Alissa
Nate stepped out of the building and into the dark alleyway in front of us.
“There he is!” I gasped out, my heart leaping into my throat. He was fine. Thank God.
The other dregs had parked their vehicles in a lot a few blocks over. After Nate had gone inside, they’d all climbed into the Escalade, and together we’d driven into the alley behind the building to wait. Tony and Noah were in front, Luke, Ryan, and Logan in the center seat, and I was in the far back seat. We wanted to be close by in case Nate needed us.
Noah had checked the tracking device several times to make sure Nate was still close by, that he hadn’t been kidnapped and whisked away.
Nate turned his head, spying his Escalade, and waited as Tony drove up beside him. Tony rolled down the window. “Well? What happened?”
Nate’s gaze flicked over everyone, then landed on me in the far backseat. “I’ll tell you once we get out of here.” He walked around to the back of the vehicle. The hatchback lifted and he climbed in, sliding his big body over the seat and sitting next to me. He was carrying some file folders that he set in his lap. The back seat was small and Nate barely fit in there beside me. Our thighs brushed together, our arms and shoulders touched. Awareness snaked through me at his closeness like it always did. My breath caught. My heart thudded. Nate was now my lover. He knew my body intimately, almost as intimately as I did. He’d made me gasp and moan in ecstasy many times. Yet each time he was near, each time we touched, it was like it was the first time. He gently squeezed my thigh. Our gazes met.
Then he faced the front of the vehicle, meeting each of the other dregs’ gazes. “Drive. I’ll fill you in.”
The car moved forward out of the alley, and several minutes later Tony pulled into the parking lot where they’d left the other vehicles. He turned the car off and everyone looked at Nate. Waiting.
“It’s The Company like we expected,” Nate said at last. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Well, not all of The Company. One person in particular. Her name is Darcy. She’s our half-sister. The General’s daughter. The one that was there that night we freed Tracker.” He paused a moment to let that sink in. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I had a feeling that what he was about to reveal was not something anyone else but this small group of people knew about. The other dregs all stared at him, listening with rapt attention.
“And?” Ryan demanded. “What does she want?”
Nate groaned and rubbed a hand roughly over his face. “She has all The General’s records on us, from the date we were born, until the date we escaped. Detailed information. Our names, ages at the time we were recruited, our birth mothers, siblings…” He broke off, swallowing hard and turning to glance out his window. “Apparently I have a younger sister named Katie. A full sister. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll bet at least some of you have full siblings you don’t know about, too.” He turned back to everyone. “There’s more. Detailed records of our time at the facility. A list of all the drugs that were used to conduct experiments on us and the results of those experiments. A list of all the animal DNA that was injected into us, and the results of each.”
I gasped at that, staring at him in disbelief. Did he just say animal DNA? No way.
Nate squeezed my thigh again before continuing on. “There’s a detailed description of all the different torture techniques we were subjected to, and all the missions we were sent out on. She has everything about us. Everything. She threatened to hand it over to the FBI if we didn’t do something for her.”
A tense silence fell, then Tony snarled out, “What does the bitch want us to do?”
Nate glanced at me briefly, then away. “She wants us to kill four people. The other shareholders of The Company. So she can take control and run the business the way she wants.” He lifted the folders from his lap and held them up for everyone to see. “All their information is in here.”
The vehicle exploded with cuss words that came from all different directions. I might have cringed or covered my ears if I hadn’t been around Kenny and the Spartans for the past few years, but I’d already been exposed to just about every swear word that existed, in more languages than one, so I wasn’t the least bit offended.
“You’re not seriously considering doing it?” Noah asked. He motioned to the folders. “Who are the targets?”
Nate shrugged. “I haven’t looked at the folders yet. I figured we could all do it together.” He sighed again. “There’s more. She’s aligned herself with the four most powerful gangs in this city. They’re all on her payroll now. The Spartans, the Sureños, the Rapsters, and the Black Dragons. She promised if we kill these four men for her, then all our records will be destroyed and we will be free men.”
Another silence fell while everyone contemplated that.
“And you believed her?” Ryan eyed Nate in disbelief. “She’s probably lying.”
Luke reached for the folders. “Let me see.”
Nate handed them over.
Silence fell for several moments while Luke and Ryan perused the files.
“One is a state senator,” Luke muttered. “Another is an Army sergeant. The third is a CEO for a large pharmaceutical company.” He snorted, then lifted his gaze, looking Nate in the eye. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? How many of the drugs they pumped into us were in testing stages from that pharmaceutical company?”
Everyone grew silent.
Ryan cleared his throat. “It looks like the fourth guy owns the zoo in Atlanta next to the old facility.”
“Jesus,” Tony hissed from up front. “Bastards. They all have to die. Every last one of them. If they’re part of The Company, then they deserve to die. I’ll do it. I’ll kill them all. None of the rest of you have to get any blood on your hands.”
“Now hold on a minute,” Logan protested. “We’re not slaves liked we used to be. No one is drugging us and forcing us to kill. We can’t just go murder someone because our half-sister, whoever the hell she is, threatens to destroy us. Who the hell does she think she is?” He jerked his head toward Nate. “I know you want your freedom. So do I. But if we go kill those people for her, who’s to say she won’t still release the information about us? What’s stopping her from stringing us along, again and again, forcing us to do all her dirty work, while promising again and again that she’ll destroy the information?” He raised his voice as he finished speaking. He was getting worked up. They all were. I had no idea what was going on here, so I remained silent and listened.
“Let me see those files,” Noah said, reaching for them. Luke handed them over. Noah handed a couple of the files to Tony while he looked at the other two.
After a moment of silence, Nate said quietly, “Logan’s right. We’re not slaves anymore. We’re not being drugged and forced to kill. But what choice do we really have? It’s damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we do this for her, we can finally have our freedom. We won’t have to hide underground anymore. We can join society like regular citizens. We can be free.”
Tony thrust the files back at Noah. “We’ll never be regular citizens. Thanks to The Company, we’ll never be normal. We’ll never be free.”
Everyone grew silent again. Then Ryan asked, “So, what kind of vibe did you get from this woman? Did she seem genuine?”
Nate glanced at Ryan. “I don’t know. She’s a scientist. She’s nothing like The General. I don’t think she’ll try to fuck us over if we do this for her. She wants to run the company in a different way. She says she’s only going to use volunteers, that no one will be forced to do any of the things that we were forced to do.”
Luke snorted. “And you believed her?”
Nate shrugged. “She seemed pretty straightforward. I have to believe her, because I need to have a good reason for doing this.”
Another moment of silence stretched. Then Tony asked, “What does your gut tell you to do?” His hard gaze zeroed in on Nate, intense, scrutinizing.
Nate glanced at me. “Right now, all I want to do is go home. We can talk about this more back at the maze.”
There were murmurs of agreement. Then everyone disbursed, heading for their vehicles.
I climbed over the seat and settled back on the middle seat while Nate went around to the front passenger seat and climbed in, telling Tony, “You drive.”
I settled back into my seat and thought about everything I’d learned that night, my curiosity about Nate and the other dregs continuing to grow. Had they really been injected with animal DNA, tortured, abused? One thing I’d learned about Nate: He wasn’t a liar. The man had integrity. He was a good person.
Nate and Tony spoke quietly from the front of the vehicle as we headed out of the city. I remained silent from my seat in the back, staring out my window.
What would they do?
I believed wholeheartedly that Nate and the other dregs were true heroes. But if they killed those men with sniper rifles, they would become murderers. Wouldn’t that cause Nate to lose a piece of his soul? How would he be able to live with that?
I didn’t want Nate to kill anyone. Killing was wrong. There was always an alternative solution. My heart pinched at the idea of him losing a part of his soul. If he did this, it would change him.
But the decision wasn’t mine to make.
It was Nate’s.
Fear clenched at my gut.
What would he do?