by Vikki Romano
“How are we feeling today?” the woman asked, and all Sierra could do was stare up at her. Her face looked oddly grainy, and she still couldn’t focus well enough to see her clearly.
After a few moments, a man came into the room, and he and the woman spoke quietly off to the side. They glanced in her direction and then the two of them pored over information on a pad before approaching the bed once more.
“Miss Mason, we’re going to calibrate you,” the man said, speaking slowly. “This may be a little painful, but it will be over quickly.”
Calibrate her? What were they talking about?
She watched in horror as the woman came over and attached small discs to her head and arm. She couldn’t see what they were for, and they were cool where she placed them.
“You’ll be just fine,” the woman said, and then turned to the man with a nod.
And in an instant, her mind was alive with molten heat and blinding colors.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jordan looked at Calder wide-eyed as he sat facing him in his small office. It was more like a converted broom closet, but Jordan seemed happy to be there, and to be part of the task force.
“I have no idea what to tell you,” he said as he sat back and shook his head.
“So these kinds of connections…” Calder said.
“Unheard of, really. I’ve read of only one case of augment interjection, but it was nothing like you describe. In the case I read, it was more like the object drove the person, not the other way around. Wow, that’s just… Wow.”
Jordan stood from his seat and laced his fingers at the crown of his head as he paced in the confined area.
“I know you really have nothing to do with it at this point, not like you can trigger it to kill me anymore.” Calder snorted and received an apologetic look from Jordan. “But is there anything you can do to see what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I guess I just want to make sure it’s not going to kill me instead.”
Jordan’s face went ashen, and he sat, dropping his hands into his lap.
“Never thought of that. Fuck…”
Well, that reaction didn’t thrill him. Bad enough he had no instruction on how to control his augment, but now it seemed to be functioning on its own whims. He appreciated that the searing pain was gone during transition, he was happy to do without it, but suddenly switching control over without any preamble was beginning to set him on edge. Thoughts of setting off every piece of electronic equipment within range of his mind made him chuckle nervously.
“Yeah, it’s going to be an issue if it starts connecting with stuff we don’t want it to. Not like I can control the connection yet. This is all so new to me. Maybe with some practice, like the rest of it, I can figure out how to steer it.”
Calder got a beep on his comm then, and he held up a hand to Jordan then tapped his ear.
“You need to come down to my office right away.” Gage’s voice was clipped, and Calder wasted no time getting to him. Giving Jordan a look, he gestured toward the door and bolted down the two flights of stairs, jumping them three and four at a time with Jordan trailing behind. Calder burst through the door on the ground floor and came to a sliding stop as he grabbed the doorjamb of Gage’s office and pulled himself inside.
“You found her?” he asked, breathless as he leaned on Gage’s desk, breathless.
Gage’s mouth flattened into a tight line and his gaze flitted to Jordan momentarily as he came into the room, but then his eyes came back to Calder.
“Jordan, can you give us a minute?” Gage asked without taking his eyes off Calder, and he nodded as Jordan left the room and shut the door.
And with those words, the blood drained from Calder’s body.
Gage shook his head and closed his eyes, blowing out a breath.
“What? For fuck’s sake, tell me! Did they kill her?” Calder sputtered, his voice cracking.
Gage opened his eyes and huffed out his breath. “No, she’s alive,” he said.
“But?” Calder prompted, slamming his hands on Gage’s desk.
“They augmented her…” Gage’s voice fell away and he sat back.
The breath stopped in Calder’s throat and he swallowed against the lump of fiery glass now lodged there. His mouth gaped, and he searched his mind for some semblance of normality, some morsel of thought that would help, but there was nothing.
He fell back onto the couch and grasped the worn leather in his fingers, squeezing, pulling until he finally let out a roar of desperation, leaning forward with his head in his hands.
Gage was there immediately, crouching in front of him, trying to offer encouragement, but Calder didn’t hear his words. He only heard his own as they reverberated through his numb mind.
“They’re going to use her against me. They’re going to send her to kill me,” he said, his mind centering on that one hideous thought.
“You don’t know that. Besides, there must be something we can do,” Gage said.
“Do? What is there to do? Let her kill me.”
“What?”
“What else is there? I can’t kill her. There’s no way. And unless I do, she’ll kill me, so…”
“That’s not the only choice,” Gage spat. “You don’t even know that she’ll be stronger than you. You could subdue her.”
“Subdue her?”
“Knock her down or something.”
“Knock her down? You do realize she’s going to be a beast, like I get, maybe even worse? I mean, we don’t even know what their new programs will do to her.” Good God, knowing that she would go through the pain and anguish he had in his transition made his whole body tense and react in a way that made Gage lean away from him.
“We can’t jump to conclusions,” Gage said, grasping Calder by the shoulder, shaking him.
“I’m not!” Calder shouted, running both of his hands through his hair. “They don’t have a copy of my program so they had to have designed a new one. A better one. Stronger. They know what I’m capable of--they saw me. She is going to be deadly, I can guarantee it.”
“Well, we can’t just leave her there,” Gage said with a grimace, taking a seat beside Calder on the couch.
“No, we can’t, but I’m not so sure she’s going to want to live through it, either. Especially not if she’s forced to kill me.”
Gage nodded and looked away as Calder stood and paced the room.
This was the hardest choice he would ever have to make. Taking down GenMed was no longer a mission--it was a moral imperative and something he needed to do on his own after he figured out how to help her. Perhaps once he got her out Jordan could fix her like he’d fixed him. He could help her long enough, until she could deal on her own.
He was no pro with his newly amped augment, but she could at least have someone to talk to that knew what she was going through. It was more than he had.
“We have ten ready that can back you up on the ground, and five more at control. If you need suppression, we have the heli and a couple of ground rovers. And plenty of weapons.”
Weapons. Calder turned a knowing growl to Gage, then stormed out of his office and headed three doors down to the small room they’d given him when he joined.
It was slightly bigger than the closet they had given Jordan. He went inside and opened the bottom drawer of the cabinet on the far side of the room. The large black case was a welcome sight.
After hauling it out and dropping it loudly on his desk, he popped the locks as both Gage and Jordan came to the door to watch what he was doing with curiosity.
The AD452 had barely been used, but now it was time to unleash it. He hoisted it out of the case and propped it on his hip as he ran through its diagnostics, thumbing the pad on the side of the stock.
“Nice,” Gage said, stepping into the room, eyeing the large weapon. “May I?”
Calder nodded and handed it
to him, and Gage grinned broadly at the heft of it.
“It’s got a few surprises,” Calder said, pointing to a few buttons on the side of the grip.
Gage raised a brow, listening intently. Calder continued to point at the stock.
“Grenades here, darts, and a flamethrower.”
“Very nice. Output?”
“Ninety amp on the low end and two hundred on the high, plus the powerburst feature,” Calder said, pointing to the button.
“Powerburst feature?” Gage asked.
Calder took the weapon back, thumbed the button on the grip before turning and pointing it at Jordan, and fired.
Before he could react, Jordan was flung across the room, landing against the wall on the far side of Calder’s office.
“Powerburst feature,” Calder reiterated, handing the weapon back to Gage, who grinned like a child.
Jordan grudgingly came to his feet and held up his hands to ward off another blast.
Calder went to a trunk in the corner of the room and lifted the lid. He had brought most of his personal weapons with him the previous week, not wanting to deal with the hour flight back and forth from his apartment to the safe house. This was just easier.
He went to his door and pulled his jacket from the hook, jabbing his arms into the sleeves as he stalked back to the desk.
One by one, he loaded weapons onto his body, stuffing pockets with power cartridges and magazines, checking the gauges on each pistol and rifle to make sure they were fully charged, then he turned back to them both.
“Let’s go down to the control room and mark out the drop,” Gage said, waving, gesturing to the door, but Calder nodded, zipped his jacket and donned a pair of shades, cranking them down so they were a pale gray.
“No need,” he said, moving past them and into the hall.
“Wait, what? Where are you going?” Jordan asked, jogging to catch up with Calder’s long strides.
“I’m going to get her,” he said, continuing with his quick pace. Jordan looked over at Gage and slapped his arm, and Gage grimaced, jogging up next to Calder.
“We have to look at the layout, figure out how we’re going to get in.”
Calder grinned widely and winked.
“Again, no need,” he said, chuckling to himself.
“How are you going to get in?” Jordan asked, his voice high-pitched.
“I’m going to walk through the front fucking door.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Calder sat in the darkness of his rig, parked some fifty yards from the front doors of GenMed’s headquarters. He had come full circle now, and he was right where he wanted to be.
With his eyes closed, he could feel the security flowing through the building’s systems.
Every entrance locked down.
Every floor on alert.
Practice helped him to utilize his thermal detection, to see things that weren’t visible to the human eye, like electromagnetics. Its signature orange glow was easy to spot as he let his mind wander through the expanse of the building laid out before him.
They had a core system in a sub-level room. It appeared blue to him, so the room was kept at a cool temperature. Within the glowing blue of that area he could easily see yellow and orange lines, hundreds of them, running through a central hub. The nerve center of GenMed.
And high above there was an odd glow, one that was buffered somehow. He was sensing an odd signal there, one that was guarded heavily. It had to be where they were holding Sierra.
Letting out a long, slow breath, Calder relaxed in his seat for a moment, focused on what he needed to do, then stepped out into the night.
As his feet strode with purpose, his eyes scanned the area. Drone cameras hovered nearby, their telltale hum evident in the cool night air, but he kept walking. He didn’t care if they saw him--in fact, he wanted them to know he was coming. He wanted them to think they had a chance.
Behind the dark glass that wrapped the lobby, he could see movement. Focusing, he counted five armed guards.
Just five? How insulting.
He approached the double doors and, grasping them by the handles, closed his eyes, let his mind wander into the locking mechanism, and flipped their polarity. Grinning maniacally, he pulled the doors open and strode in with his hands at his sides.
Calm. Cool.
Deadly.
The guards whispered their confusion, knowing the doors had been locked.
“Stop where you are!” one of them shouted, stepping forward with his rifle trained on Calder.
Calder stopped walking and crossed his arms.
As the security detail passed messages between them on their comms, Calder absorbed his surroundings.
Breathing deeply, he let his mind go, feeling it unfold, spread out into the floor, travel up the walls, and into the ceiling.
“On the ground!” the guard shouted, gesturing with his weapon.
“I don’t think so,” Calder said. “It’ll wrinkle my pants.” And with that he enveloped the room with his mind, followed the lines through the walls, and, with a nod, thrust them in darkness.
His vision immediately switched to infrascan, and the room turned a crisp gray to him. The guards scrambled, diving behind furniture and the large reception desk at the center of the room as they shouted orders, not able to see him in the darkness, and he simply walked past them.
He turned the corner and found the stairwell heading up. Taking the stairs three at a time, he stopped at the landing when a painful jolt ran through him, setting his muscles rigid for a moment. Grasping the handrail to steady himself, he closed his eyes to search the area, sense where the source of this surge was coming from.
It was an odd signal, a low buzz that tickled the back of his brain like nothing he had ever felt before. It was coming from somewhere above him, and he raced up another flight of stairs and came to the next landing, only to be halted once more by the pain.
The feedback from the source of the buzz was deafening now, and he blinked as he tried to calm himself long enough to find its location.
Inhaling, he scanned the hallway ahead. Heavily armed guards stood at intervals along its length, each wearing an infrascan visor in the darkness. He was surprised that they were prepared, given the absolute uselessness of the guards in the lobby.
Cracking the door open, Calder pulled a grenade from his pocket and flicked off the pin, triggered it, and tossed it into the hallway. The flash it produced had the guards clasping their heads, and Calder rushed by them as they struggled with their temporary blindness.
One guard plowed into him as he tried to rush by, knocking him into the wall. Calder wheeled around and clipped the man in the jaw, his other hand grasping him by the neck, slamming him into the ground.
As another guard rushed at him, Calder’s swept his leg under him and he joined his friend on the ground, groaning as his head met the floor.
Calder turned then and raced down the hallway, following the buzz that was cranking up exponentially as he neared it, making his head throb.
After punching through the door at the end of the hall, he skidded to a halt when he found Sierra sitting calmly in a chair across the room. To his right, behind one-way glass, he saw three men watching them.
So this was it.
They were going to pit them against each other in a controlled environment, like a dogfight.
Calder swallowed against the pain that now lodged in his skull as he looked back to Sierra. And he knew at that moment why everyone had been so afraid of him.
Though her demeanor was calm, her eyes spoke volumes. They were void, dead, something he recalled Jimmy saying of his, and the realization was startling.
Knowing her so well and not seeing the sparkle that he normally saw there made his stomach curl into a knot.
He couldn’t allow this to happen to her. Not to her.
“Mason,” he said, his voice deep, demanding. “Loo
k at me. Do you know who I am?”
She did not react.
He strode toward her, no hesitation in his movements, and still she remained unemotional.
“Answer me,” he barked, stopping in front of her.
And then he felt it. Like a wave of electricity passing through him, setting all the hair on his body on end. The men behind the glass began tapping on screens, their voices low as they discussed what was about to play out, and his head spun as their voices echoed in his head.
There was a flicker in Sierra’s eyes then and she stood slowly, robotically, and he stepped back to give her space.
That was when she rushed him.
The force of her body against his was enough to knock him backward, but he kept his footing and planted his feet, stopping her forward motion as he leaned into her.
He grabbed her by her shoulders and was about to say something to her when she punched him in the chest hard enough to wind him and send him sprawling. He coughed as he caught himself on the wall.
Yes, she was definitely stronger. Much stronger than he thought she would be.
He pulled the AD452 off his back and dropped it along with his weapon-filled jacket, and they fell hard to the floor with a clatter, her eyes not leaving his.
He could see her mind calculating moves, judging him, sizing him up.
Cracking his neck to prepare for the onslaught, he braced himself when she rushed him again, pinning him to the wall as she punched him hard in the jaw.
The pain of it set his teeth on edge, and he reached out to block her attack, catching another blow against his forearm. Under normal conditions, it was enough to break the bone, but things were not normal between them at all.
He let out a harsh breath as the burn traveled through his blood like a tidal wave, sending tremors through his muscles as they hardened and lengthened. His heartbeat thudded as his adrenaline peaked, and the buzz that had been itching the back of his brain suddenly sent a pulse through him that made him shudder so violently, he thought his skull would crack.