by Lyssa Hart
“We’re going to be noticeable if we take to the streets,” Hawk pointed out. “The wings, the horns, and the eyes. The company won’t need the fucking locators.”
“Keep your heads down, wings close, and stick to the shadows. That’s about all we can do right now,” Raven said grimly.
He was right and Hawk knew it, but he was a long way from being happy about it.
When his squad met up with Con’s and Eagle’s a short time later, he marked the time and addressed the most pressing issue. “Anybody got any ideas at all about how we could buy ourselves a little more time until we can get rid of these fucking locators?”
Puma studied the manhole cover beneath his feet. “If this goes deep enough it could help—maybe a lot. I doubt the locators were designed to penetrate much dirt and concrete, regardless of what the government has to say on the subject.”
Hawk felt his mood lighten significantly. “Damn sure worth a try.” He glanced around. “I’m thinking I’m in dire need at the moment, though. My nanos have eaten up a lot of energy with repairs from the fucking gas.”
“Plus we all puked our guts out,” Brahma muttered.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel pretty fucking naked without any weapons.”
“OK so we split up again and rendezvous next time at the warehouse nearest a sewer access you can find and we use the time to collect whatever we can on the run. Any objections or suggestions?”
Since nobody had any, they worked out their next rendezvous point and looked up potential sources for supplies. “I think my team will check out this vet. If he’s a surgeon, he might be able to get rid of the tracers,” Eagle said.
“Good thinking,” Con agreed.
They abandoned their rendezvous at the halfway point, hoping to buy a few extra minutes.
It might have if they hadn’t run smack into a patrol.
Any lingering doubts they’d entertained about their status were instantly removed. The patrol started firing on them the moment they caught sight of them.
* * * *
Alexis finally passed out from sheer exhaustion sometime in the wee hours of the night. Unfortunately, she was in too much of a state of shock to think about the mundane—her alarm clock went off at the usual time and at the usual volume, bringing her up from her chair as if she’d been catapulted from it.
She was pissed when she realized it was the alarm clock—not a threat of any kind—and then wondered why her subconscious mind had even briefly thought it might be. If she hadn’t been so exhausted, she might have figured it out. As it was, she was halfway through her morning routine before it dawned on her she had nowhere to go.
Naturally enough that pissed her off, too, but instead of throwing her clothes off again, she headed into her bedroom and collapsed on the mattress. She was drifting toward sleep when it occurred to her that actually going to the site might be the only way to get any accurate news.
That was assuming, of course, that there were others from the lab that had decided to go—either the night before when everything was happening, or early that morning to find out what they could.
Very likely the cops would still be on scene investigating, but she thought it was unlikely she’d get anything resembling the truth from them.
Or the company, for that matter—not that she could see the likelihood that they’d have any information unless the cops had made a report.
But even a remote possibility of discovering something was enough to make it impossible for her to go back to sleep and she finally rolled out of bed and finished what she’d started and took a taxi out to the professional park since she’d missed the commuter train.
As she’d suspected, there was a crowd of gawkers. She moved around for a while trying to get a decent look at what was going on, but she finally acknowledged that that was a waste of time. If she was eight feet tall or could fly ….
A lump formed in her throat at the thought.
It was really sad to think of such amazing beings destroyed.
They were like … works of art, really.
Well, somewhat. The fact that they were also very, very dangerous made it hard to appreciate that when they’d …. When she’d ….
But she really didn’t want to think about it and, since she spotted a co-worker just then, she was able to divert her mind from it. Struggling to reach the woman she’d spotted, Alexis thought, must be a lot like a spawning salmon felt like.
It wouldn’t have been quite as difficult if Julia had just stopped for a minute so she could catch up.
Luck was with her, however.
Julia eluded her, but she practically fell over Albert. “Albert! My god this awful!”
He nodded. “Sucks ass alright. I really hate job hunting, too.”
That was a glum thought. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how many … uh … unemployed?”
“I think there was about a thousand. A good bit of that was security, though, and I heard a shit load of them got blown to hell in there. So no competition for jobs from that direction.”
Alexis was horrified. She remembered the reports the night before had mentioned the possibility, but it hadn’t been confirmed that anyone was in the building. “Seriously? Oh my god!”
Albert shrugged. “I guess, but I didn’t really know any that wasn’t an asshole. I doubt they’d be feeling bad if it was us in the rubble. Probably making jokes.”
Alexis sucked her lower lip in. She actually hadn’t known any of the security personnel at all. It seemed wrong to say anything bad about them—now—when they were dead, but she supposed if he was right, they would’ve dismissed their deaths just as callously.
She glanced around. “What about the … uh ….” She leaned a little closer and whispered. “Cyborgs?”
He snorted. “Alexis—it was named Bio-H-Tech. I think everybody probably knows what we were doing in there.”
She felt her face heat. “Maybe, but you how the company is ….”
He glanced around. “Between me and you …. I think they got out. At least some of them.”
Alexis felt ice slither down her spine. “Why … uh … why …?”
“Because I saw a shit load of security brought up and they’ve been all over the place with dogs. They’re worried something got out.”
“Oh my god!” Alexis felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
“I don’t know about you, Alexis, but, all things considered, I think I’m going to find a place and lay low for a while until … well, until it looks like it might be safe to come up. I know all that shit about the company making people disappear the last time there was big screw up is probably bullshit, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
Alexis thought it was probably bullshit, too, or mostly, but she didn’t want to chance it either. And beyond that, there were probably some really pissed off super soldiers wandering around looking for somebody—anybody that might have to do with the fact that they were now being hunted.
Assuming Albert was right.
And she didn’t think she felt like questioning it.
The question was, where could she hide—from them—when she knew they had her scent?
* * * *
“That was close,” Brahma muttered, picking a flattened bullet out of his arm as his nanos expelled it and dropping it onto the concrete they were sitting on.
Hawk sent him a sardonic look. “Close?”
Brahma shrugged and picked up the bag he’d made off with when they’d fled through the grocery store to evade the patrol that was in behind them. “Bread,” he muttered with disgust. “I don’t suppose anybody managed to grab anything that would be good with bread?”
Puma was busy picking the slugs out of his ass.
“I got canned corn,” Cham-two said sourly.
Brahma grinned at him. “That’s what I’m talking about! I’ll trade you a quarter of the loaf for half the can.”
Cham-two glared at him, studied the hal
f flattened loaf for a moment and finally shrugged. “Alright.”
“Just split if four ways, guys,” Hawk said irritably. “Everybody needs a little chow right about now.”
“It sucks that we were that damned close and didn’t manage to grab any fucking thing,” Puma growled.
“You shouldn’t have used all of it on the patrol,” Brahma said pointedly. “Not that the cans didn’t make some pretty effective weapons, but …. Well, I saw at least one can of stew bean one of them. If you’d pitched the peaches it would’ve been just as effective and better for us.”
“I wasn’t reading the fucking labels,” Puma growled. “I don’t know how the hell you managed to.”
Brahma grinned at him. “I’m just that good.”
Puma made an obscene gesture at him, extended one of his five inch, steel claws and cut the top off of his can. Spearing a peach half, he downed it in one gulp and studied the contents of the can. “Looks like two each to me.” He speared another and passed the can.
Hawk wasn’t exactly thrilled with the menu himself, but he’d had worse.
Of course, he’d also had a hell of a lot better and wondered what the chances were that they could get their hands on MREs.
Probably somewhere around zero.
About as much of that as getting their hands on military grade weapons.
Dismissing it, he finished his portion of the food and sent Puma up to check the perimeter.
Puma called an all clear back a few minutes later and they climbed out of the sewer hole they’d taken shelter in and headed for the next rendezvous point.
He sure hoped Eagle had had some luck with the vet. As much as he fucking hated the idea of going to a vet, he was sick of this shit already.
And it was a disaster waiting to happen—a lose/lose situation for them.
* * * *
Eagle squad didn’t make it to the next rendezvous.
Hawk and his men were there first and antsy by the time Condor and his squad arrived nearly three minutes late. They located the vet’s office that had been Eagle squad’s target on their maps while they waited for them to show. When another five minutes passed without any sign of them—or the sound of gunfire chasing them in their direction—or in fact any direction—they knew the squad was in trouble.
Without weapons themselves, all they could do was to create a diversion to give the squad the chance to escape but they didn’t hesitate. They knew neither Eagle or his squad would if the situation was reversed.
They were a little better than halfway between the rendezvous point and the office they were looking for when they heard distant gunfire that told them what they’d expected. They moved faster, snatching up whatever they came across to use as weapons if it came to hand to hand.
Not that they weren’t absolutely capable of hand to hand with no weapon beyond their hands, but they would be outnumbered, they knew, and they were without the weapons they would generally have had and they needed any advantage they could round up.
They weren’t surprised when it transpired they’d guessed correctly. They managed to come up behind the patrol that had Eagle squad pinned down and caught them by surprise—because they were too intent on wiping out Eagle squad to be watching their six.
That didn’t last, of course. The patrol was demoralized to discover they’d been flanked—and that it was two of the squads of cyborgs, but they rallied well enough Condor and Hawk and their squads had to fight their way back out again. By the time they had, they’d lost sight of Eagle squad, but they were convinced they’d managed to slip off while their teams kept them occupied.
They’d captured a few weapons in the melee, but, to their vast disappointment, they discovered the bastards were equipped with genetically coded weapons and they were useless to them.
“We’re going to have to find some black market weapons,” Hawk said with disgust, wondering how they were going to manage that miracle when they knew nothing about the city that wasn’t marked on the maps.
“Maybe Raven had luck with that female they were going to track down? She’s from the city and she didn’t strike me as an upstanding citizen,” Condor said wryly.
“Maybe—hopefully. I hate to say it, but it’s starting to look like we’re up shit creek without a paddle,” Hawk said grimly, wondering if they’d have any better luck if they tracked down the head honchos at the company. So far, they hadn’t even managed to get any fucking traction.
Despite their optimism about Eagle squad, they hadn’t shown at the signal point before Cham from Raven squad arrived with the news that they had at least a temporary haven.
Since nobody wanted to risk leading the cops or the company goons directly to their refuge they split up and backtracked before they descended into the sewer system—still with no sign of Eagle squad.
And finally arrived at the platform where Raven’s group had stopped–weary, battered, hungry and thirsty—in fact about as miserable as they had ever been in memory.
As uncomfortable as the ‘accommodations’ were it was a vast improvement, and they at least had access to water, and that was a big boost to morale all around.
Food was still a serious problem. They had a super high metabolic rate to go with their super powers. And they hadn’t managed to grab more than a ‘snack’ when they’d been on the run—nothing substantial enough to hold them very long.
Nobody trusted Nika, the female that had infiltrated the company and set off the security breach protocols, but there was no getting around the fact that she was damned helpful.
Or that she was a damned fine looking woman that had every man of them thinking a lot more with their cocks than their heads.
It was easy street after they finally regrouped—all four squads—and found a doctor—that Nika took them to—capable of removing the locators that were the bane of their existence and seemed destined to be the death of them if they couldn’t get rid of them.
Comparatively speaking.
The cops and the military finally tumbled to the fact that they’d taken to the sewers and the old subway system—after searching the city from end to end—and they had to fight a running battle until they emerged from the tunnels beyond the city dome.
Hawk wasn’t particularly happy about the situation, though.
He’d known as soon as Raven’s squad claimed Nika as their mate that that was why he couldn’t get Alexis out of his mind.
Unfortunately, there were two monumental roadblocks to claiming her as theirs.
First and foremost was that she looked upon them as monsters and it wasn’t likely she was going to let them claim her and he wasn’t comfortable with chasing her down and taking her prisoner—like Raven’s squad had their mate.
Secondly and also of substantial importance was the fact that he also wasn’t comfortable with the idea of risking the lives of his men for what would probably be a fool’s errand.
He tried to dismiss it. They had their hands full trying to escape and that was enough to focus him—most of the time—on the effort to survive.
But it seemed the further they got from her the more desperate he was to turn back. Only his obligation to the others held him back, but once they’d gained their freedom and put the pack of dogs at their heels behind them, he discovered it was still nagging at him and realized it was going to until he knew, positively, that it was useless to pursue a mating with her.
Chapter Four
Hawk glanced at his squad several times and then just stopped. “I won’t be going with you. Not now, anyway,” he said emphatically, having made his decision.
That jolted all of them. Puma and Brahma glanced at Cham-Two. Cham-Two shrugged. “What’s up?”
“It’s just bothering me,” Hawk said, deciding to focus on the other reason he was going back rather than bringing up Alexis. He didn’t figure there was any point in getting anybody’s hopes up over something he knew damned well was doubtful at best. “Has been ever since Raven brought it up.”
“The kill-switch thing. I don’t want that hanging over my head.”
“We don’t know that they put one in us,” Puma pointed out.
“But that’s just my gods damned point! I don’t know. We don’t know! If there is one, I want to know. I don’t want to think I might just be going about my business and drop dead. What if we find a mate? Have young?”
“That’s kind of getting ahead of things,” Cham-Two said in a ‘whoa, slow down’ tone. “I can see having it in mind since Raven’s squad found a mate, but you know damned well the chances of us finding one are slim to none.”
He did. He definitely did, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try like hell. He shook his head at the comment instead of saying so, though. “I just don’t want to live like that. I want to know if there is one, if there’s any way to deactivate it or remove it.”
“And if you find out and there’s no way to get rid of it?” Puma pointed out.
“I still want to know. If I’m living on borrowed time, I want to know. I’m going to go back into the city and see if I can find out. I’ll meet you guys at the rendezvous when I’m done. If you aren’t there I’ll know you went to one of the others.”
“Hold on now! We’re a squad. We can at least take a vote,” Brahma growled.
“No vote,” Hawk said grimly. “This is something I want to do. It isn’t a mission.”
“And we wouldn’t be taking a vote if it was,” Puma said. “This is volunteer territory. And I’m volunteering. I don’t want to live with the possibility and not knowing either.”
“Ok, if you two are going, I’m going,” Brahma said.
“Well I’m not fucking going to the rendezvous by myself!” Cham-Two growled. “Fine! We’ll all go! I don’t know where the hell we’re going when they blew up the building, but I guess you have some idea.”
“Actually, there was someone I had in mind,” Hawk said. “The lab assistant that used to poke holes in us on a regular basis.”