In My Skin

by Shannon McKenna

  Except that the something else was most likely to be Luke, Ivy or Zade.

  She saw security guards posted at the far end of the large lobby, underneath a vaulted ceiling and sky-lit dome. She’d emerged inside of the security perimeter, evidently.

  Lucky. She’d take luck wherever she found it.

  She slipped inside the doors, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The space was packed full of people. Spotlights blazed down over a raised platform, and Hale stood on it, in front of a hanging curtain, his harsh voice blaring into the microphone.

  Ranks of soldiers stood behind the seating, dressed just like she was except that their uniforms fit perfectly. Hale was droning on about how proud he was to be the one to revolutionize the next wave of exploratory research, paving the way for future yada yada.

  She moved forward and took a spot next to a soldier in the back row, a tall black guy. He gave her a swift, penetrating look. The frown of perplexity that appeared on his brow scared the shit out of her. The guy had her number in one single freaking glance. So much for her disguise.

  “Lock in,” he whispered.

  Dani looked up at him, all innocence. “What?”

  “Lock in,” he repeated. “I can’t access your data. I can’t reach you at all.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. “Ah, yeah. That. I’m having connectivity issues.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re fucking nuts,” he hissed. “They catch you out here in service without connectivity, they’ll recondition you right up the ass!”

  “It’s OK,” she whispered. “Hale told me to come out anyway, just to help fill out the audience. He knows about it.”

  The slave soldier’s puzzled frown deepened. “What’s your ID number? I’ll try to boost you in remotely before anyone notices.”

  “Thanks, but I’m authorized. I’m covered. Really. It’s cool.”

  His gaze dropped to the symbol on her neck, and she pivoted swiftly away to hide it. She gave him a grateful smile and slithered back behind the line of uniformed soldiers. Some swiveled their heads to follow her progress.

  Whoa. Close call. Nice of him to try to help, though. Kindness was a problem she hadn’t anticipated.

  “…ladies and gentlemen, I present two Midland Rebels from the flagship Braxton study group!” Hale paused for effect. “And a live and fully functional Manticore operative!”

  The curtains parted behind him, and the murmur of the crowd swelled as the prisoners were revealed.

  Zade and Luke stood rigidly, naked to the waist and held against a white wall with thick black straps across their chests to keep them vertical. Ivy was slumped in a big chair, her skinny shoulders and spine painfully obvious, wires coming out of the ports and shaved patches of her scalp.

  Dani took her place at the other end of the line. This time, the young soldier next to her didn’t notice her at all, just watched as if he was frozen. Except for a twitching muscle in his jaw.

  It suddenly occurred to her what this spectacle meant for the soldiers. The Midland Rebels were legends for these poor guys. A fantasy of escape and freedom, crushed before their eyes. They were watching the public destruction their most secret dream.

  Which was why none of them noticed her edging slowly forward.

  All the way to the front ranks. She couldn’t take her eyes off Luke. The pain in his face burned her inside. She was afraid to breathe. The release code she had overheard Hale say to get Luke into that coffin-like transport container was all she had. That, and her own nerve. Her guts churned. Her heart pounded wildly.

  Hale’s speech blared out of the speakers, drilling into her ears. “…terrible loss to the Obsidian community. Junior Squad Leader Robert Metzer’s leadership potential and dedication was evident at an early age. We are devastated by his loss—but justice will be done. We have captured the operative responsible for Robert Metzer’s death.”

  The smattering of applause grew louder as Hale savored it.

  “Not his first atrocity,” he continued, lowering his voice dramatically. “Both of these rogue agents participated in the Midlands Rebellion, the darkest moment in Obsidian’s history. Thirty-four researchers and administrators died in the massacre and the firestorm that followed.”

  Hale paused for a moment as the crowd’s murmur swelled excitedly.

  “What I am about to do may seem shocking, and may be difficult to watch,” he went on. “But we at Obsidian are accustomed to facing harsh realities and difficult truths. With great power comes great responsibility. Therefore, for the savage crimes committed against Obsidian staff so long ago, and for the murder of Junior Squad Leader Robert Metzer, Obsidian declares that these rogue agents will be put to death. One dies now, the other immediately after interrogation. Their deaths will be swift and painless, because Obsidian always seeks to uphold the highest values of rational civilization…truth, justice and mercy.”

  The fuck it does, you violent asshole. The crap he was spouting was obscene. And in front of a bunch of slave soldiers, too. How could he not choke on his own words?

  Hale’s face was solemn as he stopped in front of Zade, but Dani was just close enough to see the gloating triumph in his eyes and the desperation in Luke’s. Now. She inhaled to scream out Luke’s control code—

  And was jerked backward, a hand clamped over her mouth with savage strength.

  “May God have mercy on your soul!” Hale bawled. “Mustang! Cameo! Stamen!”

  Zade’s eyes rolled up. The tension in his body released.

  He sagged forward against the straps that held him to the wall, head drooping.

  Oh no no no. Dani struggled wildly against the arms that were clamped around her, tears streaming from her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be over just like that. Luke’s beloved brother, slaughtered just for spite. No.

  “Shut up, you dumb bitch or you’ll get us all shredded,” a slave soldier hissed into Dani’s ear. “He’s meat. It’s done. Get your shit together or I’ll flag you myself.”

  Hale turned back to his audience. “We will now administer two injections to the remaining operative,” he boomed out. “The first is a nerve toxin that will dissolve neural connections in the cervical spine. The other will prepare him for interrogation. Afterward, he will be kill coded. D-14, for the sake of your conscience, I hope the gift of your body to science will in some small way atone for your sins.” He gestured to the side of the stage. “I now invite Committee Chairman Oscar Mittwoch and Dr. Sondra Laera of Research and Development to do the honors. Chairman? Doctor? Would you come forward please?”

  After a brief pause, a skinny blonde with a peeled onion hairdo, wearing a little black dress and spike heels sashayed out onto the stage with a brightly lipsticked smile on her face. She lifted a tray with two syringes on it.

  The blonde set down the tray and took a syringe. She gave the other to an older man who’d followed her out.

  The two of them advanced on Luke. Predators circling their prey.

  * * * *

  Kill kill kill kill kill.

  The ASP battle imperative raged unchecked as Luke stared down at Zade’s lifeless body. No breath, no heartbeat. His brother was dead.

  The heat inside him surged. He would rip them to shreds. All of them. Starting with his brother’s murderer and ending with the sadistic assholes enjoying the show.

  The firestorm analog in his mind no longer needed to be stoked. It raged on its own with terrifying force.

  His cyber-connectivity was back. Moments too late to help Zade, but he was going to death-hack the living shit out of every brain here with a cerebral implant. Fuck them up hard.

  He barely heard Hale’s blathering, his mind furiously busy finding and exploiting security weaknesses in every device in his range. Mittwoch and Laera both flanked him now, holding up their needles.

  “I suppose I
should ask if you have any final words, but I’m not about to release you to let you say them,” Mittwoch murmured. “Not until you’re a quadriplegic. Dr. Laera, proceed with the nerve toxin. Let’s get this over with. I find this spectacle distasteful.”

  Laera leaned close so he could smell her acid sweat and stifling perfume, see the red lipstick bleeding through the tiny lines at the edges of her collagen plumped lips and the mascara clumped on her lashes.

  She whispered in his ear, her breath hot against his neck. “I can see how proud you are. How strong. I admire that. You’re a magnificent specimen. I bet I can guess what your last words would be. You’d say, fuck you. So I’ll just imagine you saying it tonight…while I’m touching myself. Bye-bye, D-14.”

  The needle came up, resting against his spine, barely pricking his skin.

  Dani’s voice screamed out something. Three words. He couldn’t hang onto them with his conscious memory, but stun-coded muscle tension suddenly released.

  He exploded into action. Burst out of the thick bands bolted to the wall. Hoisted Sondra Laera up and hurled her across the room. She landed hard, somersaulting, shrieking. Shoes flying, skirt flipped up, showing the black gartered hose on her pale, bony thighs.

  Mittwoch stumbled back, hands up, eyes filled with fear. Luke grabbed him and flung him right into a dense mass of spectators. There was a commotion. Screams, wails.

  His battle yell fused with a piercing electronic scream. His firestorm fueled it like a nuclear furnace, his release code had unleashed it, and now he let it blast through everyone’s cerebral implants, far more powerful than the scream that broke his blocked memories open the night before. Raw fury unleashed.

  A monumental electronic fuck you.

  Pandemonium. Everyone screaming, staggering. Buckling, falling to their knees. Blood streaming from noses, ears. Committee members and slave soldiers alike. Convulsing, jittering and writhing on the ground.

  A female slave soldier was running straight at him. His body snapped into instant defensive motion.

  “Luke!” she yelled. Dani. That was her, wearing a slave soldier uniform.

  He reeled, barely stopping a kick that would have snapped her neck. “Dani!” he rasped, stumbling. “I almost killed you!”

  She barreled into him, clutching him. Soaked with sweat, vibrating with emotion. “But you didn’t. Let’s get the hell out of—”

  Hale bellowed something he couldn’t make out, and then—

  Crack. Grunts, gasps…a snarl of rage. Luke spun around. Zade?

  Yeah. Zade. Alive, on his feet and fighting with Hale. Zade was trying desperately to keep that motherfucker from shouting out the rest of Luke’s kill code. Zade was on top right now, his hand in Hale’s screaming mouth, trying to break Hale’s jaw.

  Somehow, Hale bit down hard. Blood poured down Zade’s arm as he dragged up Hale’s head, pulling against those teeth—

  And smashed his head down onto the hard tiles. Again…again…again.

  Zade hunched over Hale for a bare second, then staggered to his feet, cradling his bloody, mangled hand. Eyes wild. “Luke?” he asked. “You OK?”

  Luke gasped for breath. “Dude. The fuck?”

  “Later,” Zade said, scanning the place.

  Chaos. A female committee member in a silky dress thudded to her knees and vomited, then collapsed on the floor at their feet, shuddering and foaming at the mouth.

  Slave soldiers staggered upright. Two, then a third. A fourth. Tough bastards, even with blood streaming from their noses, their ears. One took aim at Luke, but stopped when his gun jammed. Luke’s electronic scream had shorted out their weapons interfaces.

  A fifth joined them, wiping blood from his eyes. They flung the rifles away. Pulled out stun batons, clubs and knives. Advancing.

  He shoved Dani behind him. “Get Ivy. We got this.”

  * * * *

  Almost dark. Asa hadn’t put on the infrared specs yet. He was the only one who needed them, since the others had their eye implants. It was pure chance that he heard the faint rattle of sliding stone, the soft thud. He turned to look behind him.

  Hannah was down. Sprawled on the rocks. What the hell …?

  He ran back to her and pulled down the infrared goggles, peering farther into the gloom. Spotted Sisko and Zoe not far away. Both of them also flat on the ground.

  He kneeled next to Hannah. Blood streamed from her nose. She was shaking violently, back arched, eyes rolled back.

  “Hannah!” he called. “Hannah? Wake up! Talk to me!”

  She didn’t hear him. Couldn’t see him. He put his fingers to her throat. Her pulse was weak, erratic. Holy shit. What was this?

  He grabbed the comm device Sisko had given him. “Brenner! Simone! Come in, Brenner! Brenner! I got a situation here!”

  There was a burst of static, and a long pause. Simone’s voice, tight and tense.

  “Simone here. Brenner’s down. Bleeding from his ears. Don’t know why.”

  “They’re all down!” he said.

  “Got it. I’ll take the chopper to location two, as agreed and set down there.”

  Still a novice pilot, but she was all they had. “You’ve got my location on the monitor?”

  “Yes. I’ll get to you as soon as possible. Brenner’s starting to move again. Thank God.”

  Sisko rolled with difficulty onto his back, coughing. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

  Zoe was stirring, too. Struggling to sit upright, every movement slow and faltering.

  “What just happened?” Asa demanded.

  Sisko put his hand to his head, wincing. “Implants,” he said. “Somebody pulsed a bad freq through our implants. Real brain-fucker.”

  Asa looked down at Hannah. Not moving. Still out of it. “She’s not waking up,” he said. “She’s not moving at all.”

  “It was worse for her,” Sisko said softly. “She has more hardware in her skull than the rest of us.”

  Something inside Asa went into free fall. “Is she…will she …” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t put it into words.

  “Don’t know,” Sisko said.

  Zoe crawled over to them, coughing out dust. “Oh, no,” she croaked. “Hannah?”

  Asa put his fingers to her throat again. “Her pulse is still weak,” he said.

  Zoe wiped blood from her mouth and chin with her sleeve and put both hands on either side of Hannah’s head. She closed her eyes.

  The utter silence that followed freaked Asa out. “Hey,” he snarled. “Not now. That’s not going to help her. What’s the matter with you people?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Asa. Let her do her thing.”

  The hard note in Sisko’s voice was unmistakable. Asa shut up.

  Agonizing seconds ticked by. Pulling him, one after the other, into a future he didn’t want to face. One where he’d found his little sister after all those empty years, and then lost her again, Whoosh, gone.

  After what seemed like forever, Zoe let out a long and ragged sigh. “OK.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded. “She hasn’t moved!”

  “She’ll be OK,” Zoe said. “Hannah’s tough. There was damage, but she’ll pull through. But she won’t be conscious for a while. We have to get her somewhere safe.”

  Asa held Hannah’s limp hand as he looked around the dark, rocky canyon. “Meaning out of here.”

  “Ya think? Yeah, take her back to the helicopter,” Sisko said. “You too, Zoe. If this mission tanks, get the hell out. And get Hannah and Zoe and Simone and Brenner to safety.”

  “I’m going on with you,” Zoe insisted.

  “No. Healing exhausts you,” Sisko said. “And you got burned by the bad freq. Don’t be an idiot.” Sisko heaved himself to his feet. Then he stumbled, falling heavily to his knees again.

  “You’re both idiots,
” Asa growled. “You can barely walk.”

  Zoe looked at him. It occurred to him that this was the first time they’d made eye contact when she didn’t have that guarded, hostile look.

  “We can’t just abandon them,” she said softly.

  Asa sighed and got to his feet. “I’m on it,” he said grimly. “I’ll find the canyon entrance. I’ll keep you posted on the comm. You two get Hannah back to the chopper.”

  “But you’re alone,” Sisko said. “I can’t let you—”

  “Nobody ‘lets’ me do anything. You’re wasting time. Zoe can’t help Hannah back to the chopper alone. Get moving. Go!”

  “Yeah.” Sisko looked miserable. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  “Do that,” Asa barked. “Now move!”

  He waited until Zoe and Sisko lifted Hannah together and set off back the way they came. Both still staggering themselves. What a clusterfuck.

  He put on the infrared specs and slunk onward through the scrubby cover of the trees. Trying not to see Hannah’s deathly pale face in his mind’s eye.

  Typical of the Midlander crowd to pick the middle of a deadly dangerous rescue extraction to demonstrate to him the physical limitations of their invincible freak squad. Leaving him to cover for them when their heads were monumentally messed up.

  While they were his wounded baby sister’s only protection.

  Chapter 29

  Just like old times.

  He’d died and gone to combat heaven. His brother, fighting with him back to back. Knowing each other’s thoughts, moving like a single being. The way they fought on the streets before Braxton bagged them. The way they fought on rebellion day.

  No time to think or reminisce. Kick and block, punch and twist, lunge and spin. Luke grabbed a baton before it bashed in Zade’s head, wrenched it away and crushed someone’s throat with it all in the same move. Zade blocked kicks and punches and knife thrusts, blood spraying from his bitten hand. A slave soldier leaped on Luke’s back, zapped him with a stun baton and brought him to his knees. Zade charged him from the side, breaking the baton zapper’s neck with a vicious twist as they hit the ground together.