Page 14 of Into the Fire: After
My belly clenched as Nova’s scent soured with remembered pain, with fresh fear.
“So they keep us in heat. Endlessly. They draw blood and extract eggs or whatever the fuck. Then they do it again. And again.”
Nausea threatened to overtake me as the reality of Nova’s torture—the torture they wanted for my Taryn—unfolded itself in my mind’s eye. Brooks had told us about the developing research of omega pheromones for alpha healthcare. Everyone insisted all was above board, obtained via consenting omegas.
But, as we’d established, omegas were a limited resource. Ones willing to donate blood, eggs, whatever, even rarer.
“The ones who die, they’re lucky,” Nova continued. “But the ones whose minds break first, or whose heats burn out entirely, they’re offloaded to the underground omega trades. Hidden from the world, kept quiet, used up at a steep discount.”
A hot tear fell down my cheek. The depravity of Nova’s words sucked me in like a black hole. Stole my breath. Paralyzed my limbs.
“I promise you,” I whispered through my thick throat, “Iwill notlet that happen to you again. But I can’t let that happen to Taryn either.” I placed my hand on her back. “Please.”
We sat there for several minutes, neither of us saying a word. I wished I could comfort her. I wished someone could comfort me.
Finally, though, Nova crawled toward the small bed behind her, reaching underneath and pulling a canvas backpack out. She slid it toward me. Frowning, I untied the flap covering the opening. Inside was a dark sweater, cargo pants, socks and boots. A small bag with a flashlight, a collapsible water bottle, a few packets of jerky. A satellite phone. A map.
Nova’s go-bag.
I looked up and met her eye. “You’re a fighter after all,” I said.
A frown marred her face, turning her back into the woman I’d woken to. The island buffeted by tsunamis and monsoons, yet still standing tall above the waterline.
“No, I’m not.” She stood. “I’ll drive you to the cave. You can figure out your own way from there.”
Five
Brooks
“Stopbeingawimpand do it already,” Taryn said.
She stood with her hair pulled over one shoulder. I stood behind her, pocketknife in hand, blade hovering over her neck.
“Sweetness,” I said, voice syrupy, “I’m gonna need you to shut the fuck up and give me some space here. ‘Kay?”
Taryn huffed again, muttering something aboutdidn’t you go to school for thisunder her breath, but I couldn’t even keep up my faux-annoyed facade.
Ask me to cut open a patient to extract a bullet or glass shard or other foreign object, and there was no issue. I’d held down hysterical strangers so that nurses could place IVs, and stitched up crying kids and adults alike. None of it fazed me.
None of them had beenmyomega.
I still didn’t know why Vikki had sent the package to me. But after she’d come to the apartment and revealed the plot against Taryn, the envelope had appeared at my work.
I’d held onto it, still sealed, as we fled the city. It felt silly, even traitorous to carry it around. More so to keep it from the others. Caine would’ve lost his shit, though.
And, to be fair, we’d had a fair bit of distraction in the meantime. And maybe we never would’ve needed it.
Except that we did.
An hour ago, I fetched it from beneath the backseat of the SUV and Taryn ripped the top open. Inside was note and a small plastic baggy containing a tiny black rectangle. Black on one side, anyway. Golden copper stripes on the other.
A microchip. One that would, according to the letter, allow her to access and decrypt Phoenix Labs’ internal files, if her person on the inside could install it.
Ergo, we needed a person to go from the outsidetotheinside.
Taryn, of fucking course, had immediately volunteered for the task.
Which begged the question of how to sneak a corporate espionage chip into a multimillion-dollar lab.
