by Sarah Noffke
Justice Unhatched
Exceptional S. Beaufont™ Book 5
Sarah Noffke
Michael Anderle
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2020 Sarah Noffke & Michael Anderle
Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US Edition, April 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-873-7
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-874-4
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Sarah’s Author Notes
Michael’s Author Notes
Acknowledgments
Books By Sarah Noffke
Check out Sarah Noffke’s YA Sci-fi Fantasy Series
Books By Michael Anderle
Connect with The Authors
The Justice Unhatched Team
Thanks to the JIT Readers
Angel LaVey
Dave Hicks
Deb Mader
Debi Sateren
Diane L. Smith
Dorothy Lloyd
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
Jeff Eaton
Jeff Goode
Larry Omans
Micky Cocker
Nicole Emens
Paul Westman
Peter Manis
Veronica Stephan-Miller
If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
For Crystal, for being my constant comic relief.
— Sarah
To Family, Friends and
Those Who Love
to Read.
May We All Enjoy Grace
to Live the Life We Are
Called.
— Michael
Chapter One
“Are you ready for it?” the scientist asked Trin Currante, as her men worked around them in the makeshift laboratory at the back of the airplane hangar.
She bit down on the mouthpiece and nodded, willing the specs cascading across her visual cortex to stop. The green words that usually streaked over her vision and told her everything from distance to destinations, temperature, wind, or a dozen other things about her environment disappeared.
Alexander Drake turned the knob on the control panel, a tentative look in his cold eyes. Electricity coursed through the cables attached to Trin’s chest, making her instantly convulse. Her brown eyes rolled back and she trembled continuously, her head knocking back into the padded chair.
The others in the warehouse looked up from their jobs, no concern on their faces for the woman being electrocuted.
After a full minute, Drake turned the knob back and stopped the electric voltage. Trin shook less, and her head lolled to the side as the electricity subsided. Unconcerned, Drake watched the woman strapped into the padded chair.
“Well?” he asked in an impatient voice, tapping a button to release her restraints. The locks around her arms and legs opened simultaneously.
Slowly, she lifted her chin and blinked,
trying to clear the tears from her eyes. She assessed her internal program, pulling up the diagnostics on her main screen. The green words began scrolling on her visual cortex.
Cyborg functionality…seventy-nine percent.
Human functionality…twenty-one percent.
She spat out the mouthpiece and shook her head of mostly wire hair. “It didn’t work.”
Drake typed on the computer next to the voltage box and concluded with a nod. “Yes, no changes in your functionality. Guess you are glad you have those dragon eggs as an option.”
Trin Currante unhooked the wires connected to the open panel in her chest. She threw a nasty look at the scientist she was forcing to help her become human once more and wondered if she might kill him if he didn’t improve his bedside manner.
She shook off the anger. Trin needed Drake. He was on the team of scientists at Saverus Corporation who had made her and the other men what they were presently, which was less than human. He had done it against his will he’d declared when she held the gun to his head months ago, after she’d taken over the facility and released all the prisoners and killed most of the staff.
Trin wasn’t sure she believed the old German man, but she knew she needed him to reverse what had been done to her. Once she, like all the men in the warehouse, had been a normal magician with all human parts. Then one man with a corrupt vision and too much money took out most of what made her real and replaced it with metal, wires, and magitech.
Thad Reinhart was dead now, thanks to Hiker Wallace.
His corporation, Saverus, was destroyed, thanks to Trin and her men.
What had been done to her and the men would live on forever, unless she found a way to reverse things. Everything she’d tried so far didn’t work. According to Drake, she couldn’t remove the magitech inside of her and survive.
That was where the dragon eggs might help. It was a gamble. According to Trin’s research, the blood of a newborn dragon could be used to fix her. One dragon egg was hard enough to come by. She’d nearly lost it all trying to get into the Gullington the first time. When she learned she needed at least two dragon eggs, she’d gone on a rampage and nearly destroyed the place she called home, Ash Research.
She looked around the airplane hangar, realizing her men were pretending to work. They were not. They were studying her, and wondering if she’d flip again, knocking over shelves, and damaging the planes and equipment.
She wouldn’t.
The company was all Trin had left. She just had to learn to control her temper, not easy to do when her emotional control center was mostly wires, much like her hair.
Slapping the metal door shut on her chest, Trin buttoned up her blouse and began retying the corset around her midsection. Some might think she was dressed for a strange renaissance fair. The truth was that much like her men, she was covered in a corset and had leather straps around her legs, chest, and arms to hold in hardware that never should have been there in the first place.
“Any changes to the eggs?” Trin asked the scientist. Drake had worked with Thad Reinhart, so she figured he might also be a resource on the dragons, although he was proving to volunteer very little information.
“No dragons have hatched yet if that’s what you mean,” he told her, looking around the hangar and watching the cyborg men as they loaded a plane for a contract job.
Trin sighed. “How can we speed up the process?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you can. And even if you could, there’s no way to tell if the thirteen eggs you got are going to be right. They might all be angels.”
Angels versus demons.
According to what she’d learned, dragons were born two specific ways, always. Some were born “angels” like the ones who formed the Dragon Elite. The others were born “demons.”
Good and bad. That’s how the world was made up. It was no different for dragons.
It was still strange a dragon was predisposed to a certain affiliation. It wasn’t a nature versus nurture situation, but there had been a reason. When Michael the archangel’s blood infiltrated the Earth, soaking into the dragon eggs, according to the legend, other blood was spilled at the same time by the demon Nergal. Half the eggs absorbed the angel’s blood and the other half, the blood of the demon.
Those who had read the Incomplete History of Dragonriders knew about the angel blood. It wasn’t until Trin had gotten access to a different text she learned the full history. Everything in the world was about balance. While the Dragon Elite was created to protect the Earth and rule over the affairs of mortals, they couldn’t exist without an evil counterpart.
It was only after Trin had stolen the single dragon egg that she’d learned she’d need at least two, the blood of an angel and a demon. She now had thirteen eggs. One of them had to be an angel and the other a demon, she reasoned. She wouldn’t know for certain until they hatched, and that apparently took an indeterminable amount of time.
“There’s something I’ve heard of that you can try to speed up the hatching time,” Drake offered, combing his hands through his long white beard. “I don’t know if it will work.”
Trin narrowed her eyes at him. “What is it?”
“You aren’t going to like it,” he said, a bit of amusement in his voice.
She nodded. “That’s the status quo at this point.”
Drake pointed to one of the planes getting ready for a mission. “The good news is you’ve got what you need to make it happen.”
She made a silent promise to herself. Drake would die. By her hands.
But not until she didn’t need him anymore.
She opened her hand, the metal joints making a mechanical sound as she combed her fingers forward at the man. “Tell me what I have to do.”
Chapter Two
Sophia Beaufont knew it was still dark before she opened her eyes. She pressed her lids together more firmly and tried to will herself back to sleep.
It was no use, and from recent experience, she knew it.
She cracked open her eyes in the large bedroom in the Castle to find she was in fact correct. It was still dark outside the Gullington.
She knew what time it was.
A cold laugh fell out of her mouth when she looked at the clock.
3:33 a.m.
Every single morning recently, Sophia had awoken at the same time.
She had no idea what the significance was, but Sophia thought it had to be of importance somehow.
Swinging her covers off, she rolled out of bed and stretched to an upright position. The flames of the candles in the torches and fireplace sprang to life.
“Thanks, Quiet,” Sophia said, stumbling around to find her clothes.
It was still incredible to her that the Castle, Expanse, and Gullington were managed by the tiny unassuming gnome. She wasn’t sure how it worked, but it was the most impressive source of magic she’d ever witnessed. It made sense it had come from Mother Nature
Sophia pulled on her boots and her eyes drifted to the note beside her bed she found the other morning upon waking up at the ungodly hour.
It read:
“The morning breeze has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. – Rumi.”
Sophia knew the note with the great poet’s wisdom was from Quiet, or rather the Castle. They were one and the same. Quiet was telling her she needed to get out of bed when she awoke so early in the morning at the same time. She quit tossing and turning and getting frustrated about not getting enough rest.
Sophia slipped out of her room silently and strode through the Castle. Each morning she’d gotten up, she found it impossible to stay confined inside her room. Something always seemed to be calling her to the Expanse, although she hadn’t found what it was yet.
She knew Quiet had a way of orchestrating things around her, like when he’d been preparing the Nest for the new dragon eggs. She trusted him and was willing to be led to a certain point. It was also frustrating. Sophia didn’t know why the sage sou
rces in her life like Quiet, Mama Jamba, Papa Creola, Subner, and Mae Ling didn’t just tell her what they were up to.