Dominant Predator Read Free Page B

transport platform shook.
    She pointed up, a wicked grin exposing her teeth. “Those, Colonel, are artillery shells. Welcome to the Revolution.”
     
    * * * *
     
    It was unnerving, to say the least.
    I had been prepared for war of this type—messy, bloody, loud and more unpredictable than anything I’d ever experienced—but nothing could have prepared me for the unending movement. I could feel each burst of gunfire. Each drop of a bomb. Each crackle-snap-flash of grenades. We were underground, but the ground moved as if it was water instead of the steadiness of bedrock.
    The President’s bunker in the capital was our headquarters for now. Meant to be used for days, not weeks, and certainly not permanently, as we coordinated the initial push against Opposition forces. The President had been adamant about that. If his people were out on the streets fighting, then he wouldn’t be hidden underground.
    This station would serve to coordinate troops, but the President wouldn’t be staying here and neither would his second-in-command General Neveed Niaz. The Coach. My Coach and handler up until minutes ago when I’d finally completed the mission I’d been training for most of my life—to kill the Premiere of Singapore. I’d assassinated him with the first bullet to be shot in public in over two hundred years. That bullet was the first to find its mark in this war, but it would be far from the last.
    Up until the moment my shot split his head open, the Premiere had been the leader of the Opposition, a faction set on maintaining power with the most elite of society. Before the Borders War had even started three hundred years ago the citizenry had been decimated, the population of the world skyrocketing to unsustainable numbers in the billions. Rampant disease propelled by food shortages had started the purge, but the war had been the final fatal action.
    While the war had brought the world population down to the hundreds of millions, strife had dropped that number even further. Widening the gap between those who had everything and those who had nothing.
    The Revolution hoped to turn that tide.
    That I had managed to remain hidden as a double operative—supposedly on the payroll of the Opposition, yet loyal to the Revolution—for more than a decade was a miracle unto itself.
    And that Armise Darcan—my enemy of seventeen years, and lover of fourteen years—had turned traitor to Singapore so he could make sure I made it out of that stadium alive after my shot was something I hadn’t had time to fully consider yet.
    Armise was at my side as we exited the transport room, his demeanour steely calm once again after the brutal transport from the stadium. He wore his silver and cobalt blue People’s Republic of Singapore uniform and his silver-streaked hair was mussed. He slicked the errant strands back. He didn’t make eye contact with me as we walked down the hallway, choosing instead to meet each wondering stare that passed over us. His uniform proclaimed his status as a Singaporean, but that he wasn’t under guard or bound like a prisoner raised more than a few curious glances. His unchallenged presence in what was likely the safest place anywhere in the States brought more attention to us than I was used to.
    It didn’t help that his face had been broadcast across the globe next to mine as the world prepared for the Olympics. The people here recognised him—but only as an enemy to the States and possibly to the Revolution. We were a paranoid group at best. Careful was a more diplomatic word, but still hyped up from the shot and uneasy from the continuous roll of the floor underneath me, I wasn’t feeling very diplomatic at the moment.
    We approached the President’s transport room—Armise at my right shoulder and Jegs trailing him.
    The doors to the room swished open as we approached and the President emerged first.
    He turned in my direction, a triumphant smile on his face. “Good shot.”
    “So I’ve