Jamie turned his attention to the closed elevator doors on Level 6. Sliding closer, he nodded at Donovan, who had come up on the opposite side. Together, they reached out and forced their fingers into the thin crack between the doors and pulled it open a few inches.
Madison popped her head up quickly over the bottom edge of the floor, getting a quick look at what she could see of the hallway. She hand signaled Jamie they were in the clear. He and Donovan hauled the doors open just wide enough for everyone to pull themselves through. Madison went first, pushing herself out of the elevator shaft and into the hallway, bringing up her weapon. The rest of Alpha Team followed her lead in seconds. Jamie was the last one out, his team arrayed around him with their weapons aimed at opposite ends of the hallway, covering all vantage points.
Viper, location of the targets? Jamie asked.
The HUD lit up with a map overlaid on the hallway around them. Jamie noted the multitude of bright dots and committed them to memory before he tapped the side of his helmet and shifted the map to the lower edge of his tactical goggles.
Nova, Bones, you’re with Tank. Inferno and Icarus, on me, Jamie said.
The team adjusted to his orders accordingly and split up. Annabelle and Alexei followed Jamie down the shorter part of the hallway on silent feet. When Alexei moved to overtake Jamie, he didn’t argue, knowing that for all the skill he possessed as a Recon Marine, Alexei was the better fighter with his Strike Force background. Alexei reached the intersection and pressed his back against the wall, with Jamie and Annabelle following his lead.
Alexei chanced a quick look around the corner and held up five fingers at Jamie to show the number of hostiles they needed to deal with. Alexei signaled them to wait and to hold position. Jamie signaled he would hold for three seconds no longer. Alexei nodded once, sharply, before he ducked around the corner in a soundless motion and disappeared.
Jamie counted to three, but before he even got to two, Alexei’s weapon went off. Jamie and Annabelle pitched themselves around the corner at three, ready to fire, but the last person putting up any sort of fight was rapidly losing against Alexei’s superior combat skills. Jamie watched as Alexei slammed his foot into the other man’s left knee at an angle, making the man’s leg bend in a way it was never meant to. The scream was cut off by the sickening crunch of bone breaking as Alexei broke the man’s neck with a quick twist of his hands.
Jamie eyed the mess at Alexei’s feet as he and Annabelle hurried to Alexei’s position. “That was quick.”
Alexei grinned wolfishly, his eyes difficult to see through the opaque tactical goggles. “Have incentive. I want shot at Everly.”
Annabelle, her back to them as she covered their six, chuckled. “We’ll make sure you get it.”
The sound of distant gunfire behind them told Jamie the others must have come across some of Everly’s fighters as well.
“Keep moving,” Jamie said.
Jamie ceded point to Alexei again since the other man was used to working a scout sniper position with Kyle. They advanced quickly and silently, Katie a quiet murmur in their minds.
Got a couple of our people trapped in a lab on your left in the next hallway and hostiles outside it, she warned.
Annabelle pulled free a compact flash-bang grenade from her vest pocket and primed the device. She held it up for Jamie to see with a smile on her face.
Tell our people to get down. I don’t want them hit by any stray bullets, Jamie ordered.
Annabelle skirted past Jamie and Alexei to hurl the flash-bang around the corner of the next hallway. Jamie closed his eyes to shield them from the too-bright light. His helmet automatically dampened the loud sound that ripped through the hallway from the flash-bang grenade, along with the sound of guns going off as Everly’s people screamed in surprise and pain, holding their fingers down on the triggers of their guns.
Jamie and the others stayed low to the ground, but kept moving forward. He took the first clear shot he had, taking out a blinded mercenary in cartel colorings with a bullet to the face. He felt a bullet hit the body armor on his chest, the impact making him grunt, but not slowing him down. Jamie threw himself forward into the fray, yanking weapons free of blinded enemy fighters even as he sought to take them out. Alexei and Annabelle were barely a step behind him, the three of them ripping through the half-dozen men tasked with patrolling this hallway with deadly speed.
Between one breath and the next as Jamie’s fist broke a man’s jaw, he felt a subtle heaviness settle in his bones. The force behind his punch tripled in an instant. He didn’t just break the man’s jaw, he broke his face. The man fell to the floor, pulpy flesh where features used to be. Jamie shook blood and bits of bone off his gloved hand as the awareness of his body came back to him in a way not too dissimilar from when he woke up in the isolation ward three years ago.
Alexei grinned, bright and vicious, fire crawling up his arms in flickering red tongues. “Reaper beat you.”
Jamie shrugged. “I’ll pay him later.”
Oh, God, please don’t think about that when I’m in your mind! Katie protested.
Then don’t pry, Jamie retorted.
It’s right there! On your surface thoughts!
Jamie ignored her in favor of stepping past Alexei to knock his fist against the lab door. “This is Apollo of Alpha Team. Barricade the door and stay inside until given the all clear.”
“Where to now?” Annabelle asked, momentarily weightless, her toes barely touching the ground.
“We keep heading for the lab,” Jamie said.
Kyle didn’t make a sound as he maneuvered through the crawl space that existed between Levels 6 and 7. Long ingrained training turned into habit before being absorbed into instinct allowed him to traverse the cramped area with ease. He’d crawled through worse as a sniper, sat still and hidden for hours through scope fatigue waiting for a target to put themselves in his crosshairs, that squeezing through the guts of a compromised smart building’s environmental systems was little more than child’s play, even if this wasn’t a game.
The map on his HUD glowed against the darkness, the night vision lighting up the area around him in high relief. Kyle concentrated on getting to the target’s location with Katie a quiet presence in his mind so as to not distract him. When she did speak, her telepathic voice rang through his head strangely, the feeling alien, but he no longer needed to worry about her finding out his secrets. She, along with the rest of Alpha Team, knew the truth now.
I’m stretched a little thin right now and can’t get a good strike on the other telepath’s mind, Katie told him apologetically.
It’s fine. I just need his general location, Kyle said, thinking the words carefully.
Here.
A red dot on the map shifting over his HUD grew a little brighter and got a black circle drawn around it. Kyle mapped the room out in his head, extrapolating the possible location of MDF scientists trapped in there with the metahuman, before deciding on the best course of action.
The metahuman with a null power wasn’t positioned in a high-level lab, which meant the stringent safety design protocols weren’t available at his location. The ceiling wouldn’t be one long slab, but neatly placed grid panels that could be popped up into the crawl space. Once Kyle was in position above the correct room, he could hear people speaking.
“This is a goddamn death trap. I didn’t sign up for a one-way trip.”
“Your family got their payment, so quit complaining.”
“Both of you, shut the hell up.”
Three hostiles, maybe more, but the one in charge was definitely the metahuman. Kyle very carefully lifted the edge of the panel closest to his face, staring through the tiny slit at the room below. The angle was terrible, but he could just make out the feet of some of the hostages below him. The metahuman kept pacing back and forth, holding a military-grade weapon in his hands like he knew how to use it. The make of it was the sort the MDF favored, which told him Everly had somehow managed to
ransack a weapons unit at some point.
How the breach in security had happened wasn’t his problem at the moment. Kyle’s mission was to take out the metahuman in the room below then go after Everly. Kyle unholstered two tactical 9 mil handguns from his thighs and set them within easy reach. With careful fingers, he then lifted up the ceiling panel in front of him when the metahuman’s pacing put his back to Kyle’s position and the other mercenaries weren’t looking. With soundless ease, Kyle slipped his upper body through the hole, handguns primed and ready to shoot.
The metahuman’s helmet didn’t cover the back of his neck like theirs did. Kyle aimed for that thin strip of flesh showing over the man’s tactical vest and took the shot. Even as he pulled the trigger on one gun, he was twisting around to take aim at the other two, putting a bullet into the first one’s knee and the next in the second man’s face, shooting around the mismatched body armor they wore. Kyle’s fourth shot went straight through the hollow of the first man’s throat, the bullet skimming over the tactical vest he’d stolen.
Kyle barely registered the screams coming from the scientists, who huddled together in tight groups. He slid out of the crawl space and flipped down to the ground, holstering his handguns in favor of the AKR-75 assault rifle he’d opted for instead of his sniper rifle. The AKR-75 was better for close-quarters.
“Everyone all right?” Kyle asked those assembled.
No one answered him immediately. He had to repeat himself before a man who looked to be in his forties finally nodded, swallowing back his fear. “We’re good. No injuries.”
Kyle scanned their faces, not seeing the one he wanted. “Where’s Dr. Patel?”
“Garza took her.”
Kyle didn’t have time to explain that it wasn’t Garza. “Command, do we have control of this room yet?”
“Not yet. We’ve routed Level 5 back to our control and are working on Level 6. Door locks can still be overridden on Level 6,” Stirling answered.
Kyle waved for the scientists to stand up. They were making too much noise for him to get them safely situated in the crawl space, so he led them to the storage closet in the back of the workroom.
“It’s a tight fit, but get down and be as quiet as you can,” he ordered. “Can any of you shoot?”
Three people hesitantly raised their hands, which was more than Kyle thought he would get. He passed over one of his handguns to a the woman who had the steadiest hands.
“If that door is opened by anyone other than MDF agents, you take the shot,” he told her.
The scientists nodded, face bone white, but the determined set of her jaw told him she probably wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. These scientists might work for the government, but that didn’t mean they were fighters. If anything, they came from a civilian background, but they were still required by the MDF to have some training in firearms. Kyle left them in their hiding spot and hoped the scientist holding his gun wouldn’t have to use it.
“This is Reaper. Metahuman with the null power is eliminated,” Kyle reported. “I’m heading for the labs.”
“Copy that. We’re clearing the outer wings,” Jamie replied.
Kyle checked his rifle before bracing it against his shoulder and peering out the open workroom door into the empty hallway. The map on his HUD reoriented itself as he moved forward, keeping his eyes locked over the sights of his rifle. Chatter over the comms echoed in his ears. He kept part of his attention on the voices coming over it, the rest remained on his immediate area.
Two hostiles came around a corner three turns later and Kyle took them out before they even had time to yell. His marksmanship had always been excellent and he rarely missed when it mattered. Kyle left bodies in his wake as he advanced to where the Level 3 lab was located in the center of the building.
Everly’s group was thin on the ground, which enabled Kyle to reach his destination quicker than if he’d been bogged down in a heavy firefight. Mindful of Jamie’s warning that they still had many of their own people sheltering in place and unable to evacuate, Kyle didn’t take any indiscriminate shots. He was taking shelter around the corner from the double-door entrance to the restricted area when he caught sight of Jamie coming around with Annabelle and Alexei on his six.
“You’re late,” Kyle said as he took the time to reload a fresh magazine into his rifle.
“Nah, we’re just in time,” Annabelle said.
Kyle heard the frantic yelling from around the corner that told him something was going on. He spared a quick look and saw the three remaining hostiles frantically trying to retrieve their weapons where they now floated near the ceiling, refusing to come down. Alexei and Kyle moved forward at the same time and fired on the enemy. They left the bodies where they lay and Annabelle let the weapons fall back within reach so Jamie could break them in half.
“Viper, the door,” Jamie said.
We do not have control. The hacker has isolated the lab, she said.
“We have teams in the process of taking back Levels 5 and 7,” Nazari reported.
“We’re coming up on your six,” Donovan said in warning.
Kyle looked over his shoulder as, seconds later, the rest of Alpha Team double-timed it into view. Jamie pointed at Madison without saying a word. Everyone regrouped in a staggered formation behind one of Trevor’s telekinetic shields while Madison blew a hole the double-layered security doors. Kyle and Alexei were the first ones through once Trevor dropped his telekinetic shield, taking out every target they could find.
The space within the lab was tight, the warning klaxon of a breach ear-piercing. Kyle ignored the sound, ignored the flashing red lights as he and Alexei fought their way forward. He was viscerally reminded of the mission in Geneva that changed everything for them, only this time, they had a metahuman team at their back and they knew who the traitor was.
Kyle and Alexei ducked down behind two workstations and darted forward beneath flying bullets. He dimly heard Madison yell, heard the meaty sound of a body hitting something hard. Donovan shouted his rage and a warning.
“They have a telekinetic!”
“Bones!” Jamie snarled.
“On it,” Trevor shouted back.
Alexei sent a snake of fire burning over the floor to crawl up two hostiles. Their shrieks of surprise soon turned into screams of agony. Kyle ignored the stench of burning flesh in favor of taking a shot at a man who had Annabelle in his sights.
Beyond the furious fighting, Kyle could see the heavily sealed lab space that made up the perimeter of the Level 3 lab. He could see Dr. Patel being held in place by a slim woman who had a gun pressed to the side of her head. Dr. Patel’s shaking hands flew over the control panel, tapping in a code that was accepted.
“The hacker got through,” Kyle snapped over the comms.
He acted without conscious thought, breaking position and ignoring Alexei’s shout of warning. No one knew what Dr. Patel’s vaccine would do if used on a person. No one knew if it would act as a cure or a death sentence. All Kyle knew was he couldn’t let Everly harm his team—harm Jamie—in her efforts to destroy the data and the vaccine. That wasn’t a risk Kyle would ever be willing to take.
A bullet sliced over the armor on his left arm as he took down two mercenaries in the span of seconds, the pressure of its passage making him grunt. Up ahead, Kyle saw the glint of a laser for the retinal scan. His arm moved without conscious thought as he took the shot on instinct.
His bullet slammed through Everly’s hand, making both her and Dr. Patel scream as the gun Everly once carried was knocked away from the scientist’s head, along with two of Everly’s fingers. Dr. Patel collapsed in a sobbing heap even as the doors to the Level 3 lab slid open. Kyle put on a burst of speed, felt himself stumble over nothing as the enemy telekinetic tried to hold him back. He wrenched himself free of the diminishing hold with a determined effort, Trevor having given him an opening somehow.
“Reaper!” Jamie yelled. “Fall back!”
So
rry, Kyle thought, vaguely sensing Katie in the back of his mind. I can’t let her get away with this twice.
Kyle dove through the quickly closing door into the lab space, hearing Ceres announce “Warning. Quarantine lockdown initiated.”
The Level 3 lab sealed itself off from the outside world even as Kyle and Everly came up swinging. Wearing an MDF uniform, her well-remembered face melting into a different visage that made Kyle’s breath stutter in his lungs even as he kept moving. The face of his dead Strike Force captain stared at him, mouth twisted in a pained snarl as Everly took a shot that Kyle reflexively ducked against. The bullet ricocheted off the reinforced walls and lodged itself in what looked like an autoclave.
Please don’t explode, Kyle thought as he advanced.
“I should have put a bullet in all your heads back then,” Everly snarled in his old captain’s voice.
Kyle didn’t respond, either to Everly or the shouts coming through his comms, all directed at him. Heart pounding in his chest, Kyle focused on the situation at hand. Everly was moving toward a destination Kyle knew could only mean trouble. He pulled a small dart off his tactical vest and primed the charge mechanism that would deliver an electric jolt to its target to incapacitate them. Kyle threw it with a hard snap of his wrist. The dart latched onto Everly’s jacket and injected a thin needle into her back.
Her spine arched against the volts of electricity coursing through her body, but she kept moving. Whatever training she’d had to withstand torture as an agent helped her in this fight. Everly crashed against the second door that led to the containment area and slammed her hand against the control panel. The door slid open and she stumbled through, mere seconds ahead of Kyle. Sometimes, seconds was all it took to change the course of a fight.
In the Wreckage: (M/M Sci-Fi Military Romance) (Metahuman Files Book 1) Page 27