Powerless by S.A. McAuley Read Free Book Online Page B

envision. Of people who aren’t down-trodden or hunted or struggling minute by minute just to make it to tomorrow. I don’t buy that it’s possible. But for some reason you do. And that has to be enough for me. You want it and I want to give it to you. And if eliminating Ahriman is going to bring you one step closer to this Utopia you see around the corner then I’ll give my life for it. The world doesn’t need more people like me, it needs people like you. All you’ve ever seen is destruction and yet you hope. If hope is all we have—all you have—then my life is worth that price.”
    “You’re lying to me. There’s more to your decision to go after Ahriman than just this ridiculous notion of hope. Just tell me the truth!” I demanded.
    “In war, truth is the first casualty.”
    “Fuck you. Are you just going to keep spitting adages out at me?”
    “Are you just going to keep asking me questions?”
    I began to pace, trying to get my anger under control. I stared at the remains of the PsychHAg facility and tried to remember the conversation I’d had with Ahriman when those walls had still been standing. There had been something Ahriman had wanted me to ask Armise, but I couldn’t grasp onto the memory without recalling it all. Sarai in that chair, her hands bound, her cries and tears, and Ahriman’s bullet shredding her brain because I hadn’t been able to act fast enough. Ahriman had been a man possessed. Intent on forcing me to bring Armise to him, because there was something he needed him alive for. Then Ahriman’s exact words snapped into focus in my head. I glared at Armise. “Ahriman told me to ask you about the key.”
    Armise drew his eyebrows together and frowned. “Chen?”
    I shook my head. “No, I said the same thing. Not Chen Ying. Another key. He said you were hiding something from me.”
    “And you believe him?”
    “Give me a reason not to.”
    Armise shut down, the same unemotional guarded response he’d had in the control room controlling his features. “I can’t.”
    And I swore I could feel the mark on my back—that bullet and knife bound by a length of frayed rope—as it had been freshly cut into my skin. As if the scar Armise had stitched with such care was ripping at the seams, tearing my tattoo into separate pieces.
    I stepped towards him, trying to bridge the distance that had inexplicably grown between us within seconds. “You can’t leave. There is no one else I can trust besides you. No one.”
    “Then your trust has been misplaced.”
    “You’re lying again.”
    Armise stepped up to me. “Who am I to you?”
    “What?”
    “It’s a simple enough question.”
    “If only it was that simple,” I ground out, spitting his own words back at him.
    He tipped my chin up and forced me to look him in the eyes. Those blue-silver eyes that would haunt me just as readily as every other vision of war that had been burned into my memory. “Who am I to you, Merq?”
    I couldn’t give him the answer I knew he wanted. “You can’t leave. I need you here. With me.”
    Armise shook his head. “Someday you’ll understand that I’m always with you.”
    And that’s when an explosion ripped through the city and the ground started to give in under our feet.

Chapter Three
    Armise and I swayed with the movement of the ground and he yanked me back from the gaping hole opening up below us.
    “That explosion came from underground,” I said. “We have to get back to the bunker.”
    Armise and I took off at a sprint, blowing past the abandoned tent city and careening around the alleys back to the door leading into the President’s stronghold. The metal door had been blasted from its hinges—whether it was from the force of the explosion from elsewhere underground or whether this had been the point of entry I wasn’t sure.
    The guard that had been stationed at the door was dead, crushed under the hunk of shredded metal. I flung the door off his body and stripped the weapons