HANCOCK stiffened, coming to instant awareness when he felt Honor stir against him. Damn it! He’d drifted off, needing sleep and healing, but he hadn’t intended to stay this long. And she wasn’t supposed to regain consciousness until she was returned to her family. He didn’t even have another syringe so he could quickly inject her so she didn’t come to awareness.
He gazed anxiously at her, hoping she was just restless and would succumb once more to the drugs in her system. But he wasn’t that fortunate.
Her eyelids fluttered sluggishly and then she saw him. He tensed, awaiting her condemnation, her hatred, bracing for everything he deserved. But she simply stared at him with dull, lifeless eyes and didn’t react at all. Nothing. Fear skittered up his spine because she simply wasn’t there.
“I should have known,” she said in a monotone. “That you would be the one bringing me to ANE, not Maksimov. Ironic, isn’t it? You ‘save’ me from ANE and you’re the one to return me to them. Full circle.”
Saying nothing further, she turned, struggling, emitting gasps of pain that her movement caused as she turned away from him and curled once more into a protective ball, shutting him out, retreating into herself and a place where she couldn’t hurt anymore.
His torment was tearing him with its vicious claws. He felt every word to his tainted soul. He ached to hold her. To comfort her. To tell her all that was in his heart. But she wouldn’t believe him. She’d never believe him. As with everything else so precious he’d lost, he’d lost her trust as well.
He nearly put his hand on her shoulder, drawing back at the last second, because he didn’t want to cause her further pain and he had yet to determine the extent of her injuries.
“What did that bastard do to you?” he demanded, barely able to keep back the roar of fury that threatened to erupt.
One small shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it goddamn matters! What did he do, Honor?”
She stiffened and he could feel her pain radiating from her tightly curled body, and it made him want to weep like a baby.
“You should know, Hancock,” she said, her tone weary, as if her barriers were slipping, as if the shields she’d constructed and the alternate reality she’d created in order to survive were slowly crumbling. “You told me what Maksimov would do. Just as you told me what ANE will do. Do you want all the gory details? Will it make you happy to know that I suffered? Are you concerned that he didn’t do all the things you said he would?”
He couldn’t breathe. His heart weighed a ton in his chest. Fear as he’d never known paralyzed him and he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t get past all he’d told her that Maksimov and ANE would do. Things he’d sworn to her he wouldn’t allow to happen because he was pulling the plug on the mission. And she thought it had all been a lie.
“What did he do?” Hancock asked hoarsely, his voice thick with tears and so much emotion that it overwhelmed him, consumed him, rendered him incapable of the simplest of processes.
“Nothing worse than what’s been done before,” she said, as if it didn’t matter. “He didn’t hurt me, Hancock. You did that. You destroyed me. And I guess, in a way, I have you to thank. Because you hurt me in a way no one has ever hurt me, and the things Maksimov did paled in comparison. It hurt. I know it did. I mean it had to, right? But I didn’t feel it. Because the dead don’t feel. And I died the day you betrayed me. So whatever ANE has in store for me, I welcome. Because it won’t matter. Nothing matters anymore. And as with Maksimov, I can at least deprive them the pleasure of hearing me scream. Of hearing me beg. Because it will never happen. They’ll delight in breaking me, but as I told Maksimov when he smugly informed me that he would break me, you can’t break what’s already broken.”
Hancock’s heart shattered into tiny razor-sharp shards, inflicting permanent wounds he’d never recover from. He was bleeding on the inside. And it would never stop. Tears streaked down his cheeks, grief consuming him until there was simply nothing left. Just as Honor had said there was nothing left of her.
Broken.
He’d broken her when nothing else had been able to.