Standby (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 2.5) Read Online Free PDF

walls. Nor did they have bloody bodies laid out along steel top tables with metal parts surrounding them.
    “You weren’t supposed to take them. That was the deal, or are you just going to overlook that part?”
    I thought back to the last time we’d had this conversation, and how she’d told me Hayden had known too much for them to allow him to go free. But they’d overlooked the part where my uncle knowingly took him into the family business and trained him with the Programs, not because he needed more white coats, but because he wanted Hayden.
    It was okay to teach him everything when it was useful for them, but when it came down to him possibly overthrowing them? Well then, they had to destroy him.
    It was screwed up, and wrong on so many levels, yet their stone-cold hearts were incapable of seeing that. They lacked empathy, for anyone other than themselves.
    “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Nora,” she said. Her voice was void of any sort of emotion. Seriously, the woman lacked a maternal bone in her body. Most mothers didn’t knowingly try and lure their children into a death trap. Then again, most mothers gave a damn about their kids.
    I glanced over my shoulder, taking note of at least three guards holding a stance near the exit. “How many came with you?” I asked, biting back my anger.
    “Ten, and they’ve all been authorized to use force if necessary.”
    The way I looked at it, I had two options: I could go with her, and act as though I intended to comply, or I could chance it and run, which would most likely result in my death.
    The probabilities of either working out for me were slim to none, but that didn’t matter, because I knew that I needed to get to Emile, before they ended up deprogramming her for good.
    “Tell them to stand down,” I muttered. “I’ll come willingly.”
    A smug grin formed upon her lips and she eased herself into the driver side seat. I followed suite and climbed in behind her, expecting the car to be empty.
    Waiting in the back seat, a large needle laid out across his lap, was my uncle. “Hello, dear,” he said, reaching for my hand, but I pulled away.
    “What the hell is going on?” It was a stupid question really, especially since it was quite clear was what taking place. I just wasn’t ready for it. This wasn’t going to be my ending. I wouldn’t allow it to be.
    “Surely you didn’t think I’d only send your mother?” he asked, arching a brow at me.
    “I don’t see why you both needed to be here.” When my uncle came around, that usually meant that someone’s time was nearing its end. He was the Grim Reaper; the one person you didn’t want to come across on the street, because death would follow shortly after. “I said I’d come, did I not?”
    “That may be the case,’ he answered, toying with the needle on his lap. I went to reach for the door handle just as my mother hit the lock button. “But you’ve been known to go back on your word, and well, we needed to be sure that you were planning to follow through this time.”
    Before I could utter another word, he lifted the needle and plunged it into my thigh.