Shockwave Read Online Free

as sharply as any you buy in a store.
    “Whatever name you give them cannot be the truth. For you, this is natural—you don’t know your real name. But this you must never admit. So, to the recruiter, your name is Luca Adrian. It is the only version of my name that I can give to you—mine might still call in the hounds.”
    Like everything else Luc had told me, that had proved true. But it was only part of the truth. What he never told me was that being a person doesn’t lead you to a place where you belong. What can a man who knows nothing but war do with the rest of his life once he leaves the battleground?
    I didn’t blame Luc. How could he tell me? Luc had abandoned the search for that answer long before he found me.
    From the moment I stepped past that first door, I never allowed my thoughts to wander beyond the next step. That’s how your mind works when you’re paid to walk trails to findthose you’ve been paid to kill. They know you’re coming, so your
next
step is all that matters. Congratulating yourself for slipping past a land mine can occupy your attention long enough to make you walk into a no-escape ambush.
    When Luc first found me, I was afraid all the time. But from the moment he sent me away, I never knew fear.
    I don’t mean I was brave. Or even reckless. But fear doesn’t take the high ground when you know the worst thing you might encounter would be better than what you had already escaped. When you already know how the story ends, there’s no suspense. I always knew there was only one way a life like mine could end—the only mystery was its timing. The skills we were trained in were useful only for delaying that ending.
    For some of us, those skills were vastly overvalued.
    T hat was my life, never to fear death, and never to be unwilling to kill.
    But I had seen too many become addicted to that life, and I was terrified of becoming like them. So, when I put together enough money to last me the rest of my bare-bones life, I stopped.
    What goals did I have? Companionship? Who would want me? I carried so much weight that I couldn’t add another’s to mine and still keep walking. Friendship? I’d had friends. I’d watched Luc walk away. I’d carried the shredded body of Patrice back to base. Not back to his home—that was a journey he’d never make.
    A mercenary might have comrades. But friends? Never. For me, that was never
again
—I knew that the loss of a true friend would be another slice off my ever-diminishing heart. And expecting every man in my unit to come back would be insane.
    One reason I had so much money was that I had nothing tospend it on. Nothing I’d ever wanted cost more than an hour of a whore’s time. But even if I’d saved every penny I’d ever earned, I would not possess the ridiculous wealth I had accumulated. That money had come from simply following the instructions of a man I’d never met.
    He may have found me when I took a job that came over the wire. How he found out that my “team” was only myself, I don’t know.
    I don’t know what drove such a man—I’d never met him—but it wasn’t any force I knew about. He was the one who told me when to put all my paper money into gold, when to change the gold back into cash. Time and time again. He was never wrong.
    I liked to think he had been a comrade of Luc’s in the Resistance—he would be a very old man by now, but he wouldn’t need youthful strength to do what he did. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would never know his identity.
    What I did know was that he could ghost past coding barriers the way I could a sleeping sentry—he’d proved that often enough. All I knew was how to access the encrypted line. Whoever was at the other end could waft through info-banks at will. A soundless breeze, too gentle to flutter a single leaf, never touching ground long enough to leave tracks. He’d helped me before. I wasn’t sure why, and never asked.
    I guessed he
could
have been connected to