Page 18 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

“My name is...” Static interrupted the audio, clearly edited. “You have no right!”

The Reaper beside me remained perfectly still, but a thin line of blood trickled from his nostril, a bright crimson trail against his skin. His eyes never blinked, fixed on the screen with the intensity of someone watching their own execution.

“Stop,” I whispered, reaching for his hand. “We can take a break.”

“No,” he responded, voice hollow. He allowed me to hold his hand, though. “I need to see it all.”

The video was cut in several snippets blurred together in the footage—his hair growing back slightly between recordings, new bruises replacing faded ones.

The time stamps in the corner showed weeks passing.

Different technicians rotated through, but the procedures remained the same: electrical current, injections, sleep deprivation, sensory manipulation.

With each clip, his resistance weakened.

His screams became jumbled, then fragmented, then ceased entirely.

The defiance in his eyes dimmed to confusion, then vacant compliance.

The transition from person to weapon happened in increments so small they were almost imperceptible, yet the cumulative effect was devastating.

The Reaper beside me watched his own unmaking with terrifying stillness. Blood now streamed steadily from both nostrils, dripping onto his borrowed shirt in a spreading stain. I grabbed a dish towel from the counter and pressed it to his face, but he didn’t acknowledge it, blinked, or moved.

“Your name is JD-2741. You are Reaper,” a voice repeated in the video. Over and over. Electrodes pulsed. Needles pierced the skin. A technician checked pupillary response, nodding with satisfaction at whatever he saw.

“Repeat it,” the voice commanded.

The man in the chair—so different now from the defiant figure at the beginning—mumbled something unintelligible, head lolling forward.

“Again,” the voice demanded.

“My name is…” He hesitated, confusion clouding his features. “My name is JD-2741. I am Reaper.”

The technicians in the video exchanged satisfied glances. One made notes on a tablet. Another adjusted an IV drip.

“Cognitive replacement complete. Proceed with physical conditioning and tactical programming. ”

I couldn’t watch anymore. My finger hit pause, freezing the image of this earlier Reaper—broken but not yet fully remade, caught in the moment between man and weapon.

“They stole you,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Piece by piece.”

Reaper remained motionless, eyes fixed on the screen where his past self stared emptily back.

The blood had soaked through the towel I still pressed against his face, warm and wet against my fingers.

His breathing had grown shallow, too regular—like something mechanically controlled rather than autonomous.

Blood continued to seep from his nostrils, staining the dish towel, but he still didn’t move, didn’t speak, as if he needed the time to process what he had just seen fully. The only sound in the tiny apartment was the rain hammering the tin roof and our uneven breathing.

I didn’t know what to say. What comfort could I possibly offer? I’d watched my killer become a victim before my eyes. The assassin sent to kill me had once been someone else—someone who fought, who resisted, who had a family, a name, a life before they methodically erased him.

I gently wiped the remaining blood from his face. His skin felt cold under my fingertips, like marble with a pulse.

I set the cloth down and cupped his face between my palms, turning it away from the computer screen that had triggered this episode. His eyes were vacant, staring through me rather than at me, but I needed him to see me.

“You fought them,” I said softly, my voice barely audible above the rain hammering the tin roof. “Harder than anyone else. That’s why they hurt you so badly—you wouldn’t just let them in.”

His eyes finally shifted from some distant point to focus on me. Something moved behind them—not recognition exactly, but awareness bleeding through cracks in his programming. A flicker of the man trapped inside the weapon they’d created.

“I felt it,” he admitted, his voice raw. “Watching that… I remembered the feeling.” He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I don’t remember being him, but I feel what they did to him—to me.”

His hand rose to his temple, fingers pressing against whatever phantom pain lived there. The gesture was so human, so vulnerable that my chest ached with an emotion too complex to name. This deadly weapon they’d created was becoming a person again—fragment by painful fragment.

I didn’t plan what happened next. My hand moved of its own accord, rising to cover his where it pressed against his temple. His skin was warming up beneath my palm, the unexpected gentleness of the contact startling us both.

He went still at my touch but didn’t pull away. Beneath my fingers, I felt the subtle tremor running through him—the physical manifestation of walls crumbling.

“They didn’t just take my memories,” he said, words careful and measured like each one cost him. “They took my capacity even to want them back.”

The simple horror of that statement hit me harder than any of the brutal footage we’d watched. Not just stealing his past, but removing his very desire to reclaim it—the ultimate violation of autonomy, of personhood itself.

Reaper suddenly pulled away from my touch as if burned.

He stood up so abruptly that his chair crashed backward onto the floor.

His breathing changed—quickened and shallow, verging on hyperventilation.

The controlled assassin I’d come to know was replaced by something raw and unpredictable.

His hands clenched into fists while he paced the small space in jerky movements, reminding me of caged predators I’d seen in underfunded zoos.

“Reaper?” I said, rising slowly, palms out in a placating gesture.

He shook his head, a short, sharp movement that warned me to keep my distance. Blood still marked his upper lip and chin, stark against his pallor. His eyes darted around the room as if seeing threats in every shadow, the measured assassin gone, replaced by something feral and wounded.

“I can’t...” he muttered. “It’s too much, can’t.”

Before I could reach him, he grabbed his still-damp jacket from the clothesline, yanking it so hard that the makeshift line collapsed with a snap of wire. My blouse fell to the floor, but he didn’t notice or care. He shoved his arms into the jacket with desperate, uncoordinated movements.

“Where are you going?” I asked, alarm raising my voice.

He paused at the door, his hand on the knob, shoulders heaving with each breath.

For a second, I thought he might answer.

Instead, he threw one last unreadable glance over his shoulder—a look that contained equal parts rage, confusion, and something that might have been fear—and disappeared, the door banging shut behind him.

I stood frozen in the sudden silence. The rain continued its steady drumming on the roof, but it no longer felt comforting. Now it just emphasized how completely alone I was.

Alone in a strange apartment. Alone in a favela where I didn’t speak the language. Alone with people hunting me—hunting us. Alone with information that could get me killed.

Panic flooded me right away, swirling inside my head and right into my chest, until I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

The reality of my situation crashed over me like a wave, threatening to pull me under.

Every sound outside the thin walls magnified in my ears—shouting from nearby buildings, music thumping from somewhere below, the occasional burst of laughter or argument.

Any of those sounds could mask the approach of someone coming for me.

I ran to the door and twisted the flimsy lock. It wouldn’t keep out a determined child, let alone trained operatives. I dragged the chair Reaper had vacated and wedged it under the doorknob, knowing it was equally useless but needing to do anything to create the illusion of security.

My hands trembled so badly I had to press them against my thighs. I closed my eyes and forced myself to take deep breaths, counting each one like my therapist had taught me after Xavier disappeared.

He’ll come back. He has to come back. Everything he needs is here.

But what if he doesn’t? What if whatever broke in his mind sent him straight to his handler? What if Brock is already on his way?

Such thoughts raced through my mind, each more terrifying than the last, until breathing became a nearly impossible task.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I quickly blinked them away.

I knew what I had to do—I needed to keep myself busy somehow.

Reaper needed a moment to process what he had just seen, but I couldn’t give myself that luxury.

“Stop it,” I whispered to myself. “Panic helps no one. Xavier needs you to be focused.”

I picked up my blouse from the floor where it had fallen, still slightly damp but warming from the tropical heat.

Escape routes began pounding inside my head.

I could call for help—but who? The local police were as likely to be corrupt as helpful.

Any call could be traced. My brother was missing.

My editor thought I was still working on a story about environmental activism.

And my informant had been clear that his hands were tied for the moment.

Which left one option: wait and make the most of whatever time I had.

I returned to the table and pulled the laptop closer. The screen had gone to sleep, a dark mirror reflecting my worried face. I woke it up with a tap and the gruesome images from the USB drive reappeared.

If Reaper didn’t come back—and part of me hoped he wouldn’t for a little while, for his sake—I needed to learn everything I could.

Something on this drive might help me find my brother.

Something might help me negotiate my survival when they eventually found me.

And understand the man who’d just walked out that door—a man who, against all reason, I was starting to care about.

I opened another folder, forcing myself to focus despite the fear gnawing at my edges. My brother was somewhere in this web of horror. Reaper was both a victim and a threat. This USB drive was the only way I could understand either of them.

The files blurred before my eyes, clinical terminology and redacted sections swimming in my vision.

I blinked hard against the tears threatening to form and began to read.

I wouldn’t cry. Crying was yet another luxury for people who weren’t being hunted.

For people whose brothers weren’t missing.

For people who hadn’t just watched a man’s humanity being systematically erased.

I couldn’t afford to be one of those people.