Fatal Strike Read Online Free PDF

Starved for companionship. Even if he was just a mental construct.
    But hey. Never open up, never get rejected. It was a policy she’d employed for most of her life, so why wouldn’t it be valid here, too? Leave it to Lara Kirk to create an imaginary friend who rejected her.
    She had to laugh, and instantly regretted it. It hurt her sore ribs. Crying in bed, like a girl who’d had a fight with her boyfriend.
    Truth was, it didn’t matter if he wanted her or not. Let him be rude. Let him just try to keep her out. She’d be back the second they dosed her, like a guided missile. If he wanted her out, he’d have to beef up his security. She’d go to the Citadel this second, but she couldn’t make it on her own. She needed their fucking drug to get airborne.
    God, how she hated that. Hated herself for being too far gone even to crave freedom anymore. She didn’t know what she’d do with freedom if she had it. But a drug-fueled sexual fantasy? Hell, yeah. Sign her up for that.
    Maybe she’d die in the Citadel, when her time came. That would be a better point of departure than the rat hole or the gurney.
    She’d let go of hope long ago. All she wanted now was relief.
    She was a psi-max whore.

3
    T he frosty dawn found Miles in a worse state than he’d been in since he hiked in weeks before, and the day that followed went straight downhill from there.
    Last night’s episode had fucked his fragile equilibrium all to hell. The shield was intact, but his sensory overload was worse than ever. Wind shrieked through the Forks. Mold, decomposing leaves, pine needles, humus, all combined into a heavy, yeasty blast of organic compounds that stunned him into immobility. He sat wrapped in his thermal bag for hours, hands clamped over his face, struggling not to retch.
    It was colder today. Snowline creeping downwards. He pulled on the warmest clothes he had, shivering. Poor Miles, delicate flower. Bring on the fucking smelling salts. No climbing today. He’d kill himself if he got blindsided thinking about what had happened with the—
    No. Nothing had happened. It was a dream . Nobody was talking to him. He was on a mountaintop, twelve miles from the nearest human being. He was not even a telepath. Stop it with that crazy shit. Stop.
    He dumped a packet of bean soup into a plastic mug of water, stirring with his finger. Gulped down the resulting ash-colored gruel. He was getting sloppy. Hadn’t eaten anything fresh in a while. He wondered if there was anything edible growing in the forest this late in the season.
    He headed into the woods, resolved to find something with phytonutrients in it. A few hours into his search, he choked down some mushrooms, but they were wrinked and moldy, and the taste was too strong to endure. A couple of withered wild onions made his stomach burn. A person needed a genuine appetite for this. He gagged, spat twigs and dirt. Yikes. Evidently he wasn’t the frontier type.
    The onions gave him a coughing fit, and he ended up crouched on the ground, grimly waiting for the pounding in his head to ease.
    Fuck foraging. Icy wind chewed sullenly at his ears. He got back to the campsite, gathered wood, chopped and split it, and settled in for a cold, sleepless night by the campfire. He was going to have to beef up supplies soon, if this turned to snow camping. It could, at any time.
    A bug caught his eye, trundling across the forest floor. It butted up against the toe of his boot, got itself turned around and went on its way. He was so absorbed in staring at it, the sensation crept up on him.
    Lara. That zingy, bright feeling. If he let himself look inside at the images, he would see her, in her white, frothy dress, doing that sexy get-through-the-wall pole dance.
    Don’t look. He stared at the flames, kept the camera in his head switched grimly off. He would not play this game with himself, goddamnit. He was not tuning in to this channel. His damaged prefrontal cortex could go fuck itself. He was not