Destiny

by A D Starrling

  Lily looked down. Their captors had changed her clothes while she was unconscious. She was wearing some kind of hospital uniform consisting of a pale blue tunic and trousers. Her gaze landed on the fresh puncture wounds at her elbows.

  She stared, unable to drag her gaze from the sinister blemishes. She realized her twin was waiting for her answer.

  I’m a bit dizzy and feel sick but I’m okay.

  Tomas’s warmth surged through their connection as he tried to comfort her.

  They took our blood. He projected a view of his arms to Lily. That’s probably why we’re like this.

  She saw the same prick marks in the creases of his elbows. She also made out the vicious bruises staining the skin of his forearms. Anger surged inside her when she detected the hairline fractures beneath. She sensed Tomas’s grimace.

  Don’t worry, I’m taking care of it.

  The contusions started to fade even as she watched through his eyes. Still, she sent him some of her own healing power to speed up the process.

  It was a while before he spoke again.

  I felt Aunt Olivia in our minds when we were fighting those people. Was that you?

  Lily hesitated. Yes. My consciousness resonated with hers at the time. I guess—I guess it’s because we’ve shared so many psychic thoughts.

  Tomas was quiet for some time. You two have always been close.

  Lily did not detect any animosity or jealousy in her twin’s voice. Yes.

  Does that mean—Tomas swallowed—does it mean Mom and Dad know what happened to us?

  The fresh agony in his voice twisted Lily’s heart. Yes, it does.

  Tomas winced. That’s gonna hurt them pretty bad.

  Lily bit her lip. I know. But I’m glad it happened. She sensed his puzzlement. Don’t you remember? You learned her name. Which means so did they.

  Tomas’s consciousness flared across their connection. Jessica Wu.

  Lily frowned. Yes. She’s some kind of scientist, like Mom. She’s the one who wanted our blood.

  Why?

  I—I don’t know.

  Silence fell between them once more, each lost in their own thoughts.

  Lily?

  Yes?

  The gas they used on us. Those men were immune to it.

  A shiver danced through Lily as she recalled the giants in the chamber they’d been taken to. She had never felt minds like theirs. Unlike the men from the island, she had not been able to even dent the walls of their consciousness, so impenetrable were the barriers shielding their thoughts. If they even had any thoughts.

  Tomas’s voice jolted her from her grim reflections. Do you think you could learn to neutralize it too?

  Lily wavered. She could still taste the noxious vapor that had incapacitated them. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

  Her consciousness folded inward, tendrils of power spreading inside her as she searched her body for the faintest trace of the gas. It was a full minute before she found a vestige of it in her bloodstream. She clenched her jaw, isolated the chemical with her mind, and scrutinized its structure.

  Yes, I think I can.

  Good.

  Lily ignored the feeling of dread gnawing at the back of her mind and focused her healing abilities on trying to break the compound down. Her instincts were telling her that having their blood taken was the start of something terrible. Something that would forever alter their future.

  She could not help but sense that things were speeding toward some kind of inevitable conclusion. An event horizon of sorts. An end that she could not yet see. And one she feared was very much predestined by Fate.

  Conrad came down the aisle from the direction of the cockpit.

  Lucas glanced at him as he slid his daisho into the harness strapped to the back of the combat uniform they’d borrowed from the soldiers at the Proving Ground. ‘What’s our ETA?’

  ‘We’re ten minutes out. It’s a short ride to the marina from the airport.’

  Lucas tried to suppress the nervous anticipation thrumming in his veins. He finished checking his guns, tucked them into the holsters at his hips, and looked up into Reid’s hard stare.

  Conrad glanced curiously between the two of them as he secured his gilded staff to his back.

  ‘What?’ Lucas asked the former Marine.

  Reid clipped a fresh magazine into his Glock, shoved spare ammunition into the cargo pockets of his combat uniform, and sheathed a K-bar on his thigh. ‘You’ve got that look on your face.’

  Lucas blinked. ‘What look?’

  ‘The one that translates to you saying the hell with caution and barging in there guns blazing and swords swinging.’ Reid frowned. ‘I know you want this guy’s blood, but we need him alive if we want answers out of him.’

  ‘He’s not wrong,’ Conrad muttered.

  Lucas bit back a sharp retort. He studied their concerned expressions, took a deep breath, and forced a half-smile on his face. ‘I promise to be careful. There, does that make you feel better?’

  Reid exchanged a chagrined stare with Conrad. ‘Great. Now he’s giving us sarcasm.’

  Conrad’s lips twitched. ‘Is that bad?’

  Reid nodded morosely. ‘The last time he was sarcastic, people died.’

  Lucas grimaced. Unheeding, Reid regaled his amused cousin with a story from their infamous trip to Europe.

  An hour had passed since Connelly had called them with the details of Miller’s possible whereabouts.

  ‘Miller’s assistant showed one of the NSA agents a picture from his office,’ she had said. ‘It was taken on a fishing boat, with Miller holding a seventeen-pound rainbow trout. We matched the background to Summersville Lake.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ Lucas had asked.

  ‘It’s in West Virginia, a short flight from your current location. NSA traced a credit card under the name of Rod Miller to the Summersville Marina eighteen hours ago. Miller’s assistant said he thinks his boss has a fishing cabin somewhere.’

  ‘We got an address?’ Reid had asked.

  ‘We think so,’ Connelly had replied. ‘Summersville Lake Wildlife Management is headed by the US Army Corps of Engineers. I told the guy in charge to ask his men whether anyone had noticed a four-star general playing in their backyard. Someone had. Miller’s built himself a reputation as a bad tipper in town. I’m sending you the coordinates of the cabin right now.’

  They’d lifted off from the airfield at Aberdeen Proving Ground shortly after the call ended. Alexa and Ethan had stayed in Maryland to follow any leads they got on the woman Olivia had seen through his children’s eyes; Anatole was on his way from LA to join them.

  ‘Better get to your seats,’ their pilot said presently through the overhead speakers. ‘We land in five minutes.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dimitri acknowledged the guard stationed at the end of the corridor with a nod before stepping inside the elevator. He placed his hand on the biometric LCD display on the interior panel and stared into the camera set up for face recognition and retinal scanning.

  ‘Welcome, Dimitri,’ Eva said through the overhead speakers. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’

  The metal doors closed and the cabin started its decent to the basement.

  Dimitri glanced at the camera. ‘Any idea why Jordan wanted to see me so urgently, Eva?’

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot reveal those details at the moment,’ she replied smoothly.

  Dimitri frowned faintly.

  The lift opened a moment later. He stepped out into a wide, glass corridor and passed several chambers filled with banks of super servers and back-up generators. Robots on mobile platforms worked silently between them, their articulated arms controlled by the AI who had built them.

  A junction appeared after thirty feet. Beyond it lay the curved south wall of the bunker holding the new computer lab.

  Following the destruction of the first research facility he’d erected on his estate, Dimitri had spent three years and millions of dol
lars rebuilding the complex in another part of the twelve-thousand-acre Bohemian forest he’d owned since before the land acquired its present name of Sumava.

  The new labs were located even deeper than their predecessors and were protected by several ten-foot-thick layers of steel and titanium reinforced concrete that could technically withstand the type of bunker bomb Kronos had used to destroy the original facility. Bar the change in location and added security features, he’d made little change to the original design of the complex, something he knew the staff who worked there had appreciated. Though they were over two hundred feet underground, he had spent a lot of time carefully recreating the ambient atmosphere of the forest above them through the use of a clever system of light wells and ventilation shafts that allowed greenery to grow inside the facility.

  The computer lab’s security doors opened as he approached them. Jordan was waiting inside.

  ‘How’s the temporary examination room coming along?’ Dimitri said, slowing to a stop.

  Jordan glanced at a pair of steel doors set in the east wall of the bunker. ‘It’s almost ready. The last pieces of equipment will be in place by the time they get here in the morning.’ He grimaced. ‘I gotta admit I don’t feel so hot about having a couple of corpses down here with me.’

  ‘We have bodies in the labs upstairs all the time,’ Dimitri said wryly.

  ‘Those are mummies,’ Jordan scoffed. ‘I don’t mind mummies. They’ve been dead for, like, centuries.’ He shuddered. ‘The fresh ones give me the heebie-jeebies.’

  Dimitri sighed. ‘So, what’s so pressing I had to come here straight from the airport?’

  Jordan hesitated before indicating the vault to their left. ‘Why don’t we step inside there?’

  ‘Why can’t we talk here?’ Dimitri said.

  ‘Humor me.’

  Dimitri wavered before following him inside the vault. Like the one in the first facility, it held the most precious relics he’d discovered during his centuries as the Head of the Crovir Immortal Culture and History Section. It had been nothing short of a miracle that the bunker bomb hadn’t reached the original chamber during Kronos’s attack on the first complex.

  The steel door closed behind them with a hiss of air.

  Jordan strolled to a table bearing a small, raised, glass platform linked to a microscope, a camera, and a 3D laser projector. Dimitri stopped and frowned at the set-up.

  It hadn’t been there the last time he’d visited the room.

  Jordan looked up at the ceiling. ‘Eva?’

  ‘The room is secure,’ the AI replied smoothly from the overhead speakers.

  ‘Seriously, this cloak-and-dagger act is starting to get stale,’ Dimitri said in clipped tones. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Would you mind emptying your pockets?’ Jordan said.

  Dimitri blinked, nonplussed. ‘What?’

  ‘We just turned the vault into a SCIF. No electronic signal can enter or leave this room right now.’

  ‘Why?’ Dimitri folded his arms across his chest. ‘And what the hell does any of that have to do with the contents of my pockets?’

  Jordan rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled loudly. ‘Howard Titus called us an hour ago. He knows how they found the island.’

  A sick feeling erupted in the pit of Dimitri’s stomach as he stared at Jordan.

  ‘His hackers identified unusual activity logs in a series of satellites covering Europe, Africa, the US, and the Pacific in the last ten months,’ Jordan continued. ‘Two belonged to the Crovir network, three were Russian, and one was Chinese.’

  ‘The satellites were tracking someone or something over a period of six months starting last October,’ Eva said. ‘The ones over the Pacific have stayed in fixed geosynchronous orbit since March this year. The area they were observing included the geographic coordinates of Balthazar Island.’

  Dimitri swallowed. ‘Are you saying—?’

  Jordan nodded. ‘Howard and Eva matched the data his team uncovered with your own activities since October of last year. The information corresponds exactly with your trips across those three continents.’ He paused. ‘The last time you visited the island was in—’

  ‘March,’ Dimitri whispered. He walked over to the table and leaned his hands shakily on the edge, remorse a dark cloud threatening to drown him. He looked dazedly at Jordan. ‘Are you sure? I was being tracked?’

  Jordan dipped his chin, his expression sympathetic.

  Dimitri swore. He couldn’t believe he was the reason behind the attack on the island and the twins’ disappearance. His heart twisted as he thought of Anna and Lucas. He closed his eyes briefly.

  How will I ever face them?

  Anger flared inside him.

  ‘You think they’re still tracking me?’ he bit out.

  ‘We think the device they used might still be on you.’

  Dimitri scowled. He removed the items in his suit and handed them to Jordan.

  There were only three articles. His cell, his wallet, and his Glock 19.

  Jordan emptied the wallet, disassembled the gun, and placed everything on the glass platform.

  The camera and the laser projector whirred into life. 3D images of the cell, the contents of the wallet, and the Glock components appeared in mid-air, above the table. They watched as Eva spun the objects in three planes. She zoomed in on them one by one, the projections exploding as she broke them down into their basic parts for detailed analysis.

  She found the tracker embedded on the microchip of his AMEX black card.

  Dimitri stared as Jordan picked up the bankcard and carefully detached a minuscule, transparent film the size of a grain of rice from the electronic circuit with a pair of fine pincers. He put the material on a slide and placed it under the microscope for Eva to analyze.

  ‘Interesting,’ the AI said after a moment. ‘This is a nano film. I have to admit I have not come across one this sophisticated before.’ A magnified 3D view of the item flashed into existence above the table. ‘Fascinating. It has a water-resistant, liquid, thermoelectric element that presumably converts body heat into electricity.’

  Jordan’s eyebrows rose. ‘So that’s how it could transmit a signal without a power source for so long.’

  ‘Yes,’ Eva confirmed. ‘I have just scanned several scientific databases for the latest information on this type of smart technology.’

  ‘And?’ Dimitri asked tensely.

  ‘As far as I can gather, this is not in mass production. Which means whoever designed this did it in a lab.’

  Dimitri glared at the image floating above the table. ‘There’s only one place I can think of where they could have placed this on me.’

  ‘Dresden,’ Eva said.

  Jordan’s eyes widened. ‘You mean—?’

  ‘The headquarters of the Crovir First Council,’ Dimitri said grimly. ‘The security measures for a meeting of the Council dictates that we leave everything in a safe room outside the chamber.’ He paused. ‘It’s the only place I visited last October where this card would have left my possession for any length of time.’

  Part Two: Awakening

  Chapter Fifteen

  The cabin stood crowded by oaks and towering evergreens two hundred feet from the water’s edge. Lucas stepped soundlessly across the moss-covered forest floor, his Smith & Wesson clasped tightly in his hands as he closed in on the sprawling, one-story structure.

  It had taken them fifteen minutes to cross the lake by speedboat from the marina and reach the secluded cove two miles to the north. The landing site they’d picked placed them twelve thousand feet southwest of the coordinates of Miller’s fishing lodge, enough distance to be able to complete surveillance of the area before they decided on a course of action.

  A bird’s eye view of the area they’d accessed via an overhead NGA satellite before they had landed at the airport had revealed little bar what looked like the end of a pier projecting over a narrow bay and the shapes of two vessels under jungle-c
amouflage covers.

  They’d cut the engine of their Sea Ray when they were still half a mile offshore and glided the rest of the way to the pebbly inlet. From there, they’d proceeded on foot until the roof of the cabin had appeared between the trees on the crest of a shallow rise.

  Ten minutes of recon had revealed the presence of four armed men guarding an eighty-foot perimeter around the building, their army fatigues blending into the browns and greens of the forest. They had also identified the dark shape of a 4x4 parked under the elevated, west-facing porch.

  Reid’s voice came over the receiver in Lucas’s left ear. ‘There’s a dirt track at my ten o’clock.’

  Lucas paused under the cover of a tree and studied the terrain to his right. He was approaching the cabin from the north. He frowned when he spotted the gravel-strewn trail.

  ‘I see it too.’ His gaze shifted to the man forty feet in front of him and the one standing next to a cluster of bushes sixty feet ahead and to the left. ‘Conrad, what’s your position?’

  ‘I’m at the pier,’ his cousin murmured over the comms line. ‘There are two guys guarding the boats. I’ll have to take them out first.’

  They’d decided to disable the vessels before they initiated their assault on the cabin, hoping to cut off Miller’s escape route. The presence of the 4x4 was an unwelcome surprise; their NSA intel hadn’t revealed the presence of an access road to the cabin.

  Lucas clenched his jaw. ‘We’ll wait for your signal.’

  He shifted slightly and was debating whether to move closer to one of his targets when he heard Conrad grunt in his earpiece.

  Lucas stiffened and looked east toward the water.

  Something flashed in the corner of his vision. Instinct had him jerking to the side. A knife hummed past his face and thudded into the trunk next to him.

  Conrad swallowed another grunt as the first man’s fist connected with his ribs once more. He heard bone crack, blocked a blow to his head from the attacker on his left, and kneed him in the loin. The guy didn’t even flinch.