Breaker's Choice
Page 1
Contents
BREAKER'S CHOICE
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Book Alert!
PART ONE
CHAPTER ZERO
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PART FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Also by S. T. Moon
BREAKER'S CHOICE
Special Agents, Assassins, and Breakers: Book 2
A Not So Romantic Suspense Thriller
S. T. Moon
Copyright © 2018 S. T. Moon
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my family and friends. Thank you for your support and patience. Thank you for not thinking all the time spent in my basement writing office is crazy.
And to all the readers who enjoy these words.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my editor, Ellen Campbell for her patience, brutal honesty, and instruction. Any errors in the final version are mine.
I would also like to thank the artists at Rocking Book Covers.
Coming next…
Push Back: (A Guerrilla War between Utopia and Dystopia)
PART ONE
CHAPTER ZERO
Fixer
Irene Vail pulled back the silencer-equipped pistol. “All I want is a nice boy who isn’t afraid of me.”
The man on his knees wept in confusion. “What?”
Irene smiled. “But that’s not why your friends had to die. It’s not the reason I’m doing this. Human trafficking is illegal. They should have thought about that before they brought those girls to this little hideout.”
“I just came with a friend. Never heard of this place before last night.” He vomited into his mouth. One hand flew to his lips to hold it in, the other supported his weight where he kneeled, bloody and broken from head to toe.
“Swallow it,” Irene said. The barrel of her gun never wavered.
The man choked, sobbed, swallowed. His bloodshot eyes glared. Irene understood the humiliation he felt.
She was just a slip of a thing, tall but lean. All hair and boobs in this outfit. He’d been ready to give it to her good—must’ve thought she was some kind of porno bonus prize.
“Get a hold of yourself,” she said, then ran her tongue along the inside of her parted lips. Her eyes were blue fire, ice, and judgment.
“Okay. I’m sorry. Can I leave? Just go and never come back? I won’t report this. Please let me go.”
“No.”
“You’re going to kill me!”
“As soon as I reload.”
His eyes widened. He struggled to his feet as she ejected the empty, slammed in a new magazine, and racked the slide again.
“You little bitch!” He lunged at her, reaching for her throat with both hands.
She aimed. Fired. Stepped back as he fell on his face with a hole in the middle of his forehead. Blood flowed over poker chips, broken bottles, and pieces of bullet-blasted sheetrock. She checked the guards to be sure they weren’t anyone she’d known. Not that she’d regret killing them if she had known them. He’d be... disappointed they hadn’t done the right thing.
“My high heels are going to leave tracks in this blood.” She pushed something away with the toe of one shoe, holstered her pistol at the small of her back and pulled her thigh-length coat closed. The belt snugged against her slim waist when she tightened it. “I’m going to have to burn the place. Which means I have to put all these helpless sheep into the wild.”
The east side of the enormous room opened to a balcony with a glorious panorama of mountain peaks and moonlight. The opposite side was a maze of hallways.
The first door was locked. She looked through the window and saw several young women curled up like kittens. I should feel something for them, she thought.
The next room was the same. A few were empty. The young men, for the most part, kept to their own bunks. Apparently, they didn’t need the comfort of their fellow sex-trafficking victims.
She found the oldest of them, a young man old enough to drink, and banged on his door. “Wake up or die.”
He opened his eyes but otherwise didn’t react. Big and muscular as he was, his life was about survival and suspicion. Irene had a feeling this would be more difficult than she’d hoped.
“I know you’re awake. Come to the door. This entire complex is about to burn to the ground.”
The young man slid off the bed and approached the small window, eyes full of wonder. “You’re a fixer.”
She ignored him. “How the hell did you wind up in a place like this? Didn’t you fight back?”
“You ever been a slave?”
She didn’t answer.
“Go away. I don’t like this game,” he said. “No one would send a fixer here. Can’t be fixed. No way to make this place right.”
Irene unlocked the door and threw him a ring of security chips. He didn’t take the bait. She stopped caring.
“I was raised to this. Groomed for it. I don’t know any other life,” he said.
Memories of her own childhood roared like a forest fire in the distance. “We’re not so different,” she murmured. “Except I was also trained to be a serial killer.”
The well-stocked bar boasted the strongest spirits she’d seen in years. The gas stove was still on: the untouchable bastards had been eating off the backs of their conquests. She opened the gas nozzles, tipped over racks of liquor, and flicked a match into the middle of it before returning to the senior sex slave’s cell.
He hadn’t bothered to get dressed.
“I’m leaving. Everyone’s going to die unless you do something,” she said.
“I don’t care about the monsters who made this place.”
“I’m not talking about the monsters. They’re already dead. Good luck.” She was out of time. “You never saw me. If you want to get the other boys and girls out of here before the fire spreads, find the master key on that ring and open them all at once.”
CHAPTER ONE
The End of Victoria’s Suspension
“I don’t believe in happy endings or easy beginnings,” Victoria said.
Breaker contemplated the clouds above them, leaning back with his hands behind his head. “Then what’s this?”
“Something in between.” She rolled onto him, still amazed by the density of his leanly muscled torso even after a year of being together.
“Are we talking about in between?” he asked, staring into her eyes.
She liked the way his voice changed—the way she knew he was getting turned on. His hips pushed up slightly. She rocked against him. They were both wearing heavy canvas pants, nothing so sleek as what she knew from her life on the grid. “I can barely feel you through these barbaric garments.”
“Take them off,” he said.
“Mmm. No.”
“You’re going to tease me all day, aren’t you?”
She yanked up his shirt and spent two minutes kissing her way down his abs, stopping at his belt. Confident she’d driven him out of his head with desire, she raised up abruptly and swatted him on the side of his squirming ass. “Time to work, stud. Living off the grid takes effort.”
“We’re not on a schedule. No boss to answer to.” He pulled her back down.
“Good point,” she said, talking as she kissed him. “But our dinner isn’t going to catch itself and your girl likes to eat.”
“My girl should learn to fish.”
“I’d rather watch you and think naughty thoughts,” she said.
“I guess that’s okay.”
They went down to the river where he put on wading boots and started fly fishing. Victoria Mayer, head of the Northwest Regional Security Office for 6Corps, thought about her suspension and rumors of a merger between her company and Red-C. The possibility scared her nearly as much as the Death Angel Project that nearly killed the man she loved. Nothing of the incident had made the news. Not even with gunships blowing apart a busy downtown street.
Her world had changed. The grid wasn’t utopia. Off-grid wasn’t the poisonous wasteland she’d been taught it was since she was a child. Dangerous? Sure. What wasn’t?
The place made for hard living and hungry times. The thought of having a baby out here and raising a family made her sick to her stomach. Not that she wanted a family. Not even with Breaker.
He caught a brace of fish. When he cast the line it seemed the little swimmers came straight to him, practically jumping on the shore without bothering to get hooked and yanked out of the water. Her efforts had been, well, comical and frustrating.
“Dinner isn’t exactly served, but we’re getting there,” Breaker said, coming out of the water toward her like a vision from a dream.
She jumped to her feet. “Race you to the cabin!”
“No fair!” He chased her, still wearing the waders and carrying a string of fish.
It was easy to forget what she had to go back to next week. Maybe I should get suspended more often.
* * *
In the morning, Victoria and Breaker patrolled for the feral Death Angel, ranging down from their cabin overlooking the mountain valley.
“It’s one of the first Death Angels,” Breaker said. “Maybe even the original prototype.”
“I hate the sound of it. To be completely honest, I hope we never see it—not even from a distance,” Victoria said.
Breaker looked natural carrying the old hunting rifle. She’d noticed it before. On a mission, especially on the grid, he carried weapons like a tactical operator. Off the grid, he was more like his father. Ready, competent with a firearm, but relaxed.
“What are you looking at?”
“Just checking you out,” she said.
“We should both be watching for the beast.”
The route they patrolled each day covered all the animal trails and easily accessible clearings within a six-mile radius of the cabin. The prototype Death Angel could smash through small trees but usually didn’t unless it was chasing a kill.
“Stop,” Breaker said. “Let’s get off the trail for a minute.”
Victoria concealed herself behind a thick stand of old trees and looked for what Breaker had seen. A curtain of quiet solitude blanketed the region. He’d lived out here long enough to know the animals were still around but she didn’t hear birdsong or see foxes darting through the brush.
“Doesn’t feel like a Death Angel,” Victoria said.
Breaker shook his head. “Over there, near the lake. Survey crew.”
Survey crews were uncommon off the grid. She’d been surprised to see them at all. If the propaganda she grew up with was to be believed, there was nothing to survey out here. But there was something was strange about this one. There were too many people. Twice as many as normal, in fact.
Victoria said, “That looks like a Red-C team and a 6Corps team.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Kind of a weird place for a dance off.”
Breaker snorted a laugh. It was a jarring departure from his seriousness in the field.
“You want to make bets on what the music will be?” she asked.
“If it’s not a live band, I’m not into it. I think they’re working the opposite direction from the cabin. We should watch to be sure.”
She zipped up her jacket and pulled on her gloves. The weather was mild but sitting still on the side of a mountain could get cold. “I’m extremely curious to see 6Corps and Red-C teaming up.”
* * *
Victoria and Breaker separated when they got back to the cabin. She stored her gear, going through each item piece by piece. Sturdy clothing, boots, binoculars, a utility knife, and a rifle. She also carried a paper map, notebook, pencil, and a primitive compass. Compared to what she’d brought when she came, this was nothing.
Her life and what she needed to thrive in it had become much simpler. Every item she carried was vitally important. Forgetting to dry her boots could be disastrous when she needed them the next day. Losing the compass could mean being lost for days.
A strange clarity came with simple living. The consequences of simple failures could be harsh. She took a short shower and savored the warmth. The water heater was running strong today.
Breaker beat her to the living room. When she walked out, drying her hair, the fireplace was already warming the room. Breaker had the television on.
“I didn’t know it was TV night,” she said.
“I want to watch the news,” he said. “Just in case there’s something about a 6Corps and Red-C merger.”
The national news was alarming but had nothing to do with corporate politics.
“Our live, on the scene correspondent, James DeVaughn, is having technical difficulties. The footage you’re viewing is from Metro D.C., where the chaos has reached alarming levels.” the commentator said with incongruous cheer.
Victoria and Breaker sat on the couch, leaning forward to watch rioting in the streets. Several vehicles in view were burning, including an ambulance. Regular police units intermingled with riot cops facing huge crowds. Just as it was starting to look like a showdown, everyone broke and ran, including the cops and the camera operator. The camera fell and was picked up. The subsequent shots were of buildings and sky as whoever carried it ran for his or her life.
“Right there, did you see that?” Victoria asked. “The side of that storefront has a hole in it. Broken glass and siding. Do you think that’s big enough for one of the up to date Death Angels to get through?”
“I see it. There’s something coming through the crowd but it’s too far away to be sure,” Breaker said. His tension was palpable.
The newscast switched to a rooftop camera aimed down at the plaza near the center for the arts. From this stable platform, the camera’s view of the scene was different. A wave of humanity fled a monster Victoria and Breaker were all too familiar with.
“I think it modified itself,” Breaker said.
“It walks upright, still has the tail and the stinger. And I guess you call those top limbs arms—still has all four of them,” Victoria replied.
It was difficult to tell how big it was with nothing to compare to in the center of the plaza. Three helicopters, one Red-C and two 6Corps, dropped down to circle it. They opened fire with their auto cannons, tearing it to pieces. People, cars, and buildings in the background also took hits.
The news coverage continued for hours. Victoria and Breaker watched all of it.
*
* *
Victoria thought about what they’d seen on the news all night. She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, and she eventually woke up from nightmares worse than the television showed over and over.
In the morning, she and Breaker followed the same routine they did every day. He sulked. This was almost what he wanted. The monster was exposed. Local and federal officials had come together to assure the public it was an isolated incident and a full investigation was being conducted.
The city was still in turmoil, but nothing had changed. There had been no call to action. No exposing of the Death Angel Project. Half of the experts demanded military intervention and the other half blamed the military for creating the monster.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Breaker said when she brought up the subject for the third time. “They’re covering it up. Hiding the truth. And people believe them.”
It was hard for her to remember that the man she loved had grown up in the shadow of the monster. Off-grid children knew to fear it as a threat, not just a story to frighten children. His entire life had been spent in pursuit of its destruction. He left his home and infiltrated modern society, rising through the ranks of 6Corps until he had the skill and the tools to go after it. He nearly died in the attempt and now it was clear that he had failed.
They continued to patrol, going through the motions. Smoke drifted up from the horizon, far beyond their range even if they used land vehicles.
“I see smoke. Could be anything,” Breaker said.
They were almost back to the cabin when a sleek helicopter approached from the direction of the smoke, hovered in the clearing just below the cabin’s back deck, and landed. Two security officers dropped to the ground and separated, taking knees on the perimeter. Each man wore full combat kit and carried C26 assault rifles.