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

by P. S. Power

  There was a clatter, as the woman ran toward them. She was fast, on a level that few were, so it didn’t take her very long. Her tan clad body, and sleep deprived face pushed through the doorway almost instantly.

  “What? Emergency?” She looked around, wondering if Bridget had decided to kill Lauren, since she was suddenly soft and fleshy. It would be a lot easier for the girl to pull off, as long as she struck without warning. That was one of the reasons to have her working with what was essentially a telepath. The early warning.

  Cindy shook her head.

  “Not that one. We found where the nuke is going to be. If we can act fast, we should be able to intercept the team coming in with it. We have an address. Bridget shouldn’t go in on this one.” That made perfect sense to her, but Turner gave her a questioning look.

  “No? Why?”

  “Eh. Well, think about it. If this is even partially related to the attempt to rip apart the IPB, and there’s a shape changed person next door, so odds are it really is, then they’d pretty much have to detonate the weapon as soon as she shows up. For that matter, some of our own people, from other agencies, might just do that, if they think it will get her. Even if it means dying to get it done. Too many of them are freaked out in that direction. Stupidly so. Clearly they just need to bribe Impulse with copious snack cakes and tickle her every few days.” She meant it, and Turner nodded, getting the basic idea.

  “I see. Right. Chambers, you hold back on this one. Good work, using your powers to find it.” She patted the kid between the shoulder blades, as if to let her know that she’d done good. Even if she didn’t think that part was real.

  The kid puffed her cheeks out then.

  “I didn’t really do anything. It was Cindy…”

  Pushing a stray hair back, out of her blue eyes, Cin smiled.

  “In part. I took the data from your head, and needed you to be there working on it for the whole thing to happen. Seriously, too. As in we need to work together in the future on things. It was a team effort, but I literally couldn’t have done it otherwise. So, we need to send in one of those nuclear squad things. The NTA?” It was a funny name, reminding her of being patted down in the airport on television, but Marcia nodded.

  To her mind the people in that group were very close to being as tough as humans could be. Silly name aside. They were the only agency in the U.S. Governmental system that were allowed to kill people without justifying it. If you got in their way, they shot you. Then they kept going with their cargo. Even if they lost people in the process. Everything was about the mission for them.

  “I’ll set that up now. Hopefully we can get bodies and they share enough info… Really, I need Karen and Dave on this one. Bridget, can you get them set up on that while I get the numbers around for them to call? Lauren…” She had nothing for the woman to do, but knew that being inclusive would be better than not.

  Cindy made something up then, since she was the one that was in charge of her.

  “She’s set up to play secretary for Dave and Karen. Work out of the conference room? We need to get her a desk and a computer, but I’m going to need mine for research. We’ll need complete notes on everything dealing with other agencies. Turn them in to me directly, and I’ll send them to the needed parties.” It sounded official, but also added a layer that wasn’t needed.

  Still, Marcia was kind of military in her thinking, so tended to respond well to things that mimicked that pattern. It was floating over her head, as she accepted the general idea pretty easily.

  The Director smiled. It was pasty and thin, but real enough.

  “Go. We don’t have time to waste on this.”

  There wasn’t that much for Cin to do, after that. Not really. She’d pretended to have work to do, but until they had at least a visual or a name for her to link to, she was biding her time. That didn’t mean she couldn’t get some things done however.

  For instance, they all needed food. Lauren hadn’t eaten anything since changing, being too excited for hunger, for instance. Bridget had managed to gulp down some vegetable oil, but needed more calories, and Marcia would avoid eating if at all possible. Penny and Wren were at the front desk that day, so she walked over and waved at the invisible woman.

  “I’m going to go and get some food for everyone. Help me carry it?”

  Penny glanced at her, shook her now short brown hair and smiled.

  “Sounds good! Wren, you have the phones? Things are busy, but almost everyone is getting in touch with people directly.” She looked over at the bird girl, and waited for an answer.

  The yellow beak opened, and a lovely voice came out.

  “Got it! That… Level is a woman now? That’s incredible, isn’t it? I wish…” She looked down, and then sideways, over at the open conference room door.

  Cindy couldn’t see the new woman in there from where she stood in front of the desk, but it was clear Wren could. She was jealous about it as well. The fact was that her first mode wasn’t that hard to handle, but she looked like a bird. No one had suggested that she could have that fixed however. If there was a list to put your name on, she hadn’t seen it yet, either.

  “Get with… Actually, me, I guess, on that one? I think the plan is to abuse the specialist we have for that as much as he can stand. Tim Baker. From a different reality, so hard to reach, but he should be back in a few days. That’s to look at Felicia and Lobo, but if you see him, you might introduce yourself? His people bow a lot, so try doing that before begging for help? We can’t afford to pay him really.”

  Penny looked a bit pissed at the words, thinking that Cin was being a jerk. Wren however just took a deep breath.

  “That would be wonderful! Can you help me with that? So I don’t mess up my chance? If it will work. I heard that Lauren was always a shape changer.” To her that meant a lot, since she lived with that kind of thing all the time. Her idea, that the specialist had somehow helped with a mental issue wasn’t even that wrong.

  Cin smiled.

  “True. Tobin wasn’t however. You should see him. He’s cute. Not that he wasn’t, but… Well, you should go and find him later? The difference is vast.” It really was, but it was also hard to explain.

  Penny, mollified since it seemed that Cin was just using her invasive mind powers, and not being an asshole that needed killing, walked around the desk. Rather absently she put her arm around Cindy’s shoulder.

  “Let’s get that food? I’m starving, myself. Being invisible burns a lot of calories. How about you? Does being a Librarian keep you fit?” It was small talk, and a rather clever way to learn about other people at the base. She wasn’t assuming anything, and was avoiding all the parts of things that might set another person off.

  That meant that agreeing with her was in order, along with an explanation.

  “Yeah. I’ve been eating a lot more lately. I used to eat every few days. A lot when I did it, but I wasn’t always hungry. Now the windows where I’m not are smaller than they used to be. Probably because I’m running my power harder, and almost all the time. I used to just kind of use it in passive mode, but… You know, I need to survive this place, so I have to use what I have.”

  Penny let her hand slip down as they walked, rather absently feeling up her behind. She meant to do it, but wasn’t actually focusing on being a letch about it. It was simply that she’d spent years being so invisible that no one knew she was there. That meant she’d gotten used to just doing things with people if she found them interesting.

  So, if she felt like feeling a person’s ass, she just did it. Even now, when she did things like that, almost everyone would forget about it, the second she let go. If they noticed it happening at all. Cindy blinked a bit, since that hadn’t been happening with her.

  In fact, that part of the other woman’s powers didn’t seem to do anything to her.

  “Um… Hey, Penny… Could you try to make yourself invisible?” Not that the woman wasn’t, under her body dye and contact lenses. It
was just that, according to the data in her head, that she could make pretty much everyone in the world lose track of her too, even when she had a physical form.

  “Sure. Looking for the niftiest show that isn’t there? Well, at least I can do parlor tricks now! Still, later you have to help me out, by finding all the guys that secretly want to do me here.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, the margin of her page showing that she was doing her invisibility thing. The interesting part was that nothing happened, as far as Cin could tell. Not to her perception. So it was working, as they walked along, but not on her.

  She nodded.

  “I can still see you. I’d wondered if that was the case. I mean, I get information from you all the time, even when everyone else ignores you. Cool. As for abusing my powers to help you get your groove on like that…” She grinned as the woman went wide eyed.

  After all, Cindy wasn’t supposed to recall what had been said. That she’d both heard and remembered that part really meant that she was doing something pretty different.

  “Well… What else is having this power for? Though… Have you been hooking up with Georgia? You should be doing that, at the very least. The woman has needs, after all.”

  There was a shrug then.

  “I have in the past. It doesn’t always do a lot for her, and she won’t remember it later. You?”

  Cindy shook her head.

  “Not so far. I did finally get some last night. Jake? He’s… Really good in bed. I mean… Kamasutra good. You should try him out if you get a chance.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have thought that… All right. I can ask? Now, find me the extra-special dirt. Who secretly craves an invisible booty call? Hmm? Tell me!”

  Looking that up took some time, and was fairly predictable, when they actually got to the idea. Now that Penny was visible part of the time, most of the people that were single and liked women were more than willing to give her a tumble. She could pretty much just walk up to them and ask, and not be turned down very often.

  Except that she couldn’t do that, since her first mode made her pretty shy. She was doing all right with Cindy, but that was because the woman wasn’t placing any real pressure on her. The part where she could see her all the time, at least with her skin and clothing on, freaked her out a bit, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Enough that it could wear on her, if they were always together.

  The trick there would be in getting her first mode removed. Timon could do it, but so could Doctor Burrows. It was expensive, and only a few Infected were in place to benefit from that kind of thing, but Penny Cooper was one of them.

  Her brother probably was as well.

  “Oh, hey, that reminds me, how is Jeremy doing?”

  The words got her glared at a bit. For a few seconds Cin didn’t pick up why, either. It was the fake seeming hands on the hips pose that got things to click in her head.

  “Me talking about getting with all those people reminded you of my little brother? How so?”

  She grinned, and then shrugged.

  “Well, he is cute enough. Seventeen… That means filled with hormones and probably in need of attention. I don’t really see the problem there.” Really, she didn’t. He was too young for her to have a relationship with, but the rest was fair game. Cuddling and naked fun time. The kid would probably even be grateful if she bothered with the idea, as if she wasn’t getting just as much from it as he was. Men were easy that way, most of the time.

  Penny laughed a bit, her face smiling. Her mind was contemplating either being happy for her brother, or killing Cindy. She hadn’t really picked one yet.

  “Gross. He’s my brother. That means he’s never allowed to have sex. Ever.”

  Rather than get on her hit list by mistake, Cindy winked.

  “Riiight. Except that you live on a base with Georgia on it. If he figures that out, I bet it won’t be long before he’s signed up on her daily visitation lineup. Even if he doesn’t go for her, he’s not exactly hard on the eyes, and life does tend to happen. Even if the grownups do think that the kids need to be kept in a box. My understanding of that kind of thing is that they keep tending to escape.”

  In Jeremy’s case, that one was even literal. It could have been a somber moment, but Penny Cooper didn’t dwell on the obvious, and focused on the idea of her little brother being a lady’s man, instead.

  That got a chuckle from the invisible girl, as they got inside the dining hall to wrangle some food for everyone.

  Chapter eight

  “All right, pal o’mine, time for us to get back to work.” Cin looked at Level, who was in her fairly attractive, if long faced, human form still. Not that she blamed the woman for doing that. If you were made to be a walking tank for ten years, and then got to have soft and comfy regular flesh for a while, that was probably a fairly normal response.

  The woman smiled at her, going a bit too big with the move again, showing gums on the top side of the thing over her teeth. It bugged Cindy a little bit, but that was more about how happy she seemed than anything else. After all, the work they were going to get to involved looking things up, mainly online. There was no killing involved, or even torture. That reminded her of something however, and she nodded a few times.

  “We need to get with Rachel Chambers and…” She had to think for a moment, to recall the girl’s name. The one that had been sexually molested in both her orc and tiny human form by the military guy. Blinking she connected to her story, which was written in what seemed like a flash of words on a movie screen now, for some reason. It hadn’t been that way before, but, she noticed, the kid was rather happily watching something in the recreation center.

  It took a moment to pick up what it was however.

  When Cindy got it, she nearly blanched, but didn’t mention it. Sara, the little seven-year-old, was watching Citizen Kane. No one else was even there with her, since all the men were afraid that they’d be accused of being molesters if they paid even the slightest bit of attention to her. The women would come by and pat her on the shoulder occasionally, but they were worse in a way.

  To them, a lot of them, nothing had happened at all, because Sara wasn’t just a tiny kid. She was also a large green Orc woman who wasn’t that good looking. Even if that form had a huge rack on her. Compared to Cin anyway. Lauren actually matched her pretty well in that regard.

  “And Sara. Do you know anything about dealing with kids?” Cindy had that one down before the woman spoke. She’d been a school teacher before the Infection hit her. Even better, the woman had worked with little children. Kindergarten age, which should be even harder than a big one like Sara.

  The dark haired woman smiled and nodded.

  “Oh, sure! Do you want me to set up lessons for her? I thought about it before, but… Well, my first mode made doing anything kind of hard, day to day. I’d try to reach out to people, but other than when Den was working with me, I’d just kind of… Be lonely and mope? I have teaching credentials though. I don’t really know what we’ve been doing for her so far, school wise. Eventually we should get her in with regular kids. Socialization is important, and around here… Well, not to put everyone down, but this isn’t the best environment for a young girl to grow up in. Look at Bridget.” After the words left her lips, she winced, and made a face that was so obvious that Cindy didn’t have to read all about it to guess that she felt it was a mistake.

  Especially since Impulse was in with Marcia Turner and Doug Tibs at the moment, fielding phone calls for the IPB. She’d heard the whole thing, too.

  Lauren saved things fairly well though, so Cindy didn’t bother correcting her.

  “I mean, we didn’t have a lot of choice with her, but she grew up too fast. The things that she had to do last year… We should avoid that for Sara if possible. I…” She shrugged, and looked sad, even while kind of delighted that she had that magical ability back again. For years her shoulders hadn’t worked that way at all. They were just there. Blocky and unmov
ing, compared to the soft flesh she had at the moment.

  There was a meaningful look, and then a huge, overdone, sigh.

  “I heard that something had happened to her? Sara? I was locked up, but… That man?”

  It didn’t take special powers to work out who she meant. After all, the screaming had probably kept her awake for a night, even if it was all happening down the hall from her cell.

  “Captain Brent Mophrey. One of the Military super soldiers. He was having sex with Sara. In both her forms. Using coercion to rape one of his own people, too. His mind had been affected by what they’d done to him, to make him more powerful. We had a Death Warrant, by the way. We didn’t just kidnap him and torture him like that. Not that it covered what I had people do to him. So if you can keep that one between us?” It had probably been scary to her, hearing all the screams that she had.

  In the moment though, her face just went hard, as she nodded.

  “Nothing happened.” Then she turned her mind away from that, trying to pretend that she really didn’t know anything at all. Like she hadn’t been there that night. It was a bit obvious, to anyone reading her mind, but the effort was real enough.

  So Cindy smiled at her, and reached across to pat her arm. The woman leaned into the move a bit and closed her eyes.

  “That… I haven’t felt anyone touching me in so long. Anyway, I can set up a program for Sara?”

  Cindy shrugged then.

  “Well, we need to get with Rachel Chambers first on it, but that sounds like a plan to me. You know, as long as you’re back on our side? If you aren’t… Well, then tell me now, and I’ll work out something else. I don’t want to put someone with her that’s just going to leave her again. If you can’t be in for the long haul there, then don’t start.” She meant it to be threatening, and a bit cold.

  That didn’t work. The other woman missed that part entirely, and to her mind the whole little speech just seemed to be matter of fact. Like Cindy was lecturing her a little bit, but also just suggesting they do what was right for the kid. As if that would be the important part of things.