Destiny

by A D Starrling

  Lucas glanced at Conrad and saw his surprise reflected back at him in his cousin’s eyes.

  ‘She can analyze things to that extent?’ Ethan muttered.

  ‘Yes,’ Alexa replied. She looked at the screen. ‘Eva, Jordan, we need you to help us with something.’

  She gave the AI and her creator a short version of the events of the last day. By the end of her account, Jordan’s expression had grown focused.

  ‘Want to hook me and Eva up to your network?’ he asked Howard.

  ‘I’m already on it,’ Eva said. ‘I should have the initial data you seek within the next few hours.’

  Howard paled and stared dazedly from the computer on his lap to the screen. ‘Did you just breach my security system?’

  ‘I did,’ Eva said. ‘I’m impressed by your set-up. I have a couple of suggestions you might appreciate.’

  ‘There’s something else.’ Alexa glanced at Lucas and Anna, her expression troubled. ‘There were meant to be less than twenty people who knew of Tomas and Lily’s existence. The children are not registered on any birth database in the world.’

  Surprised dawned on Jordan’s face. ‘So, you’re saying they’re ghosts?’

  Lucas’s fingers tightened around Anna’s. ‘We intended to keep it that way until they were older.’

  ‘The only way someone could have found out about them is if the island was being watched,’ Reid said. ‘And there’s not many people who were meant to know the location of the island either.’

  ‘What you’re saying is logical,’ Jordan murmured.

  ‘We need to find out if there’s been any unusual satellite activity, human or Immortal, in the last few months,’ Alexa said. ‘As in unauthorized access or unscheduled coverage over that part of the Pacific.’

  Howard raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s a big ask.’

  ‘I agree,’ Jordan said with a nod. ‘That will take longer.’

  ‘I’ve got another call coming through.’ Victor’s gaze swept the room before settling on Lucas. ‘Keep me informed. And, Eva, let me know if you need access to the Bastian satellite network.’

  ‘Thank you, Victor, but I already have that access.’

  Victor stiffened, hand hovering above his trackpad.

  ‘Do I even want to know how?’ he said, scowling at his camera.

  ‘Jordan said you would shoot him if you found that out so I would prefer not to say,’ Eva said primly.

  A nervous smile darted across Jordan’s face as he studied the Bastian leader’s stony expression. ‘I wasn’t just targeting you. I also have access to the Crovir network.’

  Victor muttered something under his breath. His screen winked out.

  ‘We need somewhere to analyze the bodies we’ve recovered and the shell casings,’ Alexa stated. ‘Somewhere private, preferably.’

  Asgard turned to Howard. ‘How long would it take to put something together in the bunker?’

  Howard grimaced. ‘It depends what kind of stuff you’re gonna want.’

  Anna shifted beside Lucas. ‘I know exactly what we need in order to examine those dead men. It will take some time to gather all that equipment.’

  ‘I agree,’ Madeleine said. ‘But there’s already a place where we can do it.’ She smiled faintly at Anna. ‘I’ll help. My specialty is molecular genetics and genomics, but I have degrees in other biological sciences.’

  Anna nodded gratefully. ‘Thank you. I worked as a pathologist, and I was a physician and surgeon, but I could do with another pair of hands.’

  Asgard stared at Madeleine. ‘What place?’

  ‘Dimitri’s facility in Sumava. It makes perfect sense.’

  Asgard’s face fell. ‘Oh.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Is this about the stupid feud you two have had going for, like, half a millennium?’

  Asgard sniffed. ‘It isn’t a feud. It’s an Immortal thing.’

  ‘Dimitri’s facility is geared toward his work for the Crovir Immortal Culture and History Section, but there’s more than enough hardware there to meet your needs, including a molecular genetics lab,’ Zachary said. ‘I’m sure he would be more than happy to accommodate you.’

  ‘If Dr. Godard and Dr. Black provide me with a list of what they need, I will make sure we have it all on site by the time they arrive,’ Eva said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Anna took a shallow breath. ‘I think we’re going to find something we’re not expecting when we examine those bodies.’

  ‘You mean apart from the fact they haven’t been turned to ash by crows?’ Alexa said.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas said. The unease he’d felt during his confrontation with the intruders who had attacked their home rose inside him once more. ‘Those men should have stayed down when I fought them.’

  Tense silence filled the room.

  A muscle jumped in Alexa’s cheek. ‘You mean they survived a direct strike to the heart from you?’

  Lucas shook his head. ‘No. That was what finally killed them.’

  ‘What Lucas means is that the wounds he inflicted on them should have stopped them, momentarily at least,’ Anna explained. ‘One of them had a piece of glass stuck in his heart. He was still standing even after I shot him multiple times at point-blank range.’

  ‘Was he wearing a body vest?’ Reid said.

  ‘No. I could see the damage the bullets made in his flesh.’ Anna hesitated and glanced at Lucas. ‘The one whose throat Lucas cut was still trying to fight us, even though he was hemorrhaging from his wound.’ She looked around at them all, fear evident in her eyes. ‘It was as if—as if he couldn’t feel any pain.’

  Chapter Eight

  The man stared at the two bodies inside the isolation chamber of the facility’s main lab. Lines sneaked out from under the sheets covering the still forms on the beds, connecting them to the range of sophisticated equipment lining the linoleum floor. Even though the hour was late, several technicians in decontamination suits worked the array of gleaming machines.

  Despite the flurry of activity, the monitors recording the vital signs of the first figure remained silent, as they had done the last twenty-two months. Though they had only been able to get their hands on the second body yesterday, there was no doubt that both were still very much dead.

  He frowned at the woman standing beside him before twisting on his heels and strolling to a computer station to their left. She followed leisurely in his steps, her heels striking the ground with elegant clicks.

  ‘Why have you not taken their blood yet?’ he said, not bothering to mask his irritation.

  The technician manning the desk flinched at his tone.

  Jessica Wu, the Immortal scientist spearheading the research projects at the installation, eyed him with an unfazed expression before following his gaze.

  They studied the camera feeds from the cells where Tomas and Lily Soul were being kept prisoner, four floors beneath the lab.

  ‘They are doing something strange,’ she said. ‘Even though they have not spoken a single word, not even to the guards who brought them food earlier, I believe they are communicating with one another. I would not be surprised to find they possess the same psionic and psychokinetic abilities as Olivia Ashkarov.’ She glanced at him. ‘Judging from the reports of the soldiers who took them, it seems they did something similar on the island to what she and the Elemental achieved in Yuma.’

  The man stared at the children on the monitor, a flicker of unease dancing through his veins at Wu’s mention of the dramatic events four years past. The same events that had seen Jonah Krondike ripped from his life.

  It was only recently that they had made their startling discovery concerning Lucas Soul and Anna Godard. A year and a half after Wu and her team had failed to make progress on the principal project he’d tasked them with, she’d come across information concerning Frederick Burnstein, the former Head of the Crovir Research and Development Section and CEO of GeMBiT Corp, a genetics and molecular bioinformatics company based in Washi
ngton DC.

  Eight years previously, a French scientist Burnstein had contracted to work for GeMBiT had developed a genetically modified Immortal cell. One that could technically never die. This had been at the bequest of Agatha Vellacrus, the Head of the Order of Crovir Hunters and leader of the Crovir race at the time.

  Much to Wu’s frustration, no evidence remained of the primary data from Burnstein’s research, data that would have proven vital to her own experiments in the last decade. When she had informed him of her findings, the man had made careful inquiries in both Immortal societies and eventually tracked down someone who had been privy to the details of Agatha Vellacrus’s scheme.

  The Crovir noble had been present that day, on the island where Agatha Vellacrus had met her death at the hands of Lucas Soul.

  Since Jonah Krondike had not been a member of the Crovir First Council, he had been unaware of the remarkable circumstances surrounding her demise. As a direct consequence, nor had the man.

  When they had discovered that Anna Godard’s blood had formed the centerpiece of Burnstein’s research and that she and Lucas Soul were the grandchildren of both Agatha Vellacrus and Tomas Godard, the former leader of the Bastian race, the man had concluded both Immortals could prove to be the key to the vexing problem he and Wu had encountered in their primary project. A half-breed who had been hunted by Bastians and Crovirs since his birth, Lucas Soul was even rumored to have survived his seventeenth death in the incident that had cost Agatha Vellacrus her life seven years ago.

  He had done his damnedest to find Godard and Soul since. Both had seemingly disappeared from the face of the Earth after the events in the Mediterranean Sea where Vellacrus’s plans had been foiled and Tomas Godard had also perished.

  It was only after he had begun spying on Immortals with known allegiances with Soul that he had finally tracked down the half-breed’s location to a private island in the Pacific. To his surprise and Wu’s considerable excitement, they had also discovered Anna Godard there and realized the two Immortals had had a family together.

  Not only that, but the man had been stunned when he’d learned the identities of the other Immortals who frequently visited the island, among them the ones directly responsible for Jonah Krondike’s death.

  He had known the whereabouts of Olivia Ashkarov and Ethan Storm for a long time. Although he had been tempted to send his men after them following the incident in Yuma, he’d realized it would be a foolish move, one that would jeopardize his centuries-old masquerade and Krondike’s long-held plans.

  However much he loathed them, avenging Jonah Krondike would have to wait until he had accomplished their goals.

  Nothing would stop him from annihilating Ashkarov and Storm when that time came. And come it would.

  Nearly eight centuries after Jonah Krondike had discovered the journal written by Kronos, the third-born son of Crovir and the founder of the sect Jonah would come to rule, his primary objective was finally in sight.

  It was Wu who had persuaded him to use the children’s blood instead of their parents’.

  ‘Not only will it be easier to control them, I suspect their blood will reveal even more unexpected things,’ the scientist had said a fortnight ago. ‘I need to study them.’

  The man turned and gazed at Wu. His hand snaked out and closed around her throat, lightning fast. Gasps sounded around them, the handful of scientists in the room freezing momentarily in their tasks. They resumed their duties, heads down and gazes averted.

  The woman in front of him did not even blink.

  The man leaned toward her.

  ‘Study them if you must,’ he hissed inches from her face. ‘But first, do as I told you, understood?’

  Wu licked her lips and dipped her chin. The man saw the flicker of excitement in her dark, almond-shaped eyes as he slowly released her. Deep beneath her ice-cold beauty and razor-sharp intellect, Jessica Wu was a masochist, something he’d discovered when he’d started sleeping with her a few years ago. He knew she would be waiting for him later in his quarters at the facility, eager to be tied up and taken roughly. Though he wasn’t a fan of bondage or the toys she liked to use during sex, he enjoyed the thrill of seeing her in pain and the marks he left on her fair skin.

  He turned and headed for a door to the far left of the lab. An examination room lay beyond it. Wu followed him inside and watched silently as he undid the cuffs at his wrists and took off his jacket.

  He stripped out of his tie and shirt and sat on the edge of the cot in the middle of the chamber. ‘How goes our other project?’

  ‘We’re on schedule.’ She hooked him up to a monitor and lifted a needle and syringe from the metal tray on the side table. ‘The next subjects will be ready by the end of the week.’

  ‘Good. And the man who was injured on the island?’

  ‘He’s being taken care of.’

  The smell of antiseptic reached his nostrils as she swabbed his skin.

  He did not feel the prick of the needle when it penetrated the flesh at his elbow.

  ‘The attack was launched from Princeville Airport, in Kauai,” Jordan said. ‘It’s a private airfield twenty-five miles north of the main commercial airport.’

  Lucas frowned. ‘I know of it.’

  ‘Eva picked up three Black Hawks leaving the tarmac at twenty-three hundred hours on the night of the attack from the satellite imagery she and Howard gathered. They made a straight line for Balthazar Island.’

  ‘What about afterward?’ Alexa said.

  They were in the jet that had brought her, Zachary, and Reid from the East Coast to LA. Conrad and Ethan had joined them and they stood crowded around the table holding the onboard computer.

  ‘They landed back at Princeville an hour later. A bunch of people left the helicopters and boarded a jet standing by for takeoff just before oh two hundred hours.’

  Lucas’s pulse jumped. ‘Did you see the kids?’

  ‘No,’ Jordan replied, chagrined. ‘It was too dark to make out the details. We have the aircraft heading north by north east once it leaves the island. We lose all sign of it under cloud cover two hours after that.’

  ‘There was a storm cell moving up the North West Coast,’ Eva added.

  Lucas’s heart sank at this. ‘Any chance you can pick up the jet beyond the weather system?’

  Jordan hesitated. ‘I—’

  ‘Although I cannot guarantee any results, I will continue to look for the aircraft,’ Eva said. ‘My analysis of its outline suggests it’s a Cessna Citation X+.’

  Ethan let out a low wolf whistle.

  ‘What?’ Reid said.

  ‘That’s the fastest jet around right now,’ Ethan explained. ‘Asgard tested it last year.’

  ‘I took the liberty of accessing the Princeville Airport database in the last hour,’ Eva continued. ‘I saw no records of any aircraft obtaining permission to use that runway during the time period of interest.’

  ‘What happened to the Black Hawks?’ Ethan said curiously. ‘They couldn’t have just left them there.’

  Jordan smiled thinly. ‘This is where things get even more interesting. Satellite images show them flying off to the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, on Kauai. We spotted one of them boarding a C-17 Globemaster III, the other two presumably already inside. The transport aircraft lifted off at oh three hundred hours and headed north by north west across the Pacific.’

  ‘And?’ Alexa said impatiently.

  Jordan grimaced. ‘We lose all trace of the C-17 over the Sea of Japan. Another storm front I’m afraid.’

  Conrad arched an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  Alexa looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Losing two aircraft in separate weather systems at opposite ends of the Pacific? That’s either extremely unlucky or deliberate,’ Conrad said.

  Lucas’s mouth went dry as he considered his cousin’s dubious expression. ‘I agree.’ He turned to the monitor. ‘Eva, can you plot out the aircraft traje
ctories in relation to the storm cells they disappeared into?’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  They waited while the AI mapped the data. A second window popped up on the screen minutes later. Hairs rose on the back of Lucas’s neck as he studied the calculated projections Eva had made. Reid swore.

  ‘It appears Mr. Greene is correct,’ Eva said. ‘Both aircraft look to have deliberately tracked the storm cells developing in the West and East Pacific.’

  ‘They knew,’ Alexa said in a hard voice. ‘They knew we would be looking for them.’

  Ethan frowned. ‘So you’re saying these assholes anticipated our move before we even thought of it?’

  ‘Whoever these people are, they’re good,’ Conrad said stiffly.

  Lucas turned to him. ‘Any chance you could talk to Director Connelly about the Globemaster at Barking Sands? It might be faster than asking Victor to go through the usual channels.’

  James Anthony Westwood, the man whose life Conrad had saved six years ago, had been re-elected for a second term as US President. To his cabinet’s surprise, he’d insisted on keeping Sarah Connelly as his Director of National Intelligence.

  Conrad nodded. ‘Of course. Besides, if there’s a self-serving rat in the DoD doing things under the radar again, both she and James would want to know about it.’

  ‘Anatole just left LA to return to Hawaii,’ Jordan said. ‘He’ll meet up with a team of Bastian Hunters and go talk to the Princeville airport owners directly.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Conrad muttered.

  ‘What?’ Alexa said.

  ‘Anatole can get—emotional when he interrogates people.’ Conrad grimaced. ‘Especially if he thinks they’ve hurt his friends.’

  ‘He gets emotional under all sorts of circumstances,’ Reid said with a grunt. ‘That guy’s gonna have a coronary one day.’

  Alexa rolled her eyes.

  ‘Let us know if you find anything else,’ she told Jordan and Eva before ending the call.