But the Koreans eschewed these advances in favor of showing off the electronics replacing physiological function rather than hiding it under artificial skin like Americans. The government here had approved limb amputations for the sole purpose of a cybernetic implant that might offer increased strength and improved dexterity, along with integrated technologies like GPS, Net connectivity, and other functions offered by the comm card Chris carried in his pocket. Korea looked like a technologist’s dream. Bare robotic arms, cyborg-like legs, artificial eyes, bald scalps interlaced with lustrous silver wires to enhance direct brain–Net communications...People here were not trying to make their bodily alterations appear natural. They wore cybernetic prosthetics as badges of honor.
Of course, it took a great deal of wealth to afford these physical alterations. Those that underwent the procedures were proud to show off their cyborg-like physiologies. In a country where plastic surgery was once king, cybernetics had usurped the reign of facelifts and tummy tucks.
Instead of filing in at the end of the line waiting for the next available taxi, Kyobum marched to the front. A businessman frowned and spoke terse words in Korean. Kyobum scowled and pressed a finger to his temple. His artificial eye flashed bright green.
The man held up both hands in a mollifying gesture, bowing and backing away. Kyobum took the man’s place and waved Chris and Jordan over.
“What the hell just happened?” Chris asked in a low voice.
“Those ocular devices transmit messages and identification data, much like our comm cards.”
“So our host here is a big deal or something?”
“Judging by that guy’s reaction,” Jordan said, “our buddy Kyobum is not a man to be messed with.”
“Then Vincent wasn’t screwing around, either, if he sent someone like that after us.”
A taxi opened its doors for Kyobum. He waited outside, the rain drenching his suit, as Jordan and Chris slid into the back. Kyobum followed, typed in an address on the car’s holodisplay, and jumped out. He slammed the door behind him, and the car took off.
“Wait!” Chris grabbed the door handle, but it didn’t budge. He tried to manually unlock it, but the car didn’t cooperate. Reaching over the front headrest, he fiddled with both doors, but nothing worked. He slumped back into the rear seat, staring at the holodisplay projected between Jordan and him.
Jordan held out his comm card to scan the display. “Shit, my man, we are out of luck. The holodisplay is somehow bugging my translation application. You didn’t happen to pick up another language during your time in prison, did you? It would be real convenient if you knew something like, say, Korean.”
“Funny.” He jabbed his finger at the holodisplay and hoped his chicken-pecking would result in a tangible response.
But the car continued driving through the downpour. The colorful holograms and lights of downtown Daegu gave way to drab gray and brown buildings.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea where we are?”
Jordan exhaled. “Wish I did, but my knowledge of Daegu is restricted to the medical corridor, full of skyscrapers and sprawling research complexes.” He glanced out the window. “I can tell you this isn’t it.”
“I could’ve guessed.” Chris tried to sound calm, even snarky, but fear crawled under his skin. He hoped Jordan’s hypothesis had been right, that Vincent did want something from them. That he wanted them alive. He pictured how he’d found Veronica lying in her apartment when Vincent had been through with her, blood pooled around her body. She’d been left for dead. The man had no problem dispatching someone as innocent as her, so why would Chris expect he could walk into this lion’s den with Jordan and come out unscathed? “You don’t have any weapons?”
Jordan shook his head. “The police never caught me when I dealt enhancements, so I’m not about to give them a reason to bring me in now.”
Chris slammed a hand against the window. The glass didn’t so much as shudder. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
“He wants something from us. We aren’t dead yet.”
“How the hell can you be so certain?”
“If he wanted us dead, Kyobum would’ve left us bleeding in the street somewhere. He would have called in a couple of his buddies and buried us back in Seoul, back before we ever stepped foot in Daegu.”
Chris imagined Robin, back in the hospital. He hoped she’d stayed safer than he had. After the attempted mugging, the hospital was supposed to have bolstered its security patrols within and outside the facility. With Ana staying at her house, Robin also benefited from the protection of a trained law enforcement officer.
The car slowed and turned into an alleyway. It stopped, and the doors clicked open. Chris glanced at Jordan. “Shall we?”
Jordan nodded, but before either could reach a handle, the doors opened. Fingers grasping into Chris’s shoulder, a hand grabbed him and lifted him from his seat. He flailed at the arm, but he hit only metal. The attacker set him down but kept one hand on Chris, preventing him from turning around and seeing who had taken him hostage.
He ducked to escape the person’s grip, but the fingers clenched tighter, piercing flesh. He crumpled in pain and twisted his neck.
His attacker was a woman of a slight build. Rain streamed over her body. She wore a sleeveless, form-fitting shirt revealing two silver prosthetic arms. Her eyes glowed green under the diffuse light of the streetlamps. He wondered if she was even partially human as she lifted him in the air and made no facial expression.
Jordan had been restrained by a person resembling a male counterpart to Chris’s attacker. The man wrapped his arms around Jordan’s chest. Jordan winced as his abductor carried him. He appeared to have been injured in the brief scuffle.
“What the hell do you want from us?” Chris didn’t expect an answer from either of the two, and they didn’t offer one. They lugged Jordan and him through the alley, past small, shuttered restaurants. Their feet clacked on the stones.
Chris strained to see if he could even hear his captor breathing. If she was, he couldn’t hear her over the patter of rain against tiled roofs. A door opened to the right, light escaping into the dim alley. Another woman, in a slim red dress and without any visible cybernetic alterations, motioned for them to enter. Smells of garlic and cooking meat filled the air. They stood in what appeared to be an antechamber of sorts. A lone coat rack sat near a wooden bench next to a reception desk. Holoimages of rural Korea lined the walls, but there were no doors between the artworks.
“Come with me,” she said. Long black hair waved over her shoulders as she pressed something behind the desk. One of the walls slid away to reveal a passageway leading to a set of stairs. Long strings of LEDs lit the corridor lined with wooden doors, and the scent of frying meat grew stronger.
Chris opened his mouth to protest.
The woman held up a single slender finger. “No questions.”
A sharp squeeze from his captor reiterated the point. His knees almost gave out. The metal fingers released, and he followed the woman in the red dress through the opening.
Jordan trudged behind him. With his jaw set, he appeared as though he were still in pain from the attack.
“You okay?” Chris asked.
The corner of Jordan’s mouth twitched up, a weak attempt at a smile. That expression morphed into a grimace when the metal-armed man shoved him forward. He stumbled and fell to the floor. Chris’s captor pushed him through, too, and the cyborg-like lackeys stepped back out into the anteroom. The wall crashed shut behind them.
Kneeling down, the woman in the red dress took Jordan’s hand and helped him to his feet. “I apologize for their crassness.” Jordan wavered, and Chris slipped an arm under his shoulder to hold him upright. “They seem so determined to turn themselves into androids, they’ve forgotten basic human manners.”
“What the hell is going on?” Chris asked.
“You’re interested in meeting Vincent, aren’t you?”
Chris narrowed
his eyes. “Yes, but I’m not interested in being left in the dark. Kyobum told us he’d take us to Sobek to see Vincent.”
“And that’s where you are,” the woman said. “I didn’t get the sense you were actually curious about Sobek’s consulting services for the Asia-Pacific region—rather, you seem to be more concerned about how we might assist you in certain stateside matters. Would that be correct?”
Jordan looked at Chris. “I’m not sure assistance is what we’re after, but yes, we do want answers for what’s happening on our side of the globe.”
A flash of anger burned through Chris. Answers? He didn’t want to discuss anything. He wanted to find Vincent, and he wanted the man to pay for his crimes. Pay for how he’d tortured and almost killed Veronica. Pay for the lives he’d destroyed by distributing faulty genetic augmentations around Baltimore that had brought the city to its knees, plagued by a violent disease afflicting enhancers around the community. Pay for abducting and imprisoning Chris and Robin to cure the disease and fix his mistakes.
Once he saw Vincent, once he could get his hands on the man, his priority would not be asking questions and having a chat to smooth things over. But expressing those sentiments now wouldn’t get him any closer to wrapping his hands around Vincent’s neck.
“Absolutely. Some answers would be nice.”
“Then we’re all on the same page.” She looked at Chris as if she had read his mind and knew his statement was false. “Chris, Jordan.” She stopped in front of a door and held out her hand. “You may call me Sun.”
When Chris glared instead of taking her hand, Jordan returned the woman’s handshake.
“I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I have no idea if that will prove true yet,” Jordan said.
She laughed. “I can assure you, if everything goes as planned, you will be leaving here tonight with the opportunity to think on it.”
“That’s...promising at least.” Jordan sniffed the air. “So I take it we are not what’s on the menu?”
“An astute observation. We scheduled your original meeting over dinner, so I convinced Vincent we might as well keep those arrangements.”
“He’s here?” Chris asked, his heart thumping against his ribcage. Hands by his side, he clenched them into fists.
“Of course.” Sun slid back the door to reveal a table set in the middle of a hardwood floor. Four black chairs surrounded it, and a small grill was built into the table. A half dozen small bowls held an array of foods. Chris recognized only the red pickled kimchi. “Are you okay with a traditional Korean barbecue?”
Chris treaded in and glanced around. “Where’s Vincent?”
As if in answer, a wall hissed and slid back. A man with wavy black hair stepped forth. He beamed as he blinked. His irises, green naturally, not by the augmentation of the ocular implant, seemed to radiate a warm friendliness unmatched by the coldness Chris knew existed in the husk of the man’s soul. He fought to control the anger radiating from within him at the sight of Vincent.
“My old cellmate, Christopher Morgan. Good to see you.” Vincent reached out to shake his hand.
His nose scrunched into a snarl, Chris lunged.
Chapter 22
Her pistol at the ready, Ana crouched by the bed in Robin’s guest room and held her breath. She crept to the door, pressing herself against the wall, and listened for the footsteps from downstairs. She prayed her instincts were wrong, that it was Robin arriving home. But the three separate sets of footsteps weighed heavily on her doubts.
There were no voices. Only shuffling, doors closing and opening. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. In her mind, a flash of gunfire exploded. The memory of bullets tearing into her still-weak right arm made her physically ill as she relived the attack on the Senator’s escort. Her stomach twisted as she imagined the other bodies riddled with bullets and burning around her on the interstate. Her chest felt tight, and she shivered.
A single low voice carried up the stairs. “She’s not down here.”
She wondered if the men who had tried to mug Robin were back. Maybe they wanted something else from her.
Footsteps up the stairs interrupted her thoughts. She could head them off, ambush them at the stairs. Surprise them.
The pain in her shoulder seemed to reignite. She froze, cowering by the bed.
“Wait a sec,” another voice called. “I’ve got a signal again.”
The footsteps grew closer. Two men burst through the door, weapons in their hands. Ana fired three times. One of the men flew back into the hallway with a cry. A jolt of electricity coursed through her as one of the men fired back.
Her hands trembled, but she could no longer pull the trigger. She was paralyzed. The man she’d missed stepped forward, holstered his stunner, and forced Ana’s hands behind her back. He zip-tied her hands together with the deftness of a cop. “She’s secure.”
The man who’d been shot came in, wheezing, his head low. “That shit stings.” A polymeric bulletproof vest, similar to the one that had saved Ana’s life during the Senator’s assassination, peeked out through the holes torn through his black T-shirt by Ana’s bullets.
A woman followed him in, slapped him on the back, and slid a small tracking device into her pocket. She glanced about the room and grinned when she saw Ana’s comm card on the desk.
Of course. They hadn’t been after Robin at all. They’d been after her. Inwardly, she cursed at herself for continuing to use a comm card issued to her by the same police department she distrusted. She might be able to catch criminals running from the law, but she was not used to running from the law herself.
The woman’s eyes went wide, and she pointed to something on the desk. “Hey, she’s got one.”
“Looks like you were right,” the man in the black shirt said. “She still had something after all, huh?”
The man who’d zip-tied her wrists stared hard at her. His icy blue eyes pierced into hers. “So this Dr. Haynes is involved, isn’t she?”
Ana said nothing, glaring back.
The man drew out his stunner again. It clicked as he adjusted its intensity. “I’d like to know how much this doctor already knows.” He leveled the weapon at Ana.
She could admit she was frightened. Her courage had failed her since the attack on Senator Sharp. But she would never purposefully endanger Robin or help these criminals. “Screw you.”
The man fired. Ana tensed as her teeth chattered. Waves of agony tore through her body. It felt as though flames danced across her skin. When it finished, she fell backward and cracked her head against the nightstand.
The woman stepped over to Ana. “We can always wait until the doctor gets in. Ask her ourselves.”
“Don’t know how long we’ll be waiting,” the man with the stunner said, “and this is more fun.”
“Do what you must.”
Ana tried to stand, her knees trembling. She harnessed the anger flowing through her to force herself up. “You’re going to have to kill me.”
“Have it your way.” The man backhanded her, and she flew against a window.
***
The taxi dropped Robin off at her home. She took a deep breath and trudged up the walk to her row house. A thud, as if something had hit glass, caught her attention, and she looked up. She thought she saw something move beyond the guest bedroom window on the second floor. Her heart crawled into her throat as she tried to figure out what it had been.
Squinting at the window, she tripped on a tree root pushing up a segment of the pavement leading to her front door. She fell forward but caught herself on the trunk of the tree responsible for her stumble. A flock of sparrows flitted out from the branches.
She shook her head, trying to convince herself it must’ve been a bird that had earlier thumped against the window. There had been many early mornings when she’d been woken up by the squawking of birds perching in the trees, and it wasn’t unusual for one to fly into the bedroom window when they seemed to be in a parti
cular frenzy.
Nevertheless, she slid her comm card up to her door handle to unlock it and eased the door open. She peered around the entry hall and into the living room and kitchen near the rear of the house. Nothing stirred, and nothing appeared out of place.
She opened her mouth to yell for Ana when she heard footsteps upstairs. A voice, too low to be Ana’s, came from above. It sounded muffled and unclear. She couldn’t make out the words and started to back out onto her porch, ready to call the police.
A shrill cry echoed down the stairs and through the hall. Robin froze.
The cry rang out again, devolving into agonized moans.
She tapped out a request for the police on her comm card. A text message from emergency services stated they were on their way. Even so, they’d be too slow. Another yell emanated from upstairs. She felt certain it had come from Ana and dreaded to think what might happen if she waited for the cops.
As fast as she could, she tiptoed into her kitchen, careful to avoid the boards in the floor she knew creaked. Now more than ever, she wished she had taken the stunner Jordan had given her to work. It currently rested in a nightstand drawer in her bedroom. And her bedroom was on the third floor, up past the guest room where Ana stayed and where she’d thought she’d seen movement from outside.
She crept to the stairs but needed a weapon, anything to arm herself against whoever she was about to face. Another long yell reignited her urgency, and she jumped to the kitchen counter. From a wooden stand, she pulled a steak knife. It wasn’t much, and she dreaded the prospect of plunging it into someone’s flesh, but she reassured herself she had no choice.
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 64