One Breath, One Bullet(The Borders War book 1) (3 page)

I scooted my chair back, getting ready to leave when Armise spoke up. “You want to talk about the rumours?”

“When did you become a gossip?” I deflected.

“Just talking, Merq.” He reached out and gripped that dainty cup, taking a quiet sip. “Catching up.”

I huffed. Right. He was looking for information. Details about the backroom dealings I’d had with the Opposition. That I was supposedly a soldier for hire, regardless of which country the employer was loyal to, whether Opposition or Revolution, was a secret that wouldn’t remain undercover for long. Of course Armise would be well enough connected to hear the rumblings.

I dismissed his question. “Men running scared. Grasping at any theory they think threatens their power. You know better than to buy into it.”

“I know you better than I know any of them,” Armise protested in a quiet voice that caught me off guard.

I scoffed. “Right. ’Cause a couple of alley fucks make us friends.” I emphasised the last word, an accusation, so he would have no doubt about the disdain I felt for the idea.

“So it’s true.”

“Fuck you,” I spat out.

Armise sat back, stared me down, as if he was victorious. “That’s what I thought.”

We stared at each other across the table—a challenge that didn’t need to be spoken because it was always there. A living breathing third entity at the table with us. Between us always.

Armise frowned. “So that’s how it’s going to be between us?”

I clenched my jaw. What the hell was he talking about? “What other way is there? Or has there ever been for that matter? We both have our orders.”

Armise pointed at me. “You constrain yourself by blindly following what you’re told.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Killing you seems like an excellent order for me to blindly obey.”

“So do it,” he ground out, showing the most emotion I’d seen from him in our brief encounter.

“Not until we get that key.”

Armise seemed to be considering my words, and I wondered if he’d really given me the real answer by providing intel on this Chen Ying. I knew there was information he was keeping from me. We all had our secrets.

In fact, I seriously doubted there was a place for truth in this world. Maybe there never had been and never would be. Those that hoped, that prayed to a non-existent god, were fooling themselves. Living a lie.

There were too many shades and shadows—differing perceptions—for the search for truth to be a valid journey. I lived in a world of shifting loyalties and selfish motivations—we all did—and to pretend otherwise was foolish.

Armise sipped from his cup again, then changed the subject. “Did you hear your president’s press conference today? He intends to hold the games again.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “The games?”

“The Olympics. Surely you remember your history, an educated man such as yourself,” Armise quipped.

I ground my teeth together. “If you don’t recall, a vast majority of our history was wiped out,” I evaded. That history was of particular interest to me was something even Armise wouldn’t know.

“Hence, your search for the key to the mysterious infochip. It won’t be the solution you’re seeking. I hope you know that.”

“And I hope you won’t be offended that I choose not to believe you,” I replied.

“Some day you will,” Armise said with a surety that chilled me.

Armise turned away. He gazed at the mountains, his thoughts appearing to drag him out of the present, as he considered information I didn’t know, couldn’t access. At least not without a painful interrogation session. Unfortunately, that was not part of my orders since he’d already given me the intel I’d come for. Armise’s jaw ticked, the movement betraying his unease.

“It’s been too long…” Armise then said, the words dragging out as he turned back to me. His heated gaze raked over me, making his underlying meaning completely clear to me. I froze.

So that was what this was about.

It had been two years since I’d last seen Armise. And while time had faded my anger, my desire for him had only strengthened. I didn’t understand it. I’d spent more time in the last two years trying to forget him than should have been necessary.

Armise pulled a hotel keycard from his pocket and laid it on the table.

And I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to say no.

Chapter Two

Ten years later—Year 2558

The Continental States

I couldn’t have scrubbed his voice and moans from my brain even if I’d wanted to. His words coiled around me. The memory of his cry—as he came with me inside him—filled me, crushed me. The sounds were merely an echo, and yet, after each time we ended up like this, they were just as jarring. The flap of the curtains against the open window intensified the question in my mind—would this be the time that we were discovered? And why didn’t I care if we were?

I was stuck in a disjointed limbo between satiation, duty and the need for rest. The wind kicked up outside, parting the white canvas curtains like the open maw of the lynx of myth, divulging our secrets for the world to see. Light snaked from the streetlights outside my window into the room that should have been dark hours ago, if I was at all inclined to abide by the curfew. A warm breeze stifled my desperate search for sleep. I closed my eyes again, seeking the switch that would shut all thought down.

I wouldn’t find peace this way. Not with the inevitable end coming tomorrow.

Outside the window, the first sparks of an electrical storm flashed.

The bed shifted next to me.

“Shut down that maniacal brain, turn off the light and go to sleep,” Armise grumbled, his massive frame turning away from me, away from the overly bright light all the athlete rooms were issued with. “It’s going to be too easy to beat you tomorrow.”

Exactly my point,
I wanted to say. But he would know there was a hidden meaning to my flippant reply, and I couldn’t afford to let him break my focus tonight. Instead I switched the light off, put my back to Armise’s and tried to repeat my mantra.

That I’d let him into my room, back into my bed again, was the least of my worries.

Thirteen years we’d been doing this. Manoeuvring around each other. A never-ending negotiation, where neither of us won or lost. But tomorrow was a whole other story.

Armise and I were set to compete against each other in the 50m Rifle Prone event for the first Olympic gold medal to be handed out in three hundred and two years. It was a surreal situation. Former soldier pitted against former soldier. The arena would be full of men and women I’d fought against until the treaty was inked ten years ago.

The competition between Armise and I was being billed as a dog fight. Our history, the parts that were safe for public consumption, had been paraded out. Sensationalised for the sake of ratings and increased viewership. That I had become a public figure in the last five years as the planning for the Olympics ramped up was still surreal to me. I was sure it had to be for Armise as well. Up until then, we’d spent our lives with explicit orders to stay covert. I had been deep undercover for more years than not. Everyone’s eyes would be on us tomorrow. But the media had no idea what they were really going to be showcasing.

Compared to the military training we had both undergone in our respective countries—me a Peacemaker for the Continental States and him a Dark Ops officer for the People’s Republic of Singapore—and the years we’d spent in war, battling against each other, fifty metres with a rifle would be easy. However, odds were falling heavily in Armise’s favour to win the gold.

If I’d thought the rifle event would actually happen then I would be protesting the expected outcome much more vocally. But I had other, more important, considerations than beating the man I’d spent the last seventeen years trying to kill, in a contest that wouldn’t occur.

Armise really had to go.

“You have to go,” I said out loud. Much too loudly for how dark it was in my room. There was an audible crackle as light streaked across the sky, and the scent of ozone filled the room.

Armise didn’t even bother to turn over. “Shut up and go to sleep already. It’s safe. I had Manny swipe my card at check in.”

As if that was the real problem,
I thought. Armise couldn’t stay. And for once it wasn’t the danger of being discovered, or the dark knowledge that he was my enemy and would never be my lover, that drove that thought. It wasn’t even my upcoming mission if I was being honest with myself.

My unease came from a different place.

From a deep sense of loss I couldn’t find the will to bury. And from the darkness that was slowly dissipating with the solidness of him next to me.

The streetlights outside flickered, popped back to full brightness then dimmed again, as the storm gained power. Electrical storms were frequent during the summer months in the capital. But no matter how strong the storm surged, how violent the arcs became as they bowed from cloud to ground, the power supply was protected with a chain of fail-safes and power stores that could have lit the world for centuries to come. While the poorest of citizens didn’t even have access to the grid, the wealthiest didn’t have to run the risk of losing the power they so greedily hoarded.

The mightiest were always protected in our world. While some of those left exposed to the elements—the citizens who made their homes in camps—would be killed tonight. It happened every time an electrical storm blew through. But at least their deaths would be quick and painless.

I flipped the lamp back on. The light was duller this time, yet it still caused my vision to wash out, and, for the briefest of seconds, I wanted to be somewhere else, some other time. With Armise at my side. But it didn’t matter what I was feeling, and I wouldn’t speak my notions out loud even if I thought he wouldn’t laugh me out of the room. I just couldn’t have Armise here while I was trying to remember that my mission, as always, was the only thing that mattered.

There was a brilliant flash, then a crash as a strike thundered into the ground somewhere nearby. The light next to me surged to full brightness.

The storm. My mission. My death.

Armise.

It was all too much. All of those factors combining together in this moment to leave me more unsettled than I’d possibly ever been in my life. Eating away at the ends of my frazzled nerves. I was trained to remain stoic regardless of the pressure. Regardless of the difficulty or goal of my orders. But what I was being asked to do was something that no level of training could ever fully prepare me for.

Something had to break, or I was going to.

I knew that if I was going to convince Armise to leave, it would be through threats, not manipulation. Armise could see right through my bullshit, but he was hard-wired to respond to the drive to survive. I sat up against the cheap wooden headboard, noting the half-moon slivers marking the places where Armise’s fingers had dug into the pine as I pounded into him. A semi-permanent etching of our time here. Marks that would likely outlive us both.

“Either of our coaches could come looking for us at any time,” I said. I grasped on to the excuse like a lifeline, willed myself to believe it was true.

Armise reached back and gripped my thigh. “Or war could flare again.” His voice took on my eastern seaboard cadence, a tone he saved for the moments designed to mock me. “It
is
the eve of history.”

I prodded him in the ribs, but he didn’t move. I was almost as solid as Armise. But where I was unstoppable, he was immovable. The irony wasn’t lost on me, especially with the direction my thoughts kept straying. We would be infinitely safer if we could each master both skills. We would be better as a team. Together in a fight instead of against each other. But that could never happen, even with the treaty. It would never happen because my time, my life, ended tomorrow.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I said instead, protesting against his verbal jab. “You may not think so, but this is a big deal. Neither of our countries is going to be taking tomorrow lightly.”

“It’s only a bullet,” Armise said before he buried his head under the pillow. The industrial light was probably strong enough to seep through the edges of the thin pillow he tried to wrap around his head. It gave me a perverse sense of satisfaction that if I wasn’t going to sleep, I could make sure he didn’t either.

I continued, pressing the point. “A real one. Shot in public. For the first time—”

“In two hundred years. I got it.” He lifted the pillow off his head and glared at me. “Go to sleep.”

Now he was awake as I was. I grinned. “Do you want to be the one to shoot it?”

It was a pointless question. I knew who was going to shoot that bullet, and it wasn’t going to be Armise. But it was a subject neither one of us had dared to speak about, and I couldn’t stop myself from toying with him a bit.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter either way. It won’t be me.” His voice was muffled by the cotton comforter he stuffed under his chin despite the warm air. Much like his personality, Armise’s internal temperature was permanently set to cold.

I was surprised by his answer and had to force myself not to tense in response. Armise wasn’t one to forgo a challenge. So either he knew more than he was telling me or I’d been too careless. That Armise was one of the only people in the world who could hear what I never said out loud, possibly the only person, was a reality I’d fought against since the DCR standoff. The thought that he could see through my words at this pivotal moment stilled me. I took a breath and waited, but he didn’t say anymore. “Or me,” I added, my voice taking on the military precision of practised deceit, years in the making.