Edge of Darkness

by Vikki Romano

  Letting out one last breath, he rolled the stick in his hand then tapped a few codes into the illuminated numbers on his wrist.

  He felt the data stick pulse in his hand, and suddenly his mind was awash with excruciating color and sound.

  He clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut against the intrusion of immediate pain that flashed through his body like molten silver.

  His brain felt as if it caught fire.

  Roaring, he clutched his head in his hands and dropped the stick, but whatever it had encapsulated had already uploaded into his neural systems.

  Moments later he found himself sprawled on the floor, too weak to move. Every muscle in his body tensed, hardened, setting him rigidly against the floor, curling his fingers violently into the carpeting.

  Holy fucking Christ!

  Calder used every ounce of energy he had to open his eyes and turn himself over. It were as if he had been drugged and beaten repeatedly over his entire body. Every muscle throbbed. Every joint ached. He could not contain the moan that escaped his lips when he finally turned over and lay flat on his back. Convulsions coursed through his muscles and his back arched against the pain until he lay exhausted.

  The room became blindingly, painfully bright. He patted himself down awkwardly until he found his shades in a breast pocket. Struggling to steady his hand to put them on, he used one last burst of energy to get them in place before letting his arm fall to the floor just as another convulsion hit him. Squinting his eyes open once more, he directed his shades to darken to an almost completely black level. The light was still painful, but bearable.

  Clenching his teeth against the onslaught of spasms, he breathed heavily until his body finally relaxed and he panted, spit trickling down his chin.

  The grid on his wrist blinked relentlessly. Whatever it was that he’d uploaded, it was certainly wreaking havoc with his internal systems.

  He tried to uplink to his augment to see what was going on, but the feedback that reverberated through his skull nearly knocked him unconscious.

  His thoughts scrambled.

  Had someone tried to kill him? Had they found a way past his military security to bug his brain? Dear God, how do you even get something like that back out?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sierra Mason ground her teeth. It was bad enough she’d fought against her better judgment to go to the range on her day off, but then to be stood up when Calder knew how much she hated it? It was the last straw. Then again, she had given him plenty of last straws over the years.

  Bastard. Why did he always do this?

  She tried to call him, but got a dead signal. It would be just like him to forget, turn off his service, and go back to sleep. She didn’t blame him--he had looked like shit lately--but if he wanted to stay in bed, he should have just said so. Now he had fucked up her mood by ditching her, and she wanted him to explain himself.

  No more straws.

  After bringing her car to a squealing halt in front of his building, she stalked through the lobby doors, ignored the demands of his doorman, and took the elevator to the twelfth floor. Marching to the end of the hall, she let out a breath and knocked on his door. Hard.

  No answer.

  “Damn you, McKenna!” She banged on the door once more with her fist and waited. No answer still, but when she turned to leave, she thought she heard a noise from inside.

  “If you’re fucking with me, I am so not amused right now,” she shouted against the door, and then she heard a loud crash, and this time she heard a loud moan.

  What the fuck was this all about?

  Taking the gun that she had tucked into the waistband at the small of her back, she keyed in his entry code and waited for it to click before she slowly pushed the door open and went inside. With her gun at the ready, she crept toward the living room, her senses honed as she sought out danger. Coming around the corner, she saw him sprawled on the floor, tumbled furniture around him.

  Rushing to his side, her eyes still darting around the room, she squatted to check his pulse. He flinched away from her when her fingers met his neck.

  At least he was still alive.

  Unsure of the situation, she stood and did a sweep of the apartment to make sure whoever did this to him was gone. It was a quick search, and, finding nothing, she tucked her gun back into her waistband and rushed to him.

  “McKenna, you OK? Who did this?”

  He shrank away from her and held out a hand as if to stop her.

  “Tell me who did this,” she demanded, and at her voice he groaned again and clutched his head.

  “Stop… talking…” His voice was tight in his throat and he rolled away from her. She noted he was wearing shades, which seemed strange. This whole scene was odd.

  “I need to know what happened. Should I call a med unit?”

  He rolled back toward her then, and without warning, reached up and grabbed her by the face with one strong hand.

  “Loud!” he said, then pushed her away and clutched his head.

  “Damn it, I’m just trying to help!” she said in hushed tones, touching his shoulder, and he flinched again.

  “Pain… stop… it hurts…”

  “Where? Are you shot?” She tried to roll him so she could see, but he pushed against her.

  “Not shot… stick…” he said, and Sierra sat back on her haunches, trying to understand his Neanderthal gibberish. Was he tripping on something? She never knew him to drink heavily, let alone take drugs, but she’d never seen him act this way before.

  She stood and looked around the room. There were no drugs to be found, but she did find a data stick. Was this what he was talking about?

  It looked like a typical stick to her, black plastic little thing, though it was void of labels and markings. Again… odd.

  She stood over him for a moment and her breath stopped in her throat.

  The sight of him shocked her. He was always the hulking hero to her. The big, strong guy that stood up with her, but now? He looked like a hurt child curled into a ball, moaning. It scared her more than anything had in a very long time.

  Her mind swam with questions that he seemed unable to answer.

  “Up,” he said finally, his voice like gravel, and he held out a shaky hand to her.

  Up? She stared at his hand for a moment. He was twice her size. This was going to be interesting.

  She shoved the stick in her pocket then grabbed his hand with both of hers. He let out a painful cry as she struggled to lift his cumbersome form. After some amount of pulling, he bolstered himself against the table and shoved hard enough to propel himself onto the couch in a relatively upright position.

  He leaned forward, still clutching his head, and she crouched directly in front of him.

  She reached out and brushed the hair away from his forehead, but he flinched and turned away from her. The urge to soothe him was overpowering, but there was nothing she could do, nothing that he would allow. Chewing her lip, she sat back and watched him.

  After a few moments, she could see that he was trying to slow his breathing, and eventually he sat back and raised his head, his hair falling away from his face.

  “Did you find… the stick?” he asked, his voice weak.

  “This?” She dug it out of her pocket and held it out.

  He shrank away from her again.

  “Yes,” he said warily. “I uploaded something, no idea what. Fucked me up…” He held out his wrist to her, and she saw that his display was blinking all zeroes.

  “You uploaded this to your head?” she asked, holding up the stick.

  He cringed at her loud voice and clutched his head again.

  “Stop shouting, for fuck’s sake,” he growled.

  Sierra shook her head in disbelief, toying with the small stick in her hand.

  “Where did you get it? Do you even know what it is?”

  “Mail… and no,” he said.

  Sh
e saw her own incredulous look reflected in his glasses.

  “Well, you’re not only an idiot, but you’re a jackass. You probably got a virus, or worse. I thought you had more sense than that.”

  He tapped the back of his head.

  “Cortex is military grade… high security… hard to attack.”

  “Apparently not if you were attacked. How else can you explain how fucked up you are right now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and let out some deep, shaky breaths. After a few moments, he reached up and took off his glasses.

  He squinted, barely able to open his eyes. He covered his face temporarily with his hand while gesturing wildly with the other.

  Sierra leaped up and punched some numbers into the grid on the wall. Within moments, the windows all around the room had darkened to near black and McKenna finally opened his eyes.

  There was something about him that didn’t seem right. Aside from how freaky he was acting, he just looked… different. Bulky. And his eyes were dark. Much, much darker than their natural gunmetal-blue. He looked possessed. Demonic.

  “Do you want anything? Water?” she asked, feeling utterly helpless as McKenna continued to fight with whatever it was that was going on inside his brain.

  He shook his head, which made him groan again.

  “I need to find out what’s on that stick,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  “You think?” she said, giving him a look as she came back to the couch, but her smirk changed when he winced at her movement.

  “Should I drop it off at the precinct to get it checked out?”

  “Fuck no,” he said, turning to her as she sat on the couch next to him. “That’s the last thing I need if this was some kind of hit.”

  She could see the muscles twitching in his jaw as he uttered the words.

  A hit.

  It wasn’t something she liked to think about, though she was sure she was on plenty of hit lists herself. There were tons of pissed-off perps that had targets on both their heads. Hard not to have enemies in their line of work.

  “You said you were heading to Branson. Let’s go there,” he said after he cleared his throat. “We can get the techs to scan it and let me know what I’m dealing with and what it’s doing to me.”

  “Fine by me, but are you sure you don’t want to stay here? You’re in pretty rough shape.”

  “No, I need to go and let them check me out. They have equipment to run diagnostics.”

  Sierra agreed numbly and stood from the couch. She would never get used to it, knowing there was a computer in his head. To be perfectly honest, cybernetics and bio-enhancements always seemed creepy to her. She never understood the people who got them installed. It was like having an alien inside your body, but she couldn’t judge Calder. His implant had been required by the military while he was in service. He had no choice in the matter.

  A bit exasperated by the whole scene, she turned to offer him a hand up.

  Bad idea.

  He brushed her off and got defensive, swiped her hand away brusquely, and, with a grumble, managed to pry himself from the couch to stand.

  He wobbled for a moment, trying to gain his bearings, then she watched him trudge to the bedroom, and after a few minutes she could hear him rummaging around, moving things. He was taking too long.

  Concerned, she went to see what he was doing.

  When she walked in, she found him frantically sifting through a box of ammo, his face blank. Frighteningly void. All of his weapons were laid out on his bed in rows, as if he were taking inventory.

  “McKenna?” Her voice broke the eerie silence.

  He looked up at her, his eyes vacant. He looked down at the ammo cartridges in his hands, quickly taking in what was around him, and then he gave her a look that chilled her. It was a look of disorientation, as if he didn’t know where he was. And then, instant panic.

  She could see his mind shifting, his vision narrowing, and his hands slowly started to move again, counting his ammo.

  Laying it out on the bed.

  Row by row.

  Whatever he’d uploaded into his skull did more than fuck him up. It was taking over his mind, controlling his actions.

  Sierra walked toward him, slowly, with one hand at the small of her back grasping her own weapon in preparation, and she put her other hand on his arm.

  “McKenna,” she said with some command. “Stop. Put your weapons down.”

  He didn’t flinch at her touch this time, but his demeanor changed in an instant. She could feel the heat of his arm rise under her fingers as his body began to defend itself and the hardness of his muscle became inhuman.

  It was Sierra who flinched this time.

  He turned on her so fast that she didn’t have time to react, his hand snapping out to grab hers, and he squeezed. She could feel her wrist starting to crack.

  In an instant, her gun came from behind her, and as her thumb rolled over the sequencer on the grip, she kicked against him and shot. The arc from the shock blast that hit his chest knocked him out instantly, and he fell hard onto the bed, weapons and ammo flying in every direction, clattering loudly to the floor.

  She waited a second for the static to dissipate before she checked his pulse. He had a strong one, thank the unholy gods.

  Without hesitation, she tapped the bud at her ear and put through a call to one of their techs in Branson.

  “Cooper, I need you to send a wagon over to McKenna’s right now!” she barked.

  “What’s going on? Do I need to send a team?” he asked, confusion thick in his voice.

  “No, but bring Steven. You come too, and bring your scanning gear.”

  “You’re starting to worry me, Mason. What’s going on?”

  “We’ll talk about it when you get here--stop wasting time!” She tapped the bud and disconnected the call, quickly stooping to gather up the weapons and ammo from the floor.

  McKenna was in some kind of rogue state, and there was no way she wanted the room full of weapons when he woke. She threw everything into a bin in his closet and closed the door.

  As she finished with her clean-up, McKenna started to rouse from his shock-induced sleep.

  Holy shit, she thought. She’d given him enough voltage to knock him out for an hour, and it had only been fifteen minutes.

  This is bad.

  If she shocked him again so soon, she risked permanent damage. She couldn’t do that to him, no matter how fucked up he was. Without a second to lose, she raced back to the closet and rummaged through his ammo box. She thought she had seen… There they were. Curare darts. Those would knock him out.

  If they didn’t, she was screwed.

  She took one, closed the door, and came out into the room to find him starting to move. Slowly. He wasn’t entirely awake yet, but he would be very soon, and given his previous attitude, Sierra knew she couldn’t risk him being awake at all.

  She bit her lip, grasped the dart tight like a syringe, and plunged it hard into his thigh.

  His eyes shot open and he let out a howl, clutching his leg, only to fall in a heap on the floor. Out cold.

  Sierra let out the breath she was holding. She released her fingers from the dart, leaving it protrude from his thigh, then sat on the bed.

  Within minutes, she could hear Cooper at the door. Dazed, she stood and went to let them in.

  They were standing there, wide-eyed and panicked.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Cooper asked as he came in with an armload of gear. Steven followed, toting a collapsible hover gurney and a med kit.

  Sierra couldn’t talk, but gestured with her head, and they followed her into McKenna’s bedroom.

  Upon finding him on the floor, Steven dropped his bag and knelt to check his pulse, looking up to give them a relieved grimace.

  “So are you going to tell me what happened? Did you shoot him?” Cooper asked as
he set his gear on the bed and began unpacking his diagnostics tools.

  “No, well, yes, I mean…” Sierra grabbed her forehead and dropped onto the bed again. She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out the data stick.

  “This was delivered to him and he uploaded some kind of virus into his head. He started to act crazy, mental, so I shocked him, but it didn’t do anything, so I stabbed him with a dart.”

  Just as she mentioned the dart, Steven smirked and, with some effort, yanked it from McKenna’s thigh. He let out a long whistle as he held it out to Cooper.

  “Damn. Well, he’ll be out for a month with that dosage,” he said, holding the dart up to look at it before he tossed it onto the bed.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sierra said as she looked down at Calder’s prone form. “I shocked him with a knockout voltage first and he was awake after fifteen minutes.”

  Cooper looked down at Calder, then back to her with some concern.

  “Are you sure you had it set high enough?”

  “I had to wait before I could touch him. The static was still veiling him.”

  Cooper raised a brow, then looked down to watch Steven hook up sensors to McKenna’s chest and forehead.

  “Whatever he uploaded knocked out his internal systems as well,” she added, pointing to Calder’s wrist, and Steven held it up, showing them the blinking numbers.

  Cooper visibly faltered.

  “Last time I saw someone’s grid like that, they were dead,” he said, then cringed at the look Sierra gave him. He turned back to his tools.

  “Do you know anything about his Cortex? What model it is?” Steven asked as he waved some kind of digital gadget near Calder’s head.

  “No, he never talks about it. Never brings up his military stuff,” she said.

  They were close, real close, but she knew nothing of his time in service aside from the fact that he had been awarded some medal before he was discharged. He never talked about any of it. And she never asked.

  Cooper knelt then and stuck something to the back of Calder’s head. It synched to the comm board he was holding, and he began tapping the screen with his fingers.