Nate
Okay, I was willing to concede that had been more than just sex. In the past, I’d always thought of sex as nothing more than fucking. Just a physical release. But this…this was what “making love” meant. I’d always considered the term a woman’s sentimental way of describing sex. But “making love” was exactly that. Making love. This wasn’t fucking. Alissa and I had just made love. Love. It had been the most incredible, amazing, mind-blowing experience of my life.
Yeah, that sounded cheesy. That was what feelings did to a man. Confused him. Left him reeling. This was why I didn’t do feelings. Alissa was messing me up inside. Was I in love with her? Probably. I was certainly in lust. But I didn’t want to think about feelings right now. I refused to. I was nowhere near ready to contemplate how I felt about her. I couldn’t handle that right now. For now, I would only let it be about sex. We were great together. No, we were spectacular. I would enjoy this time with her, and hope she decided to stick around for a while. But when she was ready to leave, I would let her go. I would have to. What kind of life could she expect to have with me?
Alissa had interrupted me earlier in the forest before I could think of a response to the text that had come in. I still had no idea who it was from. Alissa had offered a willing distraction for a few hours. Now I needed to figure out who had texted me and what that person wanted.
I quickly dressed and left my apartment, heading into the maze. Noah and Logan were in the tunnels, installing video surveillance throughout the maze. We’d all decided earlier that it would be wise to help keep us safe if we added cameras inside and out, and tripwires in strategic areas outside. We probably should have done that earlier, but no one had discovered our hideout until Jacob had lured those soldiers here so he could kill them a few months ago. Jacob had dispatched them and we’d felt safe until the Sureños had recently tracked Alissa here. Now, we all believed we needed the extra protection. Now, we all felt more secure with the added surveillance.
When I reached the surface, Tony was there, making the rounds of the old plantation home, checking the new tripwires Noah had installed. Noah had installed motion-sensor cameras around the perimeter outside of the building earlier that evening. The camera feed was linked to an app on each of our phones that would alert us if anyone—or anything—appeared in front of the cameras. If anyone ventured near our hideout, we would now have plenty of warning. We couldn’t always rely on our lookout Tommy, a twelve-year-old kid. It had been a mere stroke of luck that he’d been awake and watching the last time when the Sureños had invaded our domain.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted Tony to see the text, but I didn’t feel right keeping it from him, either. He was my dreg partner. My best friend.
He nodded at me, his gaze wary. He knew I’d been intimate with Alissa. He would have felt it through his connection to me. Not the actual lovemaking, but the emotions that coursed through me. Those, he would have felt. He knew I had feelings for her. I’m not sure what he thought about that, but I imagined in time he would let me know his thoughts on the matter. He was blunt by nature. Staying quiet when he had a strong opinion about something wasn’t his style.
“I got a text from an unknown person,” I admitted quietly. I swiped the screen on my phone and opened the text, handing the phone to him.
He read it in silence, then handed the phone back. “Romeo?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
Someone who can destroy you.
“Are you going to answer it?”
“I don’t know.” A part of me was afraid to. The old saying ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’ rang through my mind. If I didn’t answer this text, then I might never know who it was from or what they wanted. Some things were better left unknown.
I have something you want.
What could this person have?
Tony moved away, bending to check a tripwire several feet to my left. “You don’t have to answer it. You’ve got a woman now. You can just take her and leave this place.”
I gauged his words in silence. He didn’t sound mad. Though he obviously wasn’t pleased either. Did he feel threatened by Alissa? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t getting a jealous vibe from him right now. In fact, his emotions were completely blank. Had he shut me out?
“You don’t like her?”
He shrugged, turning to face me. “You going to answer the text?”
I sighed. Should I answer the text? Find out who it was from? Find out what they wanted?
I’d spent several hours in bed with Alissa. No new texts had come in during that time. Leaving the ball in my court.
Tell me who you are and what you want, I typed. And I’ll consider meeting with you.
A response arrived quickly.
You met me at the facility the night The General died. Instead of killing me, you let me go. I have information I know you want. Let’s meet somewhere and we can discuss it.
Tony stepped up beside me and I showed him the text.
“Fuck,” he hissed out. “I knew we hadn’t seen the last of that woman.”
I’ll admit I was curious what the woman wanted. She’d told us that night that The General was her father. Since most of us had been spawned by The General, that made her our sibling. What information did she have?
“I’m going to meet with her,” I decided. “See what she wants.”
Tony turned away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Then he turned back to me, his gaze hard. “You sure you want to do that? What if she sticks you back in that fucking lab? You could die.”
If she stuck me back in the lab, I would be in trouble. That was a place I never wanted to return to. I wasn’t sure if my pacemaker would continue to work properly if my body went into shock and my heart stopped from the injection of more experimental drugs. There was only so much a pacemaker could withstand. It wasn’t foolproof. Tasers were a definite no-no. I also had to avoid metal detectors, magnets, and electricity of any kind. All of which could short out my pacemaker.
The pacemaker was what kept me alive. Without it, my heart wouldn’t beat properly. Without it, I would die.
I wasn’t ready to die.
“She’s not sticking me back in that lab. I won’t let her.” This meant The Company was indeed still around. And that made me extremely wary. What did this woman want? And why? Was she just trying to lure me out to kill me?
For some reason, I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t imagine what she wanted.
Okay, I typed back. What information do you have that I want?
She responded with an image. A screenshot. I clicked on the image, enlarging it so I could read it. It was a document dated fourteen years ago.
Recruit Number 47. Name: Nathan. Age at time of recruit: thirteen. Mother: Elizabeth King. Father: Edward Waters. Female siblings (full): Katie. Female siblings (half): Darcy. Male siblings in the program (half): Antonio, Liam, Noah, Logan, Ryan, Luke…
The list of male half-siblings was extensive and made me cringe inside. The General really had been a sick bastard, creating as many soldiers as he could by impregnating many women, too many for me to even want to count. I didn’t even know most of the names on the list, there were so many. I imagined most, if not all, of them were already dead.
I knew Tony, Tracker, Noah, Logan, Ryan, and Luke were my half-brothers, and the woman who’d sent this was my sister. I had assumed she was my half-sister, but I didn’t really know that for sure. It was possible we had the same mother. And my other sister? Where was she? Why didn’t I know about her? If this document was correct, then I had a full sibling. A sister who shared the same parents.
I rubbed a hand over my face. How did I respond?
How do I know this is real? And how do I know you won’t have soldiers waiting to kill me?
She responded: It’s real. There’s more in your file. Much more. I have information on all the dregs. I won’t kill you. I don’t have any soldiers. I have a task for you.
I contemplated that for a moment. Then typed: What do you want me to do?
We can discuss that when we meet. And in exchange, I’ll give you your information. Your future.
My future.
Tony and I exchanged a glance.
None of us could deny that we wanted a future. Our freedom. More than anything. A life without hiding. A life without fear.
Whatever she wanted, I was willing to consider it in exchange for my future.
Where and when do you want to meet? I texted back. If I get even a hint that you’re lying to me, I’ll be gone.
I’m not a liar, came her response. Meet me in one hour. She listed an address in Augusta.
Me: Make it an hour and a half and I’ll be there.
Her: Okay. But don’t be late.
I stuffed the phone in my pocket and glanced at Tony.
“You going with me?”
“Fuck, yeah.”
Tony was right beside me as I rushed back into the maze. I wouldn’t go alone. I’d bring the other dregs along. They would wait outside, and if things went south, they could rush in to rescue me.
As we were making our way through the dark tunnels, Tony cleared his throat. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
I paused, turning to face him, as suspicion crept in. “What?”
“That tracking device you cut out of Alissa? I didn’t destroy it.”
He hadn’t? I groaned and rubbed a hand over my face. “Then what’d you do with it?”
“I gave it to Noah. He disabled it. Then he reprogramed it so that only he could track it. I think you should wear it somehow, so if something goes wrong tonight, we can at least find you later.”
I nodded. I would happily wear a tracking device if it helped the other dregs find me.
If I was injured, Tony would eventually be able to track me through our dreg connection, but that could sometimes take hours, or even days, and with a critical injury, that could mean death for me. So, a tracking device would help the other dregs locate me more quickly.
The other dregs all agreed to come along. Several minutes later, after I made a small cut on the inside of my wrist, Noah inserted the tracking device under my skin, then checked the signal to make sure it was working properly.
“We’re good to go. As long as that thing stays with you, we can track your whereabouts.”
I covered the tiny wound with a Band-Aid. I had a feeling the tracking device would come in handy over the next little while.
We all gathered weapons from the weapons room next to the gym, then headed for the surface. It was best to be prepared for anything.
I paused in front of my apartment. Alissa was in there, sleeping. Should I kiss her one last time before I left? Hold her close? What if I died tonight?
I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to know what was going on. I hadn’t told her much about myself yet. She didn’t know what being a dreg was like.
The door jerked open and Alissa stepped out into the corridor.
Her eyes widened, taking in all of us—and our weapons.
“Nate? What’s happened? Where are you going?”
I cleared my throat and stepped toward her.
“I’ll meet you guys at the surface,” I told the other dregs. They all nodded and moved off.
I wrapped an arm around Alissa’s shoulders and steered her back into my apartment. “I’m going to be gone for a few hours. Stay here, okay?”
She pulled away, spinning to face me. “What’s going on?”
I sighed. “There’s something I have to take care of.”
“You’re going to kill Romeo.” She met my gaze, her eyes filling with worry.
“Actually, no. I’m not.” I hesitated. “Though I won’t deny I want to kill that bastard.” A moment of silence stretched between us. “There are things you don’t know about me, Alissa. Things I need to tell you. But not right now. I’m going to meet with someone. And depending on the outcome of this meeting, I may, or may not, come back.”
“No.” She lifted my chin. “Then I’m going with you to make sure you come back.”
“Alissa.” I swallowed hard. I couldn’t risk her getting hurt. “I want you to stay here where it’s safe.”
“I’m going,” she repeated, holding my gaze. “Wherever you go, I go, too.”
My heart pinched. I yanked her into my arms, squeezing her tight. “Where I’m going will be dangerous, Alissa. God, I’m so glad you came back to me, but I don’t want to lose you. I can’t.”
“All the more reason for me to come along and make sure we both come back together.”
I let out a soft laugh and set her away from me. God, I was so crazy about this woman. “I don’t know how you ever thought you were weak. You are the strongest, bravest woman I know.” I cupped her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes.
“Which is why I was going with you. You made me realize my ‘weakness’ was all in my head. I believe in myself now. I believe in you. So I’m going with you. And you can’t stop me.”
I puffed out a breath. Damn. Then I kissed her firmly on the mouth.
“Fine. Hurry and get dressed. The others are waiting.”