Read Redemption for Free Online

“volunteer.”
    Most Impures accepted the existence of the NAH facilities. They offered an easy way for people to get credits needed to survive. All they needed to do was spend two years as a lab rat for the organization that’d declared them unworthy of residing with humanity. When added to the convenient fact they wouldn’t remember the two years they spent there, the NAH had more volunteers than needed.
    Mira loathed the sector facilities even before she’d been captured. She doubted anyone realized they sometimes used captives as “volunteers.” Eventually she’d need to get word to The Alliance. They needed to know their runners were at risk.
    What mattered now was getting someone to take down the facility where she’d been held captive because infiltrating it wouldn’t be a violation of the treaty. It’d been in Hell’s Playground—the area of land no one controlled. Apparently the five known sector facilities weren’t the only ones around.
    She shuddered under Adrik’s scrutiny and forced the shards of fractured memories aside. Later she’d fall apart. Right now she didn’t have the time or energy.
    “What the hell are you doing here, Mira?”
    Collapsing against the examination table seemed wise, but untended wounds burned along her back. She bit her tongue and suppressed the discomfort. Adrik didn’t need melodrama right now. His tense posture and crossed arms made her heart ache.
    He wasn’t the Adrik she remembered.
    “Hear me out and then I’ll leave. I swear.”
    “Five minutes, Mira. Then I turn Peyton loose on your ass.” The female wolf behind him snarled in approval.
    Bitch. They’d never gotten along. Five minutes to explain away seven hundred and thirty two days of hell and beg him for help.
    “The NAH grabbed me.”
    “Try again,” Adrik replied.
    “We contacted Impure Embassy headquarters. You weren’t listed as a casualty, a prisoner or a volunteer,” Sweet, ruthless Marek added with a grim look. Damn, she’d missed the chess matches they had—the ones she always lost.
    She’d missed them all—even growly bitch Peyton.
    “The paperwork must’ve gone through after you checked,” she countered.
    “We checked every week for over a year,” Peyton growled.
    “We searched every building in a hundred square miles for you,” Ren said.
    Okay, so someone had noticed she was gone. They’d searched for a year? Mira shifted to alleviate the pain shooting up her spine. Doc took a step forward, but Adrik dragged him away.
    “I don’t know why there wasn’t paperwork, but I left here and headed to The Alliance camp on my usual route. Halfway there I ran into a caravan of NAH buses and guards. I tried to run, they detained me.”
    “You were in Hell’s Highway. They have no authority there,” Marek challenged.
    “I know, but my KBAR didn’t do much good against a legion of NAH soldiers who weren’t exactly in favor of obeying the treaty. I was taken south into Hell’s Playground, some facility outside of Baton Rouge. They questioned me for days before declaring me an enemy of the NAH and sentencing me to two years within Facility Six.”
    “There is no facility six, Mira.” Adrik’s voice softened. “Why did you come here?”
    Trust no one.
    The voice from her deliriums swept across her thoughts. Had he been a hallucination? No. Impossible. He’d kept her sane and alive. He’d given her purpose, made her talk through the darkest hours.
    He had to be real.
    “Check my wrist. “ She held her hand. “They issued volunteer credits before I was sent away.”
    “Volunteer credits. I thought you were a prisoner.” Peyton sneered. “Somehow I don’t see the NAH giving their prisoners credits.”
    She deserved ten times what they’d given her for the hell she endured. “Look, they brainwashed us daily. Wiped our memories of what they did and ended each evening telling us how rich we’d be because we’d volunteered to help humanity understand anomalies. Whatever