Page 37 of Hunted to Be Mine

“Blood.” The word ripped out. “So much blood. On the floor. The walls. The donuts. My fingers.” He shook hard. “Screams, then nothing. Just sticky on my skin.”

“Specter!”

“I killed them.” He choked out the admission. “Little bodies. Eight or nine years old.”

I reached for his arm. He jerked back.

“No! Don’t touch me.” His eyes finally focused on me, wild. “I can still feel it. The knife. The way the blade caught on bone. They were children.”

My stomach twisted. The horror of what he described fought with my need to pull him back. “Focus on my voice. You’re here with me, in Munich. Whatever happened…”

A strangled sound tore free from him. He clutched his temples. Pain ripped through him. This wasn’t just memory. Something in his conditioning had triggered.

“Specter!” I lunged forward as his knees gave out.

He turned rigid under my grip, muscles locked tight. I barely managed to guide him down. The seizure hit hard, his back arching, limbs jerking.

“I’m here—” My voice rose as I shoved the coffee table aside. “Stay with me!”

Foam appeared at his mouth, pupils rolling back. The seizure only lasted seconds, but each one felt endless. I counted out loud, ready for emergency measures.

Then, his body went stilled.

“Specter?” I touched his face. “Can you hear me?”

Gray irises appeared.

I recoiled.

The man looking at me wasn’t Specter. Those gray depths that had shown warmth, pain, humor, all empty now. Flat. I’d seen clinical detachment, but this was different. This was nothing.

He rose from the floor like a machine. No confusion, no disorientation. Just coming online.

“Specter?” The name trembled out.

His head tilted slightly, sizing me up. Nothing showed recognition. His posture had changed completely: spine straight, squared shoulders, palms loose and ready. This wasn’t the manwho’d kissed me, who’d talked about memories worth pain to recover.

This was Oblivion’s creation stripped of everything human. And I had a front row seat.

I backed away slowly, heart pounding. “Specter, it’s Selina. You know me.”

No response. Just that clinical assessment, as if I were a target.

“You’re having a conditioning response.” I tried to sound level. “The memory triggered your programming.”

He tracked my movement. I’d read files on operatives like him, studied the psychology of their conditioning. But reading about it hadn’t prepared me for the void staring back, the complete erasure of the person I’d started caring for.

My back hit the wall. Nowhere left to go.

“Your name is Specter.” Authority filled my voice. “You’re in a safehouse in Munich. We escaped from SENTINEL together after Oblivion attacked.”

Something flickered in those empty depths, not recognition, but calculation. When he spoke, each word came out flat, no inflection.

“Identity: JD-24601. Designation: Specter.” The words sounded robotic. “Mission parameters undefined. Awaiting directive.”

My breath caught. This was worse than I’d thought. The conditioning had fully activated, reducing him to function and protocol.

“Look at me. Focus on my face. Remember who I am.”