Game of Dust and Ashes (Book Two in the Covert Operations series)

Prologue

In the darkness, he awoke.

He was lying down as his eyes opened to the blackness. He felt something hard and uncomfortable beneath his body. He could feel the cool dampness emanating from the air around him, seeping into his skin. He felt pain. It was everywhere, so strong and unyielding that he barely knew anything other than the pain.

He could see very little, just dark shadows. What he couldn't see was more significant than what he could. He couldn't see the cracks that ran above him in the ceiling. He couldn't see the wires that were hooked into his skin and the electrodes that had been pushed against his temples. He couldn't see the woman that sat in the chair at the opposite end of the room from where he lay, a clipboard held in her nimble hands as she glanced at the machines he was attached to.

The man was near-naked, clad only in a pair of simple black trousers. His chest and feet were bare. He had dark hair that was trussed up and messy, a wild and unkempt mass around his head. His nose was straight and angular and his jaw was strong. There was a small scar above his left eye.

His mind was blank. It wasn't because he wasn't aware enough or conscious enough to form thoughts. It was because there were no thoughts for him to form. He could remember nothing. He knew nothing of his past. Not where he lived. Not who he loved. Not even his name.

He was nothing but a blank slate.

He felt his fingers twitch against the bed beneath him. He moved them against the soft feel of sheets that covered the hard cot. He could feel the pull of wires in his arm as he twitched them and the motion caused his heart to thud involuntarily hard in his chest.

The monitor to his right beeped erratically as his heart rate sped up. He didn't know where he was. Didn't know why he was panicking. He just knew that this place didn't feel right. It didn't feel like somewhere he belonged. At the same time, he wasn't sure that he had ever belonged somewhere. It wasn't a notion he was familiar with or, if it was, he didn't remember it.

He heard, rather than saw, the woman rise from her chair across the room. The panic rose up in him again but he shoved it back down as he heard the heels of her shoes click across the floor towards him. The man tried to rise but found that he couldn't quite move. There were straps binding him down, he could feel them now if he concentrated.

"Shh, shh," the woman said. He couldn't see her, only the shadowy outline of her body. It did little to console his anxiety. "You're okay." He felt her lean over him and press something. He heard the click as she flicked a switch beside his bed.

And then, suddenly, light.

It was too bright for his eyes and he found that he shrank away from the source curling into himself painfully against the hard pillow on the cot. He turned his head down away from the lamp that loomed over his cot and closed his eyes. The blackness was gone, replaced by red behind his eyelids. The woman waited a moment; waited, until the light wasn't quite so bright any more, until he was able to squint and make out more than her silhouette.

"Hello," she said to him when he was able to look at her. "It's nice to finally see those eyes awake. I was beginning to wonder if we ever would."

The man said nothing. He just stared at her, wondering to himself who she was. Were they friends? Her tone suggested it. It was warm and soft and kind—the way someone might speak to someone they liked. He didn't know for certain. He couldn't remember anyone he liked or even disliked for that matter.

She waited for him to speak for a minute longer and then smiled when she realized he wasn't going to. "A little disoriented?" she guessed. "That's understandable. You've been asleep a very long time. Do you remember what happened?"