The Perfect Soldier

by B D Grant

  “Her pulse is racing,” Mom says, looking to the bag on John’s back. “Do you have a medical kit in that bag?” she asks.

  “Yes ma’am,” he says, pulling the backpack off and unzipping it. Sidney is getting paler, her age spots even losing some of their color.

  As John and Mom treat Sidney’s wound, Kelly tells the rest of us, “We have to get off this floor. There are people on the way up here we won’t stand a chance against.”

  Eyeing Kelly’s forearms, Ben, finally seeming to notice Kelly’s increased size, or maybe the fact that his burns are healed, asks, “What did they do to you, man?”

  I suck in a breath without thinking. My hand finds a spot on top of Kelly’s forearm. If he gets worked up then at least my hand is on the arm that’s holding the gun.

  I feel him tense, but his words are empty. “I don’t remember.”

  It’s a lie.

  I’m not prepared when I push into it. Kelly was willing to work for them if it meant his friends would be released. Kelly is the reason we got some of the kidnapped patients back. He was selected to be an Elite with six others, all Dynamar. He had more resolve than the rest, he was certain. It would make him tougher.

  The memories don’t cease once I’ve let go of him. He’s lifting weights, small boulders, and then other men over his head. Kelly, filthy from days in the woods, playing a more sinister version hide and seek with the other Dynamar training to become Elites. If another player sheds your blood you lose the game. Kelly being beaten; four against one. Him finding a way to use his unique ability to block Tempero from affecting him into something more. He uses it to mute the pain, the stress, and the fatigue making it tolerable. No, not tolerable, survivable.

  The wall he builds inside of himself is what turned him from the Kelly I knew to the emotionless Elite who could shoot someone like Sidney without a drop of remorse.

  I move away from everyone crowding Sidney and Mom, John taking things out of his first aid kit that’s twice the size of the one Kelly found. Kelly is staring off into space. I find the wall just past the double doors and lean against it. I struggle to stop the scenes playing out in my mind in short, harsh clips. I can make out Kelly still standing where I left him, staring into the space by Ben.

  Mom lifts her hand from Sidney’s wound to take the wrapping that John hands her. There’s a tiny bob to Sidney’s head as she tries to watch what’s being done to her. Sidney’s fingertips pad at her stomach and she inhales sharply. I want to focus on her and what they’re doing to help her but Kelly’s memories still aren’t done with me.

  Kelly being treated for an infection in his wounds from the basement explosion caused by his time in the woods playing hide and go seek where his ability to block out the pain gave the microbes time to do even more damage to his arm, shoulder, and neck. Unseen people submerge him into a bath of chlorhexidine to kill off the infection. The eyes of the medical team working on him exchanging glances as he doesn’t cry out from pain as they scrub deeper into his burns. What Kelly has achieved within himself isn’t lost on them. It’s decided that he needs advanced treatment. The limits of what he can block out is tested as they peel his burned flesh. I feel sick. A spray gun I’ve never seen the likes of before is used to cover his underlying tissue. Stem cells, “special stem cells,” they say to him, will make his burns nonexistent.

  “What kind of retrieval operation is this?” I hear Sidney ask, but I’m somewhere else now.

  Kelly is somewhere else. A mission. “No survivors,” a male voice echoes in Kelly’s memory. The face of a scared boy maybe eight or nine years old looking up at him from a couch. A gun in Kelly’s hand pointed at the boy’s nose. I can’t.

  “Hey, we did pretty good,” Ben snorts, unsympathetic to Sidney’s current situation like only he could be. “We made it up here without being caught, didn’t we?”

  I hear Sidney say, “You got this far only to let the girl fall out.” I hadn’t even noticed, but she’s right. I’m falling. My knees buckle as I try to shut the nonexistent eyes in my mind to not see what Kelly is about to do, what he did.

  Ben, Bryant, and Kelly turn to me as I slide down the wall. Kelly, the closest to me, wraps an arm around my waist, keeping me from hitting the floor. I want to push him away. I want to scream at him. He props me against the wall with Bryant’s help. Ben hasn’t moved, watching it all happen looking as unsympathetic as he sounded talking to Sidney. “You’re being a tad dramatic,” he says, swinging the end of his rifle in the direction of Sidney sitting in her wheelchair. “She’s been shot—don’t see her passing out.”

  “I’m alright,” I tell them. “It’s just all catching up to me is all.”

  Kelly gently lifts my chin up to him. Sidney wasn’t the first person he’s hurt since becoming one of Kian’s lackeys. I reluctantly meet his gaze. He shuts his eyes, shaking his head lightly. But when he speaks, his eyes are open. “We need to get out of here as fast as we can.”

  I swallow what little saliva is in my mouth. If more Elites are on the way, I don’t want to be here when they show up. Not after what I’ve seen. “Agreed,” I say, forcing my legs to steady themselves beneath me.

  Kelly directs us to what he says is the southeast side of the skyscraper away from where he suspects Elites will be coming from. From the memories, I’ve gathered that Kelly was the only one out of the seven trainees who was able to achieve Elite status, but there are others. I watch his broad back, his unfamiliar shoulders as we hurry down corridor after corridor. This is the second time Kelly has been out of it, the first time he had been in D-mode, as his friends and him called it when his anger, typical for Dynamar, got the best of him, and was pummeling Lia Heincliff after the raid. I was the only person who could bring him out of it, just like today. I don’t know how I keep doing it, but it seems like I have to put my hands on him in order to get through to him.

  The hallway branches off ahead of us, and Kelly holds a hand up behind him. We all come to a halt. He and John cautiously go ahead of us to check both halls. Bryant watches my mom as she checks on Sidney, her forehead furrowed in concern. Ben scopes the hall out behind us, just in case we’re being tailed. With no one looking, I follow quietly after Kelly and John where they have just disappeared around the corner.

  I get to the split in the corridor and peak around the corner as John and Kelly’s soft footsteps fall silent. I watch as Kelly motions with one hand at John. They both take aim at a door just ahead of them.

  As if on cue, the door opens.

  Two Rogues walk out, guns drawn.

  Chapter 16

  From where I stand poking my head out around the corner, watching Kelly and John I can both of the Rogues turning to face them. I recognize one of them.

  It’s Glensy.

  I pull back glancing behind me. Did they turn everyone into Rogues that they took from the bus? Bryant and Ben have their backs to be Mom and Sidney making sure no one tries to sneak up on us from behind. Mom and is checking Sidney’s pulse, kneeling in front of her again. Sidney is staring at me, but I’m not sure if she’s actually looking at me of just staring straight ahead.

  Mom turns to look over her shoulder at me. “Everything okay?” I don’t know what to tell her, so instead of answering her I peek back around the corner again.

  “You were supposed to leave with Boston and Lena,” Kelly is saying to Glensy. “That was part of my deal.”

  I’ve never seen the other guy with Glensy before. He’s older, closer to John, Bryant, and Ben’s age, big enough to be a Dynamar, but not as big as Kelly or John. Kelly shakes his head in disapproval at his friend. Glensy’s eyes dart between Kelly, John, and his partner. The guy tenses next to Glensy, his gun rising slightly. He isn’t as fast as John.

  Glensy stiffens as his partner falls to the ground, and John lowers his rifle. Glensy swings his handgun to point at John. Ben is suddenly at my side, checking around the corner having heard the shot. He relaxes when he sees Glensy is the one facing Kelly an
d John.

  Kelly’s left hand is in the air. “It’s a tranquilizer, Glensy,” he says, waving his hand at Glensy, a sign of peace. Slowly, Kelly lowers the gun in his right hand, bringing it to his side. Ben jogs back to Bryant, Mom and Sidney, his footsteps are surprisingly quiet for his size.

  “He’ll be fine,” Kelly says, glancing at John, who has lifted his rifle enough that pulling the trigger would deliver a shot to Glensy’s shin. “Your move.”

  John makes a tiny move, doing something with his rifle that I can’t see from where I’m at but when he says, “I won’t be so nice this time,” to Glensy I know he’s flipped the lever on his rifle switching from tranquilizers to the real deal.

  Glensy ignores him, looking squarely at Kelly. “I couldn’t leave,” he says, lowering his handgun. “I couldn’t leave you behind, not here.” His expression turns angry, his mouth and brow tightening as he looks at Kelly. “I didn’t know you had agreed to become one of their monsters…”

  From right behind me, Sidney calls out, “He was brainwashed.” I jump back in surprise. I hadn’t heard them coming up behind me. Bryant is next to the wheelchair and Ben behind them.

  “Who was that?” Glensy jerks, trying to look around John and Kelly.

  Kelly steps to the side, and I step out from behind the corner into full view so that it isn’t obvious that I was creeping on them. “That’s the old woman I shot,” Kelly says as Sidney is cautiously wheeled into the corridor behind me. “Bryant and Ben are here too with Taylor and her mother.”

  Kelly and Glensy take the lead while we quietly trek behind them. If anymore Rogues where to pop out like Glensy and the other guy had they would be less likely to open fire seeing them at the forefront. That is, if the word hasn’t spread among them that Kelly’s turned. Like Kelly when he pulled his earpiece out in the rec room, Glensy heard the call that a Rogue had turned, and was now working with the intruders.

  “They hadn’t told us who it was though, and they also didn’t mention that it was an Elite,” Glensy says as he and Kelly hurry us through the building. If Elites are the best of the best I doubt they want it known that one has turned against them.

  We’ve made it down two floors, but Kelly isn’t any less tense about us running into the Elites Kian had asked to be sent upstairs. The sound of frantic shuffling off in the distance has faded. Neither Kelly nor Glensy have said where we’re headed but they seem to have the same route in mind as the two of them wordlessly maneuver us through the building, and so far Mase’s card has gotten us through any doors requiring keycards.

  John, Bryant and Ben aren’t the ones who set off the Rogues’ alarms. Bryant told us that they made it past the third floor security detail over an hour ago without incident, but according to Kelly, intruders had been detected entering the building less than thirty minutes ago. Mom hasn’t said much as she’s pushed Sidney’s wheelchair through the halls trying to jostle Sidney as little as possible besides admitting that she’s been making her way up the building for over two hours.

  Ben, who has kept up the rear of the group, chuckles, “Bryant attended a spin class for his reconnaissance on the building.” John glances back a Ben. Ben lowers his voice. “He had to fake a cramp to leave the class early so that he could report back to us that he saw a Rogue he recognized from the raid walking down the hallway just before the class started. When he made it outside to where John and I were parked a block away from the building he was sweating like crazy. It’s a stationary bike for God’s sake.” Bryant rolls his eyes.

  “There was no backup for us to call, so we just decided to go for it,” Bryant says, keeping pace with Sidney’s chair. “It was dumb luck after that,” he says, looking back at Ben who grins at him. “We feel in line at the back of a group of guys dressed in gym gear like we were. They must have been some new recruits because they were doing an orientation of the building. They went straight to the staircase past the aerobics rooms and we followed. When the guys at the back of the group finally started to notice us, we turned off into an office.”

  “That was the first guy I got to shoot with a tranquilizer,” Ben says behind me.

  “We took his keycard and found the janitor’s closest next. That’s where we got these,” Bryant says, lifting an elbow in Mom and I’s direction showing us the coveralls he’s wearing. “And where I got to shoot my first Rogue with a tranquilizer.”

  “And my second,” Ben adds. “They’re going to have some half-naked men walking around once those tranquilizers wear off.” Ben says nothing about how the location of the Rogue’s city command center in the heart of Baton Rouge was discovered or how it was known that I was being held here. He just seems to be happy being a part of the action.

  We pass through the entertainment room, full of now-empty couches. One of the televisions has been paused mid-basketball game. Some of the gaming systems in front of other couches have been knocked over. I step over a remote that’s in pieces on the floor.

  Glensy whispers something Kelly. When the latter nods, Glensy waves us in a different direction out of the entertainment room.

  The route takes us to a more professional part of the building where a sultry voice is singing Ave Maria over the speakers in the ceiling. I haven’t noticed music playing before now. There are photographs on the walls of land development around Baton Rouge with plaques dating them from the mid to early nineteen hundreds. This must be where official business is held. It explains where all of the nicely-dressed Rogues were headed to when Flea brought me to Kian.

  We slow down as we approach glass doors; through them is a large sitting area where offices surround plush leather couches. All of the offices are shut; the blinds are drawn. Not a hint of light comes through. Kelly and Glensy opening the wide, glass doors when Kelly suddenly throws a hand up to stop us. Everyone goes silent.

  Ben is the last to stop behind me but the delicate sound of footsteps continue after his last step. Directly across the waiting room, a door flies open.

  Loud voices announce in a swarm of words, “Police, freeze, SWAT team!” Two men in full SWAT gear partially emerge from around the doorframe just enough for me to make out the SW on one’s vest and AT on the others. They stay just inside of the doorframe on either side, theirs eyes steadfast on the handguns and rifles that our guys are carrying. The man on the left of the doorframe sticks his foot out a few inched using his shoe as a door stop to keep the stairwell door from shutting back on them without having to take his hands off of his black assault rifle.

  Even though I’m behind Kelly, Glensy, and John, I move my right hand behind me to conceal Mase’s tiny gun I’m holding. On the other side of the door is a stairwell blocked by more men. The confined space has them on top of one another. At the forefront of the mass are two men wearing bulletproof vests that say FBI across the chest. The younger of the two is wearing street clothes, jeans and a polo shirt while the other is in slacks and a nice white long sleeve, button down shirt that he’s rolled the sleeves up on. Police, SWAT, federal agents, I understand now why Kian was so primed to get out of the building.

  The stairwell is full of guns pointed in our direction. Kelly is the only one whose gun is at the ready. Everyone else’s weapons are either pointed at the ground or somewhere in the middle of the ground and the straight ahead. None of the faces watching us from the door so much as glance over at the people around them. They aren’t scared to shoot us, they’re just waiting to be given the word.

  “Put your weapons down!” the younger of the two agents shouts.

  “Get behind me, Taylor,” Mom whispers, pulling Sidney’s chair back.

  The agent’s eyes dart to my mom. “Don’t move!” Kelly shifts his upper body effectively blocking me from seeing the agent and vice versa.

  “Drop your weapons,” another male voice says from the stairwell, “or we will shoot you.”

  “Officers, don’t shoot!” Bryant jumps forward, his hands high in the air and his rifle hanging around his back by its s
trap. “We’re on the same side. We’re trying to get Seraphim out who were being held against their will.”

  The older man in the FBI vest moves closer but doesn’t step out from the stairwell. Those wearing SWAT gear behind him inch forward with him. “Detective Ash,” Bryant announces across the space. The agent lifts his chin in acknowledgment. “I don’t know if you remember me. I was interviewed by Doherty.”

  “Tell your friends to lower their weapons and we’ll lower ours,” he says in a firm voice.

  John and Glensy start to lower their weapons, Ben, his rifle pointing at the ground this whole time, drops his to the ground. “Kelly,” Bryant grumbles, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Kelly hasn’t moved. Like he’d been with John, he doesn’t seem to be capable of submission.

  There is a Tempero working somewhere close by. I feel the calm washing over me, probably from one of the officers in the stairwell. Sidney’s voice is soft. “Put it down, son.”

  Kelly’s shoulders relax. I think it’s more from Sidney’s words than from the Tempero, because he keeps the gun up for another second before lowering it to point at the ground by his feet. There’s a noticeable lowering of weapons inside of the stairwell once Kelly’s gun is down, though none of them lower theirs very far.

  “Very good,” Detective Ash says from across the room.

  Ben walks past Mom, Sidney, and me. “Did you guys follow us in here?” he asks, looking at Detective Ash.

  A man wearing a police uniform behind Detective Ash talks into the walkie that’s strapped to his shoulder. “Friendlies,” I hear him say, but he’s too far for me to understand the rest.

  “No, I got a call,” the detective says moving into the waiting room. The two SWAT team members step out with him. A police officer steps forward to keep the door to the stairwell open. Detective Ash scans over our group as the two men on either side of him start checking the offices on either side of the stairwell door. The younger FBI agent steps out from behind Ash and speaks to him quietly. I have to crane my neck to look around Kelly. Ash’s eyes settle on my mom. “One of my people tracked her here,” he says with a nod at my mom.