Codename: Night Witch Read Free Page A

time, at least. Though for how much longer, Emily couldn't know. The warning signs were there already. In time, no single treatment would be enough to control her.
    Emily Gillings-Jones looked at her hand. Sigrid's slap had shattered two of her metacarpals. It wasn't the pain that bothered her. Pain could be ignored. Pain was irrelevant. But the girl had never hit her before. She'd seen the look in Sigrid's eyes! She'd wanted to kill her. Soon, nothing was going to stop her from doing just that. The next slap might prove to be fatal.
    Emily stared down at the sleeping girl in her arms as she stroked her hair gently. Yes, the day would come when this girl would kill her. She couldn't blame her either. Not after everything she'd done to her.
    Dr. Farrington had warned her. His advice was most specific: "Terminate her. Kill her while you can." Even her husband was growing cautious, and he rarely came around anymore. But they didn't understand. Not like she did. Emily Gillings-Jones owed this girl everything. Sigrid Novak had saved her life. If it wasn't for her, she'd still be lying invalid in some hospital bed, a living vegetable hooked up to banks of cold machines.
    Reaching back to the side of her neck, Emily let her fingertip circle the small telltale metallic slot hidden just behind her ear. Like the girl in her arms, the access port was the only giveaway that Emily Gillings-Jones was anything but a normal human woman. But of course, this was her gift from the Kimura Corporation.
    Kimura had done this to her decades ago and nearly killed her in the process. "A miscalculation." That was what they called it. "Unforeseen complications during the process of genetic recombination."
    That complication had nearly proven fatal. It would have, too, if not for the girl in her arms and the gift of life hidden within her blood. Sigrid's blood had saved her—her blood and the formula for the advanced genetic recombinant hidden within.
    But hadn't Emily saved her as well?
    Sigrid might be the first of her kind—Kimura's first real success—but Sigrid was the product of decades of research, trial and error. Other women had come before her. Dozens of them. Women just like Emily. The failures and the incompatibles. They had paved the way for girls like Sigrid. It was only through their sacrifice that Sigrid's success was made possible.
    They were bonded, whether they liked it or not.
    It made Emily sad to think their time together was nearly over. But it wasn't over yet. Not today. There was still more work to do.
    The Independents weren't free yet. One more target stood in their way.
    The data module bleeped and flashed green. The program upload was complete. Sigrid would remember none of this. She never did. Emily disengaged the device, pulling the data spike free from Sigrid's neck. The girl moaned and stirred in her arms.
    "Hush, dear. Sleep. This will be the last time. I promise. Only one more task for you to perform."
     

Part One

Awakening
     

CHAPTER ONE

Rebelle
    White lights shone down from above, jolting Sigrid instantly awake. The lights were blinding and painful to her eyes and bored deep into her skull. Even the simple act of blinking hurt.
    Something was wrong. Very wrong. She shouldn't be feeling this way. She shouldn't…hurt.
    Slowly, her blurred surroundings swam back into focus. She was in a room as white and as featureless as the lights above her. Sterile white tiles covered the floor and walls. Banks of harsh floodlights lined the ceiling.
    And she had absolutely no idea where she was.
    The Independents. Bellatrix. She remembered all of that. And Suko…
    Suko!
    Sigrid gasped at the memory. In her mind, she saw it, the desert on Bellatrix, and Suko lying in the twisted wreckage of her longspur. Her leg was a bloody, mangled mess, torn open and with splintered bits of bone thrusting through her shredded flesh. She could remember all of that, yet this…
    Sigrid stared into the white lights and to the walls and