The Wraith's Story (BRIGAND Book 1) by Natalie French, Scot Bayless

CHAPTER ONE
    I've been strangled three times in my life. Not to death.
    Not yet.
    The first was an accident I'm sure — my earliest out of utero memory. Warm hands grabbed my head and shoulders and tugged as I was uncomfortably pushed through a tight, sinewy opening. With blurred eyes, I saw the Bishop. Of course I didn't know his name yet, but it was him. He wore a gray gown then, with a matching skull cap. His eyebrows pulled together over light green eyes that held concern.
    A sensation of constriction pulled at the soft folds of my neck. I couldn't move my head. The room became hazy and I wanted to tell someone to help me, but my lips and vocal cords were too immature to form the words. Still, I knew. I formed the thought. My brain was already functioning well above that of a mundane adult. I opened my mouth and a shrill gasp escaped.
    The Bishop quickly pulled at the fleshy rope that twined around my neck, and sighed when, at last, a bellowing scream escaped my throat.
    He wrapped me in a white blanket, held me up high and turned me to face the figure on the table.
    "Here she is," he whispered to the woman on the table.
    The Woman.
    For years after, she defined what beauty meant to the blank palette of my mind. Her blue eyes gleamed with tears, and her white hair, so fine, like wisps of spider silk, sparkled under the harsh light that hung overhead. She sobbed, but beneath the tears she wore a smile and it was then I learned what joy looked like — an emotion I would not see, or experience, for a long time.
    The noise and bustle of nurses around me receded as I gazed with my eyes that were already learning to focus with automatic precision — at The Woman — at the only person who mattered.
    Then a man in a matte black helmet and what I would know later as a light combat exo walked into the room. The sweat and blood streaked nurses stood aside, deferentially framing his approach to the bed. The blue-eyed woman glanced at him, then looked directly at me and whispered, "Be free."
    Then she closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest.
    The man in the military suit aimed a blunt-muzzled instrument at her chest and vaporized her, with only a small electric pop to mark her extermination.
    A team of five in clean uniforms, with white helmets shielding their faces, entered and filled the small room. They quickly removed the mess of blood and fluid left on the table and sanitized the area.
    "You should not know who they are," The Bishop explained.
    I blinked.
    The Bishop wiped my face and handed me to a nurse. He told me not to think of the woman. So I did not — when I was awake. When I slept, she engulfed my dreams, swaddling my soul. I would not be strangled again until my ninth year.
    I am a Wraith. My name is Subject 11.

CHAPTER TWO
    I received my corneal implants in my third year. Most of the other girls didn't get theirs until their eighth or ninth, closer to their ceremony, but my visual acuity was so advanced that the Council worried that my brain would outpace the enhancements if they waited. As a result of the implants, my training accelerated and, by the time I was in my eighth year, I was sharing a corridor with girls of eleven and twelve. From a maturity perspective I was not far behind them but, physically, I was by far the smallest. A trait that sometimes served to my advantage.
    We lived in the Templum, Corridor B. Four long hallways A, B, C and D all met in the middle at the Cell, where the main nurse's station and control center were located. It was impossible to go in or out of the Cell without being scanned. Every millisecond of my life was data — blips, traces and numbers on screens.
    The Bishop wore black then, with a bright red skull cap. I never saw his actual hair color, but I speculated that it was dark, like mine, to match his eyebrows.
    I liked the smell and stiff, scratchy feel of his robes. Sometimes, if we were alone in the garden and I'd learned my day's lesson particularly well, he