Page 7

Grace

Grace walked through the steel doors of the lab like he’d done every morning for the past six weeks.

Rows of high-tech equipment and cutting-edge machinery were concealed within sterile white walls that gleamed under harsh fluorescent lights, making the air thick with the scent of metal and chemicals.

Scientists in white lab coats with faces hidden behind masks and goggles strapped him into a chair and connected tubes and wires to his chest, back, arms, and legs that snaked across the room and fed into mysterious contraptions.

Machines hummed with energy while screens flickered with complex data and schematics Grace didn’t care to understand.

He didn’t speak, was rarely social, and never smiled because he never had a reason to.

Grace was primed to be one of the greatest marksmen to come out of the United States Marines Advanced Sniper Academy.

He was good at shooting and hitting his target every time. It was just what he did. Hunting and shooting tin cans and mason jars off a fence was how he’d passed the time as a kid.

In the Corps, he’d followed orders to the letter, had received countless medals and accolades that meant nothing to him.

His own gunnery sergeant said he had a heart of darkness and eyes that viewed the world in black and white. Right or wrong.

There were no shades of gray.

His combination of anger and morality was what had attracted the attention of the Ravens.

A man in an expensive black suit with a corporate haircut and thousand-dollar wing-tipped shoes had told him it was an organization where fates were obliterated and legends were made.

The Ravens wanted to take his already strategic mind and exceptional shooting skills and enhance them into a finely sharpened tool designed for one purpose—killing in the name of justice.

Apparently, the Ravens organization was a place where the impossible became possible and an already extraordinary man was transformed into perfection.

He’d signed on without another thought.

“How are you feeling today, Grace?”

That wasn’t his name, but that was what they’d called him since he’d entered the building and walked down the hall with soundless footsteps and inaudible breaths.

He’d never bothered to refute it…he didn’t care what they called him.

Names, titles, and ranks meant nothing to him either.

He was affected by one thing only. What was wrong in the world…and how to make it right.

It was the reason he’d killed his father and left his corpse to rot in their run-down home on a desolate country road in Grant County, Nebraska.

Grace had come home after working overnight, stocking at the lumber yard, to find his mother’s dead body on the floor in the kitchen and his father sleeping off a drunken stupor.

Grace made it so he never woke up—the death would be an assumed overdose by their one lazy sheriff and his two untrained deputies.

Grant County had a population of less than two thousand. Grace wouldn’t be missed until it was too late and the trail he didn’t leave behind was ice-cold.

After he’d buried his mother in the field where she’d liked to pick fresh flowers for her kitchen—and where he’d often watch her cook for hours for her small catering business—it took a couple of days of hitchhiking and cadging rides to get to the closest Marine Corps recruiting office.

Grace didn’t know how he felt because he didn’t feel much of anything these days. He wasn’t happy, sad, uncomfortable, nervous, afraid…hell, he wasn’t even curious about the serums anymore.

“Your mental conditioning is well underway now. In a few weeks, you’ll be advancing to physical training.”

The scientist tapped several keys on a computer keyboard a few feet away.

“You’ve probably been feeling a bit more jittery lately. That’s the serum enhancing your metabolism.”

Grace didn’t have any questions, so he just listened.

“As the second generation, you’ve exceeded all expectations. Your intelligence scores were already off the charts, but now”—the man rubbed, then clapped his hands together as if eager to play with a new toy—“your cognitive abilities are unparalleled.”

The thick oil-like serum glistened in the vial, a shimmering liquid that seemed to pulse with its own energy.

The moment it entered Grace’s bloodstream, he felt as if he’d been set on fire and his blood was boiling in his veins.

He never grimaced, grunted, or gave any indication of discomfort.

Grace didn’t know what the concoction consisted of, but he did know that his strength, speed, and agility were inconceivable.

Ah.

Now he knew how he felt.

He felt powerful.

Grace could only imagine how he’d feel in another ten weeks.