Killer Instinct

Chapter XVIII

XVII.

I sat in my hotel room alone, the very room Misha and I has shared in what seemed like years ago, staring blankly at the Tokyo skyline, the night reflecting the view and my face back at me.

I sighed. I wasn't supposed to come back. I wasn't supposed to be alive. I was supposed to be gone forever, out of the reach of The Resistance Forever.

I knew that I was the ace up the sleeve, the grenade in the back pocket, the suicide kamikaze bomber that always came through.

But after reliving my deaths at the hands of Doug Spielman over and over again, nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but him. My other half. The one that I loved. The one that I had forsaken and betrayed.

Grief racked me, as I pressed my forehead to the cool glass. It would be so easy. So easy to pretend like I didn't know; like I didn't remember. I wanted to pretend that I didn't know what brand of monster I was. I was the worst kind of villain; the one that spends his whole life assuming that she is the hero.

Apollo. He took up actual physical space in my body. His essence, his presence, a part of me that I had been cut off from, but could now freely feel. Things were different in this life; he wasn't aware just like I hadn't been. We were a powerful pair. But we had been built in twos, James had purposely omitted when he had briefed me in Henry Tower for the first time. When I had first learned that I was a clone of myself; a perfect genetic copy retaining everything from my former lives: memories, emotions and skills included.

Technically I couldn't die. With the proper medical and scientific team, I could live forever. That hadn't been the point. I was built to protect humanity from itself. Now it seemed, I was protecting humanity from a byproduct of itself. Us.

And I wanted to care about Doug Spielman subjugating humanity and taking over the world. I wanted to care about the fight I had fought so long.

But I couldn't. I wanted the one thing I had been deprived of throughout all of my lives.

Apollo.

"Isley?" His voice.

I spun around, and he was there, as if my longing for him had simply conjured him up.

"Apollo," His named sounded strange on my tongue. Almost desperate. It took everything in me not to go to him, wrap in my arms. Feel his warmth and his heart beating against mine. Visions of it on top of his dead body, still warm and dripping blood haunted me. We had to leave. We had to run away.

"Look, I don't know why I'm here." He shoved his dark hair away from his face, looking tired and frustrated. "It's like I couldn't help myself. Ever since we kissed, I can't stop thinking about you. It's like I knew you wanted me and so I came to you." He glared at me. "I need you to stop doing whatever the fuck you're doing to me. It's not amusing nor funny."

"I'm not doing anything," I stammered, my heart beating wildly. So he felt it? He could feel how much I needed him.

"Stop lying to me." He strode across the room, and gripped my shoulders. A thrill of heat passed through me.

"I'm not lying-"

His lips came down on mine, hard, fast, hot. Teeth clashing, tongues tangling, his hand in wrapped around the fine strands of my hair, pulling to better angle my jaw. The gesture was so familiar, so Apollo, that tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

I kissed him back with everything in me, my body hot, so hot, clenching, desire bursting through me rapidly like gun fire, exploding beneath my skin.

I came alive.

"What the fuck is happening," He growled at me between kisses, pulling back to see my face. "You've threatened everything I've spent my life working to accomplish." His grip tightened, painfully, making me moan aloud as he pressed himself against my hips. I could feel him, hard, oh God, my knees weakened. I wanted in that moment more than I had ever wanted in my life.