Oculus (Oculus #1) (34 page)

“Is Lenny Moore even your real name?”

“It is to you.”

“I know who you’re with and you’re going to help me.”

“How about I just kill you instead?”

“You’d be putting a bullet in your own head, killing the new PR poster girl and you know it.”

Agent Moore fastens his fingers around my arm and growls obscenities as he drags me from the Chief’s office. He pulls me along down the hall, checks our surroundings then tugs me into a supply room.

“Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. If someone walks in tell them you’re lost.”

“Fine.” I listen as Agent Moore checks the room for anyone else then returns to where he deposited me by the door.

“Now, tell me exactly why I shouldn’t kill you the first chance I get.”

“Because you aren’t going to,” I growl, ripping my glasses off my face. “In fact, you’re going to do everything you can to help me or you’re as good as dead.”

“You’re blind.”

“Am I now?”

“How?”

“A fancy little device my dad left behind for me. Now, I need you to get me to Sicarius.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Yes.”

“There’s no way. I’d likely get both of us shot. Even if I felt inclined to help you, I can’t. The Chief has him transferred to a high security cell any time she’s not in the building. Just forget it.”

“No. You’re doing it!”

“Haven’t you learned your lesson? Screwing with shit well beyond what you are prepared to deal with is what has your father drooling on himself in the hospital!” he snaps back at me causing me to tremble with fury because I know he’s right.

“You’re going to take me to Sicarius and you’re going to make certain that we won’t be caught. Now. While the Chief and a boat load of Agents are responding to a contraband search. Take me to him.” I grate out, barely containing my Fury and nerves.

The anger in his eyes subsides, the crease between his brows relaxes, his lips part and he nods… compliantly.

What the hell just happened?

I have to hand it to Agent Moore. He maneuvers us with great stealth down hallway after hallway, around corners and through doors like a ghost. He isn’t as good as Sic but he’s good. Good enough to get us to the section Sic is being held in. The electric feeling coursing through my veins intensifies with each step closer to Sic we take.

As always, I feel him, I smell him…

“You have only minutes. Someone will be in soon. He is assisted with relieving himself a few times a day per the Chief’s orders. We have to make this quick.”

“Okay,” I nod and my voice quivers. I ready myself, adjust my shirt, my sleeves, and steady my breathing. If I’m not careful, Sic will sense that I’m doing something desperate, though I’m hoping that adrenaline will keep him distracted long enough for me to get the job done.

I watch as Agent Moore pulls a small plastic case from his pocket and fishes out two small flexible disks from the liquid inside. He tugs his bottom eyelid down and slides the disks onto his own eyeball, turning his eyes from hazel to bright blue.

“False eyes?”

“Yes.”

“But that won’t work,” I whisper urgently. “They would have to be in the system.”

“They are,” he huffs, irritated with my presence.

“You added a false ID to The Corp database?”

“Not me personally, no.”

“Someone else?”

“The Resistance is everywhere. Now we hurry,” he says, leaning forward to be scanned. The door unlocks like magic, sending a trill of excitement through my body. The next door we stop in front of seems to pulse. That’s just how intense it is. That’s how much I sense Sic here.

Agent Moore pulls small metal tools from his chest pocket and makes picking the outside lock on Sic’s cell look like no trouble at all. It takes him only seconds and then the heavy door swings open, revealing my phantom strung to a table like some sort of trapped animal. Leather straps hold his extremities in place while a heavy metal band covers his midsection.

“Sic! Oh, Sic!” I whimper as I hurry across his cell to the table.

“Iris! What the hell are you doing? Get out of here!” His nostrils flare and his eyes burn with anger as he looks beyond me to where Agent Moore is standing.

“I’ll rip you limb from limb for bringing her in here. Iris you have to leave.” Sic’s eyes never leave Moore standing behind me. I quickly look over the full length of him and my gut twists painfully. He’s thinner. Much thinner. His body is riddled with bruises, some darker than others. There are rings beneath his tired, bloodshot eyes. Cuts, scrapes, and burns mar his body except on his face and his waist…

Oh, Sic
.

“Please don’t waste time arguing with me. I had to see you. I made him bring me here.” I croak, taking his face in my hands. “Please.”

“Iris untie my right hand and leave. Now.”

My ability to see is still new and I’m learning what certain body language and expressions mean, so I could be wrong, but the intent look in Sic’s blue gaze makes my heart squeeze painfully in my chest.

“Why do you want a hand free?”

“The mechanism holding me in place on this table has a bio lock on it, only Chief Williams can open it. But the table started as a medical device. The straps on my arms can be removed. One hand is all I need to finish myself off. If they get someone in here to extract the right information, I will be putting you in more danger than I can protect you from. Now untie me.”

“No! I won’t let you kill yourself.”

“Fine. I’ll do it,” Agent Moore proposes, stepping closer to Sic on the table. The men exchange an intense glare, seemingly evaluating each other and our current circumstances as my heart hammers away. “As valuable as you are to The Resistance, they’ve made it clear to me that you are a serious liability to us and our cause.”

“Get away from him!” I growl, lunging at Agent Moore with all my strength, but he catches me by the arm and uses his strength and my forward momentum to send me stumbling headlong into the wall opposite me.

With a thud, every bit of air is knocked from me and I struggle to regain my breath.

The only thing I hear from Sic is a low growl reverberating through his chest as his nostrils flare. Sweat has beaded across his brow and he looks feral. I look from him to Agent Moore and back to Sic, scrambling to think of a way to diffuse the situation or pause time altogether. I need to think. I need to figure this out. If I let Sic free from his restraints he’s only going to hurt himself and as sickening as it is, I’m confident that he could and would end his own life. I have no doubts about that.

If Agent Moore carries out the order that The Resistance has given him, Sic is still going to die. Whether by Moore’s hand, Williams’ ministrations, or his own handy work, the man I belong with is going to die.

“You can look or you can cover your eyes. You’re choice,” Moore offers as the gleam of a blade appears from a sheath strapped to his boot.

“Fine. Just let me say goodbye.” Sic finally relaxes and looks at me with the same admiration and tenderness that I’ve come to know and love.

“One minute,” Moore warns as he takes the opportunity to check his watch. I clamber to my feet and rush to Sic’s side.

“I’m sorry. I had to see you one more time. I had to say goodbye. I had to try—”

“Hush now. It’s okay. You are going to go to The Resistance and make a life on the outside, away from The Corp. You are going to keep a low profile and never speak a word of me or us to anyone. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’ll leave the compound. I promise.

“I failed you and for that I am sorry, but I can’t be sorry that you were mine for a while. You have no idea how much you mean to me. I thought I was doomed to be a lonely monster. For a time, you made me feel human. Never underestimate how remarkable that has been. I don’t want you to see this. If you love me, I need you to do something for me. Right now, I need you to leave.”

“I will in a moment,” I promise, ignoring the lump in my throat. His ice blue eyes burn through me and I soak it up. I take in everything that he is, everything that we are together, all that we’ve shared…

I open myself and draw in every bit of the electricity between us hoping that somehow, I’ll be able to keep it encapsulated deep inside forever so that maybe once it’s gone, once he’s gone, I’ll still have it, I’ll still have him.

“Sic, forgive me,” I whisper, using every bit of the strength I have left to hold myself together. Sic brushes his fingers against the back of my hand in the way that would normally bring me more comfort than I’ve ever known, but this time around it only makes what I’m doing that much more difficult. If I could sell my soul in exchange for time, I would. Right now in this moment, I’d give anything if it would buy me time. A minute, an hour.

The pendant holding my father’s serum slips from the cuff of my shirt into my palm. “Please forgive me,” I croak, leaning forward to bury my sodden face in his neck.

“Forgive you for what?” he whispers against my ear.

“For stealing from you.”

“Stealing what?” Sic asks as he pulls away from me enough to look me in the eyes.

“Everything.” I whimper as I press the blunt tip of my father’s pendant to the side of his neck. The spring mechanism makes only a subtle click, but it resonates like thunder through my brain. A sob rips from my chest as I shudder against the strong man whose muscles flinch then slowly relax against me.

I pull away from him to watch the effects of the serum steal everything from the crystal blue eyes that I love looking into. And just like that, my father has robbed me of something else precious and vital to my existence except, he isn’t the criminal here.

I am.

My father merely supplied the weapon. Sic’s eyes are wide. His lips parted. His thumb brushes across the top of my hand once more in what I imagine to be a reluctant farewell and it’s my undoing. I force myself to watch closely as he is wiped clean just as the message from the bookmark had promised. This is my punishment. This is my reality. Every trace of familiarity vanishes like vapor right before me. His intense eyes and confused expression fades, revealing a blank slate. Not a trace of recognition lingers and if I didn’t know better, I’d say that I can feel my own heart tremble and break into bits and pieces.

It takes all the strength I have in my shaky limbs to support my own body weight. He isn’t resisting anything. He isn’t fighting or tugging at his restraints. He doesn’t do anything. He looks…
blank
and it’s all my fault. I watch his expressionless face closely.

Isn’t this what I wanted? Isn’t this a good thing? This means the serum worked. This means plausible deniability. This means Agent Moore doesn’t have to kill him and Sic won’t even remember that he wanted to kill himself. He won’t have information for Williams’ interrogators to extract because there is nothing to extract at all. Williams won’t have access to information about me or him or our origins or key information that The Resistance can’t afford to have compromised.

My brain says this is a good thing. My heart in all its selfishness is disappointed that I succeeded.

“Sleep,” I whisper through the tears streaming down my cheeks. Sic closes his eyes and lies motionless, wordless and if Agent Moore felt compelled to slit my throat right here and now, I can’t say I’d fight him. I already feel dead.

I slowly turn to face a very shocked looking Agent Moore. “What did you do?”

“I fixed the problem. No need to kill him. He has nothing to remember now.”

“He won’t remember anything?”

“Nothing.”

“… because if he remembers a single thing…” Agent Moore warns with one slightly raised brow.

“Nothing. He will remember absolutely nothing.”

Nothing.

That single word, that single declaration is the death of me. Something inside me feels as though it has withered and died. Sic is a stranger to me and I to him. He’s now an abandoned shell where the man I belong to once dwelled. The man who loved books and rattled on about his favorite characters. I’ve stolen each of those characters from him. He was the man who was fiercely devoted to Anna, the woman who raised him. I’ve erased her as though she never existed. He was the man who has been my twilight companion for several years. Now, not a single one of those dreams ever even happened for him. They have all vanished and with them so too has my heart.

“What now?” I ask, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Now we leave and do our best not to get caught in the process.”

“Fine. Let’s go,” I mutter as I slide my glasses up the bridge of my nose and look back at Sic once more before taking my leave from his life—our life, as we knew it.

The End

We would like to thank Robin Harper at Wicked By Design for creating such a stunning cover for Oculus. Her vision and ability to produce such a remarkable cover never ceases to amaze.

We would also like to give a special thanks to our editor(s) at Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae. We can’t say how much we appreciate how easy you made the editing process for us. Thank you.

Our acknowledgments would not be complete without thanking our amazing beta team. You know who you are and Oculus would not be what it is without your help. We sincerely hope that you all know exactly how invaluable you are to the publishing process.