Page 33 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Reaper

The night air in Vila Madalena cut through my senses—cleaner, crisper than the favela—carrying notes of expensive cologne and artisanal coffee rather than cooking oil and humanity.

I moved through shadows, my footsteps silent against the cobblestone streets.

The privileged neighborhood slept beneath its illusion of safety—trendy storefronts dark and shuttered, vibrant daytime energy replaced by eerie silence.

Only occasional passing headlights swept across the facades, momentarily illuminating the street before darkness reclaimed it.

Café Bella sat on the corner ahead—my target. According to Specter’s intel, this was where Maeve was taken before disappearing. The café appeared ordinary: security shutters were drawn, lights were off, and the café was closed for business. But I knew better.

My eyes tracked across rooftops and street corners in a sequence as familiar as breathing.

Cameras hid in plain sight—one disguised as a traffic monitor at the intersection, two more embedded in neighboring storefronts, their fields overlapping.

My mind mapped their blind spots automatically, plotting my approach through negative space—a skill I didn’t recall learning but executed flawlessly.

Pausing in shadow, I pressed my hand against my chest where Maeve’s shirt rested beneath my tactical vest. The cotton felt impossibly soft against my fingertips, carrying traces of her scent beneath gunpowder and sweat.

The simple gesture grounded me, anchored me to purpose.

Not for a mission. Not for orders. For her.

The sentiment felt alien yet essential, like discovering a vital organ I never knew I possessed.

I approached from the west side, moving between camera zones with fluid efficiency.

The café’s exterior revealed inconsistencies to my trained eye—air conditioning units twice the size necessary for the space, power cabling far too robust, subtle reinforcement in the window frames disguised as decorative elements.

Not obvious unless you knew what to look for.

And somehow, I did.

The security measures were military-grade, not commercial: thermal detection sensors embedded in window frames, electromagnetic locks disguised as standard deadbolts, and motion detection grids.

This wasn’t a café. It was a fortress wearing civilian clothes—the kind of place that swallowed people whole.

I located a service entrance along the rear alley, positioned in the overlap of two camera blind spots.

My fingers extracted lockpicks before conscious thought completed, the metal cold and familiar against my skin.

The way I held them—the angle of approach—triggered flashes of memory.

A hand guiding mine. A voice offering approval.

I’d done this thousands of times. The lock yielded in seconds with a barely audible click.

The door had secondary security—electronic, not mechanical.

My hands moved autonomously, finding the alarm panel hidden behind a false electrical box.

Six wires, color-coded. Red to disable the door sensor, blue to bypass the motion detection, and yellow for the silent alarm.

I stripped and crossed them with practiced efficiency, muscle memory guiding me through procedures my conscious mind never learned.

The knowledge existed without origin—another gift from whoever stripped away my past and rebuilt me as a weapon.

Three green lights on the tiny circuit board confirmed success. No alarms triggered, no alerts sent. I slipped inside, closing the door behind me with calculated silence.

Darkness enveloped me like an old friend. I moved through it without hesitation, my body remembering paths my mind never consciously mapped. My programming demanded stealth even with security disabled—old habits carved into bone and sinew.

Inside, the café’s front operation was meticulous: espresso machines, pastry cases, stacked cups.

But inconsistencies multiplied. The storage areas were too small for the supplies a busy café would require.

Walls didn’t match exterior dimensions. The floor plan was illogical for a service establishment.

I moved silently across the polished concrete floor, noting the unusual density beneath my boots. Reinforced. Able to support far more weight than coffee shop patrons and equipment. Military grade.

Behind a storage shelf loaded with coffee beans, I ran my fingers along the wall seam, finding the nearly invisible break. Muscle memory took over as I pressed specific points in sequence—a code my body remembered while my mind remained blank. The false wall receded, barely a whisper of sound.

“I know you,” I whispered to the technology, strange recognition flowing through me. The concealment mechanism used a particular counterbalance system I recognized in my bones. My fingers found the manual override without searching, like returning to a childhood home I’d never seen.

I disabled the alarm system with disturbing ease, bypassing security protocols that should require specialized knowledge. Yet my hands moved with absolute certainty, executing complex sequences that existed in muscle memory without conscious recollection.

The wall revealed a service elevator. Industrial. Unremarkable except for its presence in a café. I recognized the manufacturer’s subtle hallmarks—the same used in high-security government facilities.

I stepped inside, scanned the control panel with its innocuous numbered buttons, and pressed my palm against it on instinct.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the panel illuminated beneath my touch, displaying floor options that shouldn’t exist in a two-story commercial building: B1 through B5, color-coded by security clearance .

The elevator descended into darkness, carrying me deeper into enemy territory.

Each meter downward increased the weight of what awaited—Brock, Xavier, and somewhere in this labyrinth, Maeve.

Maeve, who touched parts of me I didn’t know survived conditioning.

Maeve, whose life depended on the very skills programmed into me to end it.

For five years, I’d been their perfect weapon—the Reaper.

But now, the irony didn’t escape me. Every skill they drilled into my fractured mind, every technique they forced me to master through endless conditioning—I was about to turn it all against them.

Not just disobeying orders, but weaponizing their own creation against its makers.

The ultimate betrayal they never programmed for.

I could only hope I’d reach her in time—to pull Maeve from the edge of the same dark fate I had once barely escaped. The very thought of her in that place, in their hands, sent a cold weight crashing through my chest. I knew what waited for her. I had lived it.

And yet, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, I was no longer numb.

I was alive—burning with purpose. With feeling.

With rage and hope intertwined. I was a man again, not just a construct following orders.

A man with thoughts, with convictions. And Maeve was at the center of all of them.

I didn’t just want to find her. I needed to.

I wanted to pull her into my arms, to feel her heartbeat against mine.

To tell her that she’d been right all along—that somehow, despite everything, she had found the pieces of me I thought were lost forever.

She had reached into the void where I had hidden everything human, and she had touched it. Brought it back.

And now, no one—not even they—could take that from me again.

The fire in my chest twisted, turned molten with the memory of Brock. Once, we had fought side by side, bled on the same ground. But whatever that had been, it was long gone. Shattered. Yes, betrayal had been entangled between us, embedded deep into everything we’d shared.

But even so… what he had done—what he had allowed—was beyond that.

And Brock would pay for it.

As the elevator slowed, I readied my weapon, checking the magazine and chamber with practiced efficiency. The doors opened with a soft pneumatic hiss, revealing a sterile corridor bathed in white light.

The architecture spoke to me in a language I never learned but understood perfectly—primary corridor with defensive choke points at fifteen-meter intervals, recessed lighting creating shadow pools for surveillance advantage, brushed metal walls preventing handholds during potential combat.

“Standard T-class transitional facility,” I muttered to myself, the knowledge surfacing unbidden.

“Minimal staffing. Mainly automated. Guards on four-hour rotation patterns.” This wasn’t a permanent site.

It was a waystation. A processing facility.

My stomach tightened at the implication—they were preparing to move her somewhere worse .

I moved with lethal efficiency, reading the facility’s layout through subtle markers most would miss—color-coded pipe work running along ceiling edges, the specific width of corridors designed to disadvantage multiple attackers, the placement of security cameras with interlocking fields of vision.

My mind mapped everything automatically, constructing a three-dimensional blueprint.

I’d never been in this facility. Yet I knew every inch of it.

The antiseptic smell hit me with visceral force—industrial cleaners, medical-grade disinfectants, and beneath it all, something that made my heart race with primal fear. My body recognized this environment on a cellular level. This was where people were unmade.

Footsteps approached from around the corner—single guard, approximately eighty-five kilograms based on impact resonance, casual stride pattern indicating routine patrol. I flattened against the wall, calculating his timing based on acoustics bouncing through the corridor.

Three seconds.

Two.

One.