. “No harm meant. I must be careful with what I’m going to show you.”

I unclenched fists I hadn’t realised I was balling up, that self-protection instinct taking over without thought. I nodded. “Okay.”

He moved to the bottom corner of a line of shelves, crouching down and reaching his hand into the clutter. Then an audible pop came from behind me. I turned to find a section of the wall cracked open.

The man manoeuvred around me, pushed the door open and grasped an unseen item with two hands. He unfolded the dark, dusty cloth from around it and held it out for me to see as he flipped it open.

I stared, disbelieving. I wanted to ask him where he had got it. How long he had had it.

The book was in an advanced state of deterioration, the pages cracking and crumbling at the edges. Its cover was made of a soft, brown material worn down at the spine and the place where fingers were most likely to touch. Where hands had been touching it for what had to be hundreds of years.

It was the first real book I’d ever seen.

This man, in a tattoo parlour in a seedy part of Amsterdam, had no idea what immeasurable peace he had just handed to me. I’d always been sure that not all of the paper records had been destroyed, but until now I’d never seen proof of their actual existence. I had no doubt that the man understood the danger of protecting this book. Any and all paper records discovered were to be delivered to the authorities for ‘safekeeping’ and it was illegal for any citizen to have them in their possession.

If this book existed, then that meant others did as well.

“You said you live by the bullet, but it is more than that. You are bound to us, to the citizens you protect. You offer your life for us. That is why I added the rope. Tell me, where does the scar come from that you want to cover?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the book, and I answered him more honestly than I would have otherwise. “From an incident much like the DCR. This one had a much different outcome, however.”

He nodded gravely, appearing as if there was something else he wanted to ask but couldn’t.

“What is it?” I prompted him.

“A knife, a bullet and a rope—all items that can be used to kill. To take life. And yet they are our only weapons against tyranny and for freedom.”

I crossed my arms and took a step back. “They’re not our only weapons,” I said with surety. “May I?” I asked tipping my head towards the book.

The man offered it to me with arms outstretched. I gingerly took it from him, afraid to touch the pages as he had or risk damaging them further. He stepped up next to me and delicately flipped the pages. It appeared to be a handwritten record with scrawled passages and etched line drawings. I could see the indentations where the person had put pen to paper.

“It is the journal from a soldier from the First World War, at the beginning of the twentieth century. There is a particular drawing, an entry about a man he met in the midst of fighting. Here.” He stopped on a page and pointed to a section. “My continental English is not practiced, but Ezme knows enough that she has been able to read it for me. He talks about meeting a fellow soldier and although they were of different worlds, and had been brought together by violence, they formed a friendship. This drawing here is of a language neither Ezme nor I can decipher. But the text below indicates that it means ‘bound’. You and I, and all Revolutionaries, we are not the same, but we are bound by something greater than our differences.”

“I want that added to my mark,” was all I could find the voice to respond.

“I suspected you might,” the man said with a grin. “Do you want to look at it more?” he asked with expectation.

I shook my head. At that moment I didn’t trust the stability of my hands with such a delicate resource.

The man didn’t appear to be put off by my refusal. He just took the book from my hands and shut it carefully, wrapping it with care then placing it back into the space in the wall. When he clicked it shut there was no visual evidence of the hiding place.

“Then let’s get started,” he said and led me back to the front room. “You want to take a hit before I start?” he asked as I straddled the tattoo chair.

“Of surge?”

“Not exactly,” he clarified, snapping sterilised gloves over his hands. “The black market stuff. Working over this scar is going to be painful.” The tattoo artist ran his fingers over the raised ridge along my back. “On second thought, if you survived whatever did that, I do not think it will be needed.”

I grinned.
Whoever stitched it
, I wanted to correct him. This guy had no idea the amount of pain I could tolerate. The hum of the tattoo needle buzzed in the warm air and I thought I was ready for the sting, but the first prick of the tattoo needle to the scar nearly sent me out of the chair.

The man stopped. “Surge?”

I breathed heavily. “No. The pain is good.”

“Okay.”

I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around the headrest and putting my chin on my forearms. I sank into the pain, allowing it to wash through every nerve, and forced my breathing to slow so that my muscles would relax.

“This was not part of the plan,” a voice came from behind me, snapping me out of my headspace.

“How the fuck did you find me?” I gritted out to Armise, not turning my head.

The tattoo artist’s needle went silent. I flexed my shoulders, the soreness of the abused skin travelling down my back in dull waves.

“I don’t need a fucking chip to track you.”

I nearly laughed at the frustration in his voice. It wouldn’t have been easy to locate me in a city of this size, but leave it to Armise to find a way.

“We okay here?” Ezme asked in continental English.

I nodded and settled back into position. “Go ahead,” I prompted the tattoo artist.

That metallic hum started up again and the needle dug into the scar, sending fresh spears of pain down my spine.

There was the scraping of chair legs on the floor and Armise appeared in front of me, sitting down facing me, his elbows on his knees leaning forward.

I looked up at him, scanned his face and body for any hint of injury from the kill he’d just completed, but he was unmarked. I didn’t bother introducing him to Ezme or the tattoo artist. If they knew who I was then it was likely they knew who Armise was as well, even if he no longer wore the distinctive black and silver beard that had been a hallmark of his persona during the Olympics. If either of them were affected by his appearance then they didn’t show it. Ezme sat in the piercing chair, twirling her blonde hair between her fingers as she flicked through images on a BC5 screen. And the tattoo artist’s hands seemed as steady as they had before as he etched the image into my skin and swiped away the excess ink.

“We good?” I asked Armise, switching over to a dialect of northern Singaporean I assumed neither Ezme nor the man would understand.

Armise raised an eyebrow, studying me. It was the first time I’d spoken anything besides continental English with him, and I was speaking Mongol. His home dialect.

“We’re good,” was all he responded, in the same language.

I sucked in a breath and ground my teeth together as the artist worked over a particularly sensitive spot. I kept my eyes locked to Armise, and watched as he appeared to mimic the movement as if he was feeling the same pain. Then I remembered the lightning bolt on his back—the tattoo that covered a wound I had given him—and realised he probably knew exactly what I was experiencing.

“We need to move after this,” I said, still speaking in Mongol.

Armise ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing an errant strand back. “They recognise us.”

I nodded. “They’re okay, but the next ones may not be.”

Armise got up from his chair and walked behind me, watching the tattooist work.

“Anything else I should know about?” Armise mused.

Solely from the clipped tenor and annoyance in his voice I could picture the way he was standing—legs wide, arms crossed, likely a scowl tipping his lips down. The tattoo artist pulled away for a moment and I ventured a glance over my shoulder to find Armise in that exact position.

I grinned. “I got my nipple pierced, too.”

The muscle in Armise’s jaw ticked and he shifted from one foot to the other. He inhaled sharply, uncrossed his arms and ran both his hands through his hair. He gave a mumbled
fuck
and ran his tongue over his bottom lip.

I chuckled and settled my chin on my arms again, satisfied with his reaction. It was good to know that I could still surprise Armise as much as he could surprise me.

Chapter Thirteen

The man’s blood splattered across my face, dripped warm down my cheeks, and I had to retreat a step to keep his blade from slicing through my abdomen. I flipped my blade from my right to my left and drew the length across his arm. He screamed, backed up another step, then came at me again.

Where the fuck was Armise?

I shouldn’t have needed to be in this house in the first place. Shouldn’t have ended up in hand-to-hand combat with our target. But his bodyguards had stubbornly refused to let me into the safe room the Committee member was keeping himself locked in. So I’d had to take them all out first to even get to the wily fucker. I’d opened the door with the cooling fingerprints of one of the dead bodyguards then promptly been jumped by the Committee member.

Everything our intel had told us pointed to him being a spineless idiot, much like our first two kills. We knew the bodyguards were there and we knew the house was on lockdown, but the plan had been simple. Well, it would have been if we’d known that this particular Committee member was so paranoid that he hadn’t left his safe room in days. I supposed he had had good reason for that paranoia, though.

I’d at least been able to drive him into the living room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the bay. With Armise set up with his sniper rifle in the hills, I’d given him plenty of time to pop off a clean shot. But as the seconds then minutes dragged on and I steadfastly took weapon after weapon off this guy and he kept coming at me, I wondered if that shot was ever going to come.

The guy had to be hopped up on surge or some other drug because he was stronger than he should have been. Faster than he should have been.

Should have. Fuck. Those words were going to get me killed by an Opposition pissant.

His eyes were beady and dangerously focused for how untrained all our intel had led us to believe he was. But I could see him tiring as he circled me again, his shaking arm dripping blood onto the black tiled floor. His movements were erratic, the desperation evident in the droop of his shoulders and the heaving of his chest.

If I’d had a comm chip I would have told Armise that now was the time to take his shot. But I didn’t have the fucking chip and my hands were otherwise engaged, keeping my radio—my only communication method with Armise—out of reach in my pocket.

So I kept him moving, waiting for either the whizz of a sonicbullet or the shattering glass and pop of a real one.

There was some reason that Armise wasn’t taking his shot and I was either going to have to gut this guy and finish him off or risk taking on an injury that could leave me vulnerable. The only thing I could fathom was that no matter where I moved in the room Armise couldn’t sight the target.

“Even if you kill me you won’t win,” the man gurgled, the place where I’d swiped him across the neck sending another spray of blood down his chest.

Now he was just annoying me.

“Fuck this,” I grumbled. I dropped onto my haunches, hopefully clearing myself completely out of Armise’s sight line.