Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) by Tarah Benner Read Free Book Online Page B

doing to him?
    I could hear voices. And strange music.  
    Heart pounding, I moved forward — toward the source of the noise — but Greyson grabbed my arm. He shook his head once almost imperceptibly, but I jerked out of his grip. Across the open atrium, I could see another room off to the side. The door was open. Every once in a while, a bright light would flash. I heard a scream, and my heart seized in my chest before I realized it was the canned sound of a recording. Someone was watching a movie.
    I walked through the open doorway into the dark room and instantly wished I hadn’t.  
    On screen, a man had a woman by her hair. He was pummeling her skull with a hammer, spewing blood everywhere. Her piercing screams filled the room, and I realized it wasn’t a movie; the film had a shaky amateur quality. The screaming woman disappeared. She was replaced by a man with a black canvas bag over his head. He was sitting in a dark room with his hands bound behind his back. The camera shook. Another man appeared to the side with a gun and shot three times, four times —  
    I tore my eyes away from the screen, willing my ears to shut out the sound of gunshots. Then a crisp voice began to narrate over the violent picture.
    Such a dangerous world requires a new generation of soldiers . . . a force for good to keep ordinary citizens safe from evildoers . . . safe from the violence of rebellion and the abominations created by the modern age.
    An artificially grainy image of a carrier appeared, doctored to look extra frightening and menacing.
    The Private Military Company of the United States is always working to protect and serve . . . Order. Compliance. Progress. This is our credo. Go forth and do your duty, citizen. Your country needs you.
    Without warning, the screen flickered to silver, and the same voice from the elevators rang out.
    End of simulation.
    Then the screen went black.  
    I looked around the room. There were ten rows of white chairs lined up facing the screen, but only one of them was occupied.  
    Sitting there staring up at the screen was Amory. I could only see half of his face, which looked blank — emotionless. He was wearing a white T-shirt and cotton pants that looked like scrubs. He sat up in his chair straighter than I remembered, but otherwise he looked exactly the same.  
    “I don’t need an adjustment, so you can come back later,” said Amory. His voice was clipped, cold.
    I stood there frozen, unsure what to do.
    Amory sighed, twisting in the chair. “Why don’t you —” He stopped short, staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.
    He stood up abruptly, and my body tensed, preparing to run or fight if he was so far gone that he did not remember who I was. But then he did something I had not expected.  
    Navigating around the chairs, Amory crossed the room and threw his arms around me.  
    “Haven,” he whispered into my neck, crushing me against him.  
    Everything about Amory came crashing back: his wonderful woodsy smell, the feel of his warm muscles through his shirt. Somehow, he was exactly as he had been. I tightened my arms around him.
    “Wait —” Amory pulled away slightly, a look of confusion knitting his brows together. “Why are you here?”  
    He seemed to be working to piece something together, as though it had been years — not weeks — since we’d last seen each other.
    “I —”  
    “Break it up, you two,” Godfrey grumbled behind me. “Could be cameras.”
    We broke apart, and I looked up into his face. His gray eyes looked tired, but that fierceness was still there. His chiseled cheekbones looked a little more gaunt, but it was nothing a few days of good food couldn’t fix. He was alive.  
    Then his arm fell into my peripheral vision, and I stifled a gasp. All up his forearm, crossing over the jagged scar from his CID, were twenty HALLO tag burns lined up in a row like tally marks. The tender raised flesh looked painful, irritated. He had to have been