Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
My lungs are burning. Seconds left. Maybe less.
I stop fighting his grip. Let my hands fall from his face to rest on his forearms.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, knowing that I might not reach through him this time and knowing there’s some part of him that is still inside, still hearing me. “It’s okay, Nate. I forgive you.”
Something flickers in his eyes.
“I forgive you,” I say again, or try to—there’s no air left, the words are just shapes my lips are making—“for Cal. For this. For everything.”
He blinks, shakes his head.
“Milkshake,” I whisper.
The flicker becomes a tremor. His whole body shudders. And then—
He lets go.
I suck in a breath so sharp it feels like inhaling glass, coughing and gasping, and when I look up at him through streaming tears his face has changed. The emptiness is cracking apart like an egg. His eyes are wet. His hands are shaking violently now, and he’s staring at them like he doesn’t recognize them, like they belong to someone else.
“Mia,” he breathes. His voice breaks on my name. “Oh god. Mia.”
“There you are,” I manage, and I’m crying too now, or maybe I’ve been crying this whole time, it’s hard to tell when one eye is swollen shut and the other is blurred with tears and blood. “There you are.”
He reaches for me—gentle this time, so gentle, his fingers brushing my bruised cheek—and his face crumbles.
“I almost—”
“But you didn’t,” I whisper roughly. “You—”
A sharp electronic beep cuts through the moment.
Julia. She’s pressing buttons on her remote frantically, her composure finally cracking. “Vanguard. Comply. I said comply—”
Nate moves so fast he becomes a blur.
One second he’s in front of me, the next he’s across the room, the remote crushed to fragments in his fist. Julia gasps, stumbles backward, but he’s already grabbed her by the hair, lifting her clean off the ground. Her feet kick uselessly in the air, her heels flying off. She claws at his wrist, making sounds I’ve never heard from her—high, panicked, human.
“Marsh!” she shrieks. “Call Paragon! Get reinforcements, NOW!”
I see Marsh’s face through the observation window—pale and terrified—and then he bolts from the room.
“You think you can just—” Julia is snarling now, even while dangling from Nate’s grip, her hair taut against her reddening scalp. “You’re mine, Vanguard. I made you. I can unmake you just as easily!”
Nate throws her like he’s swinging a cat.
She hits the wall hard enough to dent the plaster, crumpling to the floor in a heap of navy silk. He doesn’t even look at her—he’s already moving, already going after Marsh.
“The restraints,” I call after him, my voice still ravaged. “Nate, the restraints…”
He stops and turns back, crosses to me in two strides and the metal buckles snap like plastic under his hands. My wrists scream with relief, blood rushing back into my fingers.
“Stay here,” he says, his jaw tight, eyes hard. “I need to deal with Marsh.”
I open my mouth to call him back but he’s already gone, disappearing through the observation room and into the corridor beyond.
Seconds later, I hear screaming. I don’t know Marsh well enough to recognize his voice, but I know terror when I hear it. The screams rise in pitch, then cut off abruptly, replaced by sounds I don’t want to identify.
Wet sounds.
Final sounds.
It’s disgusting but warranted, and I feel a twinge of satisfaction.
A groan steals my attention from the corner of the room.
Julia is trying to get to her feet. Her hair has come loose from its perfect chignon, blood trickling her forehead. She’s muttering something—calling for security on some kind of sub-dermal comm, maybe, or just cursing Nate’s existence.
It takes everything I have to stand. My legs don’t want to hold me, my ribs scream with every breath. But I make it upright, stagger across the room, and when Julia finally looks up, I’m right there in front of her.
“You—” she starts.
I grab her face roughly with both hands, my fingernails digging in.
And I press my lips to hers and kiss her.
It’s revenge, pure and simple, fifteen years of isolation and rage and grief channeled into this one act. I make sure it’s deep. I make sure it counts.
When I pull back, Julia’s eyes are already going wide. “No!” she cries out. “You didn’t. You—”
I know it takes time for them to die but it’s working fast on her. Her hands fly to her throat. Her mouth opens and closes, foam bubbling at her lips, and she makes a gurgling sound that might be my name or might be a curse or might just be the sound of her body realizing what I’ve done to it.
She collapses.
I watch her lying on the on the white floor, trying to take in air, her designer clothes soaking up the spittle and bile, and I think about Cal. About Bayo and Kat’s faces in those photos. About every bruise on my body, every question Keller asked while his fists did the talking.