Who was the scary-ass clown now?
Whatever. She dropped her gaze to the white porcelain. The only thing she cared about at this point…keeping Jay alive and giving him the codes he needed to stop Dominion.
She stripped off her ripped shirt and threw it on the floor. God damn, her shoulder ached. A quick pivot and a twist of her head reflected another bruise back at her. Partially hidden by her workout tank, this one looked to be the size of a baseball with a darker center blooming where the boardroom light switch had jammed into her skin.
Her tattooed skin.
Fucking Maya. Becca had never wanted a tattoo. And now her back was covered. Her arms too. Flowers and vines connecting, crawling, sprawling like an invasive species over her body in shades of gray.
She didn’t understand the appeal. Meant to be a flourishing garden, to her, the landscape looked cold and dull. Emotionless. Lifeless. Empty. Fitting, she supposed. She could use the same words to describe her twin.
Herself too.
They were identical after all. The same blood poisoned their veins. The same DNA corrupted their cells. From the roots of their black hair to the size of their feet, they were made of the exact same genetic information.
Safe to say they suffered from identical mental health issues too. Right? If they shared carbon-copy brain chemistries, wouldn’t they both display the same clouded thinking patterns, a duplicate tendency to distort reality, and the clear propensity for violence?
She didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to think of herself as a danger to the people she loved. The ones she cared about the most. Easy enough to do when she made sure those types of individuals didn’t exist.
Aside from the memory of Jay, she had no one.
Except for Nik.
She hadn’t meant to befriend him. But he’d fallen for Maya. Thought he could fix Maya. With kindness, compassion, and understanding, he’d tried to heal her. Make her into someone she wasn’t. He wouldn’t have stood a chance with the real sister.
Maya would’ve eaten him alive.
Becca? She’d used his savior complex to her advantage.
Yeah, on an island of assholes trying to be bad guys, he wasn’t one of them. And yet, he believed in his uncle. Believed the world would be better off if all of humanity bowed to the whims of a single ruler.
A king of kings.
History knew better. Wars had been waged. Battles fought. Hundreds of thousands left dead and dying on one shore or another. For what? Land? Religion? Oil? Riches? One side claiming victory over the other despite the catastrophic costs.
And at whose behest? Presidents. Prime Ministers. Chancellors. Emperors. Elected or self-appointed, the official title didn’t matter. Lord Acton had said it best: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
When it came to the Imperium Council, a truer statement had never been made. She knew only a fraction of the corruption and greed ruling the members, and it chilled her to the bone. If any one of them managed to seize control…
Oh God! The wars, the chaos, the total breakdown of humanity would be like nothing the world had ever seen. She shuddered as the temperature in the room began to rise, along with the moisture in the air.
She couldn’t let it happen. Wouldn’t let it happen.
Well…she’d die trying at any rate.
What transpired after that? Out of her control. Beyond her ability to influence. Not her fucking problem. She breathed deep, rolled her neck, and let loose with a sigh that settled her in her skin.
Bone tired and beyond sore, she wanted to lie down, close her eyes, and sleep for a millennium. But first, she had to get back to the computer room to initiate the next phase of her plan.
With the air fogged and the glass surfaces covered in condensation, she stripped off the last of her clothes. Fuck, she hated being naked. Hated seeing the reminder of everything she’d lost because of Maya.
Without looking down at the scars transecting her lower belly, she pulled the scrunchie from her hair, careful to palm the hidden hard drive. Then she opened the shower door and stepped under the burning hot spray.
Fire beat against her scalp. Sluiced over her shoulders, scalded her breasts, and ran between her thighs until the flames reached the drain. She dropped the drive. It bounced, and she toed the postage-sized piece of hardware toward the round grate.
Caught up in the current and pulled along by gravity, the thin plastic square slipped between one of the slats and disappeared. Would it get stuck in the pipe? Yes. Would it still contain evidence of the program she’d used to override Roman’s computer despite being submerged? Yes.
The only way to destroy the data was to erase it. The only way to erase it required access to a computer. The only computers she had access to were in the monitored computer room. She couldn’t chance being discovered.
