Page 31 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Reaper

Cold. Pain. Blue.

Distorted faces. Blood-soaked concrete floors. The chair with its straps and electrodes. Deafening screams. A red poker chip spinning endlessly across a green table. A woman with dark hair. Doctors in masks. Syringes filled with blue liquid.

Maeve .

Her name anchored me. The fog receded like a tide pulled by the moon—her name a gravitational force. The poison retreated enough for one clear thought: she should be beside me. The sheets where her warmth belonged were empty.

I inhaled sharply, lungs burning with the effort—wrong scent. No jasmine. No Maeve. Another scent caught my attention. Male. Unknown. Threat.

My body moved before my mind could process. Pure instinct overrode pain signals, flooding my system with adrenaline despite muscles screaming in agony. Blue-black poison lines pulsed beneath my skin as I launched across the room.

I slammed the intruder against the wall, my hand crushing his throat. The effort sent fresh waves of poison coursing through my veins like acid in my bloodstream, but I tightened my grip.

“Where is she?” My voice sounded wrong—a toxic rasp like sandpaper on raw nerves. “What did you do with her?”

The man’s reaction wasn’t what my training predicted. The man didn’t struggle as expected. His movements were calculated, defensive blocks without counterattacks. His eyes remained steady, assessing.

“I’m the informant,” he said calmly despite my grip. “We met at my den in Mooca. The USB drive with first-tier data. The conversation through the screen.”

Images flashed in rapid succession—an abandoned building, a voice through a distorted screen, coordinates, drones hunting us through rain-slicked streets.

My grip loosened a fraction, not from weakness but calculation. Three competing protocols battled for dominance in my head:

Eliminate the witness. Standard containment protocol.

Preserve operational integrity. Self-preservation required.

Find Maeve. Protect Maeve.

The third wasn’t programming. It was something else—something raw and human they had tried to burn out of me with electricity and chemicals.

“The informant.”

“Yes. My name is Specter, Secunda generation.” He remained perfectly still despite the bruising pressure of my fingers against his carotid artery. “You’re fighting the poison well. Your enhanced physiology is adapting. ”

I released him and staggered back, legs threatening to buckle.

My body was still at war with itself. The blue-black lines had receded from my forearms but left darkened paths beneath my skin.

In the cracked mirror across the room, my reflection was a stranger’s—dilated pupils ringed with unnatural blue.

Then, my gaze snapped from shadow to shadow, scanning the dim space with sharp, restless urgency. I searched for her—the woman who, despite all odds, had become my savior in the chaos. Where was she?

My mind reacted fast, spiraling through scenarios, most of them grim.

Had she been discovered? Captured? Terminated?

Or worse—had she abandoned me?

No… no, that wasn’t like her. At least, not the version of her I had come to know. I assessed my surroundings, listening to every sound, observing each movement.

Conclusion: she wasn’t here.

And that realization sank like ice into my chest.

“Where’s Maeve?” I demanded.

The question sent a pain current through my temples like a live wire touching water. Memory fragments assembled: Maeve beside me as the poison spread, her fingers on my face, a phone call, her voice steady despite fear.

Specter straightened his clothing. “She went to Brock.”

The name triggered an automatic response—my spine straightened, muscles tensed, right hand twitched toward my hip where a weapon should be. “My handler. ”

“Your controller,” Specter corrected.

Something cracked inside me with an almost audible sound—not physical, worse. A fissure in whatever foundation remained of my programming.

I stared at Specter, processing his words as though translating an extinct language. “She went to Brock.” My muscles locked into place, tendons rigid as steel cables. “And you let her go?”

The words cut through the stillness, sharp and accusing. His track record had been flawless. Every lead, every warning, every whispered truth he had shared had proven accurate. He had been her guide through this labyrinth of secrets and danger.

He, more than anyone, understood what lay ahead. He knew what waited on the other side of her path—what they would do to someone like her.

So why?

Why had he let her go?

The room tilted beneath me like a ship in a storm. I gripped the edge of the bathroom doorframe, steadying myself.

“I couldn’t stop her. They have her brother. Blackout. She went there for a rescue mission.”

“When?” I pushed toward my gear, body operating on automatic despite the poison’s lingering constraint.

“Two hours ago.” Specter watched me with clinical detachment. “She took the same antidote I injected you with to slow your poisoning and help your system. A potential precaution if they inject her with something, giving us a bit more time. ”

My fingers trembled as I tried to get dressed. “Why would she go before I...”

The answer crystallized with brutal clarity: her hands gentle against my fevered skin, her voice pleading me to fight. To stay.

“They wanted her,” I said, the realization hitting like a blade between ribs.

“Yes. Brock contacted her directly through your phone. Threatened her brother.”

I staggered back, knees buckling beneath the weight of understanding. “She left to meet Brock. Sacrificing herself for both you and Xavier.”

Brock’s name sent electricity arcing across my synapses, making my vision fragment into shards of light. My breathing stuttered as programming and emotion collided.

“He gave her two hours to deliver you to him or he’d kill her brother.” Specter maintained tactical distance, his eyes never leaving mine. “When she realized you were too compromised to move, she injected herself with one of my last counteragents and went alone, telling me to stay with you.”

I dropped to one knee, skull threatening to split open as incompatible directives waged war inside me. Loyalty protocols activated automatically— Report to handler. Resume mission parameters —clashing violently with rage that felt too organic to be programmed.

“What… what does he want with her?” My voice fractured like ice breaking, shifting between operational coldness and raw desperation.

“The poison wasn’t designed to kill,” Specter explained.

“It’s a conditioning agent. Brock meant it for her, as he found her interesting because of how you reacted to her.

That’s the only logical explanation. Your system rejected the compound because you’ve already been processed. Hers would have been… receptive.”

The implications flooded my consciousness with images I couldn’t bear—Maeve strapped to the chair, her screams echoing off concrete walls, blue liquid flowing through tubes into her veins. My stomach turned violently, a reaction no programming ever installed.

“He’s going to do to her what they did to me.” The words tore through my throat like broken glass. “To Xavier.”

Specter’s movements shifted subtly—a nearly imperceptible increase in urgency as he stepped forward, withdrawing a sleek phone, a 3D map of S?o Paulo with a pulsing red marker appearing on screen.

“I placed a tracking implant on her before she left. Professional courtesy—I never let assets walk into potential traps without insurance. Brock gave her a Vila Madalena address, and she went there.”

I studied the location. “Vila Madalena.”

“Yes. A local café—Café Bella. It’s a non-standard extraction protocol. Brock’s operating outside standard parameters, choosing a public location with multiple access points. He’s either desperate or confident. Good news, the ping remained in the same neighborhood.”

I planted both hands on the floor, forehead nearly touching the ground as I forced my body through recovery sequences installed at the molecular level—breath control, muscle isolation, neurological override. The techniques they programmed into me to function through extreme damage.

“She can’t become like us,” I whispered, the words escaping like a confession. “Not because of me.”

Memory struck without warning—Maeve’s naked body against mine before the poison took hold.

The way she arched against me, the way she moaned my name as I claimed her as mine.

She had urged me to stay with her, to stay human, to fight against the programming that forbade any intimacy without purpose.

For the first time, I hadn’t been a machine.

I was a man with desperate needs that only she could fulfill.

The memory wasn’t filtered through programming algorithms or tactical assessments. It was raw. Real.

I remembered the weight of her leg draped over mine, her breathing steady against my chest, trusting despite everything she knew about what I was built to do. The ghost-sensation of her palm as it traced the scar across my ribs, on my back. Her head nestled against my shoulder.

For as long as I could remember, I had never felt something like that. Sure, I had slept with women before, but it was only a means to an end. A blur in my mind. Irrelevant.

She was different. She made me feel alive.

The memory deepened like sinking into warm water, sensations flooding back.

Her fingertips trailing down my arm. The faint sound of her inhale when my hand moved across the small of her back.

How she had whispered my designation—not as a label, but as if it were a real name, something that belonged to me .

The recall of her eyes looking directly into mine—not analyzing a threat or cataloging weaknesses—just seeing me. As if I were human. For the first time ever.

With steadier balance, I pushed myself upright and went to the bathroom.