Page 140 of Nemesis

My skin doesn’t crawl when he touches me. In fact, he’s not even reciprocating and I haven’t taken my hand away from his.

“It’s okay,” I say to him. Or myself, I guess. I don’t know if he can hear me. “We’re going to figure this out.”

We have to.

I have to.

39REESE

Twenty four hours prior

Rapid gunfire echoesin my mind as I’m dragged into consciousness. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m not crouched behind a half-blown-out wall with my squadron fanned out around me.

“There he is.”

A scraping noise reverberates around me, bits and pieces of awareness slotting back into place. The first thing I notice, beyond the noise, is the pain. My chin is on my chest. I’m seated, but my muscles ache.

My head throbs. I lift it and force my eyes open. There’s a single bright light directly over me. I squint until my eyes adjust, and the person who spoke comes closer.

He drags with him a chair, which he drops down into, just out of my reach.

I jerk, quickly realizing my arms are tied behind me. My legs are bound to the chair.

“Do you know who I am?” His tone is curious. He wears a bandana over the lower portion of his face.

I focus on his eyes. Light, sky blue. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a shade. They’re fringed by dark, thick eyelashes. His dark hair is buzzed short. I’ve done that before, when Kade and I were deployed. It just got to be a hassle with the dust and sweat…

“I don’t.” What’s meant to be a normal voice comes out croaked. “Should I?”

He makes a noise of disgust. “This town forgets.”

“I’m not from here.”

He eyes me, then drags the bandana down.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t a handsome face. The world opens up for beauty, and this guy clearly has it. In the same way Kade uses his broad stature to cut through a crowd, or Artemis bats her eyelashes.

Ha, now IknowI have a concussion.

That girl has never batted her eyelashes in her life.

“Did you ever go to the lower levels of Terror?” he asks.

I open and close my mouth.Lower levels?

“I went where I was told,” I say quietly. “But I didn’t know there were… lower levels.”

The man in front of me sneers. “Oh, yes. It’s where they let the deviants do whatever they wanted to us. They used drugs to keep us compliant.”

The room tilts a bit.

He’s getting angry now. He jumps up from his seat and circles around it. I hiss out a breath when he fists the front of my shirt.

“You were there,” he says. “You went to Terror. Consumed product that wasn’t yours to enjoy.”

I look away, because I did. I was a teenager under my parents’ direction, but I did it anyway. It’s one of those things that drove me to join the Marines. I needed to atone for my sins, and I thought protecting our country would do that for me.

It didn’t.

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