“One that recognizes the person as being compatible with our freaky new DNA,” Mace said.
“Yes.” Friday gave him a look that made him feel like a five-year-old who’d gotten a basic math question right.
“Mate,” Striker said. “That’s what my other half calls Friday. His mate.”
Mace nodded as the importance of that statement sank in. “Is it possible we’re coded to find and lock on to someone who matches both halves of our DNA, and when we find that person, our other half wakes up because it recognizes their importance to us? Maybe through pheromones, but seriously, who really knows how it’s done?”
Friday nodded. “It’s something I need to investigate further, but I think you’re right.” A look passed between her and her husband. “I also think that it means the person who matches you is also able to have their genes adapted to fit both halves of your new nature.”
“Like you,” Mace said, aware that Friday’s DNA was incubating a matching animal to her husband’s.
“Like me,” she confirmed softly.
Mace ran a hand down his face. “Then we’re in more trouble over here than I realized, because my animal insists that Keiko is our mate, and he doesn’t want to let her go.” He paused because he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Neither do I. She feels like she belongs with us.”
And didn’t that make everything a million times harder than it already was.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You found me an elevator that works.” Keiko beamed up at him. “Most romantic gift ever.”
And she wasn’t joking, either. The thought of walking down thirty-three floors to get to the security hub, and dodging people out to kill them while they did it, did nothing for her.
The man actually blushed. It was adorable. “It’s just an elevator.”
“A private elevator.” She bumped her shoulder against him as she teased him. “One that’s hidden in Miriam’s secret room. That makes it extra special.”
The tiny elevator was barely big enough to hold both of them, and it only went to one location—the first level subbasement, where the private parking garage was located. But it was an elevator, and it worked.
Mace brought up the building’s floor plans on the panel next to the elevator. “As far as I can figure, this will take us out close to the service stairs that run from the basement parking garage to the lobby. Which is good because those stairs don’t have as many cameras on them as some of the others.”
“So we’ll head up from the subbasement to the security hub and disable everything we can?”
“That’s the plan.” He ushered her into the tiny elevator.
“It’s not a brilliant plan, is it?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You got a better one?”
She kept her mouth shut, and he just smirked at her. It seemed to take an eternity to descend through the building. But at last, the elevator came to a halt in the subbasement. Mace held up a hand and motioned for her to wait while he checked the corridor. Cautiously, gun first, he peeked out and then signaled for her to follow.
They made their way along the corridor to the stairwell, where he repeated the whole “peeking past the door to check if it was clear, then signaling for her to follow” routine. Slowly and silently, they moved up the stairs to the ground floor. Well, Keiko tried to be silent, unlike Mace, who actually was silent. If she hadn’t been right behind him, she wouldn’t have known he was there.
Sticking close to his back, she strained to listen for any hint of trouble. All she could hear was the beating of her heart as the blood rushed through her veins. They made it out of the service stairs and into the lobby without incident. All cameras between them and the main stairs were the kind that wirelessly transmitted their signal, and their feeds were currently jammed. That wasn’t the case when they made it to the top of the stairs on the same level as the security hub.
“Camera,” Mace whispered, pointing to a spot high in the corner that covered the entrance into the corridor beyond the stairwell. “Hardwired.”
This one wasn’t being blocked from transmitting its images by the jammer. Which meant whoever was in the security hub would see them when they passed under it.
“What now?” Her fingers curled into the back of his shirt.
“I can’t shoot it out. We’re too close to the hub, and they’ll hear the gunfire. We need to cover it.”
“How?” It was too far away and too high to reach—not without being spotted first.
He hung his head and cursed under his breath. Now he was scaring her.
“Mace.” She tugged at his shirt. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m thinking.”
As she stared at him, he seemed to be having some sort of internal argument. After a few seconds, his shoulders slumped, signaling that he’d come to a conclusion.
“I need you to close your eyes,” he said, “and keep them closed until I tell you to open them.”
Okay, that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “What?”
“Shut your eyes while I deal with the camera.”
“You’re making me a little nervous.” Okay, more than a little, but she didn’t think admitting that was wise. She wasn’t certain it wouldn’t push him over the edge of the cliffs of insanity, a spot he seemed, at that moment, to be precariously balanced on. “I don’t understand why I can’t look.”
“I can’t explain. I just need you to trust me on this.”
“Are you going to leave me here once I shut my eyes?”
“What? No.” He ran a hand through his hair again, making him look tousled and sexy as well as worried. “I have ways of dealing with the camera. Secret ways that you can’t see, which is why you need to close your eyes.”
“Secret ways? That sounds corny. Do you have more tech that I don’t know about? Something experimental? Is that why I have to close my eyes—so you don’t give away company secrets?”
“Something like that,” was all he said.
“Considering I don’t work for CommTECH anymore, there’s no need to keep secrets from me. There wouldn’t be a conflict of interest, as I don’t have a company to share them with.”
“Okay, it isn’t exactly a tech secret. It’s just something you shouldn’t see until we have time to deal with it properly.”
And wasn’t that precisely the kind of thing you shouldn’t say to someone and not expect them to die of curiosity? “Now I really don’t want to close my eyes.”
“Keiko,” he said with strained patience. “We’re running out of time. Do you want to keep asking questions or let me cover the camera?”
“Moody.” Against her better judgment, she shut her eyes, folded her arms, and frowned. He might excel at saving her life, but he sure knew how to get on her last nerve while doing it.
“Turn to face the wall,” he ordered.
She let out a huff of irritation. “No trust.” But she turned away from him.
“Okay, I’m going to cover the camera,” he said. “Keep those eyes closed tight.”
“They’re as tight as they’re going to get.”
“Promise me you’ll keep them that way.”
“I promise.” She snapped the words. “Can you get on with it? Or do I have to stand here forever?”
“I mean it. Don’t look.”
And she didn’t.
For all of two seconds.
She couldn’t say exactly why she turned around to see what he was doing. Sure, she was curious, but normally she would have kept her word—but this time was different. Something made the hairs on her nape stand on end, and she felt the air charge around her. It was a strange, electric sensation that made her skin bristle and her heart race. It wasn’t so much that she decided to turn. It was more she felt compelled to.
And what she saw was incomprehensible.
Mace had loosened his shirt and lowered it down at the back. Just enough for her to see the head of a small tattoo on his shoulder bl
ade. It was a strange tattoo for a man as dangerous and threatening as him. She would have expected a skull and crossbones or a biker-gang emblem; instead, there was a tiny, detailed drawing of a bat.
She shuddered at the sight, remembering the bat that’d pushed her from the ledge. Okay, not literally, but it had definitely been to blame for her fall. She hadn’t been overly fond of bats before that incident. Now she really didn’t like them.
For some reason, she couldn’t take her eyes from the tattoo, even though it clearly had nothing to do with his mysterious plan to cover the camera. The drawing was incredibly detailed. You could almost see every single hair on the bat’s head. And the eyes were so lifelike they seemed to stare at her.
No.
Not seemed.
They were staring at her.
An icy chill ran up her spine as her stomach fell. She couldn’t rip her eyes from the bat. And she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Because the tattoo was moving. Mace’s muscles clenched, his body shivered and tensed, and then the bat morphed from two-dimensional drawing to three-dimensional animal.
Right.
Before.
Her.
Eyes.
She stared in horror as it emerged from Mace’s skin, crawling out from under his shirt, until it sat there for a moment at his collar, looking strangely pleased with itself—if a bat could look pleased. It was tiny, only a little bigger than her thumb, and it had beige fur from head to toe, making it look like a ball of fluff rather than a flying harbinger of death. She stood, frozen in shock, her mind completely blank as she tried to make sense of what she’d witnessed. There was no explanation for this. Nothing at all. As she gaped at the bat, the bat stared back at her. And then, suddenly, it spread its wings and took flight. Heading straight toward her.
And that was when Keiko screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mace spun, clamped a hand over Keiko’s mouth, lifted her with his other arm, and ran up the stairs. He barreled past the door to the floor above the security hub and sprinted through the open area with its low tables and informal seating. This floor was mainly for admin, which meant security wasn’t as tight as it was on other floors. Still, most doors had a biolock on them, and he didn’t want to blast his way into a room—that was a sure way to let Freedom know their exact location.
He turned the handle on the first door he found that didn’t have a biolock. It was a private communications room with a wall of screens and two armchairs set up facing it. Along one wall was a refreshment bar. Apart from that, there was nothing else in the room. Mace shut the door behind him and locked it. The lock wouldn’t keep Freedom out for long, and there was nowhere in the room to hide. If they stayed quiet, hopefully the terrorists would assume the room had been locked up while it was empty. It was the best he could do under the circumstances, and it wasn’t much.
There was also one huge hole in his hastily constructed plan—Keiko was still screaming. He felt the huffs of air against his hand and the dull humming sound of the trapped noise. If she didn’t calm down soon, she’d lead Freedom straight to them. He needed a distraction. Something to keep Freedom busy while he dealt with the hysterical woman in his arms.
He needed the help of the animal who shared his DNA.
The animal Keiko should never have known about.
Pull the fire alarm! Mace silently shouted to his other half, showing him an image of the alarm.
There was silence and then, Hungry. He got the distinct impression his bat was trying to find a way out of the building so he could track down some food.
I need you to do this now, Mace barked at him.
No. Hungry.
He didn’t have time for this. Freedom was coming their way. Keiko was scr… He looked down at her. The screaming had stopped. Her eyes met his, and he noted it wasn’t fear that filled them but rage. She glared at him as she opened her mouth again—and bit him. Hard. He dropped her and looked at his palm. There were teeth marks and a tiny spot of blood.
He held it up to her. “Stop biting me.”
“Don’t come near me.” She held up her hands to ward him off, as though that could stop him. How many times did he have to point out the difference in their sizes for her to get it? It was as though she was ten feet tall—at least in her mind.
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed at her. “You already brought Freedom down on us once with your screaming. The last thing we want is for you to lead them straight here.”
She looked around for the first time. “This is a comms room. It’s soundproofed.” Her voice rose with each word. “You have a bat.” She pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Living under your skin.”
He made a calm-down gesture with his hands. “We’ll talk about it in a minute. First I need to deal with rat face.”
Press the button, he commanded the bat. Now.
“You’re talking to it?” she screeched. “In your head?”
“I swear, if you don’t calm down right now, I will gag you.”
“Try it.” Her eyes blazed as she paced. “How can you talk to it? All communications frequencies have been jammed. It is an implant, right? I mean, it has to be some sort of new tech. What else could it be? It can’t be an actual bat. That would be crazy. Oh my word, I’m going crazy! I’ve snapped from the stress. I’ve crossed the line, and this is what it looks like on the other side.”
Press the damn button, he told the flying rat while he watched Keiko pace and rant.
Of course, his other half wanted to argue. No! Hungry.
“I mean, I work in the industry,” Keiko said to herself. “At least I used to, before I found out my parents were terrorists and the guy I had sex with showed me that everything I believed was a lie. But before that, when I was still a press secretary, I would have heard about a programmable bat that lived under your skin. You can’t keep that sort of tech secret.” Her hands shook as she threaded them through her hair. “It has to be tech. It has to. What other explanation is there?”
He could barely hear himself think over the noise she was making. “Please, Keiko, can you stop it for one minute so that I can deal with the bat?”
It was the wrong thing to say. It just sent her off into a rant about mutant Vikings. Mace couldn’t take any more. So he shouted the one thing at his bat that he could think of that was guaranteed to get its attention.
Do it for Keiko.
Save mine? the bat answered.
Yeah, save mine.
There was silence for a beat, and then the bat answered, Save mine. And flew off to follow instructions—finally.
Mace breathed a sigh of relief, just as a coffee mug came flying at his head.
He ducked, and it skimmed the top of his skull. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You tried to kill me.” She picked up another mug and lobbed it at him. “That freaky enhancement, that bat, was the reason I fell off the ledge.”
He intercepted another mug, knocking it to the floor. “Stop throwing things at me. If I was trying to kill you, why didn’t I let you fall?”
She ignored him and threw another mug at his head. “It just walked out of your skin. Did you drug me? Am I hallucinating?”
“No, I didn’t drug you. Why the hell would I do that?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything anymore.” She threw another mug.
He didn’t duck in time, and this one hit him on the shoulder. That sucker hurt. “Enough of this.”
He strode toward her, but she swerved left, lobbing everything she could reach at him, one item after another. Mace was planning how to grab her without hurting her just as the fire alarm went off. Keiko froze for a second, and he pounced. He pinned her arms to her sides and held her tight against him.
“Let me down,” she shouted in his ear, making his head buzz. “The building’s on fire. We have to get out of here.”
“Calm down for a second and think. Would I stand here if I thought the building was on f
ire? The bat triggered the alarm. I asked him to do it as a distraction.”
She stilled in his arms and stared at him with those big eyes of hers. “How are you able to communicate with it when the signals are jammed? What’s going on here? None of this makes sense. And why did you use it to push me off the ledge? I trusted you.”
“And you were right to trust me. You need to listen to me carefully, okay? I didn’t ask the bat to push you off anything. The damn thing only listens to me about fifty percent of the time. He flew at you to say hello.” And he was aware of just how weird that sounded.
“Are you telling me you can’t control your own freaky implant? Is it some sort of experimental tech—is that why it’s malfunctioning? Why don’t you just get the programming fixed so you can control it? And who’s making those things, anyway? I’ve never heard of anything like it. It isn’t normal. And how are you communicating with it?”
Part of him knew that he shouldn’t tell her anything more, but the truth of the matter was that it was far too late for that. She already knew too much. Even if she thought the bat was tech instead of a real bat, she would still tell people about it. And after CommTECH had become suspicious about Striker’s animal, they couldn’t afford any more rumors about programmable animal implants.
He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye, which was easy because he was holding her two feet off the ground, and he told her the truth. “The bat isn’t tech. He isn’t an implant. He’s a genetic mutation—or I should say we’re a genetic mutation, as my DNA has merged with the bat’s.”
She was quiet for a beat, and Mace spent it praying that she wouldn’t start screaming again. Soundproofed room or not, that screech hurt his ears.
The color drained from her face. “Are you telling me that I had sex with a bat?”
“What? No!” Of course her brain went to the one place he’d never expected it to. “Where the hell does the stuff in your head come from? You had sex with me.”
Red Awakening (Red Zone) Page 19