Page 62 of Fragile Facade

The one-minute alarm beeps, and we both stand, hiding behind the door we’ll need to open quickly and quietly to enter the elevator across the hall. Glitch has control of them, and he’ll open the doors for us as soon as the guard rotation switches.

“Ready?” Ransom asks.

“Set,” Riot says.

“Go,” I whisper.

But before I can pull the door open, Riot spins me to face him, lightly grasps my chin, and presses his lips to mine. Simple, quick, entirely jarring, and… overwhelming because it feels so wanted. His lips move against mine, igniting my insides with something sweet and powerful. I’m breathing harder than I want to be when he pulls back, licking his lips.

“The fuck was that for?”

His fingers trace my jaw before falling away, the black eye I gave him staring at me. “Just in case it’s my last chance,” he says. Then he changes into someone new right before my eyes, getting into character for the role he’s about to play.

“Move!” Ransom and Glitch both shout in our ears.

“You got this, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart.

He pulls open the door and, rejuvenated, we dart straight into the elevator, the doors closing a split second before the guard comes back.

23

I BLINK, SWEETHEART. YOU WIN

GHOST

I don’t knowif he’s smug enough to have kissed me as a distraction or if he simply did it because he wanted to, but either way, it’s distracting me. Almost in a good way. Because instead of worrying about what I’m doing, I’m feeling the way my lips tingle and my neck flushes as I slip down the hallway unnoticed. He’s causing a ruckus with the guards, using his charm to manipulate their reaction to him, and I’m becoming a ghost who blushes.

Blushes!

Fucking bullshit if you ask me. My mind is on that simple kiss as I use a stolen security card to enter labs, and it’s still on that kiss when I slip past three guards and a medical professional to enter the secure area I need to be in. My tongue roams over my bottom lip as I bend down to let the sensor scan my contacts, and I taste something that isn’tmeas the red light turns green and beeps me into the research office.

It's Riot. Killian is on my lips and against my tastebuds, but mostly, he’s in my head. Normally, he fucks with my mind in a way that agitates me, but tonight, it’s calming. I settle into the feeling instead of fighting it, slipping into a shadowed corner of the room as the door beeps open again.

“Fucking focus, Ghost,” Ransom says in my ear. “There are only two of them. No one else in the hallway.”

Director says I’m not allowed to kill them, but…

Quietly, I pull a syringe from my blazer jacket, grab the first woman, and stick it in her neck. I set her down quietly, stepping over her body as the second syringe slips into position between my thumb and fingers.

He kissed me. Softly… Just in case it was his last chance. The fuck?

“I can’t believe they’re letting us in this file,” says the second one as she opens something on the computer. “We don’t even have this security clearance, but something must be coming if they’re granting us access. The hell is Project Doom?”

I pause behind her. Right behind her. Not making a sound and not emitting energy enough for even the hairs on her arms to stand at attention. Project Doom? Moros is the word for the personification of impending doom, so my interest is piqued.

“Claire?”

When she spins, I cover her mouth, prick her with the needle, and plunge the cool liquid into her neck before her eyes see me. Just in case she wakes up from this, I don’t want her knowing my face.

“Director said no deaths,” Ransom says, not in a chiding way.

“They aren’t dead.”

“Yet,” Glitch adds. “Plug in to that computer before the screen locks. I’ll get whatever I can from it while you look for the key. It’ll be a program or device somewhere near a chip reader. Look for it.”

I plug in the first device I was sent with, letting Glitch hack into the computer from back in Moros. Glancing around the room, I’m met with so many different kinds of technology that I barely know what to do with any of it. Glitch had to send me a video on how to plug the devices into the right holes. Moros isn’t like this. We’re caught in the past, reliant on word of mouth and paper products rather than technology, except for the select few people who know their way around it. Director, Facts, and Glitch being three of those people.