Read Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices Online

Authors: Nash Summers

Tags: #LGBT; Cyberpunk; Futuristic

Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (9 page)

BOOK: Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices
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I sat there thinking about the choices I’d made and if I’d made them for the wrong reasons. I knew how everything was going to play out for me, and it was definitely not in my favor. I didn’t regret taking the shot on T8, but for all the wrong reasons. Not only had I been afraid that T8 was going to run Carver through with that blade, I’d been afraid for myself, afraid of the pain I’d go through knowing I was the one responsible for not stopping T8. I’d never let myself live it down.

Those were selfish reasons, not reasons based on love or affection. I’d made the decision based on my own fear, my own premonition of self-loathing if I’d ever allowed Carver to get hurt while I did nothing. I was selfish, so selfish.

Night was falling and everything felt colder than it usually did, even with the humidity. I took off my tank top and slipped under the smooth covers, facing the wall. I fell asleep dreaming about something good, because I slipped into slumber easily.

It felt as though only seconds had passed when my eyes blinked open. I’d heard the swishing noise of the plastic hanging jewels over the doorway. For a moment I thought Amdia had really sent one of the boys up to me, and in the next moment, I didn’t think it would be such a bad idea. I’d let him touch me and try to forget that it might be my last time. So I rolled over slowly and glanced into the darkness.

It was pitch-black, and I could barely see a thing besides the glowing from the tablet buttons in the corner and the dull throb of the lights on my gun. My gun was being held up in the air—not pointed at me, just lingering there, stationary.

I knew it was Carver. I’d know him anywhere. I knew his body, his presence, his being.

I sat up a little, letting the smooth sheet slide down my bare chest. I propped myself up on my elbows, my eyes locked on the black space I knew he inhabited.

“You just leave this lying around in places like this?” he asked, waving my gun.

“No one but me can use it.”

“It could be stolen.”

“Who would be stupid enough to steal from me?” I smiled at him and wondered if he could see it. He set the gun down on the dresser but didn’t come any closer to me.

“You know what’s going to happen, Jones,” Carver said to me.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“You deserve it. You let that woman escape, directly disobeying my order. Corp would have you in a containment pod just for that alone. But the real icing on the cake, the last nail in the board, was T8. You jeopardized this entire mission and killed the one man we had an in with. You could’ve at least shot him in the leg. But making that call wasn’t your decision,” he said with disturbing calm.

I remained silent. I felt like a child being reprimanded. In the grand scheme of things, I supposed I was.

He sighed heavily. “I’m going to lose one of my best soldiers because of this.”

“You’re concerned over losing one of your soldiers?” I asked, trying not to sound hurt. I shifted out of the covers and came to sit on the edge of the bed, resting my elbows on my knees.

“What do you think this is, Jones?” he asked me. “This isn’t some fucking romance novel. When it comes down to the bones, you’re a good shot and a decent soldier.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Why are you here, Carver?”

He walked over to me and positioned himself between my legs, standing close. Tilting my head up to him, I could see tiny slivers of his hair around the gentle color of his skin. His bright eyes were easy to see, so clear and empty, staring right down at me. The rest of him was invisible, still covered in black clothing that blended with the shadows and the darkness.

He was a terror, like someone who could bleed men dry before they even knew he was there. I wanted him to smile at me. I wanted to see him smile just once. He was so fucking beautiful.

Carver reached out and grabbed me by the hair, wrenching my head back and forcing me to maintain eye contact. He leaned so close to me, I could smell him. Like sweat and oil and the fog from outside. My dick was getting hard thinking about all the times Carver had ever been cruel to me, shamelessly taunting me for my own sexual inhibitions.

And then he kissed me.

It wasn’t like in movies or love songs where birds sang and sweet sighs were had. It was hard and cruel and sexual, because Carver was all those things. When he kissed me, I thought maybe he wasn’t empty inside after all. When Carver kissed me, I knew that the only thing I had inside me was a hunger for him.

His lips were smooth but hard as they pressed against mine, sucking all the air out of my lungs. Our teeth clanked together, and the grip on my hair never waned. His mouth was warm and sweet and tasted like Carver, a fluttering hint of nothingness. He slipped his warm tongue inside my mouth, and I moaned loud enough that my eyes rolled back in my head. I knew he heard it, felt it. His tongue ran against the inside of my teeth, then again against my tongue, coaxing whatever it was that he wanted from me, because we both knew that whatever it was he wanted, it was his for the taking.

He moved away from my lips and began kissing his way across my jaw, down to my neck. We were both breathing heavily, especially when he pulled my head back farther and bit at my Adam’s apple. I groaned, digging my fingers into the sheets, wishing he’d press me down and use me.

His body naturally squeezed itself closer to mine, bringing him to almost sit in my lap. Carver’s tongue left a path from my collarbone to the spot right behind my ear. I moaned low, deep in a way that I’m sure would have made even Amdia blush.

Carver’s left thigh pressed against me, and he had to know how turned on I was. I was hard in my underwear, desperately trying not to rock and rub against him, hungering for release. I wanted to reach out and touch him, feel him, see if the dick between his legs was as hard as mine.

Suddenly Carver pulled away. For a few moments, our gazes locked as we panted, unable to move.

“This can’t happen,” he said. And with that he turned and started to leave the room. I sat there for a moment, dazed. When my brain finally caught up to the fact that he was leaving, I shot straight out of the bed and followed him. He stopped and glanced back at me over his shoulder with his usual blank expression.

His eyes never lingered on me, not that way other people’s did. Most people, seeing me almost naked, at least looked at the deep scars across my wide chest, at the huge muscles of my arms, or at the sculpted line of my jaw.

I was at least a head taller than Carver, and so much bigger, but when he looked at me that way, I felt small, insignificant, at least compared to him.

“Is it because I’m a man?” I asked, low and quiet.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “No. It’s because you’re you.”

With that, he faced forward and walked through the curtain of plastic, dangling jewels in the doorway.

I knew he wasn’t lying; Carver never lied. Asking him if it was because I was a man had been pointless, because I knew that wasn’t why. The men and women within ENAD weren’t allowed any sexual relationships with people outside of ENAD, and especially not other soldiers. And in this city, in this day and age, no one gave a shit if you slept with men or women. With such a diverse range of sexuality and sexual preferences so prevalent, you could have whatever tickled your fancy, be that men, women, cyborgs, even bots. No one cared who the neighbors were sleeping with because everyone had bigger problems on their hands.

Carver didn’t want me because I was
me
. Maybe it was because I was a soldier for ENAD, maybe it was because most of the time he couldn’t stand the sight of my face. It didn’t matter what it was; it was just that he didn’t want me. The only thing I’d ever wanted was for him to want me, and he didn’t. At least not that way I wanted him to.

I crawled back into bed feeling empty inside. If I had anything close to a heart in my chest, it felt like it was breaking. But men like me didn’t have the luxury of bleeding hearts, and men like Carver couldn’t be trusted with a heart, anyway. So I let myself feel broken, just for one night. I let myself feel angry at my life, angry that there weren’t many things I wanted, and the one thing I did, I couldn’t have. I let myself fall asleep mad, wondering if this was all my life was meant to be.

* * * *

Two days passed. Two days of waiting it out, sitting in the lonely room, preparing for my time to come to report back. Over those two days, I’d thought about the whole situation over and over again, wondering if there had been another option for me other than shooting T8, but each time I entertained the thought that there might’ve been another way, I saw Carver’s face flash before my eyes and T8 with that machete raised high, preparing to use it on Carver.

Amdia had come to me a few times and asked me if I wanted her to send one of the boys up, but I always refused.

Amdia gave me those sad, sympathizing looks every time she saw me, and when I finally packed up my gear and headed out, she wrapped her arms around me and whispered to me about good luck. She probably knew something that I didn’t. She probably knew that I was as good as dead.

When I set foot into the first door of the ENAD headquarters, I went through the regular motions. Vaccinations, washing, scrubbing, poking, examining. At least I wasn’t being stuck in seclusion again. Yet.

Corp met me at the door after I dressed. The expression on his face was exactly how I’d expected him to look—pissed off. I rolled my shoulders and followed him down the familiar hallway to his office. The inside always surprised me. It was less clinical than anywhere else in the facility, with its shiny figurines and plaques on the walls. He even had a small rug under his large, metal desk and swivel chair. There was a plant in the corner that I was positive had a camera in it at least, and at least another two in the picture frames on the shelving unit behind the desk.

He motioned for me to take a seat in the chair adjacent to his, so I did.

“Well, you fucked up, Jones,” he said, exasperated. This was one of Corp’s best qualities, the fact that he didn’t dance around the point before finally coming to it. He was straightforward.

I kept my head down, staring at the back of a picture frame on his desk. I wondered what kind of family he had. He lived here with the rest of us, so I had no idea if he maintained any type of relationship outside this place. I doubted it.

“We really needed T8 alive for questioning. You’ve put up some roadblocks we didn’t have before, and you definitely made things harder. Despite all that, we’ve opted for a second opportunity for you, Jones. You’ve been a reliable soldier up until this point and haven’t done anything to fuck up this royally before. Lucky for you, Ko found another in with some woman politician, so your assassination of T8 wasn’t as detrimental as we once thought.

“It won’t be easy. You’ll be in isolation for two weeks. The higher-ups want you to run the recap simulation at least twice a day until you’re out. That means each time you run through it, you’ll have at least four individual recaps. It’ll be hard, Jones. You can take this or leave it, but you know what will happen if you become an ex-soldier for ENAD.”

I knew. I’d heard too many horror stories to entertain that idea, but the thought of undergoing the recap simulation twice a day for two weeks was almost equally as horrifying. I didn’t know who I was without ENAD, but they’d been all I’d had since I was just a kid. And they weren’t a family by any means, but I didn’t exactly have anything else.

I nodded once without saying anything.

“Good,” Corp said. “Let’s get started.”

* * * *

I woke up in a dark place.

I was breathing heavily, panting like I’d been running, but my body knew I hadn’t. The concrete I was kneeling on was hurting my knees, but I ignored the discomfort and kept assembling my sniper. The barrel, the scope, the bipod, the magazine. I knew the drill by now. My fingers were sliding with ease, moving like they’d done it a million times. Maybe I had by now. It felt so daunting, my gun, but not cold. It felt almost like a comfort to me when my fingers trailed along the magazine. It felt right in my arms, like a part of me that never existed anyplace other than in my arms.

My eyes hurt. It was too bright this time.

I rolled and lay on my stomach, cheek against the rest, waiting, watching. The windows were too big and too clear, but it was close enough to how they should be. The alley between our buildings was a little less wide, but barely noticeable, and the garbage bin near the front door was on the wrong side of the sidewalk. I was outside that same building again, the one that T8 had died inside. But T8 wasn’t dead; he was standing right in front of Carver, swinging that machete around near his face.

This wasn’t how it happened, but it was all I knew right now. I assembled my sniper and instantly there they were, T8 with his laser machete and Carver bleeding and on his knees. There was no in-between time where people died or I watched anyone but Carver. This was all there was.

I started to sweat. My finger against the trigger felt like it was made of lead, trying to sink. I wouldn’t let it though. Not this time. Please, not this time.

Bruno was lying on the ground in the apartment, watching Seno hold that dirty druggie around the neck with his thick forearm. The man Seno held was different this time; he was wearing jeans instead of ripped shorts, and his shirt was red. Everything seemed to be turning red. Things that weren’t red last time were red now.

Everyone was yelling, everyone but Carver. I could see their lips move, their frantic, scared motions. But I wasn’t scared. I knew I should be, but I couldn’t force myself to be scared.

T8 backhanded Carver across the face, whipping his head to the side. That wasn’t right. Not in the way that I knew if I’d been standing there next to him, I would’ve torn T8’s face clean off his body. This was wrong in another way. I didn’t know this happened. How was I seeing this if I didn’t know this happened?

Right. Because someone else knew it happened. Someone other than me. Another soldier.

Carver was bleeding from his bottom lip. That was familiar. He had blood plastered across his face and down his entire body. I felt like I could see him up close, looking through my scope. I felt like I could reach out and touch him. But for some reason, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to touch him all the ways I knew I had always wanted to touch him.

BOOK: Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices
4.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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