by S A Gardner
Wondered what pin dropped and tipped them to me? Better surveillance of the perimeters than Ed reported? Had we been on camera all the time? If so, why wait until Damian—oh, no! Had they already captured his men, used them to lure him away? Was that why he hadn’t come back?
My heart tried to pummel through my ribs, the urge to ask them what they’d done to him bursting it.
Yeah. Alert them to his presence if he is still free.
Had to go with the assumption that a sentry with night-vision goggles was vigilant, had seen me in a regular sweep after Damian left. Probably when my body heat shot through the stratosphere. Yes, yes. Keep thinking that. So where was Damian now, and why were they treating me so well?
We were inside the plant now, passing through inner security, the layout exactly as in Ed’s intel—and one question was answered. The mollycoddling. It was their boss’s orders.
Jake’s.
Air disappeared. The floor. The world followed. Moist heat burst behind my eyes, inside me skull, a thousand screeching bats flapped in my ears, my chest…
God—it’s starting. The agent. It’s been infective all along. I’m starting to hallucinate. Jake. My worst nightmare, my greatest regret—my indelible pain. The man I loved, the man who loved me—so much he went to hell for it. The man I sent to hell.
Like with Matt, like Ayesha and all the others who’d been stricken, the hallucinogen must be accessing my trauma, caging me in a tunnel-vision world with mutilating memories made flesh. So convincing—and oh, so real…
My heart stampeded, thoughts screeched—but—but—wait a sec—I still had thoughts—could still think. Recognized where and what and who, not oblivious to place, circumstance and self, like the others had been. Drained, depleted, my aggression wiped, resistance spent—not manic-high on simulated strength and artificial stamina. This wasn’t the agent!
What did it mean? That it was real—this was him?
Jake?
It—it was him—had been him all along—I’d sensed it, couldn’t credit it—and it had been him. Jake…
Tall, beautiful and, oh God, alive!
But I killed you!
Pain burst in my knees, sent bright crimson sparks into my vision. Like that time I’d watched Matt teetering on the ledge, I fell on them. Least I could do. Anyone with an ounce of feeling, confronted by the ex-lover they’d murdered, would have fainted.
He walked toward me now, slow, graceful, radiating authority, power. How? How? I’d killed him, shot him right in his carotid, pumped enough phenothiazine into him to kill three men. I’d seen him sag to his knees, flushed, trembling, losing control of his every muscle. I’d seem him gasping, known his heart was firing, erratic, ineffective. I hadn’t been able to stick around and see it stop. I’d been certain it would in a minute.
How hadn’t it? How had he survived? He hadn’t been faking it. I hadn’t missed—hadn’t used the wrong thing. I was certain!
He stood above me now, the heavenly color of his eyes bright, like the last gaze we’d exchanged as he breathed his last breaths, his gaze filling with reproach, disappointment and, oh God—love…So much love…
They hadn’t been his last breaths. But his eyes were still filled with the same emotions.
Please stop. Don’t look at me as if you missed me, as if you love me. Not after I killed you.
The horror of it was I’d missed him, too. The Jake I loved. The man, not the monster. Looking up into his incandescent bronze beauty, the sheer poetry of his every feature and line, he bordered on angel. An angel of forgiveness, extending his soothing hand to me, raising me from my abject misery.
I clung to his hand, surged up.
And I hugged him.
And he was real. Solid, warm, alive. His masculine scent, his heat, his aura, the first ever to mingle with mine in passion, flooded me.Oh, Jake—why did it have to be this way?
He stiffened in my frantic hug, like in Russia, the scene replaying. Jake resurrected, shocked, elated, overwhelmed. This time his rigidity dissolved, his arms lifted around me, one hand pressing my head over his steady beating heart.
“Ah, Cali, you astound me. As usual.” His tone lanced me. I hugged him tighter.
Lord, anytime now I’d be whimpering, Sorry I killed you!
A gentle, persuasive hand beneath my chin coaxed my head up. I let it, kept my eyes closed. That hand joined the other, brushing aside my bangs, teasing my lids open. I hiccuped on a stab of anguish as his eyes bore into me up close. His sensuous lips spread, his hands dropped to mine. He tugged me.
“Come.”
I registered everything on the way to what turned out to be his quarters, quite the lavish setup for the utilitarian place. He’d always liked his creature comforts. Until he’d been kidnapped and tortured literally out of his mind. This Jake was the product of irreparable mental and psychological damage. Fatal damage. My Jake hadn’t survived the abuse. A new persona had risen from his ashes. This Jake. Damian believed this Jake had been the real Jake all the time, just harnessed by an easy life, put in stasis by lack of incentive. I didn’t know anymore.
He followed my eyes around the room, towed me to a burgundy leather couch, a gentle push lowering me down on it. “Noticing my foibles?” He chuckled, his elegant British accent back in full force. “I admit, I have developed a dependence on good interior decoration since my days in the dungeons.”
He sat down beside me. I feasted on his sight. Whatever he was, he’d been my lover. I was still alive because he felt something for me still. And I was so sorry I’d killed him. It didn’t matter that I’d been right to. I nestled into him again.
He gasped this time before his arms went around me. “Ah, Cali. I thought the first hug was shock. But I should give up trying to anticipate you. You never cease to exceed all my expectations when everyone else falls short. You’re the only one who ever challenged and satisfied my jaded mind. Is it any wonder I loved you that long? Even after you killed me?”
I jerked away. He followed, his hands soothing down my back. I buried my face in my hands. Just stop.
He sighed, stood up, walked away, came back in minutes with hot drinks. I reached for the proffered cup, squinted at it. Exquisite Limoge china, golden trim and initials. A fist closed inside my chest. CJ. He’d had it monogrammed. To us, I knew it. My eyes stung. Something told me he remembered how I liked my tea. I gulped it, my eyes filled. Earl Grey, hot, sweet. Very. Yup. He did.
“You could have no concept of how I missed you, Cali.” He sat down, body language at once deliberate and eager, a superior being entertaining the one guest he deemed worth admitting into his sanctum. “Of course I forgive you for killing me. I totally understand you thought it had to be done. In fact, I admire you for it beyond words. I of all people understand what it means to do anything, no matter how crippling, because it has to be done.”
I put down my tea, found my voice. “Is this how you rationalize killing thousands? It has to be done?”
One bronze eyebrow rose, blue flames flaring in his eyes. Careful. Don’t antagonize him. You’ve never been at his mercy before. He only smiled, that elusive, serene smile. “Hundreds of thousands. Millions. But it will bring war on the planet to an end. For a long time, at least, before the cycle restarts.”
“You still think if you scare people enough they’ll stop fighting each other, unite against a common, unseen enemy?”
“It has always been the case. After disasters, people come together. I stand by my original plan to end war by annihilating all sides. My weapons—you do know about those, they’re why you are here, after all—are designed to be lethal yet noninfective, to wipe out only the exact populations I target—the chronic, debilitating septic foci of the world—so that the rest of humanity, scared and chastened, can start anew.”
I opened my mouth to say we’d gone over that before. He pressed on. “But it’s far more complicated than that. This is my bid to bring the most diabolical of all human inventions to an end—t
he war industry. You know that no one is trying to or will ever try to stop it. It’s just too profitable for everyone. That’s why conflicts are so chronic. The warmongers aren’t only the politicians, the military, the business conglomerates or the weapons’ makers and dealers. Their lower echelons spread down to the common, upstanding citizen on every street.
“Everyone needs to keep solvent and in business. Everybody has a vested interest in keeping wars alive, everyone in media, real estate, food industry, technology, law, finance, medicine and everything in between. To keep the current markets open and to open new ones, they need to create needs. Everyone needs lawless arenas to test diseases, ideologies, religions, gods, extremism, addictions and hatreds, to create hunger and conflict and injustice, then spread them. It’s what makes their trades and existence indispensable. I’ll deprive them of their playgrounds, exterminate all their puppets, their clientele and pushers—their mutations. It will take something even more atrocious than all they do to put an end to it, something that’ll breach every fortress, make no discrimination and scare everyone equally.”
And the scary thing was, he made sense. Gruesome, undeniable sense.
I’d felt that empathy with his cause and methods before. It had scared me shitless then, too. He’d sensed that potential in me, that more-than-my-share-of-extremism ingredient. He’d been confident he’d bring it to the fore, sway me to his cause. He’d had a right to think it. I did feel the tug. After years of dwelling amid disease, destitution and depravity, I sometimes felt the need to strike out at everything and everyone, the causes, the facilitators, even the victims, both the cowering ones and those who hit back in all the wrong places, perpetrating the atrocities and the madness.
Good news was—I’d never do it. Even if I sometimes played judge and executioner, I had no desire to play God.
So, Jake’s plans had expanded. No place, no one was exempt. But now he had the time and the upper hand, he was again trying to convert me to his way of thinking. I should let him try. It was my best weapon, his obsession with me.
Give him a good argument, stimulate him, please him. You know just how. Oh God, yes, I did.
I raised to him a gaze injected with all my heartache. “I can—I do condone annihilating the warmongers. But why kill their victims? Why not give them a second chance? Maybe they won’t turn out to be future oppressors as you stipulate. Maybe once better markets open they’ll rush to them.”
His gaze was all tolerance. “This remains your one flaw, Cali. You choose to be blind where so-called innocents are concerned. War, and profit, even basic self-interest, leave no innocents, only mutilated monsters, addicted wretches or eternal self-serving cowards, who aren’t only beyond redemption but refuse it at any cost.
“My time in medicine, on front lines, then in the circles of high-powered politics and finance, taught me that. You know I once was a bleeding heart, risking my life to help the ‘helpless.’ But being among the ‘victims’ made me see them for what they are. Previous and future aggressors. The weak who both breed monsters, and who make it possible for the present ones to prosper. I heard only sickness from mothers’ lips, fostering violence and preaching extermination. Survive so you can kill and torture the enemy’s people. As for the rest, the normal people in the modern world, in their pursuit of comfort and safety, they are the greed and common evil that perpetuates war. That’s why anyone touched by war has to be eradicated. They’re all diseased beyond cure.”
“But this leaves no one. We’re all touched by war one way or another. Are you planning to end all life on the planet?”
“As if that would be a tragedy.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry, it won’t be as radical as that. My targets are extensive, but what’s a few hundred million in a planet of over seven billion? There will also be more surgical strikes. My list is long. Of course my financiers believe I’m ridding them of their competition. Until it’s their turn.”
Wow. And the wow-worthy part was I knew he could actually do it. Do anything his nihilistic mind could conjure up.
Okay, another try. “Why not start with surgical strikes? Get rid of the masterminds? See how things improve with them gone? Leave those who are innocent today alone.”
“I know why it is so painful for you, Cali. You were always so prone to letting your heart rule your head. I love that about you. But then, who am I to take you to task over it? I let you rule my priorities, too.” His hand brushed my cheek.
I shuddered.
Something flitted in his eyes. He sighed. “I’m only putting into effect the part of the Hippocratic oath that you’ve chosen as a way of life. I am ‘effecting prevention, for prevention is better than the cure.’ You’re as radical as I am, Cali, but you still have that line you won’t cross. And it’s because of that line that we stand on opposite sides, when we should be hand in hand. You know that eliminating the festering ulcers of civil, religious and ethnic wars from the face of the earth is the only humane thing to do. And I—all I want is you—with me.”
I opened my mouth and his hand caressed it shut. “You don’t have to be a part of what I do and I won’t interfere in what you have to do, even if it’s against my work. But on the personal level, away from the mission each of us has embraced, man to woman, can’t you accept that we were made for each other?”
Was this my cue to laugh? Or cry?
If I accepted too easily he’d see through it. And if I told him what I really thought, it wouldn’t help any. Better play the resistant-wavering part to the hilt.
“Jake…” I sobbed for good measure. And it wasn’t faked at all. “The years without you, thinking you were dead, the changes we both underwent—the heartaches and uncertainties and anger and if-onlys—I don’t know anything anymore….”
He smoothed my hair, passion and sympathy blazing on his unique face. “I understand, especially when Damian has done everything he can to further confuse you. Too bad I couldn’t put him in his place, couldn’t play my hand, earlier. But how I wanted to, to let you know Damian is one of my lackeys.”
What?
A rap on the door took him from me, left me hanging. His men. Speaking Spanish. Said everything was ready. What was? The strike? And just what the hell had he meant? Damian, his lackey? Through his alleged control of PACT? Or did he mean something else? Something more direct? More awful? And where was Damian? What could have happened? I hadn’t felt any disturbance. Had he discovered my capture and was he now canceling the plant’s invasion, changing tactics toward saving me? What was going on?
Ask Jake. He’d tell you. He loves to talk to you. To brag. Or did he only want me to think so? Giving me only what he wanted to give, reading me, playing me at the game I presumed to play on him? With a mind as convoluted as his, anything, even coming back from the dead, was possible.
And here he came, the ultimate maze. A thousand questions collided in my mind. The agent, the biomatrix, what he’d done, where he’d been, what he’d meant. What was that in his hand?
As if I didn’t know. A syringe. No guesses whom it was for. Or why he was coming back with his men flanking him. Uh-oh.
Eight. Dammit. He valued me highly. He murmured to them, “Suavemente.”
I got that. Gently. Wondered what he’d say when I crushed a couple of larynxes, jumped him and used him as shield.
“Don’t, Cali.”
He knew, huh? Was there no surprising him?
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You should know I’m just programmed to fight, as long as I can. Nothing to do with you, you understand?”
“I do.” He nodded, so gently. “Your need to be in control rivals mine. I would have left you conscious if I could.”
“That’s what you have here? A sedative?”
Translucent azure turning dense cobalt. “Can you suspect me of using anything worse on you? You still doubt the extent of my emotions for you?”
Oh, spare me!
“But I can see you intend to fight. And I
know how lethal you can be, and are.” He said that with ultimate pride. Jeez. What was it about us violent, erratic women that appealed to these twisted men? “If you start crushing windpipes and cracking skulls, these vermin might disregard my orders, panic. They might hurt you. I can’t let that happen.”
He snapped his fingers, gave orders in Spanish. In a minute a man ran in with my disaster bag. I watched Jake sort through my hidden-in-plain-sight arsenal. He was probably the only one who could fathom what each item was for, who’d probably find more diabolical uses for each one, far more lethal combinations.
He picked the components of a dart gun, twirled them in his hands. Virtuoso hands. They’d initiated me into womanhood, into saving lives, performed miracles, snatching hundreds of lives from massive disability or death. Images shifted from memories to conjectures. Saw them performing the dark magic that brought the biomatrix into existence, the insidious killers that confounded and horrified first, turned the very victims into the ultimate threat. Had he known who my friends were when he’d had his men infect them? How could he have? How did he do it? Why?
Why all of it? Why couldn’t it be different? Such massive potential, warped, wasted—such vast intellect…. Why had it survived when his soul had been consumed?
Ponder the unfairness of fate and alternative courses of history later. Act now. He’d given orders not to hurt me, at least not to shoot me point-blank. My only chance. Had to take it. Would think about ticking him off later.
I hurled my saucer at the closest thug, catching him in the eye. His snapped into a protective ball and I charged him, using his huge body to ram two others off their feet. I jumped on the couch, springing off it to launch at the next closest, catching him in the throat with a flying yoko tobi geri. He dropped. I landed on the next, spinning him around, using him for shield, anchor and pivot, swinging, ramming the next two in the groin. The others roared, charged, the element of surprise and niceness depleted. If they caught me, it was over. I somersaulted behind the couch—had to reach hidden weapons…Uhh…