Wiped Read Free Page A

fists. Desire had me taking a step towards them.
    I turned away… and walked towards a body that lay half in and half out of a window, little droplets of its blood dripping into a puddle beneath an outstretched hand. I stared at the growing pool. Could have sworn the plunk of blood overrode everything else I could hear right then.
    And noticed something. Something that didn’t make any sense.
    Something that had my heart racing, my hands fisted, and sweat to bead on skin.
    I reached out and rolled the body over. Definitely not ours.
    But also not theirs.
    “Fuck,” I whispered as Alan came alongside. He stared down at the corpse too.
    “Are you gonna tell her or should we wait for Beck to do the honours?” he asked.
    My head came up and my eyes searched out Beck. He stood over another body, his frame immobile, his lips in a thin line.
    “Fuck,” I swore softly, but vehemently.
    And then I went to my woman. Because pissed off or not. Hurt or fucking not. I would not let her hear this from Cardinal Fucking Beck.
    Fuck. They weren’t u-Pol. They didn’t look like they’d come from Urip either. Not from Hammurg City where our surveillance had shown us they all wore clothes like Mikhail the hal-gen torturer had.
    Fuck. If they weren’t Uripean, and they weren’t from Merrika or Wánměi, then they were something else.
    And I had a sinking feeling that all they’d been doing was defending themselves.
    Lena. Fuck. She was not going to take this well.

Three

We Had A Plan
Trent
    A s far as cock-ups went, this was a big one. Huge. Enormous. Too big to comprehend.
    My heart was aching for Lena.
    Hers was completely shattered.
    “But Calvin had said…” she whispered, her body curling in on itself.
    “There’s your problem, Lena,” I murmured softly, but the words might as well have been sharp knives. She flinched. I closed my eyes. But it needed to be said. “Calvin.”
    I waited for the tears. But Lena doesn’t cry. I waited for the self-recrimination. But Lena’s a warrior princess, not a fanciful one.
    “No,” she said, whisper quiet, but I heard. “No.”
    And just like that, I’d lost her. Just like that, she’d wrapped that Elite armour around herself and shut me out. Again.
    But this hurt more than the “trap” had. This hurt more, because she was doing it while she was Elite. Lena hadn’t been Elite for months. Not really. But right now, right in front of me, she was an Elite.
    And I was nothing but a Citizen who knew no better.
    “This doesn’t make any sense,” I heard her father say across the ramshackle room we had all taken shelter in. As far as a base of operations went, it was severely lacking. Beck and his Cardinals were out scouting, along with Alan and Irdina. The fact that Cal hadn’t sent his Merrikan soldiers with them made me think he was reeling for his daughter.
    He might have been an absent father, but that did not mean the man wasn’t a real one.
    His heart was shattered too.
    I just thanked our stars that Lena’s zebra-lookalikes weren’t here. We all felt shocked. Disbelief for more than one reason. They’d have been gutted.
    Their Zebra had fucked up. Big time.
    “Why would they attack so vehemently?” Cal was asking; I’m not sure, but maybe one of his soldiers replied.
    I didn’t listen any further, Lena was AWOL, and I needed to get her back.
    I let a slow breath of air out, and then ran a hand through my hair.
    “This changes nothing,” I said. Lena didn’t even offer a snort. “We still set up a communications base here, just ensure it’s well fortified before we move on. We need the relay in order to reach the ship.”
    The plan had always been to leave the ship off shore, keeping it mobile to avoid detection. But in order to adequately keep tabs on those in the rescue party entering Hammurg and those on the vessel keeping our escape route free, we needed a base of operations in Lunnon. Lunnon which was supposed to be deserted. Lunnon which had at one