A Ruthless Victim by Nadia Siddiqui (best novels to read for students .txt) 📗

It’s a simple text from an unknown number, and as soon as he reads it, the message deletes itself, and the map application opens to show him the quickest route to walk to the nearest bus station. He will already have the ticket downloaded onto the memory on the phone, that much he’s certain of. He should have known that they were going to come for him sooner or later. It’s exactly what he would have done if it were different.

Nathan reaches the station quickly, pausing in front of the terminal. Just one vision. Just one image of what his life might have been like, what choices that he must have made to have ended up a ward of the company. A person to be tracked down and commanded. Had he once thought that this was going to be an honor? Did he choose this service willingly? Was he drafted? Is there a way that he will ever know the answer to that?

It certainly doesn’t seem like it.

They will likely erase all memories of him ever having worked with the company in the first place when he retires, when his contract is up.

If his contract is ever up. It isn’t like there’s a paper he can find with the details on it.

Silently, with a busy mind, Nathan settles into his stale smelling bus seat for a very, very long ride to his next assignment. His head rests against the plexiglass window and watches as his alleged hometown fades away into the distance, taking all of his questions with it until he’s left with nothing more than a heavy paranoia in his gut and time to kill.

Heaving a soft sigh, Nathan opens the case file and starts yet another assignment.

Chapter Two

I t feels like needles in her skin. All of the glass from the car windows exploding inward. She raises her arm in self-defense as her daughter in the back seat starts screaming. High pitched terror washes over the pair of them as she does everything in her power to keep this man from cutting her seatbelt. Inhuman strength seems to be crushing her arm, yanking at her as she braces her feet against the driver’s side door and attempts to force her body toward the other side of the car in the hopes of not only breaking the grip that he has on her arm but also to help gather her daughter to herself. First she must free her arm, and then she will open the passenger door, lift her daughter up through the open back window and run as fast as her strong legs will carry her.

She will let her daughter scream and scream because she’s not worried about giving away their location; she needs help. They will need somebody to hear them and come to their aid. They will need somebody to assist them or give them shelter. They will need a place to hide.

Only the man doesn’t let go of her arm. He’s holding onto her like his fingers are vice grips, and she can’t get free. In an act of desperation as he hauls her back toward the driver’s side window, she bends forward and closes her teeth around those gloved fingers as hard as she possibly can. She bites as if she is a feral animal needing to chew its own paw off to escape a trap.

She doesn’t know this man, and perhaps that’s worse. She doesn’t know why he wants to hurt her. All she knows is that she can’t let something like this happen, and she certainly can’t let him harm her daughter.

She pulls the keys from the ignition and balls them between her knuckles as she has done so many times since learning the trick in college, though this is the first time that she’s needed to employ this small self-defense tactic, and she uses his grip on her to force herself closer and aim those key daggers at his face.

It works for a moment.

He howls like a dying bear and recoils, just enough for her to get her arm free, just enough for her to fumble her fingers over the lock on the passenger side door and to tumble out of the car onto the asphalt of the parking lot.

He’s opens the driver’s side door. He’s grabbing for her ankles, and she slams the passenger door shut on his arm, but he’s not deterred. It’s not enough. He lunges for her daughter at the same time that she does, and his gloved hand finds purchase on the thick, golden curls that cover her daughter’s head, flowing down over her shoulders, and her daughter screams anew - no longer just terror but also pain, and her heart feels like it’s going to plummet out of her chest. Bile is rising in her stomach, and everything feels like it’s happening too fast, and she simply can’t stop. She can’t come down; her fight or flight is triggered, and she pulls - she pulls to harm her daughter so that she might free her, because she doesn’t have a choice. Because she cannot allow this man to take them; whatever he wants is clearly evil.

Some feral sound unleashes itself from her lips as she gathers her daughter into her arms. Those small arms wrap around her neck so tight that it will choke her. Small legs wrap around her torso, and she’s holding that small body to her own frame with one arm, and she pushes, she pushes harder to run faster than she’s ever done before in her life.

Her daughter screams.

She screams and screams, and the tears running down her own face are likely mirrored in that of her daughter’s.

Behind her, a car engine rumbles to life, and she thinks that this will be it; they will run them over; they will trample them beneath the spinning wheels, and