Athena Force 9: Payback

by Harper Allen

  She took a deep breath, realizing she’d come dangerously close to saying something she might regret. “Sorry if I sound abrupt. It’s just that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, trying to work through that healing you said I needed to do. I still have mixed feelings about Lee Craig and sometimes I blame the Cassandras for the fact that I never had the chance to confront him with his lies. It’s silly, I know, but…” She’d let her voice trail off and had given a thin smile as Kayla had fallen for the bait.

  “It’s not silly at all.” Kayla’s words had been sympathetic—falsely sympathetic? “And you’re right, it’s partly the fault of the Cassandras. Instead of giving you time to come to terms with the bombshell we dropped on you last December, we asked for your help in finding your sisters.”

  “Lynn and Faith are going to be part of the raid, aren’t they?” Dawn spoke sharply, her edginess based on sudden fear. “I mean—” she tried to soften her tone “—if anyone deserves to be there when Aldrich Peters has to face the music, it’s them. He tampered with their lives, too.” Lynn’s super agility and computer knowledge and Faith’s extrasensory skills would be helpful.

  But what’s more important, I’m going to have to tell them what’s happening to their genes and give them the reversal serum soon after they arrive, she thought worriedly. I hate leaving it to the eleventh hour like that, but I can’t confirm the Cassandras’ suspicions about my vulnerability by revealing that my sisters are facing a genetic crisis, too—not if Sam St. John is really trying to take me out.

  “You couldn’t keep them away,” Kayla answered. “They both want to do their bit to bring down Lab 33. They told me if I was talking to you to send you their love, by the way.”

  Her grip on the phone had tightened. “They’re doing well?”

  “They’re doing fine.” There had been faint puzzlement in Ryan’s voice. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “No reason, just sisterly concern.” Relief had flooded her at the knowledge that Lynn and Faith obviously hadn’t been suffering the debilitating symptoms she had. “I’d better ring off now, Kayla. As it is, Aldrich Peters is going to have some questions for me when I reach Lab 33, and I don’t want to arouse his suspicions any more than I have to.”

  “I understand.” Kayla had hesitated. “Or maybe I don’t. You never did tell me what this last hush-hush mission for him was all about, just that you needed to complete it for your own reasons. One day you’ll have to fill me in on all the exciting details.”

  She’d nearly lost it at that point, Dawn thought now as she waited for Peters to finish giving his instructions to the doctors. Either Ryan’s a way better actress than I would have thought, or the Cassandras haven’t betrayed me. If the pieces didn’t fit together so perfectly, I wouldn’t consider that the Cassandras could be behind the assassination attempt on me.

  But the pieces did fit, not merely because the assassin had known her real name, had known her location and had been aware of her enhanced abilities, but that a professional-style execution had been attempted. That could point to Lab 33, but it could also point to the Cassandras.

  The organization she’d given her life to had betrayed her—but could these special women truly be her enemies?

  As Peters turned from the doctors and began walking toward her, Dawn reflected on the irony of one thing she was sure of—the one man who’d had no reason at all to take her side had risked his life for her safety.

  “I’ve explained your decision to Dr. Wang and Dr. Sobie,” Aldrich said crisply as he rejoined her. “Being medical people, they’re not happy that you’re taking your treatment into your own hands, so to speak, but they confirm what you told me about the serum being harmless to young Mr. Johnson. We’ll do it your way, Dawn.”

  “I’d like the room cleared. I’d also like a few moments alone with Carter to reassure him, so I’ll be turning off the speakers to the gallery until I actually begin the procedure,” she answered, with an effort submerging her thoughts of Asher and focusing her full attention on her immediate situation. “If you could close the door behind you as you and the others leave, Doctor?”

  Her attitude was close to insubordinate and from Peters’s quick frown as he exited, Dawn knew he was irritated by it. She didn’t care. Her time at Lab 33 would be coming to an end within hours.

  Her back to the watchers in the gallery, she approached the console that controlled the lighting, temperature and speakers for the room. With a swift twist of her hand she wrenched the speaker knob completely off, and then proceeded briskly to the glassed-in cubicle where the two gurneys, only one of them as yet occupied, waited.

  “Dawn! What the hell’s going on?” Carter’s usually laid-back manner was nowhere in evidence. His voice rose higher, cracking nervously. “A couple of no-neck goons escorted me from my office, told me they’re acting on the boss man’s orders, and the next thing I know I’m being strapped down like a guinea pig. Get me out of here!”

  “The guards weren’t acting on Dr. Peters’s orders, they were acting on mine.” Walking over to the nearby steel instrument table, Dawn felt an all-too-familiar stab of pain in her temples. She fought it back. The headaches had been coming with increasing frequency these past few days, but soon they would be a thing of the past. “He’s now approved my decision, however. Tell me, Carter, why didn’t you let me know my prints were on file with Interpol before I left on my last mission?”

  As she spoke she picked up the membrane-sealed vial of serum lying on the table. She held it up to the light and then reached for one of the two hypodermic needles that had been laid out.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Carter’s denial was too swift. “Dawn, babe, tell me you’re not thinking of using that thing on me.”

  Piercing the vial’s membrane with the needle’s tip, carefully she drew the plunger back until the hypodermic’s barrel was filled with the colorless liquid. Dr. Sobie had informed her that most of the mixture was a mild sedative, prepared that way so she would be totally relaxed while the serum did its work. Knowing that her mental defenses would be lowered for several hours had worried her until she’d hit upon the idea of disabling the sound system. It wasn’t a perfect solution; there was still a chance that Peters would actually enter the chamber and take the opportunity to ask a few pointed questions to which she might mumble an answer, but at least it eliminated the possibility of a half-asleep murmur being relayed to the gallery and giving her away.

  As an added bonus, their privacy right now meant she could grill Carter.

  She turned to him, her eyes on the tiny stream of liquid that spurted from the needle’s tip as she checked for air bubbles. “You did it for money, of course. You’ll do anything for money, Johnson—even work here. Who paid you to send me out with a flawed cover story?”

  “I swear I didn’t know about the prints being on file, Dawn!” As the hypo drew closer to his strapped-down arm, his eyes fixed on hers with hysterical intensity. “You’ve got to believe me! I sent you out squeaky clean, and if someone later accessed my system and dirtied your file, I had nothing to do with it! He was just a voice on the phone and an envelope of money left on my desk afterward, dammit—I don’t even know who he was! I don’t deserve to be killed for walking away from my computer for half an hour, do I?”

  Dawn stared at him. Weak defiance struggled with terror on his face, and the terror won. He really was despicable, she thought in disgust. He’d sold her out, and now he was justifying his actions by telling himself he’d had no option but to—

  Her thoughts came to a halt. She focused on the hypo in her hand and revulsion washed over her. How different was she from Carter? For that matter, how different was she from anyone in this place, Aldrich Peters included? In front of her was a terrified man strapped to a gurney, who was convinced she was about to give him a lethal injection. She’d encouraged his erroneous belief so she could get the information she’d needed from him.

  And that information ha
d come just in time to stop her from making a terrible mistake. The voice on Carter’s phone had been male, not female. Not one of the Cassandras—it had to be one of Peters’s assassins.

  “No, Carter, you don’t deserve to be killed,” she said, her voice not entirely even. “You probably deserve to be put in prison for the other things you’ve done, but if you’ll take my advice you might even escape that.” She set down the hypodermic, noting as she did that her fingers were trembling slightly, and began unbuckling the straps that held him to the gurney. “Aldrich is going to want to know why I didn’t give you the serum. Tell him that the mere fact he agreed to my demand convinced me he hadn’t set me up. Then go get your freakin’ skateboard, tell the guards at the gate you’ll be back in a few hours, and put as much distance between you and Lab 33 as you can. This particular gravy train’s about to be derailed.”

  Despite his irritating mannerisms, Carter was no fool. He took one look at her eyes and nodded. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But why are you telling me? And what’s to stop me from telling Peters?”

  “I’m telling you because I owe you—not only for what I just did, but for the information you just gave me. It was more important than you’ll ever know,” Dawn said. She undid the last strap and stood back from the gurney with a shrug. “And you won’t tell Peters because if you do I’ll hunt you down and kill you. Understand?”

  “Totally.” Hastily Carter hopped down from the gurney. At the doorway he paused and looked back at her, some of his former insouciance already visible again in his grin. “Hey, Dawn—what you said about this gravy train? No problemo, I’ll just hitch myself a ride on another one. People like Peters are always looking for smart young employees like yours truly. Stay cool, babe.”

  The Cassandras would be furious when they learned she’d given him a Get Out of Jail Free card, Dawn thought as she hoisted herself onto the second gurney and lay back, the lights above her bright enough that she saw nothing of the onlookers in the gallery above. And that wouldn’t be all they’d be furious about. Ryan, for one, would find it hard to forgive her for believing that the Cassandras could have assigned Samantha St. John to assassinate her.

  But whatever it takes, I’m going to make it right with her, she told herself as she reached for the serum-filled hypo on the table beside the gurney. Kayla is a girlfriend worth keeping, and except for my sisters, I haven’t had the opportunity to make many of those.

  She felt the sharp sting of the lifesaving serum as it entered her bloodstream, and almost immediately a drowsy lassitude began to overtake her, but her thoughts continued. Maybe Kayla or one of the Cassandras could find a job for her in the legit spy world. She would be a hunter, yes, but no longer a predator. It was possible she might even have a real life with friends, a home that wasn’t a laboratory, maybe a romantic interest at some point.

  Asher. She would go back to him after this was all over and explain everything to him, she decided groggily. Odds were he would tell her to go to hell, but she would try anyway. Fighting alongside him felt right, and kissing him felt fabulous, she told herself with a slight smile. Maybe we really do have a chance at that future he was talking about. Once I eliminate that bastard Peters I’ll be able to—

  The headache that had been growing all day suddenly exploded through her brain. Every nerve ending in her body seemed suddenly on fire. A tidal wave of pain towered over her, crashed down on her and gathered itself for a second agonizing assault, and then a third.

  She could survive this, Dawn thought desperately. Soon the serum would begin working and she would never have to go through this again. The headaches would disappear for good, her symptoms would vanish forever, and she could begin deciding what she would do with the rest of her life.

  Because her foolish dreams of a moment ago would never become reality. She’d forgotten one important detail.

  Once she’d assassinated Aldrich Peters she would be a woman on the run. The Cassandras would have nothing to do with her, and Asher, if he ever met up with her again, would have no option but to turn her over to the authorities.

  She would get the payback she’d wanted for so long…and she would lose everything else.

  Chapter 16

  Status: three hours fifteen minutes and counting

  Time: 2045 hours

  She was still unconscious. It felt as if her eyes had flown suddenly open, but they couldn’t have, Dawn thought hazily. Darkness surrounded her—the darkness of oblivion, the darkness of unconsciousness, so she was still under the influence of the heavy sedative that had accompanied the serum. Drs. Wang and Sobie had obviously lied about its strength.

  “They work for Peters, so you should have expected them to, O’Shaughnessy.” She frowned as she felt her lips move and heard her voice—slurred but definitely her own. She couldn’t be totally out of it if she could speak. But then why couldn’t she make out the slightest glimmer of the harsh lighting that was suspended above her or the blank whiteness of the walls around her? She tried to raise her hand and felt it lift into the air.

  Glowing green numbers came into her line of sight.

  She shot bolt upright, panic sluicing through her as she focused her still-blurred vision on the luminous readout of her watch. What time was it? What time was it?

  Eight forty-six p.m. The Cassandras hadn’t stormed Lab 33 yet. She half fell, half boosted herself off the gurney and collapsed in a heap on the floor, her legs rubbery. Feeling around in the dark for the edge of the steel table, she hauled herself upright, her mind racing.

  She’d told Kayla to commence the raid at nine sharp. Ryan and the rest of the Cassandras were professionals; there was no way they would shave fifteen minutes off the agreed-upon time, so the pitch-blackness all around her wasn’t the result of either their attack or Lab 33’s response to it, and neither was the fact that she was all alone in a deserted operating room that should have been filled with doctors and scientists.

  Only one man could have put her in her current situation, and that man was Aldrich Peters. But why, dammit?

  Her coordination was still as bad as if she’d spent the past seven hours tossing back Cosmopolitans instead of lying motionless on a gurney. She lurched away from the steel table, banged her hip on the console that held the speaker and temperature controls, and slammed her face into something hard and invisible. It was the glass door of the cubicle, she realized, wincing and rubbing her forehead. She found the door handle, turned it and stumbled into the main part of the room, her head tender where she’d hit it. She took two more steps and then came to a sudden stop.

  Her hours-long unconsciousness had come as a release from the unendurable pain she’d been going through. Now that pain was totally gone, and for the first time in days she wasn’t experiencing even the tiniest throbbing that signaled it was lurking somewhere at the back of her brain, ready to strike. The serum had worked. The degeneration of her genes had not only been halted, it had been reversed.

  She fell again to her knees, but this time it was thankfulness that robbed her legs of strength. Her death warrant had been canceled…and as soon as Faith and Lynn arrived she would be able to cancel theirs, too.

  Determination forced her to her feet again and propelled her unsteadily across the room. She reached the door, felt for the light switch, flipped it on.

  Instantly her world went from blackness to blinding brilliance—white walls, white-tiled floor, the glittering steel of tables and gurneys. Shielding her eyes against the sudden light, she hurried back to the glassed-in cubicle, but stopped on the threshold in sudden disbelief.

  There was nothing on the table—no hypos, no vials, no sign of the precious serum that had been there earlier. Everything had been removed. Everyone had gone. She had been left here alone like a rat in a trap.

  “Which is exactly what this is!” Hastening back to the main doors, Dawn automatically glanced upward for her retinas to be scanned and then remembered it wasn’t necessary. They opened in front of her and she
strode unsteadily through them into the hallway, her anger growing. “Even if I don’t understand what’s behind all this, I know a freakin’ trap when I see one. But whatever Peters has planned, he’s not going to live long enough to see it through, damn him. It’s going to be a pleasure to watch that bastard—”

  The scream that tore from her throat overrode the rest of her sentence. Instantly her palms pressed to her temples in an instinctive but vain attempt to contain the agony that was shooting through her. The pain subsided for a moment and then came back stronger.

  “All…a lie!” Her words came out thickly. She took a few staggering steps and fell to her hands and knees, dimly aware but past caring that a couple of Lab 33 guards were hastening down the corridor toward her. “I didn’t get the serum…he never intended for me to get—”

  “It’s Dawn O’Shaughnessy, for God’s sake.” All she could see were the guards’ boots planted in front of her, but she could hear the apprehension in the voice of the one who had spoken. Revulsion was in the second guard’s voice.

  “It’s the freak, you mean. What the hell’s the matter with her, it looks like she’s having some kind of fit. Hey, O’Shaughnessy!” A pair of fingers snapped in front of her face. “O’Shaughnessy, can you hear me?” The fingers disappeared and as if from a great distance away Dawn heard coarse laughter. “Totally gone, can you believe it? If a guy ever wondered what it would be like taking a hack at that prime piece, now would be the time. I’m thinkin’ that empty storage room by the elevators. You game, Lewinsky?”

  “Why the hell not? I always thought she had it coming to—”

  “Bad…mistake, boys.” She could move despite the pain, Dawn found as she got to her feet. She swayed, caught her balance, felt rage give her strength. “Even on my worst day…more than a match for you…” For a moment her head cleared. She smashed her fist into the first guard’s face and then whirled in time for her forearm to slam against the second man’s windpipe. He went down clutching his throat, his eyes bulging, and she turned her attention back to the first guard as he grabbed for the pistol on his hip. Her hand came down like a blade on the back of his neck, and even before his knees hit the floor she was behind him, her grip tight on either side of his jawline.