by T K Eldridge
I held out a fist and Cutter tapped mine with his before he grabbed his bag and headed for the door. “Cutter, anything seems off, let me know.”
“That’s why I’m doing this, boss. We can’t let the girls go into a bad situation.”
The door shut behind him and I stood there and just soaked up the quiet. I was in a building, alone, with no one else around. No one talking or moving or breathing in the same space I currently occupied. That was so rare, it was worth it to take a moment and appreciate it.
I heard the Jeep start up and the garage door next door close. I heard Cutter say “All’s good, boss.” as he drove off. I went and poured myself another coffee and stepped out onto the porch. I had a gorgeous view, a good cup of coffee, some rare quiet and a lot to think about.
By that evening, Peyton and I had done two trips to the storage unit and there wasn’t a lot left for her to pack up. Sarah’s stuff was all that was really left, and the few things she’d kept to hide the fact that most of her belongings were gone. We were curled up in front of the fireplace after we’d eaten some truly amazing pasta and garlic bread that Peyton had made. Wine was poured and music played softly in the background while we kissed and talked – and waited for Cutter to call or show up.
“I wish he’d call or text or something. I’m starting to worry,” I said. “Let me try sending him a text.” I pulled out the burner phone and punched in Cutter’s number and sent him a message Check in pls.
Peyton leaned against the pillows we’d piled on the floor and sipped her wine. “Why are you worried? Is Cutter the kind of guy to go rogue?”
“No, he’s my second in command. He’s the most reliable, dependable guy on the team. I’ve had issues with nearly every other team member at one point or another, but never Cutter. It’s just we don’t know what’s out there, or what condition the cabin is in. I’m worried he got hurt or something and can’t get ahold of me. Some of those areas out there are bad for cell service.”
Peyton handed me my glass. “Drink some wine, trust in his skills, and tell me more about this place?”
“Which place?” I asked.
“The cabin,” she teased. “You know, where Sarah and I are going to be living while we wait for you to quit your job?”
I wished for a moment it was a job I could just quit, but I understood what she was doing and let out a breath. A swallow of wine and I slid an arm around her. “Well, one of the docs from the program told me it was set up as a safe house for us. He didn’t want things to go as they have, and he said he made some preparations to help us get out and move on with our lives.”
“That was really kind of him,” Peyton said.
“And unexpected, to be honest. Which is why Cutter wanted to check it out first. It’s not normal for the Facility folks to be, well, nice to us. At all. Ever.”
“Is it really that awful?”
“Sometimes. They don’t see us as human any longer, so they don’t treat us as human. Yes, we signed up to participate, but we didn’t sign up to give up our rights as human beings.”
Peyton was silent as I spoke, but the weight of her tucked against me was a comfort.
“He’s also supposed to be fixing things so we can leave without being tracked. The only reason Cutter could go get the unit or drive out to the cabin, and the reason I could help you today, is because we’ve figured out that if we wear a magnetic patch over the spot the tracker is in, we can screw it up. They’ll get whacked out readings and just assume it’s a tech issue. We go back, they run a scan and the implant is fine, and they just write it off as a glitch. We’ve done it a few times and never had any backlash from it.”
“Where’s the patch now?”
“I took it off when we came back, while you were cooking. I’m supposed to be here, so them tracking me as being here is fine.”
“What if someone shows up to check on you?”
“They won’t. We’ve been doing missions for almost six years now. They used to check at first, but they don’t have the manpower to keep following around all of the assets they have in play.”
I felt her relax against me, then the phone chirped and I picked it up. “It’s Cutter.”
“No signal out there. On the way back. Less than 2hrs out.”
My turn to relax. “Yeah, he said no signal out there and he’s on his way back. We’ve got less than two hours.”
Peyton made a soft hmm sound and reached for my glass to set it next to hers. “Less than two hours. That’s enough time to get into a little trouble.”
I agreed.
By the time Cutter showed up, we were both showered, dressed in sweats and t-shirts and watching a movie.
“Oh, good. You’re dressed,” Cutter teased as he came in. I had listened as he pulled the Jeep in next door, so I knew he was back.
“All wiped down?” I asked and he nodded. He handed me his burner phone. “Take a look. I’m gonna hit the shower and I’ll talk to you when I’m done.”
He’d taken a lot of photos of the place and the surrounding area. I held the phone so Peyton could see too and we paused the movie as we looked through nearly two hundred photos.
“That’s the little cabin?” Peyton asked, wonder in her tone.
I was wondering, too. The place was an alpine mansion and compound all in one. A gated drive, a fenced in property with security cameras, a huge main house with a wall of glass that took in the yard and mountain view. Several outbuildings that ranged from a garden shed to a handful of guest cottages tucked into the trees and landscaping. An in-ground pool gleamed under a greenhouse-type structure and trails led off into the trees with the promise of hiking or running. It looked like a paradise and I was suddenly afraid of how much I wanted us to be there.
“It’s incredible,” Peyton whispered.
“It really is,” I replied and looked up as Cutter came out to join us. I held up the phone. “Is this for real?”
He nodded. “Every freaking inch of that place is real. The caretaker accepted the pass code and showed me around. The main house has five bedrooms and six bathrooms, a library, a tech center, a movie room with leather recliners in tiers, a kitchen most restaurants would die to have, and the guest cottages are each two bedroom, two bathroom little houses. Little. Like, eleven hundred square feet each. There is a garage that holds ten vehicles and has five already in place. A van, a pickup, a couple of sedans and a Hummer. There’s even an armory.”
I just blinked at him. “And it’s all ours?”
Cutter nodded. “Held in trust for The Michaelson Group.”
“Michael, Doc’s son. Well, hell. You said there was no cell signal?”
“Not until I got about halfway down the mountain. The closest store is almost an hour from the compound, but there are enough supplies laid up to keep us through an apocalypse. Frozen, canned, freeze-dried. We’d need to get fresh stuff, but other than that, we’re covered.”
Peyton interrupted us. “Is this doctor you’re talking about a multi-millionaire?”
“Yeah, I guess he would be. He’s the one that created the stem cell science that made us possible.”
“It’s helped heal millions around the world without using the animal cells. Just the human ones. Organ donation is no longer necessary when a person can regrow their own healthy organ with a little boost. He’s probably a billionaire many times over,” Peyton said.
“But at what cost?” I asked, my gaze settled on the flames in the fireplace. “He told me about his son, Michael, who had been in his twenties when he came back from Iraq without legs, missing one arm, his eyesight damaged and his hearing barely functional. He got so depressed he killed himself. Thorpe’s wife died from the grief of losing their only child a couple of years later. He’s put everything into the science to try and keep other families from losing their loved ones like he did – and it got twisted into the Facility’s games.”
“So this isn’t what he wanted, huh?” Cutter asked.
“No. He want
ed to release the first team after the second year. The board of directors and the government refused to let them go. That’s when he knew he’d made a mistake and he’s been trying to figure out a way to fix it ever since.”
Peyton wiped at her cheeks and I noticed the tears there. “Love, what’s wrong?”
“Someone wanted to do good and it ended up being twisted into evil. I think Wilson was one of the people behind it. He was on a committee with the Department of Defense and just before he started the campaign to be President, when he ended as VP, he quit all of the extra committees and stuff. He would meet with some military bigwigs once a month on the island, but otherwise, he took a huge step back. I heard something about ‘pets’ in a ‘facility’ a couple of years ago but I never put it together until I started listening to you two. Now I think it all makes sense.”
“And now he’s trying to distance himself even more and take us down at the same time. That interview he did is why we’re supposed to do this upcoming mission,” I said.
Cutter grunted. “Is there more wine? I think I need alcohol to discuss all of this.”
“Three bottles in the fridge,” Peyton answered. “Open two and bring them in? Oh, and…never mind. I’ll show you.” She got to her feet and headed into the kitchen to help Cutter get the wine and some snacks she’d picked up. I heard the oven open and then let the noise fall away as I processed everything we’d learned over the past few weeks.
Enough time had passed that I jumped when Peyton nudged me to get my attention before she handed me a plate of snacks. Hot stuffed mushrooms, little mini quiche, sausage wrapped in pastry dough, bits of cheese, a handful of grapes and some strawberries.
“You did all this just now?”
“Well, in the last half hour. Didn’t you notice how long we were gone?”
“No, sorry. I was lost in thought. Trying to sort through everything.”
“He gets like that before a mission, Peyton. It’s a thing,” Cutter said.
“Do you not want the food?” Peyton asked.
I smiled at her and put the plate on the low table beside me. “I want it. It looks delicious and easy to snack on while talking or watching a movie. I’ve not had stuff like this unless it was at one of those parties where the trays are carried way too fast past the working stiffs for us to get more than a bite or two.”
Peyton settled beside me once more and started nibbling on her own plate of food.
Cutter settled across from us and sighed. “It’s going to be hard going back tomorrow morning, knowing what waits for us in a couple of weeks.”
“I’m just impressed. It’s not at all what I expected. I figured it’d be a one story log cabin with a wood stove and an out house. This is living like royalty.”
Cutter lifted his wine glass and looked at the two of us. “Here’s to all of us being able to live like royalty sooner rather than later.”
I tapped mine to his and then to Peyton’s and nodded. “Sooner rather than later.”
“I just hope Sarah is okay with going radio silent on her father. I think she will be, but even for all she’s a teenager and rebels against him, he is her daddy,” Peyton said.
“Well, that’ll be your job, Pey. Keeping her from blowing it all up for all of us by contacting him. Let her know your life – and ours – depends on her silence,” I said.
“I know, love. I’ll make sure she understands.”
A teenager, a governess, and a pack of half-human soldiers move into a house in the mountains. It sounded like the start of a really bad joke.
Or the beginning of an amazing new life.
Chapter Eight
Getting my mind off of Peyton and back on the team was tough, but I managed. I got a chance to pull Z, Affie and Paulo into a chat out on the trail a couple of days after we returned so I could fill them in on what was planned. They were all the way in and more than happy to get a fresh start. I didn’t tell everyone on my team the plan. Not yet. I felt a little better after I had talked to Rico, but something still kept making me hold back and I knew better than to ignore my gut.
Affie and I were on the outside trail. A cold rain had moved through the night before and parts of the trail were muddy, so we kept our pace closer to normal than we might otherwise. That also made it easier to talk.
“You’re absolutely positive about this place?” Affie asked.
“I am. Cutter checked it out, showed me pictures. It’s a freakin’ compound. Beautiful, well stocked.”
“I’m afraid to hope,” she said, voice soft.
“I know. Part of me is afraid to think about the possibilities too. But Thorpe and I talked a lot and I trust him. As much as I can trust anyone right now, he’s got that.”
“He was so kind when we came in broken. He cared for us as if we were his children and sobbed when Eros died in spite of the treatment. Then the board of directors had to be put together in order to qualify for some of the government funding and things changed. We didn’t get to work with Thorpe as much and when we did see him, he seemed lost, frustrated, angry. He wanted to let us go after our second year here but the board refused. Said it wasn’t safe for us to be out among so-called normal people.”
We slowed to a walk and moved into the brush to avoid sliding down the slope on the mud-slick trail. I looked over at Affie. Her brown curly hair cut short, but soft around her face. Dark eyes that glinted gold in the light from the lion cells she’d been given. Coffee-colored skin that wrapped hard muscles, yet still showed pale scars from battles – wartime and surgical.
“Are you, Z, and Paulo the only ones left from the original batch?”
“Yes. There were five of us that made it through, but we’ve lost two over the years in missions. That’s another reason we want out. The three of us are family. We love each other. It would destroy us if we lost one of us.”
I nodded and reached out to touch her arm. “I promise you, Affie. We’ll find a way to get everyone out of here safely.”
Affie grinned, then swatted my backside. “As long as the three of us get one of those cottages for ourselves, we’re good. Now get your butt in gear. You’re moving too slow.”
I laughed as we picked up the pace, and I told her, “You can have whichever cottage you want. There are enough of them to pick from.”
“I’ll want the one the farthest away from everyone,” Affie said.
“Done,” I replied and sped up to pass her. “Come on, old lady. Keep up.”
“Ooh, boyo, you’re asking for it.”
* * *
Gideon was in the garage, going over one of the vehicles, when I approached him. The scent of mentholated rub wafted towards me, and I coughed.
“What the hell, Gideon. You’re bathing in that stuff now?”
“Hey, boss. Well, Kit is due in a couple of days and Amber from the mechanics pool is going through hers now. Amber had been working here when I showed up, so I put it on. I’m used to it now, so forgot to wipe it off.”
I tossed him a clean rag. “Here, before my eyes start watering.”
Gideon wiped it off and shoved the rag into his pocket. It wasn’t quite as strong, but I still kept a few feet between us.
“So, is it going to be ready for the mission?” I asked, gesturing to the vehicle.
“Of course. Parts are in and I already started replacing them.”
Gideon wasn’t just doing maintenance; he was making it so the vehicle could be stripped of the GPS tags quickly and cleanly. We’d need a vehicle with no tracking to get away clean, so this one would be it. I’d sent a message to Thorpe after Cutter told me about the garage full of vehicles, and asked if one could be left at the storage unit complex for us. He said he’d see that it was done. If he managed that, then we were good. We’d just get the girls to the storage unit, load up that vehicle, and head out. If not, we’d need options.
“When are you headed out for another parts run?” I asked him.
“I could do one today,” Gideon said.
“Just tell them one of the parts I got was damaged or not the right one or something.”
“Do that, would you?” I tucked a slip of paper into his pocket. “Check that things are set up, please?” The note had said that I needed him to call T and make sure all was at the site as planned. He’d know that meant to check with Dr. Thorpe on the vehicle at the storage unit. I didn’t want to move until all of the pieces were in place.
Z came in and jerked his head to get my attention. I gave Gideon a pat on the shoulder as I walked by and went over to Z.
“First five newbies were called in to medical to get their trackers swapped. They’re being held because there were issues with the new ones not reading properly. Seems like we’re off the grid, so to speak, and being given a bit more time due to problems with the new ones,” Z said.
“Yes,” I cheered in a whisper and fist-bumped Z. “Best news I’ve had all day. That means that Doc really is coming through for us.”
“Yeah, Affie said you agreed to a cottage?”
“Of course, Z. Whatever the three of you want. I’m hoping, honestly, that you’d be willing to help manage things once we get gone. You’ve got more experience and years than me, and I’ve seen how you handle people. If we’re going to be the safe harbor for our kind, I’ll need a lot of help.”
“Whatever you need, I’m in. You’ve given me hope, and that’s a rare and precious thing, Jericho.”
My tension eased as Zeus agreed to help. I had no idea how we were going to manage all of this, and a lot of those questions couldn’t be answered until we were out of here. “I’m thinking once we’re out, we need a group to talk about needs, issues, and so on. Kind of a leadership committee for the compound. I’d like you on it and maybe Affie? I guess it depends on how many groups we can get out. Should have a leader from each group in the committee.”
“I like how you’re thinking, but let’s wait and see what we’ve got to work with once we get there. First things first, Jericho. Mission and rescue.”