In the Blood (Metahuman Files Book 4)

by Hailey Turner

  “Gailani. Glad to see you’re still Stateside.”

  “We’re out of rotation for the next couple of weeks. News streams are reporting the mess in Boston is under control and taken care of. You aren’t calling for my team through unofficial channels, are you?”

  “No, I’m calling for mine. Are you doing anything today?”

  “Nothing I can’t cancel.”

  “Good. Our debrief will hopefully not take most of the day. When we’re finished, I’ll shoot you a message, but I need you to go to Katie’s apartment and be there for her when she arrives.”

  Matthew frowned, blue-green eyes worried in his darkly tanned face. “Is she all right?”

  Jamie chose his words carefully, because he’d seen the way Katie had looked after turning off the last child’s mind. “It was a rough mission. She could use the company.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You think I don’t know what my second-in-command needs?”

  Matthew shook his head. “I’m not questioning that. I’ll be there.”

  “She give you her access code?”

  Matthew hesitated a moment before saying, “Yes.”

  Jamie drummed his fingers against the computer screen embedded in the desktop, ignoring the bursts of light from command prompts that appeared and disappeared where his fingertips touched.

  “You’re good for her, far as I can tell. I trust Katie’s judgment, so I won’t tell you not to hurt her, because she’s more than capable of dealing with you if you try. But you should know I have no qualms about making your life a living hell if you do.”

  “Shovel-talk noted,” Matthew said a little wryly. “She mentioned you’d get around to it at some point. Don’t worry, Callahan. I’ll be at her apartment when she gets there.”

  “Good. And thank you.”

  Matthew smiled a bit before the line cut off. Jamie rubbed the back of his hand over the itch on his face, the bullet graze nearly healed thanks to a quick-heal patch Trevor had slapped on it during the flight back to base. The new skin pulled tightly every time he spoke, but there was no getting around the discomfort until he showed up in Medical. Which wouldn’t happen until after debrief, something he knew he couldn’t put off any longer.

  Jamie returned to the conference room, slipping quietly inside to take his seat at the table while Katie continued to give her verbal report to Nazari and Stirling, with Kyle speaking up to confirm certain points when asked. From the clipped way Nazari and Stirling addressed Kyle, Jamie knew they weren’t happy with his actions.

  Ceres recorded the entire debrief. The oral reports would be helpful later on as a verbal record and for when they wrote up their individual after-action reports. For a mission like this, with multiple fronts and problems that arose in the heat of action, it would take hours to finish.

  Jamie dutifully reported on his actions in the field. When he informed Nazari and Stirling that he’d refused to work with the Pavluhkins any longer beneath the guise of his family’s name, they didn’t exactly look pleased with his decision, but Jamie didn’t care.

  “The MDF has used my family’s name enough over the past year. Stanislav was playing us for a fool from the beginning. If we’ve managed to outmaneuver him in any way, it was by sheer dumb luck. The Pavluhkin mission is no longer sustainable. I made the call in the field and I feel it was the right call,” Jamie stated flatly.

  “It wasn’t yours to make,” Nazari said, sounding irritated.

  “It involved my family, so yes, it was. You gave me the choice in the beginning, and I agreed to it then. I don’t agree with it now. The MDF will need to find another way forward, sir.”

  Nazari and Stirling both shared a look Jamie didn’t bother to read. He honestly didn’t care if his decision ruined plans in the pipeline for the MDF. His team and his family had given enough for this mission. In that area, he could concede, his father was right. They’d spent eleven months dancing to the Pavluhkins’ tune and Jamie had cut the puppet strings tying his team to the Russians without apology.

  Figuring out the future from here on out would be difficult, but Jamie preferred that to the lies they had all grown tired of living.

  It would mean he and Kyle could no longer be seen in public as they had been—a couple in love, able to touch each other without fear of reprisals. That unintended loss sat heavily with Jamie, but he brushed it aside. He knew Kyle would be okay with returning to their status quo prior to the start of the Pavluhkin mission only because they had no intentions of ever leaving each other.

  “And you thought it was a good idea to reveal your identity to security personnel and the Secret Service, why, exactly?” Stirling asked.

  “It was a field-based decision that I stand by. Ovechkina had sent my gear on ahead at my request,” Jamie said, lying a little to cover Katie. “Larson received it, and he was previously cleared by the MDF. My identity remained classified outside that small group of people.”

  He knew the MDF had kept those who had survived and hadn’t been previously cleared to know about his identity on base until Mercedes was able to telepathically put blocks into their minds so they couldn’t speak about what they knew. The nondisclosure agreements were all well and good, but the added mental protection was something the MDF discreetly employed.

  “We’ll be discussing your arbitrary decision on all of this later. As of right now, the Pavluhkin mission is in flux, but your undercover roles in it have come to an end,” Nazari said.

  It should have felt like relief, but it didn’t. This fight wasn’t over, and they’d left too many doors open on their end for retribution. Jamie didn’t think Stanislav’s warning about coming after his family was anything but the truth.

  Between Declan Wolcott’s former ties to a United States senator currently under investigation and fighting subpoenas, and the quiet cold war the MDF had going on with sections of the CIA, the risk of their identities being revealed had grown. Politicians of every sort always looked for dirt on their fellow candidates. With his father the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential candidate nomination, Jamie had a feeling that everything his team had done in his family’s name over the past year would come back to haunt them.

  I can’t worry about that right now, Jamie thought to himself as the debrief continued.

  Thinking about the what-ifs would come later, when he had time and a clearer mind to take apart the big picture and figure out the details of what could possibly come next.

  In the end, the initial debrief finished up around 1030, with everyone ordered to make their way to Medical, where Gracie and her team were waiting to receive them.

  “Not you, Brannigan. We’re not done yet,” Nazari said as the team got ready to leave.

  Jamie caught Kyle’s eye from across the table, unsurprised to see the stubborn look on his face. Jamie had an idea what the director wanted to talk to Kyle about.

  “Sir,” Jamie began.

  Nazari didn’t let him protest any further than that. “This doesn’t concern you right now, Callahan. You’ll be officially informed of the issue later.”

  “Tell my family I’ll see them soon,” Kyle said as he sat back down.

  Jamie nodded before reluctantly leaving the room, the door sliding shut behind him. The rest of the team milled about in the hallway, waiting for him to appear.

  “Think it’s about him killing Cillian?” Madison asked in a low voice.

  “Of course it’s about that asshole,” Katie muttered, rubbing at her temples.

  “Let’s get to Medical,” Jamie said, already walking toward the elevator. “Katie, you’re heading home after you get checked out. The rest of us will divvy up watch duty for Alexei and Sean.”

  “Like fuck I’m going home.”

  Jamie looked over his shoulder at her, meeting her exhausted, affronted gaze. “You’re going home because Matthew will be there.”

  She blinked at him in surprise, nearly missing a step. Annabelle bumped into her and mur
mured a quiet apology.

  “Did you call him?” Katie asked.

  “After I called my father I called Matthew. We’ll keep watch here, Katie. Matthew will keep watch with you,” Jamie said, not taking his eyes off her.

  He knew she wouldn’t be able to talk about what she’d done to those children at his request with the MDF psychologists. But she could talk about it with the team, and she could talk about it with Matthew, if that’s what she wanted.

  Katie made a face at him before rolling her eyes and giving in with grace. Either she was too tired to protest more than that, or she finally believed Jamie knew just what the hell he was doing.

  Probably the former. Like any good NCO, Katie believed she knew best, and Jamie was never going to argue otherwise.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve still got a job to do.”

  Jamie’s practice was to never leave a fellow teammate alone in Medical if at all possible. It didn’t matter that Alexei’s and Sean’s families were here to keep them company. Alpha Team took care of its own.

  “You ignored a direct order, Brannigan.”

  Kyle bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood, the slight sting gone in an instant. After a moment, he swallowed the metallic tang of it, refusing to look away from the director. “If that’s what you want to call it, sir.”

  At this point, Kyle had been awake for over sixty hours. The stress of the last two days in particular had left him in a confrontational mood he was only just now coming off of. He was not going to apologize for blowing Cillian up into a hundred million pieces. As far as he was concerned, the fucker didn’t nearly get what he deserved, but Kyle had been under a time crunch.

  Nazari leaned back in his seat, expression vaguely irritated. “We needed him alive.”

  And I wanted him dead, Kyle thought. “Sorry, sir.”

  Kyle knew he didn’t sound sorry at fucking all, but he didn’t care. Judging by the way Nazari and Stirling stared at him, they recognized the insubordinate tone for what it was.

  A glaring fuck you.

  “We have official recordings of you ignoring Stirling’s order about a mission-critical objective. That isn’t something we’re going to just let slide.”

  Kyle dug his fingers into his thighs. “Permission to speak, sir?”

  Stirling waved her hand at him. “Let’s hear it, Brannigan.”

  “What’s the punishment? Lay it on me, put it in my jacket, I don’t care. Right now, I want to get to Medical and see how Dvorkin is doing. So can we cut to the chase, sir? Ma’am?”

  If he was still with Strike Force, Kyle would never even dream of speaking like this to his superior officer. But he was no longer only a special forces operative, he was a metahuman. That, right there, gave him a level of security he wouldn’t otherwise have. Nazari and Stirling knew that, because the punishment was something that might have worried Kyle in the past, but right now? It didn’t bother him at all.

  “An official Letter of Counseling is going into your jacket regarding this incident,” Nazari told him.

  That was a few steps down from an official reprimand. Under any other circumstances, Kyle wouldn’t be proud about receiving it, but he considered this one a badge of honor.

  “Yes, sir,” he said in a clipped voice. “Permission to leave?”

  Nazari huffed out an irritated sigh. “Dismissed, Brannigan.”

  Kyle stood up, saluted the director and deputy director, then turned smartly on his heels and walked out of the conference room. He didn’t run, despite how badly he wanted to get over to Medical. Too bad he didn’t have Tessa’s teleportation power.

  No one had waited for him out in the hallway, not that he thought they would. Even Kyle hadn’t known how long the director would keep him behind. Now that he was free of all immediate obligations, Kyle didn’t waste any time getting over to Medical. He wasn’t in any mood to be poked and prodded by Gracie’s staff. With his rapid healing, any wounds that might have been a problem would’ve been long healed by now. He didn’t need a checkup. All Kyle wanted to do was see his brother.

  Stepping into an elevator on the ground floor of Medical, he said, “Ceres, location of Staff Sergeant Dvorkin.”

  “Level 10, East Wing,” the AI said.

  Kyle grimaced. It wasn’t surprising that Alexei was in the ICU, but it left him anxious and twitchy in a way that felt odd to him. Kyle could keep still and quiet for hours on end behind the scope of his rifle, but family always did throw him off his game.

  The private room Ceres directed him to was one of the larger rooms, with a window that overlooked the courtyard between Medical and Building Two, the area of the base that held the MDF’s R&D labs. The polarized plas-glass windows were shaded dark while the lights were dimmed to their lowest settings.

  Kyle paused in the doorway, hovering on the outskirts of the family circle keeping silent vigil around the biobed Alexei slept in. Kyle knew slept wasn’t the right word, because he was fairly certain Alexei was in a state of medically drugged unconsciousness.

  Alexei looked washed out, even in the dark. The newly regrown skin on his right arm was a shiny pink color, courtesy of a regen regime. His chest and face were clear of bruises, broken fingers whole again. His left leg was elevated and encased in a portable regen device from the knee on down, proof that while Alexei may have been tanked, his healing wasn’t finished. A nasal catheter was hooked under Alexei’s nose, but he wasn’t intubated, while several IVs piggybacked into the catheters inserted into the back of both hands. Antibiotics and other fluids, Kyle presumed.

  At the moment, the deep, even breathing coming from Alexei’s biobed sounded like music to Kyle’s ears.

  “I thought I’d find you up here.”

  Kyle looked off to his left as Gracie approached him, tablet tucked under one arm, white coat unbuttoned over her scrubs. “Can you clear me later?”

  “I knew you’d ask that question as well.” Gracie came to a stop beside Kyle before digging into her white coat pocket and coming up with three high-caloric nutrient bars. “Eat these.”

  Kyle took them without argument and tore into one, chewing his way through the dense, cardboard-flavored food item. He took a few steps down the hall, moving out of sight of the doorway. “How is he?”

  Gracie glanced back at the room where Alexei slept. “He’ll be all right.”

  “He’s in ICU.”

  “For observation purposes and to finish out the regen regime. I had to tank him while I operated earlier, and that takes a lot out of a person’s system. I pulled him out early to give his body some rest.”

  Kyle’s fingers twitched on a phantom trigger. Even with Cillian dead, he still wanted to take his anger out on someone. “What happened?”

  Grace’s lips pursed into an angry moue before she smoothed out her expression. “Crush injury to the knee. I had to amputate because the blood supply to his lower leg had been cut off and the tissue was becoming gangrenous. The regrowth process went well overall. The nanites in the portable unit are merely making sure the tissue and bone at the join site receive no rejection. I did what I could with my power to help out with that.”

  Kyle turned his head aside, fighting to keep his emotions under control, but they still broke through. He blinked rapidly, the sudden wetness rising up at the corners of his eyes hard to ignore. The thought of losing Alexei—the anchoring tie to his family—it didn’t bear thinking about. They’d known the risk when they signed up with Strike Force years and years ago, but that risk never seemed so starkly real until now.

  When his brother had almost died.

  Kyle was so, so grateful his family wouldn’t be receiving a folded flag in the near future.

  “He’ll be all right?” Kyle asked gruffly as he scrubbed a hand over his eyes, wiping away the tears.

  Gracie was kind enough to pretend he wasn’t crying in front of her. “I won’t lie. It was touch and go there for a moment, but Alexei pulled through. Right now he needs a lot of rest an
d time with the Psych department. Him and Sean both.”

  Kyle knew no one on the team cared for therapists, but after what Alexei had been through, such care was inevitable. “How’s Sean doing?”

  “Less physical damage than Alexei, but I think a bit more psychological in his case. He’s not talking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gracie shrugged. “Trauma manifests itself in various ways and it’s different for everyone. At the moment, Sean hasn’t found his voice. I’m hoping that, given enough time in a safe environment, the mental block will go away on its own.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” Gracie turned her head to catch Kyle’s eye. “The rest of your team is getting cleared by my people. I’ll give you a couple of hours, but then I want to see you, healing power or no.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kyle murmured.

  She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Alexei will pull through this.”

  It was easier to believe it now that Alexei was back with them, mostly in one piece. Kyle entered the medical room, nodding at his parents as Phaedra jumped off the chair beside them and hurried over to grab Kyle’s hand. She led him back to her spot and waited until he sat down before crawling into his lap.

  “Will he be okay?” she asked quietly, looping her arms around his neck, staring quietly at where Alexei slept on.

  Kyle swallowed around the lump in his throat, the shaky feeling of relief coursing through him making his fingers twitch. “Yeah, solnyshka. He’ll be okay.”

  For the first time in days, Kyle felt like he could breathe again.

  16

  Ain’t No Grave Can Keep Me Under

  Waking up in heaven sounded a lot like waking up at home.

  “<>” Alexei groaned, trying to open his eyes. For some reason, his eyelids felt heavier than usual.

  The explosion of sound made him flinch before someone hissed loudly at everyone to, “<>”

  Quiet settled over him and Alexei took a moment to just breathe as the haziness of drugs pulled at the edge of his mind. He couldn’t remember why that was odd. Someone smoothed a hand through his hair, the callused fingers familiar from all the years his mother had performed that same gesture.