Page 34 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

As he rounded the corner, my hand clamped over his mouth while my other arm locked around his neck in a choke hold.

His body tensed briefly before going slack as carotid pressure cut blood flow to his brain.

Fifteen seconds of pressure, then release—unconsciousness guaranteed without permanent damage.

I could have easily killed him—I had been trained to do that—but I was no longer Reaper.

I was…me. Whomever that may be. My focus wa s Brock, not the irrelevant guards around me. I’d deal with all of that later.

I dragged his body to a maintenance alcove, positioning him to delay discovery. His security badge and keycard disappeared into my pocket. His weapon remained holstered—gunfire would alert the entire facility. For now, silence was my ally.

A security terminal sat embedded in the wall fifty meters ahead. I approached it with peculiar certainty, fingers navigating the interface before conscious thought completed. The security grid manifested on the screen, revealing guard positions throughout the facility.

Two more patrol units on this level. Four security technicians in the central hub. Minimal staffing confirmed this was a transitional facility, not a permanent site. They weren’t expecting trouble here. This wasn’t where they brought their assets for reconditioning.

I navigated deeper through the corridor network, neutralizing a second guard at junction C4 with pressure to the carotid artery.

When he slumped to the floor, I arranged him in a sitting position against the wall, head positioned to suggest sleep.

A third guard fell silently near Section D, unconscious before he registered my presence.

An administrative section branched off the main corridor—the nerve center for facility operations.

I slipped inside, finding computer terminals and data storage systems. My hands moved to specific cabinets without conscious direction, extracting hard drives.

I didn’t know what information they contained.

I knew they were important. I stashed them in my pack.

There would be time to research them later once I had Maeve by my side.

The central security hub appeared ahead—a glass-walled command center with a panoramic view of monitor arrays. Four technicians inside, all focused on their screens. No one was watching the door. Sloppy operation. If Brock were here, heads would roll for such negligence.

I entered like a ghost, employing pressure-point strikes to render each technician unconscious in seconds. Four bodies slumped over consoles without raising an alarm. The facility’s surveillance system now answered to me alone.

I accessed the central terminal, navigating to facility mapping. Familiar patterns emerged on screen—I knew these layouts intimately. Scrolling through the facility subsections revealed what I needed: medical sublevel, containment wing, and room M-7—isolation chamber.

Maeve.

An urgent care notification flashed beside her room designation. Medical emergency protocol engaged. Vitals destabilizing. My blood crystallized into ice. What had they done to her?

The rage transformed from hot to arctic.

I pulled up the facility’s emergency protocols, examining redundant systems with clinical detachment.

Then, deliberately, I initiated them all simultaneously.

Contradictory emergency protocols cascaded through the system—biohazard containment triggering automated ventilation purge, which conflicted with fire suppression protocols demanding oxygen reduction.

The system wasn’t designed to handle multiple catastrophic scenarios at once.

Alarms began wailing throughout the complex.

Sprinkler systems were activated in some sections, while others initiated lockdown.

Automated security doors slammed shut, then reopened as conflicting commands flooded the system.

Over the facility-wide communication system, three different automated evacuation instructions played simultaneously, creating unintelligible chaos.

I gathered my weapons and moved toward the stairwell access. The medical sublevel awaited, one floor down. As chaos erupted around me, I descended to the medical sublevel.

The white corridors hit me like a physical blow.

My heart hammered against my ribcage, sweat breaking across my skin—combat responses triggering without conscious command.

My body remembered what my mind could not.

I’d been here before. Not this exact facility, but places just like it.

Places where people were disassembled and rebuilt according to specification.

The distant wail of alarms echoed through sterile passageways, bouncing off polished surfaces designed for easy decontamination. Blood and memory both washed away cleanly here.

I moved with a predatory focus, tracking the room designations. M-sector lay ahead. Emergency lights pulsed in erratic patterns, casting disorienting shadows alternating between harsh illumination and oppressive darkness .

A guard stumbled around the corner, disoriented from the conflicting emergency protocols. Recognition flashed across his face a second before I slammed him against the wall, forearm pressing into his trachea.

“M-7,” I growled. “Access codes.”

He struggled, hands clawing at my arm. I released enough pressure to allow speech but let my free hand unsheathe my combat knife, pressing the tip against his knuckle.

“Medical wing requires biometric access,” he gasped. “I can’t just...”

I drove the knife through his index finger. His scream died against my arm. This was merciful compared to everything I could do to him in the blink of an eye.

“Again. M-7 access. Now.”

“Protocol override,” he whimpered as blood streamed down his hand. “Daily authorization codes. In my tablet.”

I retrieved the device from his belt, maintaining pressure on his throat. The second screen confirmed what I already suspected—Maeve’s status showed critical metabolic reactions to administered compounds.

“What are they doing to her?”

“Initial conditioning phase. Chemical receptivity protocol.” His voice trembled. “Breaking down identity centers of the brain. Preparing neural pathways for reprogramming.”

I forced his bloodied thumb against the tablet’s scanner, accessing the medical database. Her vitals flashed in warning colors—heart rate spiking, neurological readings off the chart .

The timing confirmed my worst fears. Minutes, not hours, before permanent neural pathways formed.

The fluorescent lights overhead flickered, momentarily plunging the corridor into darkness.

In that blackout, I was somewhere else—strapped to a medical table, restraints cutting into my wrists as Brock stood over me in surgical scrubs, nodding as blue liquid flowed through IV lines into my arm.

“The resistance is good,” he said to someone I couldn’t see.

“Means he’s fighting. Means he’s worth salvaging.

” I screamed in my binds, desperately trying to set myself free.

But there was no point. I was already almost gone. No return.

The guard’s voice jerked me back to the present. “Look, I’m just security. I don’t know what...”

His hand shifted subtly toward an emergency transmitter on his belt. The movement registered as a threat before conscious thought formed. My knife found his carotid, severing the artery with a single practiced motion. His eyes widened in surprise as warmth spread down my fingers.

A twinge of hesitation rippled through me—unnecessary death, potential information loss—but disappeared beneath cold tactical assessment. No witnesses. No alarms.

I appropriated his security badge and continued deeper into the medical wing, his blood still warm on my fingers, moving with greater urgency as the minutes ticked.

Each second that passed was another second of blue poison filtering through Maeve’s system, rewriting her mind, erasing what made her Maeve .

Two lab technicians emerged from a side corridor, engrossed in discussion about evacuation protocols. I neutralized them efficiently—quick nerve strikes sending them to the floor unconscious—no more unnecessary deaths. Maeve wouldn’t want that.

The security increased as I approached the M-sector.

Reinforced doors. Biometric scanners. Camera density doubled.

I moved through their defenses methodically, disabling each layer of protection.

My movements became increasingly efficient as memories of similar facilities surfaced—not complete recollections but body knowledge, muscle memory that responded to this environment with practiced familiarity.

I reached a monitoring station positioned above a surgical theater.

Through reinforced glass, I saw Maeve strapped to a medical table, body convulsing against restraints.

Her skin had taken on a blue-gray pallor, veins darkening beneath the surface.

Electrodes monitored her vitals on surrounding screens, numbers flashing in warning colors.

Medical staff moved urgently around her.

She looked like…herself, still, though I suspected that was because her eyes were closed.

It was the eyes that would show if one was permanently gone.

I was terrified of what I might find once they opened.

My gaze drifted to her left. Brock stood at the head of the table, dressed in surgical scrubs, his posture betraying impatience rather than concern. He wanted her there. Somehow, he knew how much she meant to me. He more than likely knew I’d be coming for her. I activated the audio feed.

“Sir, we should consider evacuating,” a nervous doctor said, fingers tapping against a clipboard. “All emergency protocols triggering simultaneously.”