Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (13 page)

“Hey.” Ko sprawled out next to me, lying on his stomach. I glanced at him, setting down my binoculars.

Ko had a little, lupine smirk, one that would make a wolf proud. He leaned toward me and pressed his light pink lips tight against mine. After a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed his arm, rolling him over and onto his back in the same motion. When I climbed on top of him, his arms went around my neck and his long legs wrapped around my hips. I groaned when he ground his crotch against mine. I could feel how hard he was through the thin layer of protective gear. The feeling of his dick pressed against mine made all the blood in my body leave my head.

He kissed me like he was a professional, like he’d had enough practice to warrant kissing that well. His lips were soft and sure; his tongue knew just the right ways to rub against mine and lick at my lips.

I had assumed Ko would be good at kissing, and I bet he would be fantastic in bed. He’d probably lie there and moan like a slut when I pressed the swollen head of my cock against his little hole, begging me for it just the way men like him always did. He’d probably bite his lip and pretend to struggle while I held him down and barely let him move a fraction from beneath me.

I stopped and pulled back to run my gaze down his body. He was gorgeous, and I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t really noticed before. His yellow hair glowed the same pastel colors of the billboards, and their bright lights hit his hair in a spectrum of blues, greens, and pinks. The tattoo on his neck wrapped around his left ear and gently touched his chin. It was moving, dancing as he watched me. His eyes were so dark they were almost black, and I couldn’t recall if they’d been that dark before. I’d written Ko off as being shy, but he’d definitely shown me otherwise. He looked up at me with a knowing little smirk on his swollen lips, and it was then I knew how Ko and Vcue had been able to get into T8’s inner circle so quickly; I’d be hard-pressed to think of anyone denying him anything he wanted. He was beautiful in the ways that Carver was not. He was soft where Carver was hard, smooth where Carver was scarred, and he had a light in his eyes that I knew Carver had never possessed. He melted into my arms the way I’d always thought I wanted a man to melt, but the complete lack of restraint in him made me pause. A beautiful, lively man like Ko deserved better than to be a dull replacement for Carver.

An almost inaudible noise came from our side, causing both our heads to whip toward my discarded helmet. I reached over and grabbed it, putting it on as I sat up on top of Ko.

“I noticed a spike in both of your heart rates, but the cameras on your masks are black,” Carver said through my speaker, and I felt my gut clench. “Confirm that the situation is still controlled.”

“Uh,” I stammered. “That’s affirmative.”

Ko was trying not to laugh.

Carver was quiet on the other side of the speaker. I heard beeping sounds, likely from Carver looking up our coordinates on the mainframe tablet.

“We—”

“Tell Ko to get back into his
assigned
position on the ground,” Carver said, sounding hollow. I couldn’t miss the harsh inflection in his voice. Carver knew exactly where we were and what we’d been doing. Fuck.

I took the mask off and rolled away from Ko.

“Sorry, kid. Boss man says you have to get back on the ground.” I tried to play it off as a joke, even though I was internally chastising myself. He stood up gracefully, twisting and cracking his back. With a sly wink, he turned and walked off toward the ladder on the opposite side of the building.

I sighed deep and glanced back at the window into Kevin Dry’s apartment. He was still laughing away at his television show, completely oblivious to us monitoring him. I leaned against the wall and tried to think about Ko and his unnaturally yellow hair and cute little smile, but in my mind his yellow hair morphed into blue hair and his smile melted into a frown.

My loneliness kept attaching itself to Carver, telling me that he was something that he wasn’t. He was beautiful and perfect and he would never be mine. I wished, for my own sake, that I could’ve implanted my misplaced affections in someone different, someone like Ko, who I might’ve stood a chance with. Maybe I’d latched on to Carver because he was so unattainable. But the more I thought of it, the more I realized how untrue that was. When Carver had been mine, for those dark hours some nights, I hadn’t grown tired of him. If anything, it was just the opposite. Carver was a drug to me, my own personal addiction that I couldn’t seem to let go. I knew how dangerous he was; I knew that any relationship we’d ever have would be one-sided, but I couldn’t make myself let go. Not yet.

* * * *

Six days after the start of our operation, Corp determined it was a bust. Ko and I hadn’t found a single thing that linked Kevin Dry to Deleviv, so he pulled us from the mission. The days had been long, boring stakeout missions that revolved around watching the sweat dripping out of Kevin’s pores and waiting for him put his shoes on in the morning and leave the building. Ko had briefly mentioned once that our talents were being wasted, and I was in silent agreement. I wasn’t sure why they were using soldiers in ENAD for these types of operations, but it wasn’t my place to ask.

Ko and I had spent our time sleeping in our respective safe houses with our confidantes: mine with Amdia and Ko with whoever his confidante was. We hadn’t had a repeat of our instance on the roof, and I wrote it off to hormones and boredom mixed in with a bit of sexual frustration, even though I knew the type of soldier Ko was and assumed he wasn’t as sexually deprived as me.

“Jones, my dear,” Amdia said to me, holding my open palm in her hand. We were sitting in her room at the small table in the corner. The screens on her walls were playing vivid clips of every type of porn known to mankind, on silent. She sat across from me, dressed in a long, dark-blue gown, with a worried expression on her face.

Amdia believed in palm reading and tarot cards and even crystal balls, although the crystal balls were always digital and had a tendency to short-circuit. Whenever I came to Amdia, I’d allow her the pleasure of reading my palm so she could tell me about all the things to watch out for in my life, or what opportunities I couldn’t afford to miss. I never had the heart to tell her I thought it was all bullshit.

This particular time, I didn’t mind her fussing over me quite so much. I’d popped two tabs of Corx upon my arrival, and the way her wig seemed to dance like a curtain in the wind kept me transfixed.

There hadn’t been many days since meeting Song that I’d been sober. Kavric turned out to be a reliable source of drugs, all while keeping his mouth shut and altering my blood tests to come up negative for substances. I wasn’t sure if Bruno was paying him or he was doing it to save his own ass because he thought I would blackmail him, but I didn’t care. All that mattered most days were those little neon-pink pills.

“Your drug problem is getting serious,” Amdia told me while the long, synthetic hair of her wig swayed for me. “You can’t keep this up. You’re hurting yourself and you’re gonna get yourself caught one day, and Corp is gonna tear a strip out of you.”

I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Corp was bullshit, ENAD was bullshit, the whole fucking state was bullshit, and I couldn’t make myself care. Emotions that I knew should be there weren’t, and with each passing day, I cursed Song for inflicting his bullshit paranoia about ENAD drugging soldiers on me.

Amdia ran one of her pointed metal fingers along the rough palm of my hand, tracking a line I couldn’t even see.

“Jones,” she said to me, still looking at my hand. “Have you thought about leaving it all behind?”

I laughed. “What, Amdia, ENAD? The city? That’s impossible for people like me, and we both know it. I’m in this shit for life.”

“Oh, honey, it’s killing you.” She wore a very strange expression that I couldn’t place. She was almost concerned, afraid, and hopeless. “Jones, you know I love you like a son of my own. I might know someone who can help—some kid named Raeq. He gets people outta here, somewhere far away. I think you’ve got to leave this all behind you. Leave this whole damn city behind. There isn’t anything good for you here.”

I smiled at her. “Oh, but Amdia, I could never leave you. And the drugs, Lord, what would I do without the drugs?”

“Jones, listen to me,” she said. She squeezed my hand tight with her cybernetic arm, harder than any human grip could, all to get my attention. It hurt, and I was forced to pay attention to her. “You leave this city, okay? You run fast and you run hard. There is nothing here for you.”

Her grip loosened and she sat back in her chair, seeming shocked with herself. Without another word, she stood up to usher me out of her room. At the door, she gently patted my shoulder.

“You know what I’m saying to you, right, Jones?” she asked.

I nodded. I had no idea what she was talking about or why she kept telling me to leave the city, telling me that there was nothing in the city for me. I was too high to function properly, but the sad look made me nod, because I never wanted to do anything to upset her.

Later that night, as I readied myself for bed and the drugs began to wear off, I couldn’t get the image of Amdia’s forlorn face out of my head.

* * * *

The next day I walked back into the ENAD headquarters, feeling relieved at having been pulled from a seemingly pointless mission. It was late into the night, but that didn’t mean the place wasn’t bustling with people. The lights were all on in the hallway to my room, and I never thought I’d be so happy to be approaching my small piece of solitude.

What I wasn’t expecting was Tanis leaning against my bedroom door. I smiled at her as I approached, but her stern expression made me suddenly nervous.

“I thought it would be best if you heard this from me,” she said, pushing off the door. She was so much smaller than me and so sweet, but there was a fire burning in her eyes.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling the sweat drip down the back of my neck. I was worried that they’d changed their minds and decided that I wasn’t fit to be a soldier. I was worried that they’d found out that I admitted I still wouldn’t take the shot on Carver, given the same opportunity.

“Bruno was taken into custody a few days ago. He’s in the Bazaar,” she said, maintaining perfect eye contact the entire time.

I froze.

I must have misheard her, or she must’ve been wrong. Bruno wouldn’t be put in the Bazaar, not for anything; men like him didn’t belong there. The Bazaar was the state’s answer to prison. A giant pit outside the city, so ridden with criminals, drug lords, rapists; it was called the Bazaar because it was a marketplace for the filth and scum of the city. It basically had its own currency: your life in exchange for money, drugs, or sex. It ran like a large business or a small town, trading used needles or tricks for food or drinkable water. People said the rumors about it didn’t do it any justice at all and that you had to sell your left arm just to survive there.

“What? No.” I tried to force a laugh. “You must have misunderstood something, Tanis. Bruno is a good man. He’d never be sent to the Bazaar.”

She looked uncomfortable. “I know he’s a good man, but he’s been accused of some pretty bad shit, like hacking into ENAD’s computer system and accessing files that were private and locked. He was labeled a terrorist, Jones.”

My throat went completely dry, and my eyes wouldn’t stop blinking. I couldn’t believe what Tanis was telling me. Bruno was smart, too smart to get caught breaking into ENAD’s computer systems.

“Who?” I asked quietly.

Tanis knew exactly what I meant. She was hesitant, avoiding eye contact with me like she could barely strangle the word from her own mouth. “Carver.”

I turned on my heel and swiftly walked down the hallway. I felt like a wrecking ball, like a bulldozer, unstoppable and set on a mission with no driver. I wasn’t thinking or functioning properly.

Bruno’s room number was 32. It was late; he’d be in bed. I pounded on the door. I waited a few seconds and then pounded on the door again, harder this time.

“Bruno,” I yelled, but no one on the other side of the door answered.

One of the guards heard me and came down the hallway. He took a look at me and shook his head. “This room is vacant now, soldier. The occupant is no longer with ENAD.”

I turned toward him. I was bigger than him by at least thirty pounds. I wanted to snap his neck. I envisioned it, heard the crackling noise in my mind, lusted after the feeling of his spine snapping in my hands. All I could see was red.

Bruno wasn’t a terrorist; he was practically a Boy Scout. He’d broken the rules and hacked into ENAD’s computer system, but he did it out of curiosity, not because he was going to take the information and sell it or use it against the state. Bruno was one of the most loyal people I knew, and probably one of the best soldiers ENAD had. Anyone who knew Bruno or had even met him once knew that his heart was the biggest organ in his body, and to cry wolf on him being a terrorist was beyond the point of cruelty.

I shoved the guard against the wall and stalked past him, stomping down the hallway. Somewhere behind me I heard Tanis tell the guard to let me go. Smart girl.

I kept walking wherever my legs wanted to take me. I didn’t think about it, barely noticed where I was going or if I had passed anyone along the way. Somehow, unsurprisingly, I wound up standing in front of Carver’s door.

I hit the door so hard, I thought my fist might go through. After a few moments, it slid open. I knew I must’ve looked half-deranged, still completely decked out in my recon gear of sleek, tight, black clothing with matching gun holsters, and likely looking like a wild man. I could feel my skin burning beneath my gear, my heart beating so fast I thought it was going to explode. Even Carver must’ve noticed, because he stepped aside, allowing me in past him.

The door shut behind me, and I barely registered the room around us. My universe consisted of Carver and me. He was barefoot, wearing blue sweatpants that he must’ve thrown on at the sound of hammering on the door, and was topless. His body was lean and sculpted perfectly, sporting the numerous scars across his chest and abs like they were medals of honor. His hair was mussed more than I ever recalled seeing it, some sweeping over his forehead while his clear eyes stared at me.