The Seraphim Sequence

Chapter 2-1

Chapter Two

Nasira pulled up outside Jay’s apartment block and unbuckled her seatbelt.

‘I’m going in alone,’ Damien said.

Nasira suppressed the urge to draw her pistol. ‘The hell you are.’

‘You’ll blow your chance before you even set foot in his door,’ Damien said.

Who the hell did he think he was? She was the one who didn’t trust Jay. She drummed the steering wheel.

‘Don’t even want him anyway,’ she said.

Damien shrugged. ‘I don’t have to—’

‘Just do it.’

He got out of the car and made his way toward Jay’s apartment block: a cuboid green and hot-pink building that looked like a misshapen watermelon.

This was the last place Nasira wanted to be right now—at Damien and Jay’s doorstep asking for help. They were good at what they did, she’d give them that, but they weren’t exactly the sort she’d bet her life on. After the Desecheo Island incident, stealing the Chimera vectors, she’d been more than relieved to part ways with them. Jay was charming and he meant well, but he was also a pain in the f*****g ass.

She was here, she reminded herself, for Sophia. While Owen Freeman, the leader of the Akhana, might want the best for Sophia, he wasn’t around right now. He was tucked away in a Shadow Akhana base somewhere. The Fifth Column would like nothing better than to dispose of the leader of a resistance group like the Akhana, comprised mostly of former Fifth Column employees and servicemen and women. Not everyone under the Fifth Column’s employ was completely comfortable serving the psychopaths of the civilized world.

Freeman had assigned DC as Sophia’s bodyguard, but all he seemed to do was get in the way. And he didn’t genuinely want to protect her; he did it only because he was under orders. Nasira and DC maintained a mutual respect, but it was difficult at times. Nasira was the only one who really cared about Sophia.

Nasira almost laughed. When Sophia had first attempted to deprogram her a couple of years ago, she’d wanted to kill her. She’d wanted to separate Sophia’s head from her shoulders with a few strokes of her knife. But now Sophia was her closest friend—her only friend. Just as Damien and Jay were like brothers, she and Sophia were sisters. And now Sophia needed help. Outside help. If anyone could understand that, she hoped they could.

After the hurricane in New York had decimated the Akhana base they were stationed at, everyone had migrated to other Akhana bases, mostly in the US, some to Canada, others to parts of Asia, and others to Australia. Damien and Jay had long ago declined Sophia’s offer to join the Akhana, and Nasira had no idea how long they’d remained in New York, or even if they had remained there at all after they’d dropped off the grid entirely. It had taken her the best part of a month to track Damien down, and she’d only managed it because he’d left a New Zealand post office box number with Passport Pete.

The more she thought about it, the more she was certain Damien had purposely left that loose end untied. Maybe he wanted to be found.