LOGINCedric shoved the screen door open with his shoulder and caught it before it could bang shut.The cold slapped him awake. He stood on the porch in a thin shirt and let it sting. Inside, the family lay scattered across the cots, and half of them were faking sleep. He'd been listening to it for an hour. Nobody breathes that evenly when they're really out.The stars were thick over the trees. He stared at them until his eyes watered.Behind him the boards creaked. Bare feet, slow. Then Gianni's arms came around his waist and a chin settled on his shoulder."Go to bed," Gianni said."I can't.""I know. You've been out here forty minutes."Cedric snorted. "You counted?""I always count." Gianni kissed the side of his neck and stayed there a second. "Scared?"Cedric took his time. "Yeah. Really scared.""Of the Bureau?""No. I'm not even scared of dying. I got over that years ago." He gripped the rail harder. "It's you. And them. I'm scared of leaving."He tipped his head toward the window,
Gianni hit the door before it finished closing.He went straight for Marcus, fist already swinging, and Alex caught him around the chest just in time. Leo grabbed his arm. Gianni dragged them both two steps across the floor before they got him stopped."You brought him here?" His voice cracked on the last word. "Cedric, are you out of your mind?"The safe house was one low room of concrete, cold enough that everyone's breath showed. Somebody had left a lantern burning on the table. The family had been waiting there for hours, and from the look of them, none had slept."The man who ruined us," Lily said. She was crying, and she was too angry to wipe it away. "You walked him in through the front door like a guest."Mia had backed up against the wall with her arms crossed over her stomach. She didn't say a word. Sera stared at Marcus like she was trying to decide if he was really standing there. The new clones sat bunched together on a cot, and one of them kept whispering to the others t
The water was cold enough to stop his heart.It slammed into him like a wall, and then it was everywhere, pulling him down, spinning him end over end until he couldn't tell the surface from the riverbed. Something hard caught his ribs. Something else raked across his thigh. He tried to kick upward and the current dragged him back, indifferent, enormous. His lungs burned. His shoulder, already wrecked from the fall out of the SUV, flared white. The last thing he saw was a thin gray light far above him, wavering and shrinking, and then even that went out.He woke to the smell of woodsmoke.For a long time he lay still and didn't try to understand it. There was a ceiling of rough-hewn beams over him, and the crackle of a stove somewhere to his left, and a weight of thick wool blankets piled to his chin. His ribs had been wrapped tight. Someone had cleaned the gash on his thigh and stitched it with neat, careful knots. Under the woodsmoke hung another smell, faint and sour, one he knew fr
The door banged open so hard it bounced off the wall.Gianni was through it before Cedric could get his feet under him. Dirt on his face, a long tear in his jacket, eyes red like he hadn't slept in a week. Two steps and he had Cedric in his arms, squeezing so tight that Cedric's cracked ribs lit up. He didn't say a word about it. He pressed his face into Gianni's neck and breathed in gun oil and sea salt, the smell of every safe house they'd ever shared, and something in his chest that had been clenched for days finally let go."I thought you were dead," Gianni said. His voice broke in the middle. "I actually thought, that's it, he's gone.""Not yet." Cedric's hands were shaking, and he couldn't make them stop. He just held on. "Not tonight."Lily hit them next, all elbows and crying, wedging herself into the gap. "You're here," she kept saying, like she needed to say it a dozen times before it counted. "You're actually here."Then Mia was there, and Sera, and Alex, who tried to look
The river hit like a slap from a giant hand. Cedric went under, tumbled, lost up and down, and kicked until his head broke the surface and he dragged in air that tasted like mud and diesel."Aaron!" He spun in the current. "Nora!"The truck was already half gone. Its back end stuck out of the water at a steep angle, groaning, and the rear doors had burst open. Heads bobbed in the dark. Some kids clung to chunks of wreckage. Some were thrashing. A few weren't doing anything at all, just slipping under without a sound.He dove.The water was black and so cold it made his teeth ache. He found a shoulder, grabbed a fistful of wet shirt, and kicked for the surface with a boy of about nineteen hanging off him like dead weight. He shoved him toward a floating door panel and went back down. Somewhere to his left Aaron was doing the same, one arm bleeding into the river where a piece of metal had opened his forearm. He didn't seem to notice.Down, up. Down, up. Cedric's lungs burned and his ar
Cedric put his shoulder into the wall, felt nothing give, and went back to pacing.Four steps across, four back. The cell was cramped and freezing, with no window and a drain in the floor he tried not to look at. They'd taken his boots, his watch, even his belt. He had nothing to fight with and no way to tell Gianni he was still alive. He dug a thumbnail into his palm and kept walking. His head was all he had left, and it had gotten him out of worse.He was running through the ceiling tiles for the third time when the lock clicked.The door opened without a sound. A guy in a lab coat slipped in and shut it behind him too fast, like someone might be watching. Mid twenties, skinny, ink smeared on his fingers, sweat at his hairline. He looked at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anywhere but Cedric."I'm Dr. Aaron Kim," he whispered. "I work for the Bureau. I don't agree with what they're doing."Cedric stopped. He'd heard that line before, usually right before something sharp came out.
Cedric stopped, then he turned around slowly.Falcone was looking at him now, really looking, his phone forgotten on the table. His expression was unreadable, but something was happening behind those eyes, some calculation, some recognition that Cedric didn't understand."Come here," Falcone said.
The wire itched.Cedric stood in the club's bathroom, full of black marble and gold fixtures that probably cost more than his entire existence, and stared at his reflection. The crisp white shirt they'd given him was tailored within an inch of its life, tucked into black slacks that actually fit fo
The guy Cedric was just about to fuck ran off, leaving Cedric’s alone to scramble for an exit strategy, What the hell was he supposed to do? Talk his way out? Run? Fight? Beg?There was absolutely nowhere for him to hide, the alley had only one single exit, currently blocked by three guys who looke
“Shut the hell up, don’t take your mouth off my cock unless I say so.”Cedric huffed with annoyance, dragging his teeth along the underside of the guy’s cock so it would hurt, as payback for talking to him like he was some cheap fuck. Well, he was one, but still…“Cut that out. What kind of pornsta







