Any further retort was cut off by Markov’s entrance. “Luca, you’re here. Good.”
He was slim, with close-cropped dark hair and a wispy beard. His dark eyes sharpened when he brushed past Jules. “Please bring 763B and 986Y to the observation chamber. Immediately.”
“Right away, Dr. Markov,” Luca said, wondering why he wanted Luis the cat and Frick the rat in the observation tank at the same time.
The animals were glad to see her. She dashed a cup full of kibble into Leroy’s dog dish and sprinkled some rat food pellets in the clear plastic carrier she used to transfer Frick to the observation tank. Then she went back for Luis.
The cat was waiting for her. He arched his back under her hand and meowed when she picked him up. Luca nestled the feline close to her chest, and he began to purr softly, licking her hand.
“If you promise not to eat Frick, I’ll bring you a treat,” she whispered.
Luca lowered him into a holding pen connected to a six-by-six observation corral recessed into the floor. Sensors studded the tank’s inner wall for recording signal data. On the other side of the tank, Frick the rat watched nervously through the clear plastic door of his own holding pen. Once both animals were secure, she walked to the control room.
Markov was speaking in his professorial voice to a black woman not much older than Luca. Her hair was cut close, her posture upright and self-assured.
“The animals have been implanted with a nanite dose in their brain stem,” Markov was explaining. “The theory I’m testing is that we can control instinctive behavior, transmit real-time sensory data, and possibly even facilitate basic two-way communication.”
“The silver disc,” the woman said. “How does that work, exactly?”
“It’s a transceiver. The biggest problem with the signal is gain.”
“You’re working with subspace frequencies?”
“Absolutely. That gives us the best communication range and speed, potentially global reach—if we can solve the gain issue.”
She cocked her head. “And what are you going to demonstrate with these subjects?”
“Ah, yes.” Markov walked to the control panel and rested his hand on Jules’s shoulder. “Aggression intervention. I’ll demonstrate how we can alter the feline’s natural instincts to hunt and even encourage gentle behavior toward the rat.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “I’m watching, Doctor.”
Luca’s heartbeat quickened. Markov triggered Frick’s door, releasing the rat into the observation tank. He quickly ran to the side farthest from Luis and cowered.
The cat peered out through the plastic, eyes alert and calculating. Luca wished she had arrived just a few minutes earlier so she could have fed him.
The door to Luis’s pen rose. He stalked into the open corral and dropped into a crouch.
“Doctor…” Luca began.
Luis began stalking around the tank’s perimeter. The more animated Frick’s whiskers became, the slower Luis moved.
“What you’re seeing is natural, predatory behavior on the part of the feline and the expected fear response by the rat, its prey.” Markov pointed to the sensor readout, which showed a flat line. “No intervention yet, please note.”
Luis was close now, nearly close enough to pounce. Frick’s growing panic came in a constant stream of high-pitched squeaks. Luca saw the muscles along the cat’s sleek body ripple as he gathered his legs beneath him.
Luca’s own body tensed.
“Now,” Markov said calmly to Jules.
Luis leapt.
Jules engaged the transmitter.
The effect was instantaneous. Luis dropped to the floor in mid-leap, landing on all fours next to the terrified rat. Frick scrambled away to settle near the closed door to his own pen, his whiskers twitching. Luis began to preen himself.
“Amazing,” the woman said. The sensor readings had spiked during the experiment, then leveled off to a new normal.
Markov smiled broadly. “Our intervention has overridden the cat’s natural instinct to hunt, making him a placid, well-adjusted creature. Think of the applications to humanity.”
“Mind control, you mean.”
“Oh, nothing so nefarious!” the scientist said. “I was thinking of mentally ill individuals. If we can control abnormal impulses in them, we can help them lead a normal life, even assimilate into society.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “And if you discontinue the signal? ”
Markov nodded at Jules, who pushed the button again. The cat’s head swiveled to find Frick. His tail dropped to the floor, and he began stalking Frick again.
“Please, Doctor,” Luca said.
“No need for bloodshed,” the visitor added. “You’ve proven the tech.”
“Oh, of course,” Markov said, motioning to Jules. With a flick of a button, once again Luis became docile. “This technology, while more advanced than anything we’ve seen before, is nothing new in terms of the theory behind it. Back in the early twentieth century, doctors controlled motor functions in Parkinson’s patients by installing a stimulation implant directly into their brains. That’s my goal for my invention, applied to the mentally ill. Schizophrenics, even psychopaths could potentially benefit—”
“Does it work the other way?” interrupted the woman watching the animals in the pen.
“You mean forced aggression?” Markov asked. He reached around Jules to enter a new sequence, then activated the transmitter.
Frick the rat reared up on his hind legs, his red eyes glowing fiercely, and launched his small body at Luis. The cat skittered backward, yowling. Frick pressed in, ripping at the cat’s fur, his tiny teeth slashing for Luis’s throat.
“Stop!” Luca dashed from the room and vaulted into the observation tank, grabbing Frick by the back of the neck and lifting him off Luis. The rat’s whiskers were a storm of activity. He twisted in her hand and sank his sharp teeth into Luca’s thumb .
Luca stifled a scream as she wrestled the rat back into his pen, then thrust her bleeding thumb into her mouth. The visitor appeared at her side. She wrapped a clean, white handkerchief around Luca’s injured thumb.
“That’s a nasty bite,” she said. Her voice was calm and kind. “My name’s Hannah, by the way. Hannah Jansen.”
“Luca,” she replied, attempting to ignore the pain in front of Jansen. “Vasquez.”
Markov had exited the control room, Jules close on his heels, clearly furious. “I must apologize for my assistant,” he said. “She’s a bit squeamish when it comes to the animals. We can conduct another—”
“Nonsense, Doctor,” Jansen said. The command in her voice made Luca smile inside. “You’ve certainly demonstrated the efficacy of your research. If you and your assistant would put these animals away, I’ll finish dressing this young lady’s wound. First aid kit?”
“Control room, ma’am,” Jules supplied.
Markov muttered to Jules to return the cat to its cage.
Back in the control room, Jansen removed the handkerchief and began cleaning the wound. “Well, the good news is, you don’t need stitches. But this will really throb for a few days.” She applied an antiseptic spray, then a quick-drying gel to seal the wound. “Leave this on for at least twenty-four hours before you check it.”
“I will,” Luca said with genuine gratitude. “Thank you.” Through the window of the control room, she could see a frustrated Jules trying to catch Luis.
As the cat easily evaded her grasp, the readings on the panel caught Luca’s attention. The transmitters were all zeroed out and the lines representing Luis and Frick were back at baseline, like they should be. But another signal was showing on the screen. A variable signal.
Jules exited the tank with the captured Luis.
The signal disappeared.
• • •
That night, long after Donna had gone to bed, Luca sat awake in the dark on their ratty loveseat. Sleep wouldn’t come. Her thumb throbbed, despite Jansen’s excellen
t field dressing.
All day, Luca’s mind had percolated on the brief, active signal reading on the lab’s control panel. Jules had been radiating a signal. How was that even possible? That was the whole point of working in an EM-shielded space. Data glasses, retinal implants, even old-fashioned smartphones were rendered useless.
There was only one possibility. The signal had come from Jules herself.
She slipped her data glasses on and eye-scanned to the WorldNet through an anonymous connection.
She hadn’t visited the Pawn’s Portal in weeks. It was a secure gathering spot for ex-Neos, people who claimed the New Earth Order was a recruiting method for corporate mind control on a massive scale. She told herself the people who posted there were just conspiracy theorists, crackpots with nothing better to do than to let their paranoia run away with them.
But tonight, after seeing Markov’s technology in action, Luca thought maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.
Luca entered the Portal. It was skinned as a hotel bar, complete with dark corners and a beery-breathed lounge singer playing a piano. Every visitor had an avatar to represent them. Luca used her favorite superhero, Wonder Woman, but dressed as her alter ego Diana Prince.
The man behind the front desk smiled. “Howdy, Dubya-Dubya.”
“Shhh,” Luca admonished. “It’s Diana Prince, remember?
“Ah, yes. How lovely to see you again, Miss Prince. How can I help you?”
“I need to speak with Magdalena.”
Chapter 5
Remy Cade • Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar
The troop carrier rocked as they descended into the choppy lower atmosphere over the Persian Gulf.
It’d been more than six years since Remy Cade had been part of a battle unit, but it felt like only yesterday. The butterflies in his stomach, the racing thoughts recounting every detail of the mission, the obsessive way his hands checked his gear over and over again.
M24 assault rifle, Glock sidearm, carbon-smartglass knife. Check, check, check. The new Dragonskin body armor hugged his torso like a second skin, promising him invincibility. But experience taught him believing that feeling got you and those around you killed.
Most of the squad had their data glasses on, engaged in a multiplayer combat game. Only he and Sergeant Rico were passing their last few pre-battle minutes without distraction. Rico chewed a plastic toothpick.
“You ready to go, Sam?” Rico asked .
Remy clenched his teeth. “Enough with the Sam shit, okay?” He knew the Neos still harbored doubts about his loyalty. Rico was Remy’s babysitter, and for some reason, he wouldn’t stop calling him Sam.
“It’s my new name for you, man. You’re my secret agent man —Sam, for short.” Rico flipped the toothpick end over end with his tongue, an insolent grin painting his face.
Remy turned to the window. A blooming line of sunlight crawled across the eastern Mediterranean Sea. He squinted at the horizon. There were eleven other teams out there, one from each of the Neo assault bases scattered around the world. Together, they would take on twelve US forward operating bases across the Middle East and Africa. His team was assigned CENTCOM at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Penetrate the command-and-control infrastructure and upload a virus into the central computer—that was their mission. While the generals slept in Washington, the Neos would take away their ability to wage war overseas.
The blow wasn’t meant to be fatal. It was meant to send a message from Cassandra:
My people are everywhere; we can strike anywhere. You are not the most powerful force on the planet anymore.
You are not safe from me.
But there was another mission, known only to a few select team members, like Rico. The real goal of the coordinated strike was to deliver Remy into the hands of the enemy. He’d been promoted to spy. Less a vote of confidence, and more another test of loyalty. An opportunity to prove himself to Elise once and for all .
Elise Kisaan was the love of his life and he’d do anything for her, that was the harsh truth. But she had tested that faith sorely. He went along with the faked kidnapping by the Neos, even took a bullet for her. He watched her kill two men in cold blood and not shed so much as a tear of regret. Remy stood by as she manipulated the weather, putting thousands of people at risk…
All that mattered to her was Cassandra’s wishes … and Remy, of course. But if it came down to it, which one mattered more?
Months ago, he’d finally given in and tried to officially join the Neos, stupid tattoo and all, but Elise had stopped him.
“I need you clean,” she’d said.
Clean? The term hadn’t made sense at the time, but it did now. No tattoo, no implants, nothing to indicate to Colonel Graves that Remy had been turned by the Neos.
And now he was a spy.
Even Elise must have suspected she was pushing her influence with Remy, because she took it slow. She invited Remy to share her bed on the Temple of Cassandra space station. Her quarters had floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded them a magnificent view of Earth.
How many nights had they made love in front of that scenery before she’d sprung the question on him? Twenty, thirty? Not that it mattered; with Elise it was impossible for him to say no.
He closed his eyes and let his mind wander…
Elise straddled him, her long, dark hair stroking his face with the rhythm of their bodies. Her silhouette framed in the reflected glow of the Earth below, she dug her nails into his chest. Remy knew she could tell he was close. Her bionic thighs tightened gently against his sides and her hips rocked as she rode him .
Waves of ecstasy pulsed through him as he held her fast and close, their eyes locked together. The shared moment of heightened existence stretched until, at last, their heartbeats began to slow. When the cool air swept over their sweaty flesh, it teased out a shiver from both of them.
Elise gazed down into Remy’s eyes with a satisfied, conquering expression he found too erotic for words. Then she leaned down slowly to kiss him on the lips. Remy’s hands slid along her back, pulling her even closer. He never felt safer, never more complete than in the far-too-short moments following their lovemaking.
“I love you, Elise,” he whispered.
She kissed his ear, her breath heavy and humid. “That’s why you’re here.”
Carefully, she removed her body from his. He watched her pull away and out of bed. The white light from Earth made her damp skin glisten as she padded to the bar.
“Thirsty?” The curves of her body were slim and perfect, barely a ripple of scar tissue where the bionic legs fused with her hips.
Remy was conscious of the power she had over him in moments like these, but he didn’t care. He only wanted more of them, forever.
She poured them each a glass of water. Handing him his, Elise walked to the huge window. The silver light bent around her. “I need to ask you to do something,” she said.
Remy took a sip. “Yes.”
Though she faced away from him, he could hear the smile in her voice. “I haven’t told you what it is yet.”
“I’ll do anything for you. You know that. ”
Elise returned to their bed and threw one leg, warm and powerful, over his midsection. If he hadn’t known she had bionic limbs, he wouldn’t have been able to tell. Elise settled on her back, her head in the crook of his arm. Her hair smelled like flowers.
“You know Colonel Graves, right?”
Remy grunted. “You know he was my CO in the army. Why?”
“Would he remember you?”
“Oh, yeah. Graves was a soldier’s soldier. Knew every man in his outfit. We were Graves’s Diggers, and if you served under Graves, you were somebody. He even offered to be a character witness at my court-martial.”
Elise rolled over and placed her chin on Remy’s chest. Her eyes were dark brown and intense. “They’ve put Graves in charge of a project called Haven. It’s a silo, a place to shield a few thousand people from an
environmental catastrophe, but there’s more to it. Our intel says they’ve developed an entirely new power source. Unlimited, clean power. Think about what we could do with that. But we can’t get any of our people inside the Haven, and we really need to know—”
“You mean Cassandra needs to know.”
It was always Cassandra. In those moments when Remy felt closest to Elise, Cassandra would slip between them. Always.
Elise cocked her head. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” She pushed herself into a sitting position. For a few moments of silence, they no longer touched. Then she placed her hand under his chin and gently turned his face toward her. “We’re in this together, Remy. You and me. Or are you having second thoughts about our cause? ”
“I don’t have any second thoughts about us,” he said.
“And that’s exactly why I need to know you’re committed, once and for all,” Elise said. “To me and to Cassandra. I’m nothing without her.”
Then her demeanor melted, and she became the shy girl he’d first fallen in love with. “When you get back, there’s a lot we need to talk about. I—I think it’s time. I want to start a family. With you.”
Remy pulled her close, banishing Cassandra from between them.
“I just need you to do this one last thing for me…”
• • •
And now, he was riding a military transport with Rico. Bedroom to battlefield.
“All right, listen up!” Rico shouted, standing.
The chatter from the gamers ceased. They removed their data glasses. The tension in the cabin charged the air around them.
“Both squads will move out when we land. When Cade and I are in position, I’ll cue you for the diversions. Make it good and get your asses back to the shuttle while we deliver the package. Understood?”
Grim faces nodded back.
The ship lost altitude rapidly, entering the military transit lanes. Just another routine troop transport, one of a dozen flying all over the Eastern Med and Northern Africa. They entered a holding pattern over Al Udeid Air Base. Despite his nerves, Remy knew this delay was expected. All the international US military bases were on lockdown, given the overt hostility from the Chinese and Russians—hell, the whole damned planet—following the Lazarus disaster.
Cassandra's War: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 2) Page 4