Prototype Read Online Free Page A

peace.”
    “With your other husband?” he clips out.
    “No,” I say too quickly, then take a deep breath to steady myself.
    There is an audible sigh on the other end. “Emma, please come home. Let me take care of you.”
    A single, hard laugh bursts free from deep inside me. “By giving me limited access to the world? By forcing me into having your children, then giving my daughters to one of your camps?”
    “Our children will never know that life. They don’t have to, Emma. There are benefits to being who I am. You only got a glimpse of what I’m capable of doing for you.”
    What he is capable of doing
to
me is the only thing concerning me, and that is why I will never return. “Will you call off the search or not?”
    “What kind of man would I be if I gave up the woman I love more than life?”
    “You do not know what love is. If you did, you would let me go.” I hang up before hearing his response. The cell clatters to the marbled floor and I crush it under my shoe.
    Why did I think that would work? I know Declan too well, and he always gets what he wants.
What he pays for,
as he so eloquently put it to me once. According to the laws in the east, I am his property. The Burke family purchased my host as a teenager, and because I am a clone his company created, he has every right to me. But I cannot accept that. Not with freedom still in my grip.
    I step around the plant into the view of the casino. One glance into the teeming room reveals new trouble. White-and-gold-uniformed men stand near tables, their attention seemingly somewhere else, but I know this tactic. The red coats in Declan’s labs used to trail me too. They are not as unassuming as they would like me to believe.
    Two of the security men throw something that zips through the air so fast I am clueless about its purpose until my arms, elbows to shoulders, are strapped tight to my rib cage. My legs are restrained from knees to hips. They have used some sort of wire to snare me. I lose my balance and drop to my butt like a stone.
    One man, the head of security according to the extra flair on his uniform, raises an arm. “We got her. Someone call the hotline.”
    They will
not
send me back to Declan. I twist my ankles around and pull up my pant leg. I finger my knife free, then run it up between my thighs, cutting the wire.
    Patrons at tables scramble out of their seats, crowding the aisles. Others take to using the tabletops for their escape, toppling hundreds of chips on the way. Security fights to get through the mob while I work my way into a standing position.
    I am unable to free my arms before someone barrels into me and we skid across the marble floor. My back hits a clay pot so hard the pot cracks open and potting soil spills all over me. I thrust the knife into my attacker’s thigh. He yells and his weight disappears, taking my blade with him.
    On my way back into a standing position, I shoulder another man in the stomach. After that, any route out I may have had closes like the lid of my recent coffin. I allow those buried fighting instincts to take over and ignore the alarmed warnings in my head, because
I will get out of this.
I have to.
    Someone snatches my ponytail and yanks my head back. My back hits his chest and I slam my heel down on his instep. He cries out and pushes me right into another man, who catches me by the shoulders. The man looks nothing like Declan—none of them do—but he may as well be a perfect representation. The determined set of his jaw. The tight grip of his hands. Letting this man, or any other, take me so easily cannot happen. Not like this. I will die first.
    I bring my knee up between his legs and he releases me with a grunt. I strike him in the chin with a solid kick, then immediately aim another to my right, connecting with a chest. I whirl around with a jumping roundhouse to the front again, then tilt forward to balance a kick back into the man coming in behind me.
    Finally, the way is clear to run.