Double Helix Collection: A Genetic Revolution Thriller

by Jade Kerrion

  Slumped face down on the ground, Danyael slowly pushed up on his elbows. Despite his hazy vision, he saw death all around. He braced himself for the rush of guilt, but beyond an initial flash of sorrow, he felt little. He was drained, empty; he was wrung out by his own pain, too numb to feel.

  How much time had passed? Danyael wasn’t certain. He raised his psychic shields. Next to him, Jessica sighed in relief. She tugged her hand free of his and stood up. She lifted her face to the unmoving air and closed her eyes. The sky, a clear blue, shimmered as the telekinetic dome dissolved. Jessica then left him, running across the blood-soaked grass toward a path that led off the island.

  Danyael’s drifting gaze rested briefly on Scar. The super soldier’s body lay prone several feet away, many of his injuries self-inflicted. Scar had been injured but alive when Danyael had lowered his psychic shields. He had killed his protector too. Danyael exhaled, the sound somewhere between a sob and a sigh. He dropped his head back to the ground. How many had died because of him? Conservatively, he estimated close to five hundred. If killing twelve men in self-defense had sent him to ADX for life, what was the sentence for killing five hundred deliberately? Forty life sentences? He chuckled, the sound soft and bitter. Come on, Zara. I’m ready whenever you are.

  ~*~

  From her perch high in a tree, Zara saw joy dance across Miriya’s face.

  “Oh my God, he did it. Danyael did it!” Miriya’s grin was dazzling.

  The relief Zara felt was dampened by the awful sense of the inevitable. Danyael had driven hundreds of people to suicide with no more effort than dropping both psychic shields. He possessed too much power, too much deadly power, to be allowed to live free.

  She could spare him his inevitable imprisonment by killing him. It was the best solution, the only solution. For Danyael’s sake, she had to see it through.

  “How is he?” Zara asked quietly.

  “Exhausted and in terrible pain, but he’s alive. He’s going to make it.” The grin split Miriya’s face again as she shimmied down the tree, scraping skin in the process. She ran toward him.

  Zara steeled herself against the ache deep in her chest. Her daughter would never know her father. I’m so sorry, baby. He would have loved you. I know you would have loved him. She unlocked her black case and assembled her sniper rifle. She would give Miriya a few minutes with Danyael—the alpha telepath deserved at least that much after everything she had done for him—and then give Danyael the mercy he craved, the mercy he deserved.

  Zara raised the rifle to her shoulder, watching through her scope as Miriya approached Danyael. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  ~*~

  Surrounded by his enforcers, Alex Saunders watched events unfold from his vantage point on the Mount Vernon Trail. He released the breath he had been holding. Unbelievably, they had won. Danyael had won—

  Alex stiffened suddenly, his brown eyes glazed from a precognitive vision. He shouted a warning through the council’s psychic channels. The assault group! Save Danyael.

  ~*~

  Through her scope, Zara saw Miriya look sharply over her shoulder at something along the Mount Vernon Trail. Alarm flared in her green eyes. The telepath threw herself through the air. Her small body jolted twice and then collapsed beside Danyael.

  Miriya’s presence in Zara’s mind vanished.

  Zara’s mouth dropped open. Miriya? Miriya, talk to me.

  ~*~

  From behind him, Danyael heard a voice scream his name. He turned his head.

  Two feet away from him, a petite blond woman crumpled to the ground. Slowly blood trickled out of her mouth.

  His breath caught. “Miriya?” He dragged himself to her and saw the bullet wounds in her back. Had she taken the bullets meant for him? No, he couldn’t let her die. She was the only one who could save Lucien. His healing powers, weakened in a body driven past exhaustion, trickled out. He had to save her—

  A bullet pierced his back, and then another. His body jerked from the impact. The chill of impending death raced hard on the heels of the explosive pain. His fingers tightened briefly around Miriya’s, and then his grip slacked. His eyes closed. His healing powers faded; he had nothing left to give.

  ~*~

  Through the scope of her sniper rifle, Zara saw crimson bloom across the back of Danyael’s shirt.

  Shock punched the air out of her lungs. Minutes earlier, she had been ready to kill him, but in that moment, she knew that she could never have pulled the trigger.

  She was too full of selfish hope for a future, their future, to permit him to die. She leapt from the tree, landed in a battle crouch, and pushed to an adrenaline-fueled sprint. Her heart and her mind in unison screamed only one name. Danyael!

  ~*~

  The assault group! Save Danyael!

  Shock ricocheted through the council enforcers, but the impossible task had fallen to the only person close enough to protect Danyael.

  Through binoculars, Galahad had watched with horror as Miriya leapt to shield the empath and took the bullets intended for him.

  Galahad shot to his feet and raced south along the wooded trail. Nothing could save Miriya, but perhaps he could still save Zara. She was out there, and like Miriya, Zara would step into an impossible fight to save Danyael’s life. He needed to save her. He could not let the two women he loved die to save the man he hated.

  He burst into a small clearing. A sniper was poised on the top of the Military Assault Group’s black armored personnel carrier, his rifle aimed at the island. Ten other soldiers, including the general, clustered around the vehicle, apparently ready to depart.

  Weapons swung in his direction. He leapt high, somersaulted, and landed on top of the vehicle. The startled sniper looked up. Galahad kicked the sniper off the vehicle and used the momentum to throw himself into a backflip. Two bullets whizzed past him, one passing so close that he could feel the subtle heat of its wake against his skin.

  He coiled into a battle crouch and launched himself at the assault group. His blades flashed, drawing blood. Pain stabbed into his mind, briefly driving him to his knees, but he brushed off the telepathic assault. He attacked, his fist skimming under the man’s chin. The blade between Galahad’s fingers sliced through the telepath’s jugular.

  The pressure against his mind vanished as the telepath, his face pale and stricken with horror, sank to his knees, his hands pressed against his injury. With brutal efficiency, Galahad disabled the remnants of the Mutant Assault Group, fatally injuring many of them, and then turned to its leader.

  The general made no apparent move to defend himself. His smile was cool, knowing.

  For Miriya, and for Zara. Galahad poised to strike.

  “Hold, Galahad.” A man in a crisp U.S. Army uniform, accompanied by a small team of enforcers, stepped into the clearing. He looked at the general and nodded briskly. “General Howard.”

  “General Lysander,” Kieran Howard’s tone was mocking. “What brings you out here so early?”

  General Lysander, the director of the National Security Agency, shrugged. “Just a small matter of national security.” The nonchalance in his tone vanished. “General Howard, I’m placing you under arrest on charges of conspiring with the terrorist group Sakti.”

  ~*~

  “No, damn it!”

  Danyael’s eyes flashed open, the physical agony sharp and scalding as Zara pulled him onto his back and cradled him in her arms.

  She shook her head. “Not like this.”

  “Go…” he whispered. Blood swelled up in his throat. “Shields will fall when I die. Go…”

  She looked up. “Help’s coming.”

  He followed her gaze and saw several people running toward him. “No.” He tried to push away from her, but his body no longer obeyed him.

  “Danyael, keep your eyes on me,” she ordered, her voice calm.

  He shook his head, the motion so weak that it was scarcely visible. “Kill me, please. Can’t go back…”
<
br />   Shadows blocked out the sun. Alex Saunders’s voice boomed through his spinning head. “Heal him now.”

  Someone knelt beside him and placed her hands against his chest. A soft voice, laced with urgency, crooned, “Let me in, Danyael, it’s all right. I can still help you. Let me in.”

  He refused.

  “He’s fighting me. If he doesn’t let me in, I can’t heal him.”

  “Break his shields,” Alex ordered.

  The physical pain consuming him faded into irrelevance as pressure mounted against his mind. His fingers clawed at the ground as he fought to breathe. He had to keep the telepaths from smashing his psychic shields. He had to keep the psychic healer out of his mind and his body, until he died. He had to hold out for a few more seconds.

  “We need more telepaths,” someone called out. “We can’t get through.”

  Alex’s voice was sharp. “Jessica!”

  Danyael’s gaze flashed to Jessica Richardson. The teenager chewed on her lower lip and wrung her fingers. “No,” he pleaded.

  “I’m so sorry, Danyael,” she whispered back.

  Her power flicked out like a whip, coiling around his mind. Her grip tightened. The pressure soared. Danyael screamed.

  Jessica wiped away the tears from her eyes as her mind bore down inexorably. Danyael’s psychic shield cracked. No…please, God, no. Don’t let me live.

  The combined power of several telepaths merged, driving down like a sledgehammer on the sliver of weakness in his psychic shield. It shattered.

  Danyael threw his head back, his mouth open in a silent scream. Anguish stole his voice. More than his shields shattered. The impact stunned his mind and broke his will to resist.

  The healer’s powers surged through his broken mind and into his damaged body, its warmth driving away the chill, a soothing balm against the physical pain.

  As his body healed, his spirit suffocated. Zara’s face was hazy through the tears in his eyes. She had betrayed him. Again.

  Once more, he would pay the price for his blind faith in Zara Itani.

  ~*~

  Zara blinked back the tears from her eyes. She cradled Danyael’s head with one hand, and with the other she stroked his cheek. She looked into his dark eyes and saw far too much pain, too much hurt. His lips moved, but no sound emerged. For a moment, his struggle reflected in his eyes, and then he seemed to stop fighting. His erratic breath evened, his racing heartbeat calmed. His eyes fluttered and closed. He had slipped into unconsciousness.

  The blood pumping out of his bullet wounds halted. If she looked under his shirt, she would see the injuries close, flesh sealing over the wounds. The sliced skin on his forehead, their deep cuts spelling out the word “whore,” repaired, leaving no scars.

  The psychic healer sat back on her heels and looked up at Alex. “He’ll make it. I don’t know if I can do more for him. His leg injury is old, and the wounds are surrounded by scar tissue. We could cut the wounds open and remove the scar tissue, but I can’t heal through them.”

  “Leave them for now. And Miriya?” His strong voice caught.

  The healer shook her head. “I can’t bring people back from the dead. Danyael could have saved her within moments of her death, but now it’s too late.” She looked down at Danyael, sighing softly. “He’s in a lot of psychic pain from absorbing others’ injuries. He’s not going to wake for a while.”

  “Good,” Zara said. “That gives us time to finish this.” She pulled out both Glocks and set the barrel of one against the tender underside of Danyael’s chin. The other she pointed at Alex Saunders. “I have twitchy fingers,” she warned the wide-eyed telepaths. “You’ll take me down with a psi-blast, but I promise, you’ll kill Danyael and Alex in the process.”

  Alex’s voice was calm. “Zara, what are you doing?”

  “Keeping a promise. Danyael asked me to kill him, to keep him from being sent back to ADX. He seemed to believe the latter was a foregone conclusion, but it occurs to me that it doesn’t have to be. We both know Danyael never deserved to be there in the first place. Your decision to send him there led to this. Unmake that decision. Danyael is not going back to ADX. It’s up to you whether his next location is a hospital bed or a slab in a morgue.”

  Alex spread his hands. “He is not going back to ADX; I give you my word. He’s not going to prison, any prison. We owe him too much.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  “He’ll get a fresh start. I don’t know if he’ll accept our help, but if he does, we’ll help him get back on his feet.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “He goes his own way, and it’s not back to prison.” Alex nodded. “We’ll do right by him, I swear it.”

  Zara looked down at Danyael. His face, its sculptured beauty unaltered by suffering, was at peace. In sleep, he seemed much younger and infinitely more vulnerable. She put her guns away and reached out once more to caress his cheek gently. I love you, Danyael. Always.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Danyael stared out of the hospital window. From his bed, he watched the reddish glow of the sky concede to night. Watching the sunset kept his mind from cycling through an endless litany of guilt. It kept the image of Miriya’s lifeless body from dominating his every conscious thought. She had saved his life, and for what? You promised you would be safe. You promised to help Lucien, but you threw your life away on me. Why?

  That question had churned through his mind since he regained consciousness. Hours later, he still had no answers, none that made any sense.

  Danyael gritted his teeth as his left leg cramped, sending spasms of pain shooting along the length of his spine. The dull ache oozed out, sapping his strength and endurance, both of which were slow to return. It was as if his body knew better. What was the point of returning to ADX in prime health? Still, he shifted as best he could, trying to take the weight and pressure off his leg. The handcuffs that bound his hands to the metal rails of the bed tugged as he moved, chafing his raw wrists.

  He had seen no one except for stern doctors and dour-faced nurses. No one answered his questions, his pleas, to tell him if Zara was safe, if she was alive. As the hours passed, he stopped asking. She had betrayed him and walked away, as she had done once before.

  The door opened. Alex Saunders walked in, accompanied by two enforcers. Alex’s only greeting was a brisk nod as he strode to the bed and unlocked the handcuffs. “That was smart of you.” Alex stepped back as Danyael sat up slowly. “Grabbing the medical records tablet while the nurse is called out of the room and altering the dosage of painkillers and sleep aids? It’s a good thing the nurse was smart enough to question the dosage and check with a doctor. We didn’t go through all the effort of trying to save you to have you kill yourself with a drug overdose the very same day.”

  A muscle twitched in Danyael’s smooth cheek.

  “You have only yourself to blame for the handcuffs,” Alex continued. “The doctors didn’t want to risk your further tampering with medical records and prescription medication.”

  Danyael cradled his wrists against his body. He spared a final glance out the window. When he was certain that he could speak without his voice trembling, he looked at Alex. “I’m not going back to ADX. You can let me kill myself, or I can force you to kill me.”

  Alex snorted. He tossed a tablet down on the bed. It landed squarely on Danyael’s lap.

  Danyael reached for the tablet. “What is this?”

  “Commutation of your life sentence to time already served. I’ve filed a petition for a presidential pardon—a full pardon—but those things take time. Meanwhile, you’re free to go, to return to your life.”

  Danyael stared at the document displayed on the tablet. “I…don’t understand. I killed twelve people in self-defense and you sent me to a super maximum-security prison without trial, for life. I killed four…five hundred today, deliberately, and you set me free?”

  Alex paced the length of the small hospital room. “The Mutant Ass
ault Group has had its eye on you for a long time. After Galahad escaped, the assault group used the ensuing chaos to drive you to the edge. They wanted a reason to take you in. But you didn’t break, not even after they kidnapped Lucien and blocked his mind. At the same time, I found out that Howard had been experimenting with super soldiers, and he needed an alpha empath—you—to make his work a success.”

  Incredulity edged into Danyael’s voice. “And you sent me to ADX to keep me out of the general’s grasp?”

  “I sent you to ADX to accomplish one of two things: to keep you out of the general’s grasp, or to escalate the stakes and force him to get you out.”

  “So if the general had never come for me, you would have left me to die in prison?” His fury, potent because it was so rare, flashed into a flame. Danyael hurled himself at Alex and shoved him against the wall. The two enforcers pulled him back, and one of them slammed his knee into Danyael’s injured leg, causing it to buckle beneath him.

  Alex shrugged his shoulders, adjusting the lapels of his suit.

  Danyael trembled in the enforcers’ grip, shaking with anger. “You were like a father to me. I trusted you.”

  “It was necessary—”

  “For what?”

  “National security.”

  “Was it worth it? Was it worth my year at ADX? Was it worth Miriya’s life?”

  “I am not responsible for the general’s decision to fund and train Sakti.”

  “He did it to save me from the hellhole you sent me to.” Danyael clenched his teeth. “He treated me well. He protected me.”

  “I know the general did right by you, but what he did was wrong.”

  Bitterness wrung a laugh out of Danyael. “That gives me a hell of a choice, doesn’t it? Be valued by people who do the wrong thing, or be treated like trash by the people who do the right thing.”

  “Danyael—”

  He averted his gaze.

  Alex began, “The council would like to help—”

  “I do not want the council’s help.”

  “You’ll need it to get back on your feet.”