* * *
RAWLS HAD NO luck hunting Wolf down before their 1900 strategy session, so when the two men sent to escort Rawls to the meeting showed up in the clinic after Faith’s stress test, Rawls took them aside and explained the situation to them. After a moment of conferring with each other, Faith was motioned forward. They were both escorted outside the clinic to where another golf cart waited, but this one had rows of seats for extra passengers.
Cosky, Zane, and Mac were already seated in the back row of the vehicle. Rawls helped Faith into the cart and took the seat beside hers. Once they were settled, the driver took off in the opposite direction from where Wolf had taken Rawls earlier.
Apparently they weren’t going to the same office where they’d gone to report the information Pachico had given them . . . curious.
This time the trip through Shadow Mountain was short. Their driver took the first corridor to the right after the medical bay, and drove less than a hundred feet before pulling into an empty parking space against the wall. They followed their escorts through one of those strangely translucent sliding doors and into a web of connected offices and halls.
None of the offices they passed were marked, nor had there been any indication above the entrance to tell them where they were. And now that he thought about it, nothing was marked in this place. The only way you could tell you’d arrived at the hospital was that the people exiting and entering were wearing scrubs, and at the mess hall, by the smell of food.
Nothing about the place shouted operations.
Until their escorts turned a corner and he found himself in front of an open set of double doors.
Behind the doors was a large round table, which could accommodate a dozen men, and a huge freestanding dry-erase board. Dozens of maps ringed the room and a white projection screen swallowed the entire front wall.
Half a dozen hard, watchful faces turned to study them.
Instantly he knew where he was. Instantly he felt at home.
He’d spent thousands of hours seated at similar tables, in similar rooms, eyes glued to wall maps or schematics projected on giant screens. He’d drunk gallons of coffee from identical Styrofoam cups from coffeepots placed in similar unobtrusive, out of the way places.
He’d been in this same room, in dozens of different locales, over the course of his career. It was as comfortable as an old pair of combat boots.
He spotted Wolf across the room and beckoned him over. For a moment it looked like the big warrior was going to ignore him, but then his gaze fell on Faith and a frown touched his face. Without saying a word to the men standing beside him, he headed across the room.
“Dr. Ansell,” he said when he reached them, and offered her a formal half bow. After straightening, he glanced at Rawls, his gaze shrewd. “Problem?”
Before Rawls had a chance to explain, Faith stepped up.
“There are . . . aspects . . . of the research we were doing that are classified,” Faith said, tugging at the bottom of her T-shirt. “But in light of the rescue, and the fact that my team was kidnapped rather than killed outright so they could repeat the process—” She cleared her throat. “So in light of all that, there are things you need to be aware of. Things you may run into. Things you won’t be prepared for.”
She went from tugging the bottom of her shirt to smoothing it repeatedly over her hips. It was a nervous tic. She’d done the same thing in the tunnels. A grin threatened at the memory, until he got a good look at the tension on her face.
Wolf studied her face for a moment and then dropped his gaze to the constant smoothing of her hands. “Your insight is appreciated,” he finally murmured, his voice unusually gentle. “Sit. We begin soon.”
She acknowledged his suggestion with a tight nod and let Rawls take her elbow and escort her to the table. Once she was seated, however, her hands had nothing to smooth, so she started absently picking at her cuticles.
Rawls watched her quietly before covering her restless hands with his. “Everythin’s gonna be fine. You just wait. You’re worryin’ over nothin’,” he said, trying to project encouragement and calm in his voice.
She nodded, but without much conviction. Luckily, the side door swung open and four older men with tanned, leathery faces and long, graying hair in immaculate braids strode in. From the way Wolf greeted them, it was obvious he’d been waiting for them, which meant they’d be getting started soon.
As Wolf spoke to the middle elder, recognition stirred. The four newcomers were dressed differently from the four elders in the cave. Rather than roughhewn rawhide poncho-styled garments, they wore loose jeans and button-down shirts, but he’d swear they were the same four elders who’d performed the binding ceremony.
With Wolf still talking, the lead elder glanced at Faith. After a moment he nodded. The four elders took seats at the head of the table, leaving Wolf standing alone. Not that he appeared uncomfortable, but then, Rawls had never seen Wolf look uncomfortable.
“Dr. Ansell, if you would join me,” Wolf said, his gaze steady on Faith’s tense face.
Rawls frowned; he hadn’t expected them to call her to the front of the room like some schoolgirl being disciplined. She didn’t seem to mind, though. Without hesitation, she pushed back her chair, climbed to her feet, and walked up front.
“Thank you.” She cleared her throat nervously. “I’m not sure how much Commander Mackenzie and his team told you about the research my team and I were involved in.”
“We are aware you were advancing the new energy paradigm and created a prototype capable of pulling energy from the atoms in the air,” Wolf said. “And that your lab was targeted and your team kidnapped because of this.”
“Yes, all of that is true.” She coughed, fidgeting, looking more conflicted than ever.
“Dr. Ansell?” Wolf’s voice was so quiet Rawls barely heard it.
She glanced up, stared directly at Wolf, and squared her shoulders. “Yes, everything I told Commander Mackenzie is true. However, much of our research is classified, so there were . . . things . . . I didn’t mention during that conversation.”
“Such as?” Wolf prompted when Faith fell silent.
“Such as the fact that the prototype is capable of connecting with and augmenting certain people’s brain waves and expanding their brain’s capacity.” She seemed to force the explanation out.
An uneasy stir went around the table.
Brain waves? Expanded capacity? Of all the possibilities he’d expected her to spill, this news hadn’t even been in the periphery of his mind.
“Augmenting? How?” This time it was Wolf’s superior who asked the question. And while all Rawls could see was the back of the guy’s head, his voice was the same as the elder who’d worn the red etchings in the cave.
“The machine basically turbocharges certain people’s brains. It makes them capable of doing extraordinary things . . . mentally.”
“Specify,” Wolf said.
From the sharpness in Wolf’s voice and the grim expressions ringing the table, he wasn’t the only one who saw the ugly ramifications in Faith’s news. No wonder she’d been so dead set on addressing Wolf’s superiors.
“In one experiment, the subject turned on a microwave just by thinking about it. In another, she blew the same microwave up—just by thinking about it.”
Blew something up with just a thought. A chill feathered down his spine. How the hell did you protect yourself against something like that?
Down the table someone swore softly.
“You’re telling us”—Zane’s calm voice ruptured the stunned silence—“that this machine you developed can turn certain people’s thoughts into weapons? They can kill by just thinking about it?”
“Yes.” She responded to Zane’s question as calmly as he’d asked it. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
She was remarkably collected now, as though letting the cat out of the bag had drained all the tension away.
“And you didn’t tell us about
this. Jesus Christ, with the hands it’s fallen into, this thing could destroy the world. This thing could give one person the ability to control the whole fucking world. And you didn’t tell us about this? Jesus Christ.” Mac shook his head, stunned disbelief lifting his voice.
“No. I didn’t tell you about it,” she agreed, her voice empty of apology. “And I wouldn’t be telling you now if you didn’t absolutely need to know. How do I know you won’t use it for yourself? Turn it over to your military and weaponize it? How do I know that what you’d do with it would be any better than what they’d do with it? I didn’t know if I could trust you. There’s a good chance the people who stole the schematics for the prototype haven’t realized its full potential and it could be recovered and destroyed without anyone realizing what it can do.”
Dead silence followed her retort. The four elders glanced among each other, and Rawls saw a new respect in the eyes that turned back to Faith.
“You said it affects certain people’s brains,” Cosky finally reminded her. “What percentage of people does it affect?”
“From the data we’ve been able to gather, it syncs with certain brain chemistries and brain waves. In the lab and surrounding offices, three out of nineteen were affected. But it wasn’t a large enough sampling to foretell what the rate would be in the general population.”
Rawls nodded absently. What she said made sense. Brain chemistry varied slightly between individuals. Much of the data would depend on the range of brain chemistries or waves the machine could sync with. Only through sampling hundreds of brains would they have been able to work out an average. Yet sampling the volume of brains necessary to acquire a percentage would have caught someone’s attention eventually. Attention they couldn’t afford.
In fact, from what he remembered from their earlier conversation, Dr. Benton had destroyed the prototype for fear it would fall into the wrong hands.
The precaution made much more sense now, as did the NRO’s interest in the research.
Christ, if this technology got into the wrong hands . . . it was absolutely essential they recover it before the NRO re-created the prototype.
“You said it took years to develop the original prototype, and that Dr. Benton destroyed all the research along with the machine before they were taken,” he reminded her.
If it took years or even months to create the machine, they’d have plenty of time to track the scientists down and retrieve them before their invention went online and operational.
“Yes, but Dr. Benton has a photographic memory. He won’t need the research to complete the necessary steps. And he’ll be able to complete those steps faster since he’s done it before. I’m sure he’ll try to slow the process down, but . . .” Her voice trailed off and she swallowed hard, her gaze clinging to his.
He could see the pain from the memory of her murdered friends burning in her eyes. And she was right. They couldn’t count on Benton stalling. The bastards who held him had proved repeatedly that they were ruthless and deadly.
“How long would you estimate it will take them to re-create the prototype?” Zane asked, his voice thoughtful.
Faith shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. But the machine doesn’t need to be fully operational before it can sync with the human brain. Last time it started at sixty-nine percent.”
Rawls frowned, something niggling at him. “How did you find out about the machine’s ability?”
The original intention of the machine had been energy based after all; they hadn’t been doing any research on people’s brains.
“It started small. Lights turning on or off randomly. Machines as well. We thought the lab had an electrical short. We didn’t put it together until Marcy asked Julio to turn on Big Ben and the machine suddenly powered up. Marcy laughed, said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned off just by asking too?’ And it just . . . turned . . . off. That’s when we started testing her on other machines, the centrifuge, the microwave, the lights, everything. It became obvious fast. All she had to do was think about turning a machine on or off, and it did. But we didn’t know why. Not at first.” Her face tightened for a moment and she took a deep, calming breath. “We didn’t realize her sudden almost-supernatural ability was connected to the Thrive generator until the machine overheated and shut down during our flurry of testing. Just like that, Marcy was normal again. That’s when we put it together. The ability was only present when the prototype was on.”
Rawls’s chest tightened in sympathy. Marcy and Julio had been two of her friends murdered in the lab that day. Apparently two people those bastards hadn’t had any use for.
“You said three of you had the ability to sync with the machine. If they do create the prototype, they can use it too—”
“No,” Faith broke in. “None of the people kidnapped were able to sync with the machine.”
“So they killed those of you who could sync with it?” Cosky asked, a puzzled tone in his voice.
“Not exactly. Whoever attacked us and kidnapped my team didn’t know about the machine’s side effects. We were very careful to keep that quiet. They must have been after the new energy utilization, or possibly they were interested in repurposing the prototype as a clean bomb. It would take very little rewiring to create an energy distributor.” She paused for a moment to frown and then shrugged. “I’m guessing, of course. But if they’d known about the secondary effect, they wouldn’t have killed Marcy or Bekka, and they would have tried harder to find me.”
It took Rawls a second to realize what she’d just admitted.
Oh hell, no.
His whole body stiffened. He didn’t bother praying that nobody else had picked up on that confession because every single person in the room had been trained to zero in on and use such slips of the tongue.
Jesus—Faith had no fucking clue what she’d just brought down on her head.
“Let me get this straight,” Mac said slowly. “You were one of the three who could sync with the machine.”
Rawls’s fists clenched, of course it would be Mac to feed her to the lions.
“I was,” Faith admitted with a frown. She glanced at Rawls, and whatever she saw on his face had her eyes widening in alarm.
“Forget it,” Rawls snapped. Shoving his chair back, he surged to his feet. “We don’t even know if they’ve built the damn machine.”
“But if they have,” Wolf said, his dark gaze fixed on Faith’s profile. “And Dr. Ansell can sync with it . . .”
“No,” Rawls snapped again, his voice rising. “We aren’t talkin’ about a fuckin’ walk in the park, here. You’d be puttin’ her life in danger, and for what? For the possibility that she might be able to sync with a machine that probably isn’t even erected yet? Her team was grabbed less than two weeks ago. That isn’t enough time to build this contraption.”
“You don’t know that.”
He’d expected the cool counterargument, just not from Faith.
“Faith.” He paused to calm his breathing. “You don’t know what they’re askin’. You don’t—”
“I think I do.” Her voice was very quiet and far too determined. “I think I know exactly what they’re suggesting. They’re suggesting I come along and sync with the prototype if it’s operational.”
Okay, so she had picked up on what they were asking of her. But damn it, she didn’t know what she was getting herself into. Rawls raked a hand through his hair, shocked to find his heart hammering like he was fighting for his life. Hell, he was sweating like a stuck pig too. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back.
“You don’t have CQB trainin’, you don’t—”
“She will be protected,” Wolf broke in, his normally inscrutable face softened by sympathy, except he was looking at Rawls, not Faith.
“You can’t protect her from everythin’.” He could hear his voice rise, but he was powerless to stop it. “All it takes is one stray bullet. One moment of inattention. She’s not trained for this. You have no damn right to dr
ag her into the field.”
And for the first time since—well since that other life, when he’d still had a sister and family—panic struck. Strangled him with fear. His breathing hitched, his heart pounding so hard he could hear it in his head.
He’d just found her, Goddamn it. Barely had her back from the dead. He wasn’t going to lose her so soon. Fuck, he wasn’t going to lose her ever.
What the hell?
Where did that come from?
“What about what I want?” she asked, her gaze locked on his face as though they were the only two people in the room. “Those were my friends they murdered in the lab. My friends are being held by a group of monsters who treat people like disposable objects. Who jeopardize children for the sake of their own agenda. If there’s even the slightest chance that my presence could help bring these monsters to justice, then I’m doing it.”
Before Rawls had a chance to launch another argument, the elder from the ghost binding stood up. He nodded to Faith, and turned to face Rawls.
“The decision is Dr. Ansell’s. She alone has the final say,” he said with finality. “She goes.”
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
* * *
THE LAST THIRD of the meeting with Wolf’s people was a blur in Faith’s mind as she entered the sleeping quarters Wolf showed her to. She’d been too busy having a mental meltdown after agreeing to accompany them on the rescue mission. A very dangerous operation too, judging by Rawls’s violent reaction.
Vaguely, she remembered a discussion about some organization called the New Ruling Order, which sounded like a bunch of rich people with too much time and money on their hands. And then Eric Manheim’s name had popped up as the force behind the attempted hijacking of flight 2077, as well as the attack on Amy Chastain’s family and the murder and kidnapping of Faith’s coworkers.
Not that anyone but Rawls, Wolf, and Wolf’s people knew the information had come courtesy of interrogating a ghost! When pressed by Mackenzie, Wolf had blandly attributed the intel to classified intelligence. It had been all Faith could do to hold her tongue; Mackenzie and his men deserved to know where the information they were about to risk their lives on had come from.
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