Into Twilight: The Stefan Mendoza Series, #1

By P R Adams

He does the government's dirty work. When he's double-crossed by one of his own, he'll stop at nothing to take out the trash.

Korea, 22nd Century. Surrender isn't in Stefan Mendoza's DNA. So when a traitor betrays his black-ops team, he alone pushes through the torture and escapes with revenge burning in his mind. On the verge of a systems failure, he taps into his underground network for a set of cybernetic limbs. But his high-tech recovery comes at a heavy price— an assassination hit on a rising political star. 

Filled with resentment for the cutthroat world of contract killers, he uses the hit job as a cover to track down the traitor. When he discovers he's competing with other assassins for the same political target, he starts to piece together a sinister conspiracy that could lead him straight to the shadowy figure behind his betrayal. 

Trapped within a hotbed of corruption, can Mendoza exact his revenge and win his freedom or will he spiral deeper into the twisted game of brokered death? 

Into Twilight is the first book in The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy of high-octane cyberpunk techno-thrillers. If you like street-smart soldiers, complex conspiracies, and immersive sci-fi settings, then you'll love P.R. Adams noir-style page-turner.

Buy Into Twilight to take a walk on the dark side of justice today! 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Promethean Tales
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386197850

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The shakes had me bad. They always did when shit was about to get real. I got up from the bed, felt the warmth of the silk-smooth hotel bedspread transition to coolness. The air conditioner droned, struggling against my anxious heat. My clothes—brown button-down shirt, gray slacks, grayer wool socks—clung to my skin. The Koreans handled the humidity so much better. As if I didn’t already feel like a foreigner: my maternal grandfather’s six-foot-tall, thick-chested frame; my father’s black hair, pale brown eyes, and faintly copper-brown skin; my maternal grandmother’s pronounced nose, broken during Krav Maga sparring gone a little too far.

Foreigner, definitely.

I parted the curtains. The street below coiled between the business park’s diamond-bright towers. The sky was gunmetal gray, burned through to the west by an acetylene torch sun. To the north, ash-white smoke blew out to sea, the ghost of old Seoul. Towering robot vehicles carried radioactive debris scraped from the heart of the ruins to the harbor in Incheon, passing them on to robot ships, which smothered the remnants of the once-grand city in concrete before depositing everything in the depths of the Philippine Sea.

How many millions had died in the desperate nuclear blast the North Koreans had finally delivered in a futile attempt to avert defeat? No more than were vaporized in Pyongyang and Hamhung in the retaliatory strike, certainly. And how many had died in the subsequent depression? Too many.

My data device vibrated at the same moment I heard a chime from the speakers grafted to the bone behind my ears, then a voice. It was distant chatter until I tapped the fine mesh that was a second skin running across my right palm to crank up the volume.

Even before I heard the voice or saw the identity on the inside of my shades, I knew it was Stovall. Brady Stovall, Agency operator, mission head, and man of his own dreams.

I tapped again, keying the mic built into my shades. What?

Stovall’s face filled the lenses. Handsome, with curly brown hair, a cleft chin, and washed-out blue eyes, he’d had a rough life and it showed. Stefan, we need to talk. It came out all earnest and smarmy. Typical Stovall.

So talk. I hated dealing with him, the entitled little prince. He hated dealing with me, the know-it-all hick from Idaho.

If something happens, I want you to have Jacinto ride on Danny’s connection.

What, run the drones? I chuckled in disbelief.

Jacinto de Guzman was my Gridhound, what some liked to call a hacker. Second-generation Filipino American. He was a shady little fuck who was becoming shadier and less reliable by the day—too many drugs and who knew what else. And I was running out of patience with his dismissiveness when stress hit. He had a big head and skinny body, greasy black hair, dark gold skin with tattoos and piercings, and he liked to dress in a black leather jacket and pants, even when it drew unwanted attention.

Danny. That was Danny Chowla, my sniper. Former Marine, ace sniper, expert drone operator, and about as laid back as a human could be. Until it was go time. Then he became the one person you wanted watching you from the sky. To those who didn’t know him, he was a lean guy with a big nose and twitchy brown eyes, someone who could be Arab or Indian or maybe even Hispanic like me. But get on the wrong side of him, and he could drop you with a right hook you never saw coming. Or take your head off with a sniper round. I kept him separated from Jacinto normally. It was the only way to keep the little shit alive.

Danny won’t buy it, I said.

He will if you pitch it to him. Sell it as a good training exercise for Jacinto.

Is it? He can barely keep up with everything going on in the Grid anymore.

Stovall sighed—imperious, condescending. He’s still the best you’re going to find.

I’m thinking I’ll start exploring my options when we get back to the States.

Always so sure you’ll come out alive. You know the odds of anyone reaching fifty doing what you do are less than ten percent. Every mission, your odds go down. That’s got to worry you.

I wanted to track Stovall’s location in the hotel, kick in his door, and punch his teeth in. One day. I don’t need to reach fifty, Stovall.

Oh, right, right. I forgot. Saving up for retirement. How’d you do after the market crash? He snorted. You’re just another unmarked grave outside a prison compound. That’s all people like you are any good for.

That and pulling the trigger to keep precious little princes like you from dirtying your chickenshit hands meddling in foreign affairs. One day, this is all going to come back around and bite us in the—

The chime again. Jacinto this time. I added him to the call.

Movement in the Grid. Jacinto sounded dulled by something very illegal.

The disagreement with Stovall would have to wait. What do you see?

Rhee. Moving toward the elevator. Jacinto’s breath caught. Bodyguards. Full entourage. This is it. Vehicles moving into position outside the lobby.

Feed the channel. I stroked my palm with the pattern to mute and open a text to Stovall, then dictated: We’ll finish this later.

He texted back: Deploy, but maintain a safe distance. Remember to have Jacinto run the drone.

I disconnected Stovall and came off mute. Looks like the team’s getting the feed now. I pulled a display sliver from my pants pocket: clear plastic, palm-sized, flimsy. The circuit fabric came to life, turned rigid, and slowly built out a merged image culled from security video feeds, commercial Grid traffic, and our own drone data. A simulacrum of Rhee stepped into the elevator on the thirtieth floor, joined by seven other people, six of them dangerous-looking. Black suits and ties, black sunglasses, shoulder holsters, barely perceptible scars on hands and jaws where cyber-implants had been inserted.

PSS. Presidential Secret Service. Another team would be in the lobby, a third waiting with the vehicles.

Any sign of Yuh’s team, Jacinto?

Yuh Hyun-kyung. Chinese-trained North Korean assassin. Terrorist. Person of interest. I flipped the display sliver over and scanned through the bots Jacinto had hunting down Yuh. All green.

Jacinto got out a half syllable, but my attention was on the feed, where a signal had crept toward amber. I tapped it, and the data stream turned into a summary. A van and two cars—boxy Kias, rentals—were heading south on the Dongbu Expressway.

We have a potential. I drilled down into a detailed view. Dongbu Expressway. Rentals flagged as questionable. Possible Yuh connections. Headed south. Nine minutes and closing.

The display sliver powered down and went back into my pants pocket as I peeled my raincoat from the desk chair and hurried to the elevator, re-keying to speak to the team. We’re live. Jacinto, Clemens needs—

On his way to the garage. Danny, too.

Good. Steal whatever bandwidth you need. I want constant updates.

Jacinto snorted. Riding government priority channels. Feeds will be live.

You have your door secure? For someone so aware of computers and signals precautions, he was notoriously weak on physical security.

Yeah.

Braced with a chair?

I’m good. A growl, like he thought it was intimidating.

I narrated a text to Danny as I hurried into the elevator lobby: Special request today. Play nice with Jacinto. Let him tool around in your drone. Just have a kill switch ready for his connection.

Danny replied as only he could: Sure. Kill switch.

I connected to the whole team. I want two vehicles. Clemens, get the gear ready.

On my way, yeah? Danny, he will get his gear and head to the perch at the Samsung Tower construction site. The big Swede huffed as he spoke over the echoes of hurried, booming steps; he was in a stairwell. Danny would be in the lead, long legs and arms pumping.

Norimitsu held the elevator door for me. Skintight black pullover shirt, slightly looser black pants, mirror sunglasses—he was compact, and the clothing made him seem even smaller. It was all misleading. He was quick and wiry strong. Bright elevator lights drained color and vigor from his golden skin, thinned slicked-back black hair, and creased his squarish face with wrinkles. Sweat sheened his forehead.

Trouble?

Ichi. He set a forest green gym bag on the elevator floor and tugged black grip gloves on as the doors closed.

I bowed my head. Fighting with Tae-hee again?

Norimitsu lifted the gym bag; it was perfectly centered. The child knows no discipline and does not respect her mother.

Sixteen. Tough age.

The slight tilt of Norimitsu’s head said I was taking the wrong tack.

You said she was doing well with her training.

The problem is with her academic studies. It will be resolved when I return to Miyoshi. He sucked in a breath, then said, Sharks eat their young.

I smiled. Children were a distraction, but he was in the moment now. They left me perplexed and always wondering how the human race survived. Ichi was a good kid, but she was old enough now to think she knew it all. And then there was the unspoken stigma of having a Korean mother.

Tae-hee. The only person who could have ever threatened my friendship with Norimitsu.

Norimitsu turned toward me slightly. Traffic will be light.

If Rhee’s convoy heads south, negotiations are done for the day. He’ll be heading for the Blue House. If he headed north.

The door opened, and I stepped back, allowing two runners in, each shouldering the other as they jockeyed for position. Roberto and Morena Porto, my drivers. Our Brazilian twins, decked out in charcoal gray pants and royal blue windbreakers. They sported the same hairdo: shoulder-length, styled to soften their square jaws. Mirror shades rested on wide, bronze noses beneath thick, black eyebrows.

I needed the more disciplined of the two. Morena, you take lead with me.

Her thick lips curled down in disappointment. You say he heads south?

"If he heads south."

We got off at the second floor and hurried toward the parking garage connection. The outside air was like running into a barrier. Three sports vehicles were parked just beyond the entrance, the body of each washed in waves of color—metallic green, sea green, brilliant orange blossom. Animated designs shifted: a dragon, a jet, a cheetah. Hidden behind concrete support beams deeper in, our rides didn’t stand out as much. Silver Mitsubishi Sparrow cars with smooth curves and dangerous slopes that were remarkable only in the manufacturer. They hummed to life as we approached, now in pairs. The space just beyond the vehicles had earlier held a Kawasaki Super-Ninja, a black-and-chrome indulgence that did not match our inconspicuous specs.

It was typical Danny and worth it.

Clemens crawled out of the back seat of the closer Sparrow, a black rectangular box in each hand. His wide face was dull, pasty, piled over by thick blond hair. His blue eyes were vacant, revealing nothing, like crystal. He tossed a box to me, the other to Norimitsu. The Swede jerked his head toward the cars as he looked the twins over. Under the driver seats for yours, he said.

The twins didn’t break stride.

I tapped a finger sensor, and the box unfurled into a shoulder holster with a Remington R60 automatic pistol. Pure ceramic composite construction, and un-chipped, they could pass through many detection systems, were immune to hacking, and couldn’t be traced to anyone. And they left control to the shooter. I slipped the holster on and let the strap’s smart material adjust until snug against my shirt, then pulled my coat on over.

As I sank into the passenger seat next to Morena, I said, Jacinto, status please.

Convoy’s moving toward Dongbu.

Clemens grumbled as he slid in behind me. The Sparrow was advertised for four but meant for two. At nearly six-foot-four and 250, he was bigger than me and hating life.

Something started to gnaw at the back of my mind. It’d been there but just a whisper until now. Any imagery on those vehicles?

Still searching the security cameras. Jacinto was testy.

Morena accelerated as we descended to the street below. Concrete and LED lights flashed past in a blur. I trusted her driving, but I had to close my eyes while we shot through the parking garage.

What about video from Dongbu? I didn’t like pressing Jacinto, but the whisper was shifting to a scream.

Smoked windows. The testiness was more obvious. Backtracking. A minute.

Our Sparrow flitted through traffic, and I spotted the last of the convoy—big and black and immune to the smog and dust. They’re heading south on Dongbu. Danny, you copy?

The Ninja’s roar was a muffled purr through Danny’s microphone. Yeah, I’m pulling into the construction site. I’ll keep an eye south. I’m moving the drones now.

Seconds sped by. We shifted lanes and shot up the on ramp as the light shifted to red. In the rearview, Roberto ran the red and struggled to avoid a banged-up SUV. Morena smirked. Sibling rivalry.

I pulled the display sliver out again and set it against the palm of my left hand. The three rentals were two minutes out and closing fast.

Check Feed Four, Jacinto said.

I swiped and tapped and Feed Four came up. Not simulacra but actual video. Choppy but good resolution. Six people exited an apartment building. Scrawny, sickly. NoKos—North Koreans. Four men, two women. Dressed simply. Sunglasses. Three men hurried into the bowels beneath the apartment building, and the Kia van and cars appeared a few moments later.

Two people for a van that size? I watched the video until the vehicles disappeared. My pulse ticked up. Something was definitely wrong. What are the odds they could get their hands on explosives or materials to brew their own?

Nope. All six on the watch list. Simple jobs—construction, delivery, robotics repair. They come near anything dangerous, they’re arrested.

What about ramming? Could that van be heavy enough to knock these SUVs around?

One. Maybe.

Morena snorted and glanced at me. These PSS guys, they know what they do. No van gets close enough to do anything dangerous.

It was true. The whole operation seemed unnecessary, but Stovall knew something. The Agency wouldn’t stand up a team of contractors otherwise, especially not an expensive one, and my team was premium.

I took our channel private and encrypted—no Stovall snooping. This is just us. I need your thoughts. Norimitsu? Jacinto? Danny? I glanced at Morena and twisted around to look at Clemens. Does this seem odd?

Clemens shook his head.

Morena shrugged. Yuh makes three attempts on Rhee, right? The Agency stops one, the Koreans the others. This just another attempt. Right?

Roberto wouldn’t say anything different. It was all a paycheck to him.

Danny whistled. I’ve got the vehicles in sight, doing eighty and accelerating. I got two birds at high altitude over the expressway. Hey?

Yeah? I wanted opinions, not updates, but I needed both, and it was always tough keeping Danny talking, especially if he’d let his meds dispenser run low.

Uh, no helicopters in the area. No drones, either. We own the sky.

Jacinto said, He’s right. Clear for miles.

Norimitsu’s voice was silk on the line. Rhee has enemies. Within the military. Hardliners.

I flipped the display over and pulled up Rhee’s files. His rivals wanted tighter security, more clamping down on NoKos, greater alignment with the corporate giants like Samsung and Hyundai.

And liquidation of NoKo political prisoners.

I looked down and to my left, trying to put the pieces together. What’s the angle for the Agency? Are they being played? Were we being played?

Danny said, Yeah, um, we’re out of time, guys. They’re not much more than a mile back and closing fast. I don’t have a clean shot on anyone, but I could try for the van driver.

No. At the speed they were going, it sounded too risky. Roberto, let Norimitsu take a look at them.

The image on the display shifted to a slightly delayed feed from the camera in Norimitsu’s glasses. Roberto had slowed until parallel with the lead car. Thermographic video showed two human forms within. Backscatter imagery showed potential assault weapons between the front seats. Roberto drifted back to the second car, and the imagery showed the same.

We’ve got assault weapons in the cars. I drilled down to examine the passenger. Extra magazines in thigh pouches. What’s in the van?

The Sparrow drifted back and adjusted speed to match the van.

Norimitsu sighed. If they have assault weapons…

He didn’t need to finish. The decision was already made, but I had to know—

Machine gun fire flooded Norimitsu’s channel at the same time a hole erupted in the van’s side. I was barely aware of Roberto’s head and shoulders spraying across the dashboard and windshield before the video cut out.

I flinched, for a second unwilling to accept what I’d seen. Morena twisted around. What was—

The trailing Sparrow twisted and flipped, then it went airborne, arcing end-over-end. Shattering. Shedding plastic panels, spraying glass like rain. Leaving only the chassis. Twisted, crumpled.

Norimitsu.

The NoKos’ rentals accelerated.

I brought Stovall back onto the channel. NoKos have engaged. Jacinto, hit them with everything you’ve got.

Clemens didn’t wait for my signal. He pulled two R60s and twisted around, tracking the closest car and opening fire. The vehicle between our Sparrow and the car braked and swerved, clogging the lane, leaving the NoKos exposed. The R60 bullets tore through the Sparrow’s body and shattered its rear driver-side window, and blew out the Kia’s windshield. Armor-piercing rounds punched neat holes in the driver and passenger. They seemed unaffected at first, the passenger hauling up her assault rifle, then they both spat up blood and slumped in their seats.

Morena jerked the wheel to the right to cut off the second Kia car as it came around the failing lead vehicle. I had a good look into the smoked glass of the driver’s side, then opened fire. Glass exploded, gloved hands flew up, and blood tracked down the driver’s lifeless face. The Kia drifted into the retaining wall, and the scream of twisted metal and cracking plastic reached me over the drone of the engine and tires.

The van shot past, and Clemens blew out the windows on the passenger side. I looked past Morena, saw tears streaming down her cheek, and I knew I didn’t have to tell her what to do.

The Sparrow leapt forward and slammed into the van’s front passenger wheel well. I grabbed at anything and everything as we fishtailed, then she had us under control.

Something moved in the back of the van—big, heavy, rocking the vehicle.

Morena braked and slammed the wheel to the left just as a machine gun tore chunks of concrete out of the road ahead of us. I had a vague sense of something quadrupedal, almost cat-like, and then the Sparrow was jumping forward again, even with the van.

Clemens, the driver, I shouted.

The big Swede was already firing. The van twisted and jerked, and a part of the sliding side door crumpled and fell away, giving us a clear look at the slumping driver.

And the robot in the cargo area.

It was half again the size of a tiger, with armored plates covering joints and chest. The feline impression came from the head, which was like a puma’s thanks to the armor.

Three eyes at the center of the face locked onto us. The thing leapt through what remained of the door, tearing it off like so much aluminum foil.

Morena had time to mutter a curse before impact. The robot’s metallic front paws punched through the windshield and into her chest. Blood shot onto the dashboard. The impact rocked the Sparrow up onto two tires; I fell against the belt and door. Concrete whipped past, unnaturally close to my right.

I pressed a hand against the window for balance.

Clemens fired, but his bullets couldn’t get through the robot’s armor. The metal cat’s claws dug into the Sparrow’s failing frame, then Morena’s seat, to get closer to Clemens.

My window shattered, and my right hand flailed against nothing but air, touched concrete, then exploded in pain as my arm was pinned between the Sparrow and the concrete.

The feline jaws opened, clamped onto Clemens’s head, and bit down.

Servos whirred, gears ground, and bone crunched; metal and plastic scraped against concrete beneath me as I gagged on blood and brains. I had the vaguest sense of my lower arm tearing off, then my shoulder was scraping against the road. The carbon mesh of my coat dug into my skin, then melted away.

Flesh was pulped. Muscle. I blacked out, then woke to the car coming to a core-rattling stop.

The Sparrow groaned beneath a great weight.

Stefan? Stefan? It was Danny. A million miles away. Panicked.

He never panicked.

Can…see… I was drifting. Robot…

It’s, uh, moving away. I lost Jacinto. Stefan? Stefan? I—I need to bug out. We’re compromised.

The… We had something else. A last trick up our sleeves. My trick. I heard distant gunfire. PSS. Why stop? The robot couldn’t catch them, could it? The…robot?

Moving toward the presidential convoy. Stefan, you gotta get out of there.

I tried to move, nearly blacked out. Can’t.

I—I can get to you. I can.

No… Someone screamed, and I wished I could see what was going on. I could feel my glasses gouging into me but couldn’t see. I wondered what the drones were feeding— I remembered! The…drones! Drop…

Drop the… Danny gasped. I—I could save the drones. Nothing’s in the airspace—

Drop…on…robot.

Oh.

I heard huffing and grunting, and then I heard the Ninja’s engine come to life. Danny had abandoned me. There were only two people I had ever come to truly trust in my years in the military and at the Agency and now as a contractor—Norimitsu and Danny.

And now I had lost them both.

I blacked out again for a moment and woke to a minor earthquake. Glass skidded and bounced inside the ruined Sparrow. Time seemed to drag, then faces entered my field of vision. Gold-skinned. Stern. Humorless. They pulled the pieces of Morena and Clemens out of the wreckage and after a long time came back for me. They spoke among themselves, men in business suits and military uniforms. Finally, they seemed to agree on something, and the Sparrow was brought back upright.

What remained of my right arm came off in all the jostling, and I finally passed out completely.

CHAPTER 2

Death took its sweet time coming. I woke to the smell of alcohol and puke, latex and gore. A bitter, sharp medicinal taste drifted across bruised and broken gums. I danced between gagging and choking on the blood collecting at the back of my throat. Machines hissed and pinged, a strange, life-sustaining symphony. The pain was too intense to truly sink in, so it settled for running jagged claws through my brain and guts. I couldn’t see anything, but I had the sense I was in a surgical ward. The voices were strange, distorted by acoustics and drugs.

When I felt something tearing through the flesh of my remaining arm, my body jerked against restraints. When the tearing became grinding through bone, the darkness came again.

There were days after that where I would wake, feel the raw nerves and the ruined flesh, taste the bile in my throat, smell the chemicals keeping me alive. I could hear the pathetic rasp of my breathing, the faint groan of cushions as someone shifted. My mind would teeter toward snapping because I couldn’t see what had been done to me. That was when I’d cling to the realization that Stovall had done this. He’d betrayed my team. He’d gotten Norimitsu killed. Clemens. The Porto twins.

I would fantasize about breaking his neck and watching him slowly die.

Then I would succumb to the drugs.

The periods of awareness lengthened. My surroundings changed—the machines sounded different, echoed strangely. Voices came in snippets. Men, mostly. Harsh, choppy. Korean. They slacked back the medication until I couldn’t sleep, and my awareness compressed down to the core of my shattered body. I compartmentalized my thoughts the way the Agency had trained me to, focusing when I could on the mission and my duty to the Agency and country.

No training was enough, though. My arms demanded my attention. They wanted me to move them, but when I did I couldn’t feel anything below my left shoulder and less from my right. My hips ached, and my legs felt like lead. Acid-laced lead.

I wanted the pain to go away. I wanted to sleep.

My hosts wanted something else.

The first day that truly carried an almost normal clarity with it came with a special sensation. I was moved. Not for a bath. Not to check my injuries. I was vaguely aware when those things happened.

I was moved to a chair. Sturdy. Rigid. Anchored. Uncomfortable. With hard leather straps that bit into flesh that was nowhere near healed.

A voice—Korean, deep, brusque—asked, Who you work for? The words echoed off concrete or stone.

I felt—heard, smelled—other bodies around me. Breathing. Clothes rustling.

Something heavy and hard cracked against my thighs, and I realized something was wrong with them. I caught a soft sound just before the pain lanced through me. Intense pain. Bone-broken pain.

Who do you work for? A different voice. Refined. Sophisticated. Almost accent-free.

My face shook, and I struggled to shout something, anything. I would confess to whatever they asked of me if I could. But I couldn’t. I could barely whimper. It was the conditioning, the months under chemical and psychological stress. There was no betraying the Agency. Fuck you.

It was all I could manage. A solid, defiant curse. It felt good.

The strike against my thighs came again, and the bones cracked the rest of the way.

I screamed, and it was like running rusty blades over raw vocal cords. Then I passed out again.

It went like that for too long to keep track. I had no sense of days or hours. My awareness was a feverish, terrified suffering that made me wish for death interlaced with numbness. I would recover in a drugged-up coma, then wake to someplace that sounded like it might be a prison. I would receive just enough care to regain my strength, then discover an all-new hell. Their approach varied wildly. After breaking my legs, they switched to my ribs. While those healed, they pulled out the last of my remaining teeth. After that, they snipped away pieces of my ears. Then they ruptured my testicles.

Only the questioning remained: Who do you work for?

Sometimes, the pain became so extreme that I could hear Stovall’s snobbish East Coast drawl. You know what’s wrong with you, Mendoza? You think you know everything. You think you’re better than everyone else. Want your cake and eat it, too. How do you feel about that now?

That was Stovall’s thing, and it had been for as long as I’d known him. He hated the way I could call bullshit on his political views without access to the finest education money and being a legacy could grant. He’d worked hard to be born into that. In his view, you had to have that lifetime of special access and treatment to see all the layers, all the nuance and contradictions. It was the only way to justify his belief that it was fine interfering with another nation’s politics. For me, it was all hypocritical nonsense. I worked for a paycheck, and I knew the day would come when Stovall and his type would cost the country terribly.

What I was going through felt like a special hell designed by Stovall and his pledge brothers.

Weeks passed that way, perhaps months. I wondered what they were using to keep me alive and how they had arrived at such a science to know the limits of the human body.

Finally, they gave up.

I woke in a hospital bed. A pale green gown felt itchy against my chest, and a stiff gray blanket covered everything below that. Sunlight slipped through louvered windows, turning a floral display at the foot of my bed gold-white. Empty leather chairs lined the wall opposite me—painted the sort of pale yellow you would most likely see in a hospital—and curtains blocked off a glass wall to my left. Condensation collected on the side of a plastic pitcher resting atop a rolling tray just beyond my reach. My throat ached for a drink.

A nurse came into the room, granting me a glimpse of a busy hallway before closing the door behind her. Her slender frame was hugged by a tight, blue outfit. With pale, soft flesh, full lips, and large brown eyes, she could have been a mail-order bride.

Or a facsimile of Tae-hee.

The nurse bowed slightly and said, "Kamsa Hamnida. Mr. Smith, you are thirsty?"

Yes, I rasped, taking relief in the knowledge I hadn’t cracked. They had to have acquired my true identity from all the DNA they had access to. Or maybe they hadn’t.

She pulled a cup from behind the pitcher with delicate hands ending in blood-red nails. The water was diamond sparkles splashing, and it was sweet and cool as she tipped it into my mouth.

You are better today? Your eyes are recovering? She leaned in enough that I could see down her top and smiled when I did. Maybe we can do something about your arms, hmm, Mr. Smith?

She set the cup down and gently patted my chest next to the sleeve—tied shut—where my right arm should have been. "You have money for regrowth? We have excellent clinics. Top doctors. From the