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CHAPTER TWO
Haina
I didn’t drop my gun, but my grip on it loosened … slightly. “What do you mean?”
“We were prisoners, too. Super soldiers being doped withyourblood,” the medium-height guy said. “Which explains why I’ve never felt stronger, smarter or moreawarein my life in the last eighteen months.”
The shortest guy nodded. “When the alarms went off and lights went out, then we heard that there had been a security breach, we decided to escape.”
I narrowed my eyes, letting my gaze bounce across all of their faces. “How long have you been here?”
“We were raised here,” he said. “Our lastsourcedied eighteen months ago.”
“Which was why I was brought in.”
They all nodded. It was no surprise that we’d all been living in the same compound and this was the first time I’d ever seen them. The compound was enormous, and those in charge made a point of keeping sources separate from their recipients.
I was their enhancement source. Each of the men in front of me had my blood coursing through their veins, which gave them my extra abilities, although only temporarily.
“Your name is Haina?” the medium-height guy asked cautiously.
My head bobbed.
“I’m Rix,” he said, offering me a friendly smile. Even though it was dark out, when he flashed me those white teeth the entire sky seemed to get a little bit brighter. The man was very nice looking, but when he smiled it took him from nice looking to jaw-droppingly beautiful.
“And I’m Zane,” said the tall one with the white scar in his brow and the unruly dark hair.
The shortest of the three with enormous arms, grizzly bear aura and the deep green eyes smiled tightly. “And I’m Jorik.”
I swallowed, and a deep breath snagged tightly in my chest. “When was your last doping?”
“Half an hour ago,” Jorik said. “We were in the lab hooked up to a transfusion when the alarms started going off. But we got full doses.”
I exhaled, and the tension in my shoulders lessened. They’d be good for a couple of days. Which meant if there was an ambush, they would still have enhanced abilities—myabilities—to help fight off the other soldiers.
Zane—the tallest one—reached into the pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out two black canvas pouches. “I grabbed more vials, too.”
“We don’t want to hurt you, Haina,” Rix said, his brown eyes full of what I hoped was sincerity. I was inexplicably drawn to this guy.
He had an innocence and what felt like a deep-seated optimism about him that made me want to believe everything he said. Made me crave that positivity. He’d just killed countless men, and yet, he was still smiling. Without even realizing it, I’d taken half a step closer to Rix. Zane and Jorik noticed, though, and their eyes widened.
“It was your attempt to escape that distracted the lab techs and the guards and allowed us to escape. We couldn’t have done it without you,” Rix went on.
“And you couldn’t have done it without us,” Zane finished. Something about the way he was looking at me set the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. Like he had an ulterior motive, different from the other two, or was hiding something.
I glared at him. He glared back.
“You said there is a boat twenty miles from your survival pack?” Jorik asked, blinking several times and swiveling his head around, taking in his surroundings. His hand came up and he scratched his chest, reminding me even more of a bear. “So this escape was planned? You had help?”
I nodded. “Yes, Neffers helped me escape. He said he’d be waiting at the boat for me.”
Their expressions were grim.
We were all thinking the same thing. Neffers was most likely dead—even though Moord had said he wasn’t. Moord was a psychopath and not above lying, so I held out little hope that Neffers was still alive and waiting for me. And even if hehadbeen alive, that explosion would have taken care of every person in that compound and rendered them to ash.
And since Moord mentioned Neffers, chances were Moord knew about the escape plan and had soldiers poised for an ambush. What he hadn’t counted on was the three men in front of me trying to escape, too, and blowing up the place. Because that sure as heck hadn’t been part of the plan.
I was supposed to trigger a security breach, disarm as many guards as I could, then travel through the air ducts to the closest point of exit and leave that way. But these three blowing up stuff had put a bit of a kink in the plan.
