Destiny

by A D Starrling

  ‘I think I know somebody who might know where those are,’ Alexa had said grimly.

  Zachary and the others had just landed at the airport outside Ceske Budejovice when her call went through.

  ‘Try Room 51 in the basement of the Memorial Library,’ Zachary had said ‘It’s in Harvard Yard, on Massachusetts Avenue.’

  ‘Thanks.’ A smile had curved Alexa’s lips, her tension melting away at the sound of his voice, as it always did. ‘Hey, remember that thing we did last week?’

  ‘You mean—?’ Zachary started, his tone turning low and husky.

  ‘Yeah, that thing.’ Her smile had widened. ‘I can’t wait to do that again.’

  A low chuckle had left her throat as she had listened to Zachary groan at the other end of the line.

  ‘You’re killing me, babe.’

  Alexa had grinned. ‘I love you too.’

  She’d ended the call and looked up into Ethan’s sullen stare.

  ‘Seriously, why is everything about sex with you two?’

  Alexa had tut-tutted. ‘Jealousy is an ugly trait, Ethan.’

  It had taken twenty minutes to get a Bastian helicopter to fly up from Baltimore and take them north to Massachusetts. By the time they had unearthed the scientist’s personal file among the archives beneath the Widener building, Anatole had reached Boston.

  The address listed for Jessica Wu had led them to a twenty-acre estate fifteen miles southwest of the city. Bar the security lights in the garden, they had seen no signs of life since they had snuck over the gated wall encircling the grounds and taken up position in the woods hedging the lawn leading up to the colonnaded porch running around the property.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Alexa said.

  They moved rapidly in the darkness, their steps muted by the grass, and reached the rear porch seconds later.

  Ethan crossed the terracotta floor and placed a hand on the wood and leaded-glass back door. He detected the security sensor attached to the frame, sent a burst of elemental energy through it to disable the house alarm, and gently manipulated the lock. It clicked faintly. He turned the handle and opened the door.

  They headed inside, their guns in hand.

  A black and white marble vestibule opened up in front of them. It spanned the length of the house and led to an atrium dominated by a grand, split staircase rising to the upper levels, with the entrance foyer beyond. Light from the external security lamps glittered off crystal chandeliers and mirrors, the rays reflected on the antique, polished-wood furniture. Ornaments filled the reception rooms and a state-of-the-art kitchen opened off the central passage. They cleared the wings and the first floor before heading upstairs.

  They found a study attached to a library overlooking the lake at the rear of the house.

  ‘Bingo.’

  Ethan crossed the carpeted floor and took a seat behind the desk. It was framed by wide, double doors leading to a balcony spanning the width of the building. A sleek, dual-monitor computer sat in the middle of the table.

  ‘I’ll check the bedrooms and the loft.’ Anatole disappeared back out the door.

  Alexa cupped a pen torch in her hand and started exploring the floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

  Ethan took out the smartphone he’d bought on Howard’s instructions and plugged it into a port at the back of the computer. He removed his own cell from his rear pocket and hit speed-dial. The call connected seconds later.

  ‘Howard? I’m in. Let Eva know.’

  He watched the monitors come to life before his eyes. It took seconds for Eva and Howard to breach the security system protecting the computer and log into the mainframe. A window popped up when they started uploading the drives to their servers, the smartphone acting as a physical backup.

  Ethan rose and headed to where Alexa was inspecting some books. ‘Found anything?’

  She arched an eyebrow. ‘Our good doctor seems to like sexually deviant play.’ She showed him the covers.

  Ethan grimaced at the explicit titles and images. ‘Oh.’

  His cell buzzed. He slipped it out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and frowned.

  ‘Remove the smartphone! They know you’re there!’ Howard snapped from the other end of the line when the call connected.

  Ethan strode to the desk and snatched the phone out of the port.

  ‘What?’ Alexa said tensely.

  Ethan swore. Letters and numbers scrolled across the computer monitors, the drives disappearing as they were remotely deleted.

  A shot came from somewhere above them. Alexa bolted out of the room with her Sig in hand. Ethan rounded the desk and was reaching for his Colt when glass shattered behind him. He whirled around, saw light glint on the muzzle of a gun, and raised his hand.

  Alexa heard a crash behind her as she ran out of the library. Two shadowy shapes fell past the banister ahead of her and struck the landing below with a thud.

  Movement flashed to her right. She leaned out of the way of a gun, feeling heat streak past her face as her attacker fired. She knocked the pistol out of his hand and brought her Sig up. A second man appeared in the gloom and kicked the weapon from her grasp, taking her by surprise.

  She blocked a high kick to her face, evaded another shot, and jumped out of the way of the palm strike headed for her chest. She narrowed her eyes at her opponents and reached for her sai daggers.

  Super soldiers!

  More figures appeared in the foyer. Anatole was fighting the man he’d fallen with on the landing below. Alexa barely had time to glance at him before the soldiers facing her attacked. She danced out of the way of two more bullets, roundhouse kicked the gun out of the second man’s hand, and narrowly avoided the knife headed for her throat.

  Ethan grunted when the super soldier’s fist connected with his jaw.

  He crushed the blade headed for his left thigh, front-kicked his first attacker in the chest, and sent the second one crashing into the desk with a blast of elemental energy.

  They came at him again, hands and feet moving in a fluid dance of strikes and kicks, their faces expressionless. He gritted his teeth and blocked their attack.

  ‘Well, this is shit,’ Anatole stated.

  He stood next to Alexa on the landing, his chest heaving, a knife clasped in his hand.

  Alexa frowned at the super soldiers surrounding them. Three stood on the steps above them and four faced them from below. They ignored their dead companions on the upper landing and the foyer, their vacant stares chilling.

  The fact that the men they’d defeated weren’t getting up told Alexa they were not Immortals.

  Anatole wiped a sliver of blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘Got any ideas?’

  ‘Try not to die,’ Alexa muttered.

  Anatole sighed. ‘Story of my life, right there.’

  Alexa stretched out the kinks in her neck. ‘I’ll take the ones at the bottom.’

  Anatole steeled himself. ‘Gotcha.’

  The men came at them as one.

  Alexa weaved between a flurry of blades, kicks, and punches. Heat rose in her chest as she countered the soldiers’ deadly assault, her body drawing on the unearthly power that had awakened inside her following her first death. It danced through her veins, a savage energy that filled her soul with fire and rendered her mind red with bloodlust.

  The floor shuddered beneath her feet when the ungodly force blasted out of her in a powerful wave that forced the super soldiers back a step. She bared her teeth in a feral snarl, the strength of her attack accelerating exponentially, the sais blurring in her grip.

  The super soldiers fell before her one by one.

  A crash erupted on the upper landing. A figure shot out of the library and smashed through the banister. It sailed through the air and struck the chandelier suspended above the atrium before plummeting to the marble floor thirty feet below.

  A familiar energy washed across Alexa’s skin.

  A second figure emerged backward from the library, feet dangling a couple of i
nches off the wooden floorboards and hands clawing at its throat.

  Ethan followed, his expression cold and focused, his left hand raised, palm facing the super soldier suspended above the ground.

  ‘Whoa,’ Anatole murmured.

  Ethan’s fingers twitched. The super soldier glided through the jagged gap in the banister and soared out over the atrium, his face reddening as he fought for breath, the skin at his neck dented by an invisible force.

  The Elemental raised his arm. The soldier kicked his legs out frantically as he rose ten feet in the air. His figure blurred as he was driven downward in the next second, his body smashing onto the foyer floor with a sickening thud.

  Anatole winced. ‘Ouch.’

  Alexa turned toward the men still standing.

  Wood creaked and glass vibrated under the unearthly forces sweeping the atrium. The chandelier trembled and swayed overhead, crystals casting a myriad of flashes across the bloody battleground below.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lily raised her head slowly.

  They are coming.

  She climbed awkwardly to her feet, bracing herself against the concrete wall of her cell, the dread that had been with her since she woke that morning escalating. Her brother’s energy pulsed across their mental connection, his consciousness flashing gold as he tried to console her.

  The door opened. Two guards entered the cell. They took her by the arms and led her out of her prison and into the corridor beyond.

  Tomas and his escort joined them from a junction on the left a moment later.

  Her brother held her gaze, his green eyes warm. We’ll be okay.

  Lily bit her lip and nodded. This time, the guards took them up to the tenth floor.

  This level was different to the one where they had been brought the day before. A single, wide passage opened up ahead of them, its length suggesting it spanned most of the underground complex. A pair of freight elevators stood framed in the wall on either side of the lift they exited. Beyond them, concrete gave way to thick glass.

  A shiver raced down Lily’s spine when she spotted what lay inside the cavernous, two-story-tall chambers behind the transparent walls they were escorted past.

  What are those?

  Apprehension colored Tomas’s voice.

  He gazed beyond the metal mezzanines that ran around the upper periphery of the space to the concrete floors one level down.

  Lily stared at the rows of giant, round, glass tanks rising vertically from the ground. The structures were connected to the ceiling and to an array of complex machines and monitors by lines and pipes. Men and women in lab coats toiled diligently at the instruments, their work assisted by robotic arms suspended from steel frames hanging above their heads.

  Her gaze skimmed the equipment before focusing on the most sinister things in the rooms.

  Suspended in a murky liquid inside each tank was the near naked figure of a man. Tubes and wires snaked out of the bodies, linking them to the machines outside. Most were the size of an average human. A third were bigger, much bigger, like the four men who had attacked them the day before.

  Lily’s mouth went dry when she finally grasped what they were looking at.

  Life pods. Those are life pods like the ones Aunt Olivia saw when she was taken prisoner four years ago.

  Tomas’s unease exploded inside her mind.

  You mean—?

  Lily dipped her chin. Super soldiers.

  She swallowed and wrenched her gaze from the ghastly parade on either side of them. The corridor seemed to stretch on forever. She estimated they’d passed six hundred pods by the time they reached the steel doors at the end of the passage.

  Beyond them lay a lab. Lily slowed and stared, her pulse accelerating as she registered the scores of people inside it. They all seemed to be waiting for something. Or someone.

  She stiffened when she spotted the glass wall at the other end of the chamber. Beyond it was an isolation room similar to the one where they had been taken yesterday. Monitors and medical equipment lined the white linoleum floor.

  In the center was a pair of beds.

  A man lay atop each cot, eyes closed and bodies still, oxygen masks strapped to their faces. The cotton sheets covering their frames did not move, their rib cages still beneath the linen. The figure on the left wore a fresh dressing on his chest. The one on the right bore a healed surgical scar on his, with a second livid wound running diagonally from the tip of his left shoulder before it disappeared beneath the sheet toward his opposite hip.

  The air seemed to thicken before Lily’s very eyes. An oppressive atmosphere descended around her, making it hard to breathe. She could feel a dark energy swirling inside the lab, the same energy she had sensed ever since she’d woken in the complex.

  It was coming from the bodies inside the isolation chamber.

  She glanced around at the people in the room, stunned that they seemed unaware of the overwhelming pressure bearing down on her.

  Do they not feel it?

  A man crossed the floor toward them. Jessica Wu followed in his steps, hands in the pockets of her white coat, her beautiful face cold.

  Lily looked up when the man stopped before her and Tomas. Unlike the scientists around them, he wore a suit.

  He studied her and her brother for a moment, his expression impassive and his eyes inscrutable. ‘You do not appear to want to use your powers today.’

  Lily reached out and curled her fingers around Tomas’s hand. She could feel him trembling next to her, the same suffocating dread pressing on her consciousness resonating inside him.

  She had already breached the minds of Jessica Wu and the normal Immortals in the room. What they had revealed had her heart thundering inside her chest. As for the man in front of them, the man whose name she had identified from Wu’s thoughts, his mental shields were proving as impenetrable as those of the giant super soldiers they had faced the previous day.

  ‘How disappointing,’ he murmured. He took them gently by their shoulders and guided them toward the isolation chamber. ‘Come. Since it’s thanks to you that all of this is possible, I think it only fitting that you be here for the grand awakening.’

  Something caught Lily’s attention as they neared the glass wall. Her eyes rounded when she saw the stone tombs standing on a pair of pedestals inside a second isolation chamber to the right.

  The man followed her gaze. ‘I haven’t thanked you for the seal.’

  Lily’s hand shot to the base of her throat. She’d assumed she’d lost her sun cross pendant during the attack on the island. She spotted the glittering, gold necklace inside a glass case on a table next to the tombs. An identical necklace sat in a velvet-lined box next to it.

  She looked ahead into the isolation chamber and saw the red bags at the end of IV lines running into each of the silent figures’ arms. Her fingers clenched around Tomas’s. He squeezed back, understanding flashing across their connection.

  ‘Dr. Wu tells me your blood has remarkable properties,’ the man said. ‘She is keen to—study you further. I convinced her you should witness this first.’

  He dipped his chin at Wu. She looked over at the scientists manning a workstation to their left. One of them clicked a couple of keys on a computer.

  The digital screens on the infusion pumps linked to the red bags started to flash. Crimson slowly filled the IV lines, displacing the clear fluid within.

  Lily’s breathing turned shallow as she watched her and Tomas’s blood make its way into the veins of the dead men on the beds.

  An expectant hush filled the lab. A minute passed. Then two.

  At five minutes, the man in the suit frowned. ‘Why is nothing happening?’

  A muscle jumped in Wu’s jawline. ‘Give it some—’

  Though it was soft, the noise when it came was thunderous. A beep.

  All eyes swung to the monitor attached to the dead man on the right.

  It came again, a high-pitched, electronic sound that made L
ily’s pulse jump. Another echoed it a second later.

  She swallowed a whimper and watched the flat lines on the monitors spike, the beeps speeding up with the rising heart rates, the electric rhythms normalizing into regular beats. Alarms sounded around the beds as the other machines picked up signs of life from the two men. They lit up, the numbers on the screens climbing rapidly until they reached normal ranges and silenced the shrill warnings.

  The man in the suit walked over to the glass wall and placed his hands flat against the polished plate, his face filled with a fervent light.

  ‘My God, it’s really happening,’ Wu whispered. She leaned a hand against a table, legs visibly shaking.

  The cotton sheets trembled violently as the dead men started to take deep, shuddering gasps, their bodies adjusting to life once more, the oxygen masks over their faces misting. It was almost a minute before their breathing settled into a normal pattern.

  Tomas’s fingers bit into Lily’s skin when the man on the right suddenly sat up and wrenched the mask from his face.

  His eyes slammed open. Dark pupils stared at them wildly from within a pair of pale, milky irises, their depths as old as time and radiating such evil Lily could not help but shudder.

  The figure on the left rose slowly. He blinked, revealing cloudy, blue eyes that would have been an identical shade to her own and her father’s were it not for the pearly film covering them.

  The men’s expressions crumpled in the next instant. They clutched their heads, raised their faces to the sky, and screamed.

  The agonizing sounds tore through Lily. She opened her mouth, a tormented cry ripped from her own throat as she collapsed to her knees.

  Her brother fell at her side, his voice echoing her distress, his pain and the suffering of the men behind the glass forming red waves that crashed over her, overwhelming her consciousness.