A flurry of activity drew the guard’s attention and she attached herself to the side of the tank and began to climb up toward the very top. She was only half out of the water when the shouted orders penetrated. They wanted hooks dragged through the tanks just to make certain no one was hiding in them with air tanks. So many soldiers tromped up onto the roof that she felt the vibrations right through the tank. Spotlights went on, illuminating the entire roof and all six tanks. Worse, soldiers surrounded the tanks and more climbed up to the top to stand on the platforms, ringing the large holding containers.

Bellisia sank slowly back into the water, clinging to the wall as she did so, her heart pounding unnaturally. She’d never experienced her heart beating so hard. It felt as if it would come right out of her chest and she wasn’t really that fearful—yet. Her temperature was climbing at an alarming rate. She was hot and even the cool water couldn’t alleviate the terrible heat rising inside of her. Her skin hurt. Every muscle in her body ached; not just ached, but felt twisted into tight knots. She began to shiver, so much so she couldn’t control it. That wasn’t conducive to hiding in a spotlight surrounded by the enemy.

She stayed up near the very top of the tank, just beneath the water line, attached to the wall, and made herself as small and as flat as possible. There was always the possibility that she could die on a mission. That was part of the . . . adrenaline rush. It was always about pitting her skills against an enemy. If she wasn’t good enough, if she made a mistake, that was on her. But this . . . Peter Whitney had deliberately injected her with a killer virus in order to ensure that she returned to him. He was willing to risk her dying a painful death to prove his point.

He owned them. All of them. Each and every girl he took out of an orphanage and experimented on. Some died. That didn’t matter to him. None of them mattered to him. Only the science. Only the soldiers he developed piggybacking on the research he’d conducted on the girls. Children with no childhood. No loving parents. She hadn’t understood what that meant until she’d been out in the world and realized the majority of people didn’t live as she did.