Page 153 of Kill Feed

Again, and again and again…

His hands claw uselessly at my arm, his movements growing weaker with every impact, and I barely notice the blood beginning to smear across the steel beneath his face. There’s something almost hypnotic about the repetition—the dull crack of bone, his strangled attempts to breathe, the way his resistance slowly disappears. Should I go on?

Eventually, Kieran’s hands fall, and his body goes slack. I hold him there for another second, watching him hang limp in my grip, and only then do I let go.

Right in time, too, as a siren tears through the factory. Overhead, the fluorescent lights flicker back to life, and I almost need to shield my eyes against the sudden light.

I wipe blood from my hands on his trousers before stepping over his body. I grab my mask and move out the door, slipping into the hidden hunter’s passage. Not long after, footsteps sound from up ahead.

Two figures round the corner, and I’m greeted with two friendly faces and smeared clown makeup. Yara’s eyes sweep over the blood covering my clothes. “Damn, Graves. You weren’t holding back.”

Yasmin smirks. “Who’d you get?”

“Oh, it wasn’t a player,” I state in a casual huff, never breaking my stride as I move past them.

By the time I enter the hunters’ waiting area, the room is alive with conversation. I replace a towel with my mask on a nearby shelf and begin scrubbing the blood from my forearms.

“You look like shit,” Marcos states as he meets my side, eyeing me up and down.

“I’ve looked worse.”

“That’s true,” he laughs, but it dies down instantly as a redhead enters the waiting area, scanning the room with her nose scrunched up. “Where the fuck is Kieran?” Misha exclaims.

Another soldier joins her side, looking equally as confused. “He should’ve been back by now.”

“I haven’t seen him since the blackout,” the man with the straw bag mask and overalls chimes.

I don’t say a word, of course, and Marcos instantly tears his gaze away from the crowd and pins them to me. “I’m taking a wild guess here, but I take it, you know?” he utters under his breath, crossing his arms over his chest.

I flash him a wide smile, and it’s all the confirmation he needs that I’m entirely responsible for Kieran’s disappearance.

“What the fuck are you trying to do, Dante?” Marcos retorts, keeping his composure as best as he always does.

“Exactly what you would’ve done to protect Leo.”

“Stop comparing them,” he fumes back. “Our situations are not the same.”

I put the night vision mask back on over my face, tightening the leather strap behind my head. I’m hoping Marcos gets the hint and stops with his incessant—yet viable—questioning and just accepts that I’ve made a choice and I’ll die on that hill.

Unfortunately, he keeps scolding me, so I brush him off and claim I’m heading to the bathroom to wash the dried blood from my hands.

Finally, I reach the restroom, kick the door open, and stroll inside, enjoying the silence as cold water runs over my palms.

Naturally, I’m rudely interrupted.

The clicking of two pairs of heels echoes across the tile. I glance up at the mirror and find myself face-to-face with none other than Miss Selene Whitlock herself and her bodyguard, Kamala.

Selene smiles ear to ear, stretching that red matte lipstick across her mouth like a cut carved into her face, while Kamala locks the door.

Ah shit.

They probably plan to ‘eliminate’ me here and now for what I’ve done.

Luckily, I have a mouth like honey, a tongue sharper than any blade, and a rather impressive talent for talking myself out of situations exactly like this.

“You’ve made quite a spectacle,” Selene begins. “A mess I now have to clean up.”

I take a deep breath, shut the tap, before turning to face her.