The Torrent (The New Agenda Series Book 4) Read Free Page A

thinking about her family. She wanted to remember what mattered most and stay connected to her life in the real world. Morray was a master manipulator, so the less interaction with him the better. She remained on her side, facing in the opposite direction, and he left her alone.
    Her favorite memories were always of Grace. The most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Smart and gifted, her daughter wouldn’t back down from anything. Not even her own mother. Ava smiled at Grace’s stubbornness. She reminded Ava of her own youth; Grace didn’t break all the rules, just the ones that made little sense. Ava clung to the hope of returning to the real world and telling her daughter how much she loved and respected her.
    Grace represented hope, as well as freedom. The first child naturally conceived by a city center resident proved that things could change. Finally, people were free to leave the city, they could choose their professions, or fall in love, instead of being assigned a partner match. It was the dawn of a new era. For the last seventeen years, society wasn’t held captive by Morray’s strict and oppressive system. Ava promised she’d never let him go back to reclaim what didn’t belong to him.
    Being locked inside the desolate prison seemed utterly hopeless at moments, but in a strange way, she was keeping her promise. With Morray in close proximity, he couldn’t cause harm to the outside world. She trusted something would change, and she’d find a way out, leaving him behind in this eternal prison. Ava had learned to depend on faith over the years.
    Morray’s laughter poked into her thoughts.
    “What now?” she asked.
    “I just recalled a most pleasant memory.” Light flickered in his dim gray eyes.
    “Oh, you actually have pleasant memories?” she mocked.
    “Quite a few.”
    “Interesting that you can just block out the horrible, ungodly crimes you committed.”
    Morray lowered his head. Was he actually ashamed and remorseful for his actions? This was a side of Morray she had never seen. He wiped a tear from his cheek. A tear? No way. This was just another attempt at manipulating Ava; he had perfected the art.
    “Oh, come on. I’m not buying this act. Don’t you have something better to do? Like, I don’t know, plot how you’re going to find a way out of here and reclaim victory over the masses?”
    “I can see why you’d think that. I haven’t exactly shown remorse for my crimes. But sitting in this purgatory is forcing me to look at my past sins. I’m not proud of what I did. I tried to go back and make at least one thing right, but that didn’t work.”
    Ava remembered why they were stuck inside the mainframe in the first place. He forced her to go into his archive files and retrieve Phoenix, so Dickson could upload his identity matrix into a new biometric body. Morray wanted to start fresh with a fake version of his son, who had been dead for over three hundred years.
    “It didn’t work because you can’t go back in time and fix what’s already been done. It happened. All of it. And now you have to sit with yourself and relive every awful moment.” She smiled, tilting her head to the side.
    He straightened his suit. “You seem quite content about that.”
    “You’re damn right. Let’s not forget, you had every intention to hand me over to one of your elites when I turned eighteen. And you had no problem with Dickson uploading that person’s consciousness into my body,” Ava growled. “If I hadn’t escaped with Joseph, my consciousness would be nothing. I would’ve been vaporized.”
    “But I changed my mind, remember? I wanted you to live on as my eternal queen. To help me run the Los Angeles City Center. We could’ve ruled together, and not just in Los Angeles, but over the other city centers in my kingdom.” He lifted his strong chin and grinned slightly; too handsome for his own good.
    “Honestly, that sounds worse than being vaporized.”
    “If you would have just