But they never had to see the faces of those they destroyed; the sacrifices they spoke of, the consequences of our war, never touched their desks. They had me. I was doing their dirty work for them.

No. No more. That ended right now.

Numbly, I went back into the server room and walked to the place the bomb sat, tiny and ominous, red numbers ticking down. Looking down at it, everything inside me went cold.

2:33

2:32

2:31

Two minutes? What the hell? Even after the conversation with Madison, there was no way that much time had elapsed. Though the reason for it was immediately clear: the timer was moving twice as fast as a normal clock, eating away the seconds at a frightening speed. Even as I stared, they seemed to go faster, until the seconds were nothing but a red blur against the screen. My head spun with the implications. I’d never make it out in time. If I hadn’t come back, I would’ve died with the humans when the building went down.

Horror flooded me. Dropping to my knees, I pulled out my wire cutters and stared at the tangle of wires surrounding the bomb. Red, blue and yellow. My hands shook, and I clamped down on my resolve. If I chose wrong, none of this would matter, except my death would arrive a few seconds earlier than planned.

I clenched my other fist. Without thinking too much about it, I jammed the blades around one of the red wires and, before I could second-guess myself, snapped them shut, severing the line.

The device gave an ominous beep…then stopped. Nothing exploded in a blinding cloud of dragonfire, and my heart started beating again.

Dropping the snips, I ran my hands down my face, everything inside me twisting into knots as the realization of what I’d done—what they had done—hit me full force. Maybe the bomb had malfunctioned, maybe there had been a glitch to make the countdown accelerate like that. But I knew better than to think this had been accidental. Talon had never intended for me to come back.

In a daze, I rose from the tile floor and stumbled toward the exit. Fear clawed at me, dark and crippling. Talon was my whole life; my entire existence had been spent serving the organization. I knew what would happen once they figured out I hadn’t died like I was supposed to. I was fully aware of what they did to those who went rogue. But there was no turning back. This had been coming for a while now. I knew it, my trainer knew it…and Talon had known it, too. My days of spy missions, sabotage and blowing up buildings full of innocent humans were over.

That’s it. I remembered Madison’s face, the way she’d smiled up at me, and my resolve grew. No more. Do you hear that, Chief? I’m done. This is Agent Cobalt, checking out for the last time.

Crossing the room, I opened the door and melted into the shadows. I still had to get free of St. George, but even if I escaped, the organization would have accomplished at least one thing. A Talon operative had died in this building tonight. As of this moment, Agent Cobalt no longer existed.

Ember

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I couldn’t stop them. My heart was racing, and my nerves felt charged with electricity. My trembling fingers were still curled around the smooth handle of the gun in my lap. The gun I’d used to shoot someone.

My stomach heaved, and I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could still see him, the slack face and the sightless, staring eyes. The bullet hole in his skull, oozing blood. I didn’t even remember pulling the trigger. The moment I’d seen him through the attic opening, aiming his gun at Garret, I’d reacted. Without thinking, just as I had in the St. George

compound—quick and lethal, almost instinctive. Now, because of me, a man was dead. I’d become a killer, an assassin, just like Talon wanted.

Lilith would’ve been proud.

“Where are we going?” Garret’s voice echoed beside me, calm and composed. He didn’t sound remotely anxious or freaked out, as if being targeted by snipers, breaking into a house and taking out two fully armed soldiers was a perfectly normal day for him. Business as usual. For a moment, I resented his perfect composure. I’d just killed a man, one of his former brothers in arms; you would think he’d be slightly upset by that.

“Downtown,” Riley answered without looking back. He sat in the front seat, both hands on the wheel, and drove like he rode a motorcycle: fast and with purpose. Beside him, Wes hunched over his laptop, not looking up when Riley took a corner without slowing down, making the wheels screech. “Near the Strip. I have a friend there who can hide us.”

“And the vehicle?” Garret looked out the back window, maybe searching for flashing lights. “I assume the original owner isn’t going to be happy about us hot-wiring his car.”

Wes snickered. “Hot-wire a car,” he scoffed. “Please. Is that how you do things, St. George? How very primitive.” He tapped two fingers against his skull. “Modern cars these days have lovely computerized brains that you can turn on with a phone. Makes them fairly easy to hack into, if you know what you’re doing.”

Great, I thought, crossing my arms. The gun dropped onto the seat beside me. I didn’t want to look at it, much less touch it anymore. So now we’re murderers and car thieves.

A soft click made me look up. Garret had reached over and taken the pistol from where it lay between us, then smoothly flicked on the safety. He turned the weapon around and offered it to me again, his gray eyes solemn as they met mine.

“You had no choice,” he said, holding my gaze. “Those soldiers would’ve killed us both if they could. There was no other option, you did what you had to do.”

The lump in my throat got bigger, and I eyed the weapon like it was a giant venomous spider. But I made myself reach out and take it back, closing my fingers around the now warm metal. “I know,” I whispered, setting the gun carefully on my leg. “But that doesn’t make it all right.” I shot a wary glance at the front, where Riley and Wes were talking in low voices. Wes was pointing to a map on the laptop screen, where a glowing blue dot approached an intersection. Riley swore, gunned the engine and ran an aging yellow light. Neither seemed to be listening to what was happening in the backseat, but I lowered my voice anyway. “I don’t want to be like them,” I murmured. “Either of them. Talon or St. George. If I start killing without a thought, if it becomes instinct, why did I leave Talon at all? What makes me any different than the Viper they wanted me to become?”

The blare of a siren made us jerk up. A cop car passed us, going in the opposite direction, lights flashing blue and red, speeding toward the distant column of black smoke curling into the sky. The soldier leaned back, gazing out the window, and didn’t answer my question.