In the Wreckage: (M/M Sci-Fi Military Romance) (Metahuman Files Book 1)

by Hailey Turner

  “Gonna need a lift out if you want to leave quickly,” Kyle reported.

  “We’ll grab you off the roof.”

  Jamie could hear sirens in the distance that meant police were on their way. Most of the terrorists were dead, though some remained effectively grounded. Terrorist reinforcements could still be incoming, but they wouldn’t be Jamie’s problem. Right now, Alpha Team had to get the hell out of there. Jamie and Katie made a run for it, clattering up the ramp and into the Hermes combat jet. The others had deposited Dr. Patel and her fellow scientists into the nearest seats and strapped them in for the flight out.

  The engines were primed for liftoff, Annabelle’s attention focused out the windshield and on her instrumentation. “Waitin’ on your signal, sir!” she yelled over her shoulder.

  “Go!” Jamie shouted.

  The combat jet juddered through the abrupt takeoff. Jamie felt the shifting motion in his gut as Annabelle guided them into the sky, coming perilously close to scraping paint off its side as she veered toward the roof of the CDC. Kyle raced across the roof toward them, weapons in hand. Jamie watched as Kyle took a flying leap onto the open ramp, keeping his balance as he hit with a clatter, falling into a crouch when he landed. Trevor helped haul him inside using telekinesis.

  “All in,” Jamie reported.

  The ramp closed, the warning light flashing from red to the green of a solid seal as Annabelle aimed for the skies above the Atlanta megacity, the engines a harsh whine Jamie felt in his teeth.

  “Shields up, but we ain’t in the clear. Sensors pickin’ up enemy fliers comin’ in from the south. Airforce scrambled fighter jets earlier, but they’re still two minutes out. Reaper, I need you on guns,” Annabelle said.

  Kyle made his way to the flight deck and strapped into the co-pilot’s seat. He took over the controls for the weapons mounted on the roof and belly of the combat jet with sure hands.

  “Everyone strap in. Trevor, anchor anyone who doesn’t got a seat. How’re the civilians looking?” Jamie said.

  “We’re in the clear on the telepathic attack. I managed to deflect it. Their minds just aren’t used to mental interference,” Katie said.

  “So long as they’re in one piece, I’m happy.”

  The rest of the team quickly got settled, while Jamie made his way to the flight deck, bracing himself in the tiny space that separated the pilots from the passengers. He could feel Trevor’s power slide around his body, anchoring him in place. He knew better than to disrupt Annabelle’s attention when she was in the middle of a dogfight, so Jamie didn’t talk to either of them.

  A holographic targeting display had popped up around Kyle’s seat and the sniper was deftly handling the topside machinegun while the missile boxes built into the bottom of the combat jet were held at standby. Annabelle had plotted them a course high into the upper levels of the stratosphere, the vector leading them home to D.C. The Hermes combat jet was capable of limited space flight for a short period of time. Annabelle had sealed the combat jet for space, a small holographic display showing their oxygen range for the team and their passengers near her left arm.

  The loud hum of the laser guns firing at their pursuers registered through the combat jet as Kyle guarded their six. Jamie’s eyes flicked to the targeting displays, noting that the sniper had taken out one of the enemy jets even as Annabelle pulled evasive maneuvers, still flying up. Trevor’s telekinesis felt like a steady, unmovable wall around him.

  “Don’t skip atmo,” Jamie ordered.

  “Roger that,” Annabelle replied, hands steady on the yoke. “Reachin’ high stratosphere in less than sixty seconds. Reaper? How’s our six lookin’?”

  “One down, two falling behind. Altitude gain is too much for them. Air Force is in the vicinity and will handle cleanup,” Kyle said as the remaining enemy bogeys fell off the radar.

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Jamie clapped his hand over Annabelle’s shoulder, giving her a gentle squeeze. “Get us back to D.C.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Trevor, we’re in the clear,” Jamie called over his shoulder.

  The thick bands of invisible power wrapped around his torso and legs disappeared. Jamie left Annabelle to handle the flight home and retreated back into the transport area. Trevor was coaxing the scientists awake and dosing them with painkillers to take the edge off the migraines Jamie knew they had to be suffering through. The case with Dr. Patel’s scientific work sat on Katie’s lap, secure in her hands.

  She looked at him, tactical goggles flipped to the top of her helmet, her blue eyes bright in the overhead lights. What if they have a vaccine?

  I don’t think she found one, Jamie said.

  But what if she did?

  All Jamie could think of in the face of her question was that day in Tripoli where the rest of their platoon and the people they’d been tasked with saving had died beneath the Splice chemical bomb. Katie saw his memory, could maybe pick up the guilty thoughts Jamie still had, even now, for surviving when the others hadn’t.

  We’ll let the higher-ups deal with it.

  Katie tilted her head in silent acknowledgment of his order before leaving his mind. Jamie took the empty seat beside her and buckled in. He reached over and covered her gloved hand with his own, looking straight ahead.

  “It won’t change anything,” he told her quietly.

  They would still be alive.

  That was something they all had to live with.

  13

  Devil In the Details

  “Splice is unstable,” Dr. Patel explained as she very carefully lifted out the vials of the active chemical from the transport case. “That is its inherent working state. Finding a way to stabilize the chemical won’t change its use as a weapon. What we’re looking at changing is human DNA, just not to the extent of the subject in question becoming a metahuman.”

  She looked up through the protective face plate of her PPPS into the camera and smiled slightly in apology. The MDF had a Level 3 lab in Building Two, which also housed other scientific labs and the R&D lab, all of which operated on a separate environmental control system. They had the equipment on hand and safety protocols to protect workers in the restricted area and isolate any airborne toxins and pathogens. Director Nazari and Deputy Director Stirling had met Alpha Team in the lab area upon their return to base. The three scientists who came with Dr. Patel had been escorted to Medical for a checkup while Dr. Patel had insisted on seeing her work to a secure location.

  The group stood outside the restricted lab area and decontamination room, huddled around an array of screens in a viewing room to watch Dr. Patel. The director had allocated this section of the lab as off-limits except to Dr. Patel and her people, high-ranking officers, and Alpha Team.

  “Splice actually degrades in less than twenty-four hours after activation, but it can do a lot of damage during that time. We know it causes catastrophic cellular destruction in humans once absorbed or breathed in, and our immune system can’t keep up with it. Only a small percentage of people have a natural immunity to it, but we still haven’t been able to isolate what triggers that immunity,” Dr. Patel said.

  She carefully set the vials into a sealed, biohazard containment unit bolted to the floor. “For some people, being exposed to Splice triggers an immune response that activates dormant endogenous retroviruses in a person’s junk DNA. Those particular ERVs are different in every person we’ve tested, which makes isolating the trigger difficult. We do know they stabilize the body’s reaction to Splice by changing the underlying cellular DNA into something different rather than going the route of catastrophic cellular destruction. But metahuman DNA is inherently unstable. Splice can’t affect it after initial infection because chaos in the cells already exists.

  “I’ve been working on finding a vaccine for Splice for years, building off previous research. We think we might have found a way to counteract the chemical and stabilize the human body’s reaction to it by way of DNA
integration. The therapeutic vaccine we’re working on could theoretically create antibodies to isolate early unstable cells infected with Splice and destroy them.”

  “How far have you managed to get in your trials?” Trevor wanted to know.

  “We’ve finished the first phase of genetic coding, and results are promising so far. Our paper is set to be published in a scientific journal at the end of the year.”

  “Have you begun testing on animals?”

  “We’re scheduled to begin that phase early next year, if this incident doesn’t push back our research. Human clinical trials are still years away.”

  On screen, Dr. Patel closed the door to the containment unit and triggered it to lock. She headed out of the lab and into the decontamination area between the restricted and unrestricted areas. It took several minutes for her to get out of the PPPS gear and cycle through the decontamination procedure before rejoining them in the viewing room.

  “So it’s not viable,” Nazari said when she finally stepped outside the lab.

  “Not yet it isn’t. But we’re closer than anyone else has ever been and I will stand by that statement,” she replied.

  Kyle tuned out the rest of what she said as he scratched at an itch under the collar of his shirt. Alpha Team had racked their weapons and stripped out of their tactical body armor after they landed, but everyone was still in dirty combat uniforms and in need of a proper cleanup. Everyone had been too worried over the transfer of the chemical storage case off the combat jet and into the secured lab within MDF headquarters to even go to Medical and get cleared.

  Kyle knuckled his eyes, the adrenaline crash from earlier still making him feel on edge. He didn’t want to sit and listen to Dr. Patel’s scientific spiel. He wanted to get his after-action report done, go through whatever consisted of SOP for metahuman teams coming in off the field, and then enjoy some downtime.

  Kyle’s gaze drifted back to their team and the impassioned speech Dr. Patel was giving the director in order to gain permission to continue working on her retrovirus. The MDF didn’t have the lab qualifications for her to safely work on it though, so Kyle wasn’t surprised when the director shook his head.

  “Until we isolate the main terrorist group targeting you and take them out, our goal is to keep you and your work safe. I can’t authorize you to work on it. Our lab isn’t graded for the level of safety regulations it requires,” Nazari stated.

  Dr. Patel looked like she wasn’t used to hearing the word no. She huffed angrily and crossed her arms, prepared to dig in for the fight. The director cut her off with a raised hand.

  “You would have died today if we hadn’t sent Alpha Team to retrieve you,” he reminded her flatly. “Don’t bother to deny it. We operate at the behest of the United States government, as does the CDC. You can argue all you want, but it won’t change my decision, and I have better things to do than listen to you repeat yourself, Dr. Patel. I’m well aware of what you think you have and how you think we are interrupting your work, but keeping you and your work out of terrorist hands is far more important than putting you behind by a few weeks. Deputy Director Stirling here will show you where you will be staying for the foreseeable future.”

  Kyle was amused by the way Dr. Patel seemed thunderstruck about being immediately shut down without any chance to argue. Jamie seemed to take the director’s words as a dismissal, because he headed for the exit, while Katie corralled the rest of the team with a look to follow after him. Kyle and Alexei took up the rear, leaving the sputtering Dr. Patel behind them.

  The next hour or so went like Kyle expected. Medical claimed them first, with Dr. Gracie Gold ordering them about with the firmness of a drill sergeant who would not be denied. Jamie didn’t even try to duck her orders, which meant the rest of the team went through the after-mission checkup without complaint. Kyle still wasn’t used to the rigorous tests the nurses and doctors performed, tailored for each metahuman’s unique power. With his own, they simply documented that he wasn’t suffering from any wound he might have sustained during the mission in Atlanta and measured his vitals against his baseline. All of it came up normal.

  Kyle was one of the first to be dismissed from Medical, two high-calorie nutrient bars in hand, but he stuck around until Alexei finished up. Alexei flopped down beside him on the uncomfortable chair in the nearby waiting room and stretched his arm out along the back of Kyle’s chair.

  “<>” Alexei groused.

  “<>”

  “<>” He perked up a little. “<>”

  Kyle nodded agreement. The high coming off a successful mission only lasted so long and sometimes the crash made it hard to focus afterward when they used to be with Strike Force. They knew now it was because their bodies had specific needs that weren’t being met back then. Kyle tilted his head back and rested it against Alexei’s arm, closing his eyes.

  The rest of the team trickled free of their medical overlords within the next thirty minutes or so. Everyone wandered into the waiting area to claim a seat until the team was waiting on Katie and Jamie. By the time those two were released, Kyle’s stomach was telling him it was starving in no uncertain terms.

  “Can we eat before we do anything else?” Kyle asked when Jamie finally stepped into the waiting room.

  Jamie’s blue eyes skimmed over his team before he nodded. “Yeah, we’re getting food.”

  They left Medical and made their way back to the main building. The IV nutrients and few nutrient bars the nurses had provided them weren’t enough to completely stave off hunger. Kyle would admit that he felt less ravenous than he normally did after a mission than when he and Alexei were part of Strike Force. They didn’t have to beg cooks for double portions at the MDF. The cooks here happily heaped food onto their plates and they had the right to go back for seconds if they were still hungry afterward.

  Their trays each carried two plates, and in the case of Annabelle’s, three slices of pie precariously balanced on a small dessert plate. She definitely had a sweet tooth, but Kyle couldn’t blame her. He’d stacked three cookies on his tray and had eaten the top one before they made it to a table. As soon as everyone had claimed a seat, they fell onto their food like starving people, conversation nonexistent while they ate.

  The growling in Kyle’s stomach eased as he fed it, chewing his way through a mound of mystery meat, mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables. He looked up from his food when Alexei started talking to Katie, the pair conversing in quiet Russian. None of the rest of the team seemed bothered by their conversation, a stark contrast from some of their old nationalist type team members back in Strike Force who’d sometimes taken offense at the private conversations he and Alexei would have.

  Everyone drifted away after a while, set on getting their after-action reports finished and signed off on so they could start their regulation downtime. Eventually, only Kyle and Jamie remained at the table. Kyle looked across at Jamie, who was scraping his fork over the empty plate.

  “Wanna get out of here?” he asked.

  “Was waiting for you to ask,” Jamie replied, a small smile quirking his mouth upward.

  They dumped their dirty dishes and trays in the bins situated against the side wall before heading for Jamie’s office. Jamie requisitioned a laptop for Kyle through an aide and it was delivered within ten minutes. Kyle got comfortable on the opposite side of Jamie’s desk, navigating his way through the list of forms to find the right number used for after-action reports. The amount of red tape that ran a bureaucracy, military or civilian, was ridiculous.

  They finished their reports in record time and submitted them to the proper channels via email. With everything squared away, Kyle was more than happy to leave the base in Jamie’s company, watching headquarters disappear in the rearview mirror of Jamie’s car. The sun was setting in the wes
t, casting an orange glow across the darkening sky that fought with the bright light pollution burning through Washington, D.C.

  The drive back to the condo hit traffic that was more stop and go than standstill. Kyle was content to listen to the twenty-four-hour news stream Jamie had the computer turned to and the current story of the day coming out of Atlanta.

  “You know, I’m not used to being in the headlines,” Kyle said as he listened to the host talk about the fight Alpha Team had headed up.

  “You get used to it. Eventually.”

  When they began to turn down familiar streets, Kyle could feel heated anticipation slowly suffuse his body. He didn’t shift in his seat, but he couldn’t hide the smirk when Jamie sped up for the last few miles.

  The urgency from the last couple of times they’d been together was banked a bit, the need to get off a slow growth desire that had Kyle leaning into Jamie’s side on the ride up in the elevator instead of mapping out that hard body with his hands. Jamie curved an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer with easy strength.

  “Shower,” Kyle decided as they stepped into Jamie’s condo, the lights automatically turning on.

  “Bath,” Jamie countered.

  “Far be it from me to rack up your water bill. Lead the way.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes but did as Kyle asked. The bedroom light flicked on at their entrance, as did the ones in the bathroom, the heater automatically turning on to warm the space at a low temperature. The computer instantly obeyed Jamie’s order of “Water to eighty percent heat, fill bath sixty percent.”

  The sound of the water pouring out of the faucet to fill the large, freestanding tub was a soft background noise as they deftly stripped out of their dirty shirts. Kyle caught Jamie by the arm when he saw Jamie scratching at the pale scruff on his jaw and pushed him toward the toilet.

  “Sit. Where’s your razor?” Kyle asked.

  Jamie sat, a bemused look on his face as he leaned over to undo the laces of his boots. “Second drawer.”