Edge of Darkness

by Vikki Romano

  “Let’s go!” the man shouted, offering Calder a hand to get him to his feet as their unit’s skid touched down on the edge of the roof, allowing them only seconds to jump inside before it swayed, banked hard, and took off into the night.

  Calder laid Sierra out on the deck of the cabin and crouched beside her, putting his ear to her chest. The beat was faint, and even with his extraordinary new hearing he could barely pick it up. He reached up and brushed the dark hair from her face, being careful not to reopen any wounds by tearing it away from dried blood. The other man came back to them, dropped a medpack on the floor, he knelt, and quickly opened it. Rifling through its contents, he pulled out a small package and ripped it open with his teeth.

  “Morphine, for the pain,” he said, peeling off the backing and lightly slapping it onto her arm. Calder nodded and grabbed the kit, pawing through the contents until he found antiseptic wipes. He teared two open and delicately cleaned her face, making note of gashes. The other man was right behind him, dressing the wounds as they were uncovered, applying butterflies where needed.

  Moving down her body, they did the same, dressing and binding what they could until they got her to where they were going. That thought made Calder’s eyes snap to the man across from him.

  “Where are we going, and who the fuck are you?” Calder asked, sitting back on his haunches.

  The other man wiped his sweat-covered face on his sleeve before sitting back and giving him a stern nod. “Gage Crewe,” the man said. “Special ops.”

  “Special ops for who?”

  “Private sector. I was hired by an outside firm, foreign.”

  Calder noted the accent that confirmed he was working for a foreign agency, but as long as they weren’t government, he didn’t give a shit who the man worked for. He just wanted to get Sierra out of there alive.

  He gave Gage a curt nod and held out his hand.

  “Calder McKenna,” he said, but the man looked down at his hand with hesitance.

  “You’re not going to snap my arm off?”

  “No,” Calder said with a grin, realizing why the man was hesitating. Gage smirked, and after another second, grasped his hand and gave it a firm shake.

  “What outfit are you working with?”

  “I’m alone,” Calder said as he continued his ministrations with Sierra, who remained unconscious throughout the ordeal. That didn’t sit well with him, and he hoped she would have shown some signs of life by now.

  “Alone?” Gage asked as he applied butterflies to a wound on his own arm, “And your condition?”

  “My condition?” Calder asked. Well, that was one way of putting it, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to explain it to a total stranger.

  “Yeah, I saw you when you came onto the roof, man. That was inhuman, whatever it was you were then.”

  Calder glared up at him. So that was what Jimmy had seen in the bunker. That was why there was so much fear on his face. What he’d seen was inhuman. Well, that didn’t sit well with Calder either. He was still a fucking human being, there was no changing that, but that others would now see him as inhuman… non-human. No, that didn’t sit well with him at all.

  “It’s not a condition,” he said, his tone snarky. “I was augmented in the military, new breed of super soldiers. Didn’t quite turn out like they expected.”

  “No shit,” Gage scoffed. “And they let you out like that?”

  “Let me out? I’m not a fucking animal,” Calder growled, and Gage grimaced, looking skeptical. Calder shook it off.

  “I was discharged. Honorably. It’s a long story.”

  “And I’m listening. We got a long flight,” Gage said, gesturing at the window. Calder suddenly realized the sky was dark. There were no lights from the city anywhere to be seen. He had been so focused on Sierra’s care that he hadn’t thought to notice.

  “Where are we going? I need to get her to a hospital!” Calder came to his feet and ducked his head as his tall frame took up the space inside the heli. Gage came to his feet as well, holding up his hands defensively, pushing them against Calder’s chest.

  “Relax. We have a clinic at the safe house.”

  “Safe house?”

  “Our ops runs out of a syndicate in NE4, near Baltimore.”

  “Syndicate--so you work for the mob?”

  Gage stepped back, looking up at Calder with a blank face. Slowly he began to smile and then roared with laughter.

  “The mob?” he said, still laughing, “You need to stop watching old movies, my friend.”

  The laughter got under Calder’s skin in a bad way. A very bad way. He didn’t appreciate the situation he was currently in, and certainly didn’t appreciate the position he’d put Sierra in. For this asshole to laugh at his expense and then call him friend… it was more than he could swallow.

  Before he even realized what he was doing, he had Gage against the door, his fingers around his throat, his other hand on the handle, ready to open it and toss him out at ten thousand feet. Gage’s laughter stopped immediately.

  “Are you done?” Calder said menacingly, his face mere inches from Gage’s.

  The man sobered and shoved against Calder, and he let him go, but watched him closely.

  “You need to relax. I’m on your side.”

  Gage went back to the medpack and began throwing items back into it, cleaning up the mess on the floor.

  “Why were you at GenMed?” Calder asked, coming to kneel beside Sierra once more. The look of her face made him grit his teeth until it pained his jaw.

  He’d done this to her. Not directly, but this had happened because of him. Because she had come looking for him. He would never be able to live with himself if she didn’t come through this.

  “She’s a fighter,” Gage said, looking down at her. “She made a noise and tried to fight me when I found her. I mean, she was nearly unconscious, so it wasn’t much of a struggle, but she still made the effort.”

  Calder closed his eyes. His blood was pulsing so loudly through his ears he thought he would lose his mind and rip Gage’s fucking head off if he didn’t stop talking about her.

  “Why… were you… at GenMed?” he asked again, more loudly, and Gage shook his head, grabbed hold of a strap hanging from the wall, and hoisted himself onto a seat he flipped into place.

  “My… employer holds an interest in GenMed. Investor of some sort. I never ask. As long as they pay the fee, I just do what needs to be done.”

  “That’s noble of you,” Calder said, folding his legs and pulling Sierra’s hand into his lap. There wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t bloodied or bruised, he realized, as he skimmed his thumb over her knuckles. They were bloodied too. She had tried to defend herself. He knew she would. She was a fighter.

  Gage smirked and let out a breath.

  “A paycheck is a paycheck,” he said, turning his head to look out the window. “Anyway, my employer sent us in to gather data about a month ago. GenMed had been skimming money from them, so we figured whatever they were doing, it wasn’t legal. And everyone knows that GenMed isn’t some mom and pop shop. We all knew something crooked was going on, we just didn’t know to what extent.”

  Calder knew exactly where this story was going. He was embroiled in their crooked scheme more than Gage knew.

  “I’m assuming you found something?” he asked, but deep inside he didn’t want to hear Gage’s answer.

  Gage turned away from the window.

  “People were going in, but not all of them were coming out. I realized it after about a week of observation. Certain people would catch my eye by something they were wearing or how they looked, and I never saw them leave.”

  “Maybe you just missed them, were looking away when they passed by?”

  “I thought the same thing, so I had my team run recordings of the entryways, and I spent hours watching them. Those people never left.”

  Calder closed his eyes. Either they were
augmenting them and failing, or they were doing something completely different that changed them in some way. Made them unrecognizable.

  Inhuman…

  “So I started following them,” Gage continued. His words made Calder open his eyes and turn back to him, watch him as he continued. “My team was able to hack into their system and get me a clearance, and I just blended in, took on a job in one of the labs to be able to watch what was going on.”

  “And?” Calder needed to know, but Gage frowned and leaned back against the wall.

  “Nothing yet. I managed to catch them bringing in several people on gurneys, but haven’t been able to catch them in action. I’ve only been in the lab for two days. She’s the first live one I’ve found.”

  “Out of how many?” Calder asked.

  “Seven. She was the first woman I’ve seen.”

  “That’s because she wasn’t supposed to be there. They took her. She came looking for me.”

  Gage’s eyes met Calder’s, and they searched him for a moment.

  “What’s your connection there? Why were either of you there?” Gage asked, leaning his elbows on his knees.

  “They want me. It’s always been about me. She was never meant to be there.”

  “And why do they want you?”

  Calder tapped his head.

  “They want what’s in here.”

  Gage tilted his head and gave a questioning look.

  Calder grumbled to himself. He had to let him know what he was dealing with.

  “The code that runs my augment, they want it. The original was destroyed years ago when shit hit the fan the first time. The project that produced my augment and those that were installed in the men in my unit didn’t go as they planned, and to their knowledge, all but three had died in battle. The three of us that were left were deemed nonfunctional and discharged.”

  Gage shook his head and leaned back.

  “You don’t look very nonfunctional to me.”

  “That’s because I was hacked.”

  Gage’s eyes widened.

  “Come again?”

  “Hacked. My augment was hacked. Long story short, your employer isn’t the only one who has an interest in what’s going on there.”

  “Wow.” Gage whistled as he shook his head again. “I’m not fazed by much anymore, seeing the things I’ve seen, but this takes the cake. So… hacked. What does that mean exactly, and more to the point, are we safe… in here… with you?” He gestured around the small, dark cabin of the heli.

  “Safest place you’ll ever be.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The man standing next to her was not Calder. She had no idea who he was, but he seemed intent on doing whatever it was he was doing. If she had any strength or if her mind was clearer, she’d say something. Problem was, neither of those things were true at the moment.

  The man was a little older than Calder. He was also shorter, much broader and stockier. Like a bulldog. His hair was cropped short, military style, which gave her pause and made her panic momentarily. He looked down at her then, his green eyes steady on hers before he nodded and turned away from her.

  As he moved away, Calder stepped into view, his blue eyes intense as they gazed down at her, his hand hesitant as it came up to brush the hair from her forehead.

  “Jesus fuck, thank God,” he blurted, sitting on the side of her bed.

  Sierra tried to speak, but he waved her off.

  “You’re real weak. They did a lot of damage,” he said, but looked away for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Don’t try to talk just yet. It’ll be too painful.”

  She furrowed her brow, which, in and of itself, was painful. When she tried to lift her hand to soothe her forehead, she realized she was too weak to do even that. Letting out a soft groan, she tried to concentrate on Calder’s eyes, the blue so vibrant. The concern in them was palpable.

  She knitted her brow and blinked at him.

  “Pain,” she got out through dry lips, and in an instant, Calder was off the bed shouting for someone. The movement was dizzying. She tried to reach out, to steady herself, but it was more energy than she had, so her hand went limp against the bed and she closed her eyes.

  Moments later the bed dipped and she managed to open her eyes long enough to see the bulldog come back, and she watched as he stuck a patch to her bicep. And like that, everything went fuzzy and the pain drifted to the corner of her mind.

  Dazedly she lolled her head to the side and looked to find Calder there again, looking troubled.

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice cracking. Calder leaned to the bedside table and grabbed a cup. After fumbling a bit, he turned to skim ice over her lips. Sierra tentatively touched her lip with her tongue and winced at the burning, but was soothed by the moisture he provided.

  “Why did you come alone?” he asked as he looked back to her. “You could have been killed.”

  “I had to find you,” she said softly. “Had to help.”

  “You shouldn’t have come at all,” he nearly shouted. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

  Sierra winced at his tone and looked away. Why was he so angry? She hadn’t expected him to jump for joy when he saw her, but she certainly didn’t expect him to chew her out. And a thanks would have been nice to hear.

  “You could have died,” she said, turning back to him.

  “So could you!” he shouted, and shook his head even more angrily than before. He got up, paced her bed, then left the small room in a huff.

  This was really unlike him. Not that she was in the habit of landing in the hospital regularly, but they both got injured pretty frequently, and they had each other’s backs no matter what. Why he felt this was so different, she didn’t know. Trying to figure out why only made her head ache more.

  Taking a shaky breath as she watched him leave, she looked around the room to try to figure out where she was. It didn’t look like any of the hospitals she had seen in NE2, and it was quiet. Now that was a rarity. Perhaps they had her on a higher floor to drown out the noise?

  After a few moments, a woman came into the room and replaced Sierra’s IV bag, and as she left, the bulldog returned. He crossed his arms and came to stand by her, giving her a smile as he looked down at her.

  “How you feeling?” he asked. Well, at least he asked. It was more than Calder did.

  She nodded. “I’m OK.” But when she looked toward the door and let her concern for Calder seep into her thoughts, he pulled up a chair and sat, leaning against the bed with his elbows.

  “He’s upset,” he said. “We didn’t know if you were going to make it.”

  Sierra understood that, but again, it wasn’t like Calder to overreact. Or react at all.

  “Where am I? And who are you?” she asked, clearing her throat when it came out as a croak.

  “My name is Gage Crewe. I work special ops out of this facility. We’re in NE4.”

  Sierra gasped and her eyes flitted to the door, but Gage put a hand to her arm.

  “It’s OK. I’m on your side. I’m private sector, not government.”

  Her eyes came back to him then, and she knew he was being honest with her. If anything, Calder wouldn’t have left her in his care if he had been a threat of any kind. No, if he was a threat, he’d be dead. Calder would make sure of that.

  “NE4?”

  “Yeah, we’re about thirty-five miles outside Baltimore. This is a secure facility, and as you can see, it’s a full-service shop. We have a doc on call, and most of us have enough medical knowledge either through military or civilian training to be able to help where needed. I was just glad I was able to pull you out of there before they killed you.”

  Sierra looked up at him then. Kill her? Why would they kill her? If anything, she thought they’d maybe use her as bait to get to Calder, but kill her?

  Gage read the look in her eyes immediately and bent to grab a cup off the table. He maneuvered t
he straw to her mouth and she sipped cautiously. The cold water bit into the gash on her lip and she jerked away, water running down her chin. He grabbed a towel off the table and dabbed her, making sure not to aggravate any of the wounds there. That was when she felt them and her eyes went wide.

  Hesitantly, she raised her hand to her face and touched lightly. She was bandaged, which she knew, she could see them in her periphery, but she didn’t know to what extent.

  Gage took her hand and moved it away, laying it gently beside her.

  “They did a number on your face, I won’t lie, but our doc does good work. I mean, look at this handsome mug…” He turned his face and pointed to his chin.

  Sierra offered him a soft smile. She had to admit that he was a handsome guy, in a rugged, kick-your-ass sort of way. Calder had the same rugged handsomeness, but he had moments of beauty. His hard lines and angles could be on a billboard selling anything he wanted, but it wasn’t about what they looked like. It was about what she would look like when her bandages were gone.

  She was never one to be vain or girly. She hardly ever wore makeup, hardly ever did her hair. Her idea of getting ready for the day meant finding a hair tie and a shirt that made it to the laundry. She wasn’t a slob, not by any stretch. She prided herself on keeping fit, and her job kept her in shape without setting foot in a gym. Now, she wasn’t so sure about things. She wasn’t hideous to look at, but being scarred was a different monster entirely.

  Thoughts about what Eric would say had her blood going cold. They had been together for almost three years, lived together for the last seven months, and he was the one who set that bar. He didn’t like her to wear makeup, didn’t like it when she dolled up, told her it made her look cheap. Not something she wanted to hear, so she didn’t because she loved him. At least, she kept telling herself she did.

  He had a stable job as an engineer. He didn’t demand too much of her aside from making sure she was home when she was off-duty, which hadn’t been often, and he hadn’t been too happy about it.

  Christ, this little stint would set him off. She couldn’t tell him where she was or why. All she needed was for him to go to the precinct asking questions. And the precinct, well, that was another issue altogether, and she felt panic crawl up her spine.