One Breath, One Bullet(The Borders War book 1) (12 page)

Neveed passed another pill to Armise and he made sure to look at it before popping it into his mouth and dry-swallowing it. I could see the set of his shoulders change as the particles healed him too. But I got a perverse sense of satisfaction knowing the visible marks I had left on him would take days to heal.

I could feel my strength returning in waves and I no longer had to use all of my focus just to keep my body in check. It was only then that I realised there was a question I hadn’t asked. “My parents?”

Neveed grimaced and looked to Armise as if for help.

Armise moved a fraction closer to me. “They left the safe house.”

I erupted at Neveed. “Goddammit! What did I tell you?”

Neveed flinched but stood his ground. “It was their choice.”

“They shouldn’t have had one,” I said through a clenched jaw.

Armise’s hand on my arm stilled me. “Focus, Merq. They’ve been waiting for this moment for thirty years. You know that,” he said as if he understood them and their motivations.

Maybe he did. There was a lot I apparently didn’t know about the man standing next to me.

I took a deep breath. Thirty years ago my parents had used the attack on the capital to fake their deaths and set into motion a string of events that put me in the custody of the States so I would have a chance to undo the damage created by the invention of the sonicbullet. They’d sacrificed raising me, their son, because even at that young of an age I showed the same battle-ready temperament as Armise, who had been conscripted as a child. They’d given me up for the good of the Revolution. And waited thirty years for a chance to right the wrongs of a relative so distant that it shouldn’t have mattered—but it did.

I’d never questioned their decision because I felt the same pull they did. And yet I was furious. As soon as it was discovered they were alive they would become targets. Not because of a relative they never knew, or the name they bore as just as heavy a burden as I did, but because of me.

Neveed looked at his watch again. “I’ve got to get back to the locker room. You have five minutes and then I’m sending the trainers down to the tunnels to find you. Armise needs to be gone by then.”

“I don’t need any time,” Armise said, and started to follow Neveed.

I grabbed Armise’s arm and stopped him from walking away. Neveed glanced over his shoulder one last time. “Five minutes,” he reminded us as he continued towards the mouth of the tunnel. Neveed knew the five minutes weren’t for Armise. They were for me.

Armise stared at where my right hand was curled around his bicep. His arms were massive and yet my hand could nearly circle around the muscle. I waited until I could hear Neveed’s heavy footfalls passing through the door before I asked Armise, “How long?”

Armise didn’t have to ask me to clarify. He knew I was asking how long he’d been working for the States. He stood stock still as he answered. “Since the DCR standoff.”

I sucked in a breath. Twelve years. He’d been my ally for twelve years. Of everything today, this moment was the first where I struggled with what to say next.

I stared at him for a minute that dragged on even though I knew I was wasting time. There was just too much I wouldn’t know until this was all over. When we could finally be alone again. And knowing the hell we were walking into, Armise and I probably wouldn’t have a chance to be alone for weeks. Possibly months.

If we survived that long.

Suddenly I ached to go back in time. For it to be last night, when he had his arms wrapped around me and the world wasn’t falling apart around us. Regret was not an emotion I was familiar with and one that I quickly decided didn’t suit me well.

I dropped my hand from his arm and turned my back on him. It had been years since I’d worried about exposing my back to him. Which for some reason, my teetering sanity being the most likely culprit, I found very funny. I chuckled loudly. My laughter was tinged with nerves, more pressure release than happiness, and the oddest thought struck me.

I turned and pointed at his left hand where my escape from that standoff in the DCR was forever marked. “Did you start working for the States before or after I chopped off your finger?”

Armise held up his hand and grinned. “Before.”

Shit.

My laughter was cut short and disappeared into the blackness surrounding us. We were left with silence.

I remembered the aftermath of that standoff. Of the people who had taken me in and given me medical treatment that had saved my life. The same people who had ensured I made it back to the States alive, with the infochip in my possession.

I remembered that vision of a bandaged hand, caring for me after my collapse in the desert. A vision I had been sure at the time wasn’t real.

“It was you who got me out,” I whispered.

“Barely,” Armise ground out.

I could tell there was more to that story. A story we didn’t have time to discuss.

I ran my fingers through my hair. My body was a ball of exposed nerves and anxious energy.

I hated not being fully informed. How much more was there that I didn’t know?

Armise started to walk away again, but I couldn’t let him go yet. My next question burst out of me without thought. “How did they know you would turn?” I called after him, certain that it had been Neveed or one of the Revolutionaries who had recruited him.

Armise’s jaw ticked and I could tell he was considering lying to me. But then he scratched at his beard and his face softened. “Because I came to them.”

I furrowed my brows and played with the ring in my lip.

I came to them…

His confession blasted a path through my ears and into my brain, shorting out the electric flashes—receptor to receptor, synapse to synapse—that should have interpreted Armise’s words into something that made sense.

Armise ducked his head down and closed the space between us in two steps that put him chest to chest with me.

I wanted to ask how much had been real between us, and how much had been manufactured. But I already knew the answer. He lifted my chin, his silver eyes washed out, reflecting the whites of the light in the tunnel. To anyone else they would be unreadable, but I could see it all.

There were words said between us. Ones that were unspoken but unmistakable. And I knew why I’d grown to trust him.

Because I could.

Armise leant forward and kissed me, softer than he ever had before. It was jarring. Familiar and yet unexplored territory.

And then he spoke two words that made my stomach drop, even though I’d known for most of my life they were coming.

Chapter Ten

The roar of the crowd was deafening, even behind the thick glass separating me from the festivities outside. Over five hundred thousand people filled the stadium where the Opening Ceremonies were being held. Residents of each country gathered together peacefully in one place for the first time in over three centuries.

The excitement from the crowd was palpable—like that split second moment of a sonicrifle charging, subatomic particles coalescing, just before it popped. But instead of diffusing in one sharp blast, the energy of the stadium built, layer by raucous layer, as each voice clamoured to be heard, to give sound to emotions that had been suppressed for too long. Or maybe oppressed. I couldn’t be sure anymore.

The sky above the glass ceiling of the stadium shone brightly with stars and the fat roundness of a golden moon distorted by wisps of the pollution haze. The night outside the stadium was quiet. Still.

The images broadcast by the press corps on screens in the stadium showed celebrations across the globe. People congregated on streets to watch this historic moment.

When the image flipped to the States, to the areas surrounding the government buildings and the Olympic Village, the streets of the capital were conspicuously bare.

The commentators remarked on the citizens hunkering down, preparing for yet another electrical storm.

I could read the expanse above the stadium and know they were lying. There would be no storms rolling through the capital tonight—at least not from the sky.

Since Armise and Neveed had brought me up to speed, I couldn’t tamp down the surety that there was more I wasn’t being told. More that was actively being hidden from me, for reasons I wasn’t privy to. The part of me that was a soldier first accepted this reality without question. It wasn’t my job to know everything. It was my job to act when ordered.

But the part of me fixated on Armise—and this part was growing more demanding every day—wondered why Armise’s involvement with the States had been hidden from me for so long. I was sure Neveed was behind that decision, and not President Kersch. The history between Neveed and me was sordid at best since he was the first man I’d ever slept with and also the first man I’d ever beaten with bare fists. Then he’d been assigned as my handler—my mission as much his responsibility as mine—and everything between us had changed. I had no doubt that Neveed had kept Armise a secret just because he could.

I narrowed my eyes and turned towards Neveed. “You shaved your head for me,” I mused, framing my words as fact instead of a question. I didn’t want to give him any room to evade me.

The head-shaving ritual was part of this faith. An ancient mourning practice that came from his ancestors, from a country no one in his family had resided in for generations. And yet Neveed held onto those beliefs and traditions.

Neveed ran his palm over his head as he nodded, looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I didn’t trust that Armise would come through.” He hesitated. Cleared his throat. “I still don’t.”

My anger flared. “And so you think of me as already dead,” I bit out.

Neveed shook his head. “No. I pay respect for your willingness to give your life.”

I crossed my arms. “What aren’t you telling me about him?”

Neveed waved off my blustering tone. “You wouldn’t listen to me even if I told you. You’re blinded by him. Make it out of this alive and we’ll talk. I’ll show you what I know. Yes, I kept Armise’s involvement secret from you, but that wasn’t solely my choice.”

I gave a guttural huff of displeasure.

I understood, or at least thought I could understand, the reasons for Armise keeping his allegiance hidden from me. We, Armise and I, were still in the midst of active negotiations. We had been for over thirteen years. Circling around each other. Touching. Tasting. Testing.

To admit his loyalties out loud was to lose his strategic advantage. So Armise had waited until outing himself was inevitable. If I had been in his place I would have done the same.

Either way, now that I was standing metres away from that real bullet, looking out at the Olympic torch that soared, unlit, above the stadium, I felt like I had when I’d woken up in the hospital after the DCR standoff—I had a mission to complete and I needed to move.

I was in a holding area separate from the athletes who were parading through the arena. The sergeant who’d given me the spreading purple bruise on my jaw was glaring at me from his position in front of the set of one-way mirror doors leading into the stadium. He hadn’t said a word since I’d walked in with Neveed and greeted the Olympic Committee members by name, my patented Peacemaker smile in full effect.

The Committee waited with me passing around drinks, talking loudly. An air of victory filled the room. Of celebration. The twelve Committee members wore lavish coats and gowns that had to cost more than most citizens made in a lifetime, and spoke openly about the fight against tyranny as they sipped on kettleberry cocktails in glasses made of thinly chiselled stone.

Their arrogance could only be matched by the spectacle I saw building outside on the field.

The stadium was garish. Too bright. Colourful. Gaudy.

A distraction.

And just as Armise had said, we were the decoration.

The opening ceremony venue was a show of elitism and impropriety. A visual example of everything wrong with our world today. The stadium itself could be seen for kilometres. The Olympic torch, if it was ever going to be lit, would be visible from the dronebots hovering just outside the planet’s atmosphere.

I overheard two Committee members commenting on their belief that the President was grandstanding. They spoke of his blatant flaunting of his power and the unassailable position of the States as the superpower. They condemned him for his immorality and lack of humility.

And they were right. But not for the reasons they chose to believe.

The President was mocking them and they didn’t even know.

I tried to look over the sea of athletes congregating on the field in areas cordoned off for their respective countries. The colours for each country swirled together as the athletes paraded for the gathered crowd. The cobalt blue of the People’s Continent of Singapore. The royal purple of the United Union. The emerald of the American Federation. The gold amber of the Dark Continental Republic. And the vermillion of the Continental States.

Five countries, five leaders. Two warring causes. One bullet to bring them all into a collision course.

Four hundred million citizens of the world standing in their way.