Project Prometheus (Assassin Fall) - Softcover

Polydoros, Aden

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1640631895 ISBN 13: 9781640631892

Verlag: Entangled Publishing, LLC, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

The Academy stole everything from Hades, their perfect assassin. Angry and leaving bodies in his wake, he finds two other ex-assassins doing the exact same thing.

Tyler and Shannon once killed for The Academy. Now they’re tracking and hunting down its scientists. So why is The Academy only after Hades?

Shannon will do whatever it takes to protect Tyler, even if it means teaming up with a former rival. While she seeks answers to her past, Tyler wants to learn the truth about the mysterious white room, which no one has ever seen except him.

As for Hades? He simply wants revenge.

They all need answers, even if it means returning to the organization where it all started.

The Assassin Fall series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Hades Rising (prequel novella)
Book #1 Project Pandora
Book #2 Project Prometheus

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Aden Polydoros grew up in Long Grove, Illinois, and now lives in Arizona. He is a writer of young adult fiction. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys reading and going on hikes in the mountains. Aden Polydoros is a 2015 Gold Medalist in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has published two short stories in Best Arizona Teen Writing of 2015.

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Project Prometheus

By Aden Polydoros, Liz Pelletier

Entangled Publishing, LLC

Copyright © 2018 Aden Polydoros
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-64063-189-2

CHAPTER 1

CASE NOTES 1: HADES

Hades awoke inside the sensory deprivation tank, in full dark.

As he struggled to cast off the drugged weakness that enveloped him, he could almost feel the darkness wrapping around him, heavy as wool, smothering. Needles bit into his arms, and the walls collapsed in, closer, closer. Soon they would crush him.

Gasping in terror, he extended his arms to touch the steel walls of his prison, only to discover that his hands were immobilized above his head.

Chains rattled with his panicked movements. Chains. Slim metal bands around his wrists. Handcuffs. Fear mellowed into powerful disorientation. Why was he wearing handcuffs? Was this another one of Dimitri's experiments?

He suddenly became aware that the surface beneath him was not buoyant water, but instead a mattress of some sort. Soft, lumpy cushioning, damp with sweat or blood.

He wasn't in the sensory deprivation tank at the Georgetown safe house, so where was he?

Not a hospital, that's for sure. Hospitals were bright, noisy places, filled with the cacophony of monitor alarms and intercom chatter. Here, there were no safety lights, and the only sound he could distinguish was his own heavy breathing.

As he pulled at the cuffs, pinpricks raced down his arms. Not needles, just muscle soreness and poor circulation. There might have been an IV tube in the crook of his elbow. It was too dark to tell, but that was what it felt like. With his hands chained to what he assumed was the headboard of a bed and his ankles similarly fettered, his movements were restricted to the minimum.

This was wrong. During those times when his rage became uncontrollable and he lashed out at everything around him, Dimitri had always used soft restraints and sedatives on him. Never handcuffs. Torqued the wrong way, handcuffs could cut off the circulation in his wrists.

His hands were the most valuable part of him.

As Hades shifted on the mattress, his stomach throbbed with a soft, bruised ache. Whatever drug muddled his mind also took the edge off his pain. He had difficulty associating the feeling with himself.

That's right, I was shot, he thought. So what am I doing here? Where am I?

As he yanked at the chains, he was distracted by a creaking overhead. Footsteps crossed the ceiling, and from deeper into the room above, hinges squeaked as a door was opened.

Light flooded the room. Concrete floor and brick walls. Boxes along one wall, workout machines along the other. No windows. The far wall opened into an alcove that he assumed led to a stairwell, and he watched a brown-haired man step out from it.

"Oh, you're finally awake," the man said, walking up to his bed. "I was getting a little worried, kiddo. The doctors really doped you up. I heard you tried to bite them. Like a wild animal."

Though the man's expression was bland, his flushed complexion and narrowed eyes suggested internal turmoil. Caged rage. His voice only confirmed as much.

With a jolt, Hades recognized the man's lean, patrician face. Lawrence Hawthorne, the state senator of Virginia. He had given one twin daughter to Project Pandora and kept the other, only to take the first away again when the latter twin died two years ago.

A low growl escaped Hades's throat. This was the man responsible for the death of the only girl that he had ever loved.

"I know you're a child of Pandora," Hawthorne said, resting his hands on the bed's cast-iron footboard.

He saw no point in responding.

"Tell me your name."

"I don't have one," Hades said.

"Your name."

"Subject Two of Subset A." A-02. Two. They all meant the same thing — a weapon, not a human.

A vein throbbed in Hawthorne's temple. "That's not a name."

"Hades."

"Hades? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's Hell, and it's the god of Hell."

Hawthorne scoffed. "You're not a god. You're just a sick kid."

"It's the codename Dimitri gave me," he said, allowing his head to fall back against the pillow. "He asked me, isn't it interesting that Hell is both a person and a place? I didn't understand what he meant at first. Then I did."

It surprised him how effortless it was to grasp at that memory. Usually, his memories were scattered and disjointed, like bits of shattered bone that he had to sift through and reorganize. But everything had drifted back into place while he slept, leaving only the smallest gaps. Soon, he sensed, even those empty spaces would mend.

"We're not here to talk about Dr. Kosta," Hawthorne said. "We're here to talk about what you did, and don't try to deny it. I know you were acquainted with Dr. Kosta, but you work for someone higher up in the organization, don't you? Who do you take your orders from? Who in Project Pandora told you to shoot Elizabeth and the others?"

"Subject Nine of Subset A."

Hawthorne wrinkled his brow. "What?"

"That was her name. Not Elizabeth. Nine."

"Don't call her that," Hawthorne growled.

Hades lifted his head. "You're just her cell donor, so why do you care? You sold her before she was even born."

Hawthorne took two small bottles from the counter and carried them over. They were apothecary bottles, darkly tinted. They couldn't hold more than ten milliliters each, but even a fraction of that amount could be lethal, depending on the type of chemical.

"Listen, kid, we can do this the hard way or the easy way," Hawthorne said, then held up one of the bottles. "If you cooperate, I'll give you morphine once we're done talking."

He didn't want morphine. Pain was familiar, easy to work around. Morphine would only dull his senses. But he had a feeling the other chemical would do far worse than that.

"This is sodium thiopental," Hawthorne said, raising the second bottle. "I've heard that it can make subjects quite talkative, that they'll say things they'd never say otherwise. However, at a high enough dose, it can be fatal. And I'm willing to take that risk."

"Oh, I'm perfectly fine with telling you the truth. I don't need drugs for that." Hades lifted his head to look the man in the eye. "But first, just tell me ... Does it give you satisfaction to kill your children?"

Hawthorne reeled back like he had been slapped. Huffing, his face red, he rushed to the counter and scrambled among its contents. Plastic crinkled under his searching fingers, and when he found what he was looking for, he turned back to the bed.

"You'll regret that." With a bottle in one hand and a plastic-wrapped syringe in the other, Hawthorne returned to his bedside. "If I can't get the truth out of you, this will."

"Did you know, your daughter and I were part of the same subset? We lived in the same barrack at the Academy, and we were in many of the same classes."

A muscle ticked in the corner of Hawthorne's mouth, and he looked away. In his poor eye contact and bodily tension, Hades saw unease beneath anger. Doubt. He held the syringe without trying to open it.

"Over the years, we came to be very close friends. Well, more than that, actually."

"Shut up," Hawthorne whispered.

"Nine wanted a real life so badly, did you know that?"

"Don't call her that."

"I forgot about it for so long, but I remember it now," he said. "It's all coming back to me. I remember how she talked about it. How you were going to give her a real name and a room of her own. How she was going to convince you and your...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Entangled Publishing, LLC
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1640631895
• ISBN 13: 9781640631892
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar