In the Shadows (Metahuman Files Book 3)

by Hailey Turner

  Madison rose to her feet, her face a mask of restrained fury. “Status?”

  “Wounded,” Alexei reluctantly replied.

  “I’m fine,” Sean said.

  “Bones, we got injured,” she dutifully reported over comms they couldn’t access.

  “How’d you find us?”

  “Viper is piggy-backing on their security. She accessed a backdoor when we reported you used your warning code phrase.”

  “I thought she was ordered not to hack it?”

  “The director apparently changed his mind.”

  “Right. Okay. We need to go.”

  “Icarus has the car outside.” Madison jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the wall instead of the lobby, eyes scanning the area for threats. “Heading that way?”

  “I phase you, you’ll lose comms,” Sean warned.

  She nodded, holding up a single finger in the age-old gesture of wait. “Nova to Icarus, we’re coming through the wall, north of your position. Get ready for a pickup in twenty seconds. My comms are dead after this.”

  Madison came around on Alexei’s other side. Sean solidified them long enough for Madison to take some of Alexei’s weight onto her slim shoulders. Concentrating, he pushed his phase field through both of them. Madison blinked in surprise, lifting her free hand to her ear.

  “Wow, that’s so weird. Everything just blanked out.”

  They headed for the wall, hauling Alexei along between them. Running through tables and chairs, they short-circuited at least three dealer machines before passing through the wall like ghosts. Shaded sunlight made Sean blink rapidly as he quickly tried to adjust his vision. People filled the front of the casino, milling about in shock or hurrying to get off the property. Sirens roared in the distance, promising a police presence sooner rather than later.

  “Over there,” Madison said, nodding in the direction of the casino’s front drive.

  A black SUV had a clear route to them, everyone kept at bay by Trevor’s telekinesis that he’d tunneled through the crowd. Annabelle braked to a hard halt meters away, the side door already opening for them.

  They closed the distance in seconds, with Sean not caring about people seeing them phase through solid objects, not after Madison’s attack inside the casino. He hoped MDF hackers were already crawling through the casino’s security system and wiping them from the database. Considering the panic everyone was in, he hoped the public wrote off what they saw as a mass hallucination.

  Trevor helped Alexei into the far back seat while Sean scrambled into the middle one. Madison took the front passenger seat, drawing a gun from the glove compartment before the door was even shut. Annabelle drove forward, hands tight on the wheel.

  “Bones! Make us a hole,” Annabelle called back to him.

  Trevor telekinetically parted the crowd around them as she drove forward, trying not to speed, because that would bring unwanted attention. When they finally reached South Las Vegas Boulevard did she pick up speed, peeling away from the mess behind them.

  10

  Cold War Transmission

  “What happened?” Jamie demanded through the SUV’s communications system.

  Alexei felt calmer once he had his captain’s voice in his ears. It didn’t do anything to alleviate the fiery pain in his side, nor the migraine-level ache in his head that left him feeling sick to his stomach and weak in body. The neuro-jammer bolt had barely clipped him, but even that was enough to wreak havoc on his nervous system.

  “Let me see,” Trevor said, batting his hand away from the towel he was holding against the bloody wound in his side.

  Alexei blinked rapidly, staring up at the SUV’s roof as he tried to swallow back the bile crawling up his throat. Trevor had a field med-glove on and the cold touch of the device on his skin made him grimace.

  “Bullet isn’t inside the wound, but I’m not sure about shrapnel,” Sean warned Trevor from the seat in front of him. “And he took a hit from a neuro-jammer gun.”

  Trevor’s swearing wasn’t loud enough to drown out Kyle’s shout over the comms. “Inferno got hit with what?”

  “How the fuck did they even know to have a neuro-jammer gun?” Madison demanded.

  “Is the line secured?” Sean asked, staring at Alexei with a tight expression on his face.

  “It’s an MDF setup, so why wouldn’t it be secured?”

  “Get someone to double-check.”

  “It’s fine—”

  “Someone double-check the fucking security of the goddamn line!” Sean snarled in a tone of voice none of them had ever heard come out of his mouth before.

  A tense silence filled the SUV for a good minute before Katie’s voice came over the uplink. “Line is fully encrypted and secured.”

  Sean rubbed hard at his face, mouth twisting. “Adrian and Declan knew my name. My real name.”

  Alexei wanted to reach out and hold Sean’s hand, but it took everything he had at the moment not to get sick all over the car as Trevor worked on him. Sean must have seen something in his face, because he twisted in his seat a little more and draped an arm over the back. Alexei didn’t have to move all that much for Sean to wrap his fingers around his hand.

  “We’ll traceback what happened when you return to base and reassess your covers,” Nazari said in a clipped voice.

  “We didn’t make a misstep while in the field here in Las Vegas, sir. They didn’t find out because we slipped up somehow. Before our meeting with Declan, I saw Kevin Stableford in the lobby as he was leaving the casino.”

  “I knew you must have seen someone,” Madison said. “Who’s this Kevin guy?”

  Alexei was having a difficult time paying attention, but every ache in his body momentarily disappeared at Sean’s answer.

  “He’s a CIA protective agent assigned to watch over CIA Deputy Director Carter Bennett,” Sean said tightly. “Bennett oversaw my extraction from Belfast and transfer to the MDF. He knows I’m a metahuman.”

  Alexei didn’t know he had tightened his hand so hard until Trevor reached out to pry his fingers off Sean’s before his fingernails broke skin.

  “Was final sign-off on our missions,” Alexei said, hissing through his teeth as Trevor prodded the area around his wound while scanning it with the med-glove.

  “What?” Sean said, staring at him in confusion.

  “Bennett was always the final sign-off on any missions we were seconded to with the CIA,” Kyle explained slowly. “He was also in charge of the internal investigation into Cora Everly’s betrayal.”

  “We all know how well that went,” Annabelle muttered.

  “I want you five back on base ASAP,” Nazari ordered.

  “No. I’m sorry, sir. I can’t go back. I need to get to New Seattle,” Sean said.

  “That wasn’t a suggestion.”

  “I can’t prove it, but Bennett purposefully leaked my identity to the Wolcotts through Stableford, and he did it for a reason. Whatever that reason is, it’s because he sees me—us—as a threat. He knows everything about me. The CIA still has my file in their archives. He knows I’m MDF now and he knows where my family is. If Bennett is leaking intelligence to the enemy, then he sure as hell isn’t going to stop from targeting my family. I’m not letting them become a target.”

  “He could know about our family, too,” Kyle added in a voice that promised murder if anything happened to their family. Alexei could appreciate his little brother’s rage when he could barely focus enough beyond the pain.

  Alexei reached for Sean’s hand this time, pleased when he squeezed back tightly. Alexei cleared his throat, ignoring the taste of rancid bile on his tongue. “We go.”

  “You’re wounded and can’t use your power,” Trevor pointed out. “And stop moving. You have a few pieces of shrapnel embedded in your abdomen. Bad enough I’m trying to sterilize the area while Annabelle drives like a maniac, but you squirming isn’t helping me any.”

  “Hey!” Annabelle protested.

  Alexei rolled
his eyes. “Not stop me before. Is just bullet wound. Is nothing.”

  He ignored the disbelieving look Sean sent his way.

  “You’re ridiculous. You’re not going into the field wounded,” Sean argued.

  “I’d like to believe the CIA deputy director isn’t a double-agent, but considering the problems we’ve had with that agency lately, I’m not inclined to dismiss the idea out of hand. Even if Stableford was acting on his own, there’s no telling what intelligence he’s been privy to,” Nazari said.

  “No telling what a man like Bennett would do if he thought he was cornered, sir. We also can’t ignore the fact that the CIA deputy director may be operating with the full executive authority of Langley behind him.”

  “That’s enough to give me nightmares,” Katie muttered.

  “I’m requesting the green light to meet my team in New Seattle and extract Wraith’s family, sir,” Jamie said. “Do we have any agents working in New Seattle right now?”

  “We have operatives in the field monitoring the recent Sons of Adam activity in the Pacific Northwest, but no one we can pull without risking current assignments,” Nazari replied.

  “What about my family?” Sean asked tensely.

  “We’ll get eyes on them through the security grid. I understand your family still doesn’t know what you do, Wraith. This will come as a shock to them, and they’ll have to be sequestered at base until we get things sorted. I’ll authorize a retrieval mission, but try to keep the city damage to a minimum. New Seattle has already been relocated from its original location once before. Let’s not add a second time.”

  Sean grimaced, a bleakness in his gaze that Alexei didn’t like. “Understood, sir.”

  “And our family, sir?” Kyle asked.

  “We’ll deploy a security detail to Reaper and Inferno’s family for the foreseeable future as well. It’s the best we can do on short notice.”

  Alexei would breathe a sigh of relief if he didn’t think it would hurt.

  “It’ll take us a couple of hours to rendezvous with the rest of the team in New Seattle. I can fly us there, sir,” Donovan said.

  Alexei tuned out what was being said around him for a few seconds, because it was easier on his head. Instead, he focused on Sean, because that was far more pleasant than focusing on Trevor doing what needed to be done to stop the bleeding in his wound. Extraction of the shrapnel pieces and closing the wound would have to wait until they got back to base.

  “Is good to have team, kotyonok,” Alexei muttered.

  “Never said it wasn’t,” Sean said, looking a little less frantic around the eyes.

  Alexei lightly stroked his thumb over Sean’s hand. “Will be okay.”

  “I’m uploading your flight plan to the private civilian airport north of Las Vegas that accommodates Coyote Springs Golf and Air Club. We’ve requested the use of a private plane under the Callahan name and listed you with a bioware allergy, so they’ll ask for a scanprint when you arrive. Go through the motions and we’ll delete it from their systems afterward,” Katie said.

  “How long to get there?” Sean asked, still holding onto Alexei’s hand.

  “Once we get outta Las Vegas, about thirty minutes. I’ve already switched out our vehicle’s plate code. If they’re lookin’ for us through cameras, it’ll take longer to find us,” Annabelle said.

  “How are we on Olympus’ security cameras?”

  “Can’t wipe all of it,” Katie replied, sounding apologetic. “We’re focusing only on the public areas where any of you show up using your powers.”

  “The director is putting through the paperwork necessary to authorize the mission. We’ll be wheels up within the hour and meet you in New Seattle. You’ll most likely reach the city before us,” Jamie said.

  “I can’t wait for you guys. I need to get to my family,” Sean said.

  “I understand. Annabelle and Alexei can wait for a pickup at the airport. Depending on what happens, we’ll wait for your arrival, or we’ll go to you.”

  Alexei blinked a couple of times, Sean’s face blurring in his eyesight, before closing them completely against the pounding in his head. He’d rest, just for a few seconds.

  When he opened his eyes again, the vehicle was stopped, engine off, and Sean was crouched down in the small space between the middle and rear seats. The ache in his side was dulled but still present. Local anesthesia, but his body’s reaction to the neuro-jammer hit meant the area hadn’t been numbed completely. The heat had tripled to a scorching blanket that filled the SUV he was sprawled in. It reminded Alexei of the deserts in Africa and the Middle East, the backdrop to refugee camps on contested borders filled to capacity with people whose homes were no longer livable.

  Sean’s hand was warm on his face, fingers gentle as he quietly urged him into wakefulness. “Lyosha. Lyosha, I need you to wake up. Can you do that for me?”

  “Ya vstayu. Gde mi?” he replied.

  “I have no idea what you just said, but at least you’re talking,” Sean said with a relieved sigh.

  Alexei frowned, working his way through the fog in his brain. Everything was jumbled in his mind, the throbbing ache still present in his head and in his side. It took effort for him to string together English.

  “Am awake,” he muttered.

  “I can see that. But we need you to get up. The plane is ready.”

  Alexei pushed himself to a sitting position with Sean’s help, swaying there for a moment as he got used to being mostly vertical. His skin felt overly sensitive and numb at the same time, but the burning pressure he’d become used to over the past few years was missing. Alexei stared down at where his hand lay curled on his lap, palm up, and tried to reach for his pyrokinesis. The stabbing pain in the center of his skull made him stop, sucking in air through his clenched teeth.

  “Don’t try to use your power. Trevor thinks it’ll take at least twelve more hours for you to shake off the symptoms, and even then, using your power is going to hurt,” Sean warned.

  “Had worse.”

  Sean eyed him with fond exasperation. “Is being stubborn over wounds a prerequisite for joining Strike Force, or what? Because you’re being ridiculous and—”

  Alexei shut him up with a kiss, able to focus a little better now than in the hotel room during their escape. Sean mumbled a few more words against his mouth before giving up and kissing him back with a desperation Alexei could almost taste.

  “Am okay,” he said when they finally parted. “Trained for this.”

  Sean rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t make your stubbornness any better.”

  “You like.”

  “I think the drugs must finally be kicking in for you. Come on, we need to go.”

  Alexei allowed Sean to help him out of the SUV, not bothering to hide how unsteady he was on his feet. He was surrounded by his team, not the enemy, and didn’t have to put up a front. Trevor waited outside the SUV by the door, gently grabbing hold of his right arm to help him out.

  “Looking a little green there,” Trevor said, not unkindly.

  “Tell Annabelle no barrel rolls,” Alexei replied.

  “It’s not that kind of jet.”

  Alexei squinted through the too-bright sunlight at the civilian plane they were taking north, the feel of it scorching on his bare skin. He knew if they didn’t get into shade soon Trevor would have to treat him for a sunburn as well. Shaking off their hands, Alexei walked a little unsteadily to the small private plane Katie had commandeered for them. He needed to grip the handrails on the steps and take them one at a time to make it inside, but he got there on his own two feet.

  Madison helped guide him to the closest seat, and Alexei gingerly sprawled out the moment he sat down. The plane was smaller than the one they’d borrowed coming west, with no chance of fully stretching out in the four leather seats that faced each other. Closing his eyes, Alexei rubbed at the side of his head, wishing the ache there and in the rest of his body would hurry up and go away. He’d bee
n hit by a neuro-jammer gun during his initial training with the MDF to learn what it felt like and how to handle the side effects. Alexei was still annoyed to learn there really wasn’t much he could do until his brain and central nervous system evened out to a more normal level.

  The wound in his side throbbed as he shifted in the seat, a painful reminder that Trevor’s field dressing wasn’t the same as a regen regime. Someone rested a hand on his shoulder; Alexei didn’t even have to open his eyes to know it was Sean. “Am okay.”

  “You will be,” Sean said.

  “Wheels up in five,” Annabelle said over the public comms.

  Alexei blindly fumbled for his seatbelt before Sean did it for him. He cracked open one eye, seeing Sean’s face close to his. Lifting a hand, Alexei stroked a finger over the edge of Sean’s jaw, causing those worried brown eyes to meet his.

  “You call your family?” Alexei asked.

  Sean shook his head, mouth in a tight line. “My brothers won’t answer a call from an unknown number. Same for my parents.”

  “Could have Katie make call be answered.”

  Sean was quiet for a few seconds before confessing, “Not sure that would matter since they might hang up on me. It’s my dad’s birthday today and I told them I couldn’t make it like all the other times. My mom was pretty pissed.”

  Despite his brain being mostly mush at the moment, Alexei still remembered the conversation he’d overheard while driving Sean home last week. “Birthday dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will make it now.”

  “This isn’t how I wanted them to find out what I’ve done with my life.”

  Alexei rolled his eyes, wincing a little as the motion caused pain to stab through his skull behind each one. “Should have told. Is family.”

  “I don’t want to argue about this, Lyosha.”

  “Is family,” he stressed, letting his hand fall away from Sean’s face to rest over the pressurized bandage on his side. “Not hate you for surviving.”

  He should know. He’d spent three years hiding his identity as a metahuman to remain in Strike Force and keep his parents and sisters ignorant of what he’d become. Alexei had been too afraid back then of losing them to the memory of Russian government-backed bratva and security members tasked with keeping the laughable peace in the refugee camps and city he’d grown up in. The terrorization they’d survived had colored his opinion of metahumans until the day he became one.