Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)

by Shannon McKenna

  Noah stopped short, and shoved her back into a narrow space between two parked trucks until her back hit rough brick. He cupped her face in his hands and gave her a swift, hard kiss. “Stay here. Right here.”

  She gasped for breath. “But what are you going to—”

  “Shhhh. Not a word. Don’t move.” He pressed her back against the bricks, and darted back the way they had come.

  She was locked into place for a confused moment. Then she heard the slap of running feet getting closer. She scrambled behind the trucks and eased her way forward along the wall so she could see what was happening.

  She heard a heavy thud, a startled yell. Gasps, grunts. Cursing, punctuated by slapping sounds. A harsh, chopped-off shout. The guy had attacked Noah.

  She crouched down and saw a second guy’s feet flash by. Still more pounding footsteps were getting closer.

  Three to one? Fuck that. She had to help him. Now.

  Various lengths of rusty rebar were scattered on the ground. Some lay across the path between the trucks and the dumpsters. She grabbed the end of the longest piece of rebar she could see with one hand, and a brick with the other. Just as the running footsteps and panting breaths got louder, she jerked the rebar up—

  Yes. The guy tripped. Went flying with a shout and hit the ground hard.

  Caro pounced on him, screaming as she swung the brick she held downward.

  Her opponent twisted, blocked her blow so that the brick glanced off the side of his head, but he still roared in pain. Caro whipped back to avoid his punch—

  A rush of air moving, a blur of rapid motion. She was lifted. Tossed to the side.

  Noah kicked the guy’s face. The whipping sound, air moving, flashes of color. His moves were too fast for her eyes to register. He yanked the guy’s arm, wrenched his knee sideways, slammed a fist down on his chest.

  The guy lay still, his face a mask of blood below the nose. Arm and leg bent at impossible angles. Out cold.

  Caro stared up. Noah didn’t even look rumpled. A glance behind her revealed that the other two attackers lay on the ground, in the same condition.

  Noah grabbed her wrist and lifted her up to her feet. “You were supposed to stay put,” he said with disapproval.

  “I haven’t survived these past few months by doing what I was told,” she said.

  She barely caught his appreciative grin just before he grabbed her hand and pulled her into a stumbling run. “Let’s move.”

  “Yeah,” she coughed out.

  They spotted a back door that opened onto a loading bay and ran inside. An exit sign pointed them toward a stairwell, which led down into a basement corridor with a low ceiling hidden by insulated pipes.

  Caro barely kept pace with his long, purposeful strides, held up by the arm around her waist. It was like being swept along by a powerful storm wind. One which knew exactly where it was going.

  They came to the battered doors of a freight elevator. Noah jabbed the button and dragged her into his arms while they waited, hugging her fiercely. His heart thundered against her ear. He threw off so much heat. It was life-giving.

  She tried not to see it, but now that they weren’t in frantic motion, the loop in her head started to play. Bea, catapulted into the air. Bea crumpled, bleeding and silent. She pressed her face to his chest.

  His arms tightened. “You OK?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said fiercely against his jacket.

  He grunted, unconvinced, but the doors were sliding open. Into the elevator. Up another level. She followed where he led and tried not to stumble. At some point, they were outside again, running through an icy drizzle that gave her goosebumps.

  He came to an abrupt halt, and she heard the thunk of the car locks opening. He opened the Porsche’s door and helped her in. “Seat belt,” he directed.

  She fumbled with it clumsily as he got into the drivers’ side.

  He clicked his own seatbelt into place as he he started the motor. She noticed the dark wet splatter on his jacket sleeve as the car surged into the street. “Noah, you’re bleeding!”

  “Not my blood,” he assured her.

  She sagged back, relieved. “How the hell did you do that?”

  His elusive smile showed. “No big deal. There were only three of them.”

  “Only three . . . ?” Her voice cracked, failed her. Only three, her ass.

  After a moment, she tried again. “So, were you some kind of commando once? Is that where you got the scars?”

  “You don’t get to ask questions right now. I’m taking you home. And you’re coming clean with me.”

  “I don’t think so.” Caro’s voice gained strength. “Slow down. I’m getting out of the car now.”

  “Not at this speed. I want to know who’s messing with you, and why.”

  She sat there, too exhausted to protest. Astonished, too. She’d been mooning helplessly at this guy nonstop since the moment he’d entered her field of vision, but she’d realized in a sudden, spine-tingling rush, that she’d never really seen him at all.

  Not until now.

  * * *

  “Escaped?” Mark snarled into the phone. “How in the fuck did she do that?”

  Carrerra hemmed and hawed. “I sent in my three best operatives. But the guy with her had serious combat skills. He took them by surprise.”

  “But you didn’t go.”

  “No.”

  “Three trained, armed professionals, and she got away. Again.” Mark’s AVP was starting its nasty buzzing drum roll inside him. “Where are you now?”

  “The hospital,” Carrerra admitted. “Two of my team have broken knees. Ripped ligaments. All three have broken jaws. They’re being checked for brain bleed—”

  “As if I gave a shit. As if they had any brains. Why aren’t you out looking for her right now?”

  “I’m about to—”

  “To leave the fucking hospital? Good move.” Mark bit the words out with lethal softness. “Do it. This minute. Find Caroline Bishop.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Don’t fuck up a second time.” Mark slid the phone into his pocket.

  It took a few minutes of concentrating just to drag his raging AVP under control and remember what he was doing. Product testing.

  He’d found the perfect place for it. The abandoned gravel pit off the highway was protected on three sides like an amphitheater. No people for miles around. He’d checked for thermals, listened with his augmented hearing for approaching cars. He was eager to get to Seattle and collect Caroline, but he had to be realistic. When he activated the rest of the slave soldiers, they would outnumber him twelve hundred to one.

  He had to develop his control technique very quickly.

  Marc wrenched open the nailed crate and lifted out the multi-mode slave soldier control unit. Lydia Bachmann had babbled on about the amazing new special weapons back when she was still hoping that she might survive the encounter.

  Hadn’t taken long for her to realize that she was so fucking finished.

  The equipment wasn’t elegant in its design. Just a large, clunky helmet. The freq wad was inserted into a larger amplifying console. Commands synched wirelessly with implants inside the slave soldier’s brains and could be sent to multiple subjects at once.

  Plus, there were many modes. Verbal commands relied on the slave soldiers’ programming and brain stim, but wireless commands from the console went straight to their cerebral implants. There was also an FMC mod, fine motor control, that gave the controller complete command over the slave soldier’s nervous system, but that required more equipment and was more complicated to learn. Later for that. There would be time.

  He wanted to play with the quick and dirty toys right now.

  He looked out the back of the parked truck. Brenner was out in the gravel pit, setting up two extremely realistic dummies that Mark had found in Kitteridge’s vault. They even had fake blood pumping through surgical tubes and artfully simulated soft tissue and organs.
A young woman dummy, and a child dummy, a girl about the size of a five-year-old. The little girl dummy held a doll, a detail which he found perversely kinky. Those Obsidian pricks thought they were so fucking cute.

  Brenner had finished getting them in place. Now he just stood, staring at them. There was a sickly gray green pulsing in his sig around the level of his liver. Dread.

  Mark’s anger flared. Sloppy design. Brenner should have no emotions aside from an eager desire to serve his controller. Mark had to burn those feelings out of him.

  There would be plenty of opportunities for that coming up real soon.

  Mark approached him, savoring the moment. He could have used the pain setting on the freq wand from a distance, but it was more fun up close.

  A long, hard zap broke the pattern of colors in the slave soldier’s sig into a muddle of disoriented agony. Better. Softening him up.

  Mark gave Brenner a moment to recover as he looked over the settings on the amplifier. The one he was most intrigued with was the last option. TOT. DES.

  Total destruction. At his fingertips. He liked it. Felt right.

  Mark pointed at the female dummy. “First target,” he said. “Go.”

  He pointed the console at Brenner, and pushed the TOT. DES. button.

  The effect was immediate and violent. Brenner threw back his head and roared like a wounded bear. He leaped at the female dummy, knocked it to the ground, and proceeded to rip its limbs off. Then its head. Realistic high-pressure blood spurted out of the breached fake arteries, drenching him.

  After he’d torn off all the limbs, he began to claw and bite the tissue away from the skeleton.

  Mark was so enthralled by the spectacle, he let it go on for a while. Lydia had warned that leaving the soldiers on total destruction mode for too long would compromise their function, but Brenner needed a good hard whack to get him into line.

  Brenner clawed and gnawed at the bleeding shreds of the dummy like a maddened dog. He would just keep at it indefinitely until Mark told him to stop, or until the target was pulped.

  He pushed the stop button. Brenner rolled over onto his back, gasping for breath.

  When the slave soldier’s sig once again looked more or less human and he’d struggled back up onto his feet, Mark pointed at the child dummy.

  “That’s your next target,” he said. “Go.”

  He pushed TOT. DES. and Brenner roared again. Then he staggered, and stopped. He stood there, swaying. His arms swung around, fingers clutching and fisting, seeking a target to strike and rend but remaining motionless. Three seconds. Five. Ten.

  Mark cursed under his breath. Bullshit implant and stim design. Worthless turd was resisting his programming. If Mark pushed too far, he’d trip the autodestruct and Brenner would be toast. A huge investment of energy down the drain.

  He stopped the amplifier, pulled out the freq wand and set it to maximum pain.

  He let Brenner scream and writhe for a good ten minutes. He’d almost ceased to care if he damaged the guy. He had to learn his lesson, or else he’d be useless anyway. So why the fuck not? Better to just have at. Get it out of his system.

  He let Brenner catch his breath after his punishment, sweating and shaking, and then gave the man a rousing kick to the ribs. He pointed to the child dummy.

  “On your feet,” he barked. “Again. That’s your target. Go.”

  He pushed the button and Brenner leaped on the little girl dummy with a hoarse roar. He began to tear it to pieces, yelling the entire time, but his hoarse bellows no longer sounded triumphant. They sounded desperate.

  Mark observed carefully. After a while, he concluded that as long as he functioned, Brenner could suffer as much as he liked. His inner conflict was irrelevant as long as the programming held. And it seemed to be holding. So it was all good.

  He watched with enjoyment as the process ran its course. The bloodsoaked, howling Brenner reduced the child dummy to something unrecognizable as human. Skull crushed, bones shattered, tissue torn apart. Almost liquefied. It was enough.

  Mark lifted the console and stopped him. A strange silence descended. Even the bird and animal sounds were gone.

  “Go down to the creek,” Mark told the slave soldier, pointing to the nearby gulley. “Get cleaned up. There are fresh clothes for you in the back of the truck.”

  Brenner got to his feet. “Callie.” His voice was scratchy and ruined.

  “She’s not here,” Mark said. “If she were, I would tell you to kill her. And you would do it. So shut the fuck up. Go clean up.”

  Brenner was looking at the ground. Mark realized that the slave soldier was staring at the doll that the researchers had shoved into the girl dummy’s hand.

  It was a baby doll, drenched with blood. Now missing an arm and an eye.

  Brenner lifted his head, and fixed his eyes on Mark. His blue eyes shone weirdly bright, their color only heightened by the slimy fake blood that covered his face.

  Brenner’s gaze was pure concentrated hatred.

  It didn’t bother Mark. Hate was good. Hate was fuel.

  He should know.

  Chapter 17

  Cold, bracing air rushed in when the car door opened. They were at Noah’s house again. She’d come full circle. She got out, squinting in the white light from the overcast sky. Glimmering gray lakewater and evergreens. It smelled good.

  Her legs wobbled for a moment when she tried to stand. Adrenaline aftermath.

  Noah offered his hand to walk to the house. She took it, entwining her fingers with his, comforted by the warmth of his touch. The lethal war machine she’d just seen in action had been locked away somewhere deep in his psyche.

  The guy was a walking contradiction.

  They reached the door and went in, making their way into the big kitchen. Noah switched gears, going into alpha-male domestic mode. She was fine with that.

  Strong coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich grounded her a little. She was starting in on her second cup when Noah sat down opposite her, silently waiting.

  She struggled inwardly for a few minutes as she sipped her coffee. Her first instinct was to stay silent, which seemed like the only way to protect him and herself. Although she’d never in her life met a person less in need of protecting than Noah Gallagher.

  What a weird and excellent rush that was.

  The urge to resist his curiosity was still there, but it was mostly habit. The desire to tell him the truth was getting stronger by the second.

  “I’m not sure where to begin,” she said at last. “But I do want to talk.”

  “Good.”

  “OK.” She stared down into her coffee as she chose her words. “Last night, you made some guesses about me. You pretty much nailed every one. I do come from near Boston and yes, I’m an artist. I also make theater costumes and masks—that’s how I got started at Bounce.”

  “That fits.”

  What did he think it fit? His calm expression gave away nothing.

  “Anyway, I used to have a much more lucrative job with a company called GodsEye Biometrics. My boss, Dex Boyd, bought a small firm that did everyday biometric security—you know, retinal scans, iris scans, voice recognition, even fingerprints. Old school stuff.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Dex developed a brain-based system and hired me to train new clients in its interface. So that’s how I started. I loved the work. But all that’s gone. GodsEye can’t exist without my boss, Dex Boyd. He was murdered eight months ago.”

  His eyebrows went up. “So then. Security. Biometrics. Don’t tell me, let me guess. Somebody wants you to open a vault for them. Right?”

  She gave him a startled look. “Ah . . . how did you figure that out?”

  “It’s not much of a leap,” he said. “What’s in the vault?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Not my business to know. It belonged to this woman named Lydia Bachmann. The CEO of a weapons manufacturing firm. I was her coach.”

  He frowned in perp
lexity. “Coach? For what?”

  “I didn’t explain the system yet,” she said. “Dex Boyd developed biometrics for vaults and safes using brain waves patterns generated while visualizing a sequence of images. Clients who weren’t good at visualization struggled with it. Dex was always looking for staff to demonstrate the interface and work on it too, make it more user friendly.”

  “How did he find you? Is he an art school alum?”

  “No,” she said. “We connected through a mutual friend.” She looked at him warily. “I was in a mental institution at the time.”

  He didn’t answer for a several seconds. His voice was gentle when he finally spoke. “Huh. That came out of nowhere.”

  “Yeah.” She looked down at her clasped fingers. “All my life, I’ve had this thing. I used to call it a problem, but I’ve trained myself not to. If I imagine something, I actually see it. As if it were real and solid. Right in front of me.”

  She looked up at him. He said nothing, but his eyes urged her on.

  “It was odd, but nobody really noticed it until after my mom died,” she continued. “I saw her everywhere. I freaked everyone out. It took me a while to sort out what was real and what wasn’t.”

  “Can’t have been easy.”

  “No. But I—well, anyway, my Aunt Linda took me after Mom died. Nice lady, but not very imaginative or open minded. I got older, and when it kept happening, I scared her a couple times. Ended up in the psych ward more than once. Antipsychotic drugs stopped my visions, along with everything else. They have a lot of side effects.”

  She tried to read him. His expression was neutral, but she sensed how intently he was listening. That focused amber glow in his eyes made her catch her breath.

  She wouldn’t react like that if he were judging her. She hoped.

  “How did this GodsEye guy find you?” Noah asked.

  “A friend that I’d met in the psych ward had heard about Dex,” she said. “She thought it could be an opportunity for me. ‘Put your crazy to work for you,’ she said, or something like that. Made sense to me, so I contacted him. Dex invited me to come in. He’d designed a new test to measure the capacity of the visual center of the brain, and I placed in the top one percent. He offered me a job on the spot. I worked for him ever since. Software development, research, coaching.”