Ripped Open (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 2)

by P. S. Power

  Instead Cindy nodded, since it didn’t matter what boring thing she was doing really. It all lacked interest to her, and all needed to be done.

  “Brian, can you get video gear for us? Paper and pens, too. I’ll get with Agent Burkes and see how were going to do this. Den, Kerry!” She waved at them, which got the armed people to jog over, watching the world carefully. “We’re doing the observation and recording here. Video and written records. Photos too, if we can.” She sounded a bit bossy and official, but everyone else just came over, nodding, as if that was her actual place in the scheme of things.

  It was all she could do not to laugh like a movie villain, steeple her fingers and order her minions around. That was good, since it was clear that Agent Burkes was about to have a problem with them being there doing the work. To head that off she waved at him a bit. She was small, and cute enough, for the man to be mildly distracted by her serious expression.

  “We don’t have experience on this kind of thing. So, what do we need to do? Get the outside first, and try to separate the traces left by the IPB and FBI, from what might have been there before? Then… I guess, we slowly move in, and take it one room at a time, getting it from every angle possible?” She didn’t let herself grin, knowing that it was what would be needed. It wasn’t just inside the book floating over Agent Burkes, it was pretty close to common sense.

  The man nodded, not really thinking of it as telepathy, which a lot of the others were.

  “Exactly. The real trick here is that people like to be lazy. We can’t afford that. I know this isn’t what you Operatives normally do… I can process it myself, if…” He was trying not to stress the others, more than suggest that they couldn’t run simple video equipment. It wasn’t even about their lack of skills for him. Just the idea that Infected people had first modes, and that meant they weren’t able to do basic things sometimes. Like find their asses with both hands. Or, just possibly, remember not to kill people they were working with.

  It wasn’t even real prejudice coming from the guy. He knew, for a fact, that Infected people sometimes had special needs. Letting them opt out, to his mind, was all about helping them if they needed not to be there standing around.

  Marcia was about to jump the man, and growl at him over it, but she paused when Doug grinned a bit.

  “We can get this done. Just let us know what to do.” The words lacked aggression, since whatever nifty changes Doug had gone through genetically, he still had his first mode. For him that meant being really laid back. Without anger, jealousy or annoyance, as far as he knew.

  So, the exact opposite of Cindy. She had to agree though. They could get things done, if given a chance. Not that she cared personally, but she could be bored there, and be a good and helpful girl that got the praise for working, or she could go and sit in her room and not make any inroads with the others.

  Burkes was the head Agent of the IPB. At least he was if he didn’t leave due to post traumatic stress. That meant getting in good with him was nearly as important as doing the same with Marcia, or even Brian. They were the main power base for the agency. Anyone with eyes would be able to see that. Doug was the second in command, but that didn’t mean everyone else saw it that way. So he had something to prove, or so it seemed from the words over his head.

  At least if he wanted to keep his new and special job.

  So, as soon as Brian came back, holding several different camera bags, and some nice looking devices that made very little sense to her. Devices that, when she checked his brain, seemed to be designed to pick up radiation traces. It wasn’t a horrible idea, checking for that kind of thing. After all, if there was a nuke under the base…

  She looked at Brian, and picked up what was going on inside his subconscious mind, she understood why he’d gotten the things in the first place. Without even thinking about it, he’d worked out what was actually happening. Except that the data was still buried, deep inside of him.

  Cindy got it out, for everyone else.

  “There’s a nuke under the compound here.” It was just a statement she was making, and no one else, none of the captives that were being moved away, knew about it. Brian did, however. More, the thing would be going off, as soon as the people at the top of the creepy organization figured out that the base had been taken. That was there inside of Proxy’s head. On the good side, that psychic part of him didn’t seem to think it would happen soon. Nothing had leaked out yet, thankfully.

  Director Turner came over quickly, having heard what she was saying. The woman doubted it was true, but also didn’t at the same time. Her own first mode was kicking into overdrive on the topic.

  Her look at Cin was hard, but not mean or angry.

  Cindy tilted her head a bit and then shook it.

  “I picked it up from Brian’s brain. It should be under the floor boards inside, actually. Well enough shielded. I can take you there? We should probably get everyone else out. I’ll run the camera.” Because she was the psycho-killer. If they were going to waste anyone on this kind of thing, that would make sense.

  Her boss gave her a slow smile, and then started waving at the FBI agents there.

  “We have a possible nuclear device under the structure here. Accessible from the inside. We know enough not to poke it with a stick, but you might want to clear your people out. Unless you want to confirm it first?” She was playing, but one of the people, an older lady, walked up, her face strained.

  “I can do that. I’ve had classes on bomb disposal. Not that I can handle a nuke, but what are the odds that it’s not just a dispersal device?” She spoke as if that made sense, but also knew that it wasn’t, given the depth it was at. If it went off there, it would be held in place by the feet of dirt and rock sitting on top of it, unless it was a rather large explosion.

  It was an odd team that went down, inside the underground complex. Marcia made some sense, but not enough for Cindy to actually see the point. Oh, she understood what the lady was doing, which was kind of what Cin was herself. She was trying to lead by example. It wasn’t the same thing exactly, but she was trying to influence others by seeming brave and like she had a real reason in being there.

  The poor FBI woman wanted to send someone else to do it for her, but knew that she actually had a point in being there. So did the little blonde woman. After all, that was the person who at least claimed to know where the bomb was. Taking the Director of the IPB with them made no sense at all to her mind. Worse, the men that were there with them were kind of insisting on standing around, waiting for their verdict. The instruction manual had told her, over and over again, that the first thing you did in case of a nuke being found was to not mess with it. Then, if possible, you were supposed to get everyone clear, and call in a team of specialists.

  Even that was a joke, of course. If they saw the bomb, they were all probably dead before they managed to do anything like that anyway. Still, it was her job to get eyes on the thing, and prove that it either wasn’t real or that the delusional and overly perky blonde shorty was insane. Which was hopefully the case. The words were written in yellow, and bold print, though outwardly the woman didn’t seem to be glaring at her, or blaming her Infection for the thing being there, if it was.

  Cindy took a deep breath, feeling a bit uneasy herself, since she couldn’t beat a bomb in particular.

  “I’ll go down first. Follow me. Everyone else needs to be prepared to get out of here, just in case. Proxy…” She didn’t know if that was the exit plan for the FBI as well, but Brian waved at everyone, his body posture a little stiff.

  “Let’s come over here? Everyone please. I can teleport us out, if we’re close enough together. Not that it will be easy. This is a lot of people.” More than he could take along with him, functionally speaking. Not that he wouldn’t try, if it was needed.

  Cindy moved inside and went down the stairs, the interior doors having been left open by the people searching. Marcia grabbed a camera and turned it on to record the whole t
hing. Like she was on vacation and wanted proof that she’d been to the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t a horrible idea, of course.

  Looking back at her, Cin smiled.

  “How often do you get to see a nuclear device, right?”

  The FBI woman, Milly, at least if she was wearing her own photo ID, nodded.

  “I guess. Let’s hope that you’re wrong?” She wondered if the small woman was going to attack her for suggesting that kind of thing.

  Even for a psycho, a giant explosion was a thing not to wish for. Not if you were walking toward it anyway.

  “Fingers crossed?” Cindy did it, which cutely enough had the other woman doing the same thing. Marcia laughed a bit, not seeming nervous in the slightest.

  “Down this way. We need to pick up the boards on the floor in the center room.” Walking quickly, since going slow wasn’t going to help anyone at all, she led the way to their doom.

  More exactly, to the large device that Marcia uncovered with one hand, pulling the heavy flooring up easily, thanks to having super strength. She actually froze halfway through the act, then nodded, and set the board in her hand to the side. After that she pointed the video camera into the hole that was exposed.

  “Well. I’m not a nuclear engineer or whatever it’s called, but my guess is that this isn’t just a dirty bomb. What’s your take?” She looked at the FBI lady, Milly, and actually waited for an answer.

  The nervous woman started to pant a bit, due to anxiety. She really wanted to run away, even though she knew that it wouldn’t help if the four-foot-long thing went boom.

  “No… You’re correct. That’s a nuclear bomb. We need to get pictures of it and call in the right people. Which isn’t us. Not at all.” She didn’t move, as if not wanting to be the first one to do that. Like it was a contest.

  Worse, the woman thought that Cin and Marcia would judge her for not wanting to stand there. Cindy looked at the device, and nodded.

  “I don’t see a timer, or pressure switch. So, some kind of remote detonation seems likely. We need to pull back and do what Milly here suggests. Get help, and get away from here. I don’t know about you, but my super power of reading things isn’t going to protect me from that kind of thing. How about you Milly?” A bit of nervousness trickled into her voice then, which was odd, even to her own ears.

  The FBI lady took a deep breath and nodded several times.

  “My special power of being remarkably patient might not cover that one either. Should we go up?”

  They did more than that. They scurried out, with Turner in the rear, walking casually. Even if she didn’t think that her powers would actually let her survive a direct blast from a nuclear weapon. It might, but she didn’t know that for certain. She was still going to make it seem like she was in charge. After all, if she died, it didn’t matter.

  Otherwise, looking like she was in command, calm and collected, might help her later. She was sauntering, as Milly practically ran, in order to show that she was the boss. Technically Cindy didn’t have to do that, so she walked a bit more quickly than Turner did. Her black boots making soft clicking noises right up until she hit the dirt outside. The FBI woman was already yelling at everyone.

  “Clear the area! There is a nuclear device here! A real one. We need to get with the Nuclear Transport Agency!”

  Cindy nodded.

  “Which we can do from a distance. Brian, start moving people? Five at a time. We either have space for this, or we don’t. I… Give me the radiation detector, and I’ll make certain that it has a payload. We’ll need to know that.” The trick there wasn’t that she was the perfect person to send, but she was taking a page from Marcia’s book on that. If she was standing there, going away last, or nearly so, then she was just as safe underground, next to the bomb, as she was on the surface, waiting to die.

  It meant reading up on how to use the thing, and, interestingly, having a video camera in Director Turner’s hand as the woman followed her back inside. There was a trace from the thing, showing that it was live, but the shielding was probably pretty good.

  Cindy had to cross reference a few times to find the right charts, but looking around, she nodded.

  “The prisoners should be all right. Even the workers here. They might be a bit more prone to cancer in twenty years, but it isn’t a death sentence, having been here.” Now her voice was calm again, since the sudden rush had worn off a little bit already. That was kind of a shame, since Cindy hadn’t felt that alive in weeks.

  Her first mode being largely gone had worn away that part of things a lot. The fun of life. Not just the happy good times of murder, either. Everything felt drab, for some reason. Dark and a bit boring. Though, given the situation at the moment, she had to figure that things were probably kind of shadowy, to say the least.

  After all… Nuke hidden in the crawl space.

  That wasn’t the kind of thing that most people did for kicks.

  She held out the display of the handheld unit, the gray and black thing looking slick and high tech. She also read off the numbers, in case the picture wasn’t good enough to show what was happening. After a bit, Turner actually winked at her.

  “Good work. Let’s clear the space, and see if our ride out is ready. We can leave the rest of this to the pros. Except that we can’t, of course.”

  Cindy glanced at her, and read the idea easily enough from over her head.

  “Because we need to guard the location, until the professionals get here, to prevent anyone from stealing or removing the bomb?”

  There was a soft snort then.

  “Right in one, new girl. Who do you think we should get for that job?”

  Marcia had a plan, but it was wrong. She wanted Lauren, Bridget and Prime to stay with her for the task, since they were the only ones that might survive that kind of thing. At least if they were far enough away.

  She just shook her head at the idea.

  “Team Four. They can protect things here and if it goes boom in a big way, get themselves out. We need to protect them, but they have a teleporter with them, right? Lariat?” Also they were all made of energy, and not real. If they blew up, Rigs would be able to make them all again, without any harm being done. Which was her real point, but never spoken about out loud, since Rigs was too powerful for anyone to actually handle. That kind of thing scared the government, so the IPB politely hid it from them.

  So that the good public servants could sleep at night.

  Ms. Turner brushed at her brown curly hair and then took a deep breath that made her tan military style blouse shift on her thin frame.

  “I can see that as valid. Fine, we go with that plan then. I tend to hold them back, but in this case it makes sense to deploy them alone. Unless you want to stay?”

  “Screw that. I tend to die if nuclear events happen.”

  “Don’t we all? Let me get with the right people.” This time Marcia led the way out, not wanting to use her cell phone right next to the bomb, just in case it made a difference.

  The air outside smelled like trees to Cindy. It wasn’t unpleasant or anything. Brian came and went a few times as she looked around, standing there and waiting for Team Four to come in. That meant she, Brian and Marcia were still standing there when the people from the last team got there. They weren’t really people, of course. They were, instead, incredibly cool energy projections from one person’s mind. That they looked like powerful super beings and had different powers, was mainly down to Rigsby having a great imagination.

  The small elf seeming man, who was about four-foot-tall and had a lute with him, waved at her.

  “Lady Cin! You must needs vacate the location. We have this under our watch now.” He smiled while he said it, then moved to protect the bomb down below. By guarding the doors to the place.

  June, the shapeshifting telepath walked past her and nodded.

  “This is different, isn’t it? The last place didn’t have a nuke in the basement. I bet they feel cheated now. Talk about a B
location.” She meant the people that had worked there.

  It probably wasn’t true.

  Before she could answer, Brian grabbed her left arm, and took Marcia by the hand, then made the world go blue. It was pretty, but slightly different than the one time she’d done that before. The color was a bit off, and she wasn’t sitting in a car at the same time. That Brian could teleport cars more easily than people made some sense, when she looked at why in his head.

  He was afraid that if he carried too many people, he might drop them. With a car there was no worry of that. It was a first mode issue really. Otherwise he could take about twenty or more people along with him when he went places. The difference in color was, she understood, that they were traveling through time. Slightly. By about five minutes.

  That meant they got into place a little later than they needed to. It also meant that they got into the front office at the base just in time for the President to call them. Apparently, when you found a nuke inside the U.S. the head honcho wanted to be in the loop on the matter.

  Thankfully that part wasn’t her job. Cindy did have things that she needed to get to. For instance, writing the whole thing up, then sneaking carefully over to the brig, to torture Phoebe and Sinclair. Except that all of the people that had been brought back were safely tucked away in medical. She got that when she linked to Sinclair, who was waking up enough to actually realize that her clever plan to escape and betray the IPB had led directly to her repeated rape.

  Not that the girl was able to think of it that way. After all, to her mind it wasn’t and couldn’t be, directly related to anything that she’d done in life. In a way there was merit to that argument. She hadn’t raped herself after all, and the criminals that had done it were responsible for what they’d done. Not her.

  Fair enough.

  The woman had, in Cindy’s view, also walked right into the thing, by making a poor choice. If she would have just quit, she could be free, more or less, right then. Instead Cindy was probably going to have to wait, since Proxy had tried to make certain no one would harm her. Not that anyone else was really thinking that way. Not after they found out about what had taken place in regards to her.