Parasite (The Domino Project Book 3)

by Hanna, K. T.

  Sai nods, continuing down the stairs with slightly shaking limbs. Her brain isn’t focusing.

  Get Bastian. Get the code keys. Hopefully take Owen and the rest out with them. Make sure to free anyone imprisoned. Get to the battle room.

  With the streets taken care of and the people herded into places where they can’t get hurt, things will get easier. Not to mention the Ebony helping them overall, at least in most of the other PCs anyway.

  “Right now we have to get down to Bastian.”

  Dom looks at her. “You know I know that, right?”

  She nods. “I just have to keep saying it. Need to focus. I hate it down here.”

  “No sane person likes it down here. There’s this…” Dom pauses, as if searching for the word.

  “Feeling of decay and death.” Dael’s voice filters down to them from several steps behind, where they’re helping guide others down.

  “Exactly.” Dom nudges Sai gently. “See, no one likes it down here. Let’s focus on Bastian.”

  Dom takes point and inches his way to the door, motioning for silence in the stairwell. “Camo up.” He whispers, and Dael, Evan, and himself all oblige. Sai does her best with her body and armor, but it’s nowhere near as effective.

  “You two bring up the rear,” Dom says to Sai and Darrien. “Don’t let her get hurt.”

  He opens the door, and the dominos filter through it. Sai’s learned how to detect their presence by the slight waves in the air as they move. She follows them out as they check and clear each of the corners and start moving toward the end of the corridor where the laboratories are located, with Darrien bringing up the rear.

  She remembers this floor, and even though Darrien hasn’t been here before, he can sense something. “Darrien,” she says harshly in a low whisper. “Clamp down.”

  Darrien’s shields slam up, almost nicking Sai’s consciousness in the process. Sai holds his gaze for just a moment, long enough to recognize he knows he panicked and is sorry.

  They pass what used to be the nurses’ station and head down the other passage, to the holding bay of those slated to die—who’d outlived their usefulness. It made Sai feel sick back then, and it repulses her even more now.

  Four Damascus soldiers stand outside the door, a soft whir surrounding them. Dom motions for Darrien and Dael to keep a lookout where they are and moves in, with Evan and Sai bringing up the rear.

  In a swift, harsh movement, Dom is momentarily more visible as he slices a morphed hand up under the plating attached to the back of a Damascus’ head and severs the wiring connecting it to the rest of the body. At the same time, his second hand spikes through to its operating center and the red light of its eyes goes out.

  The two others collapse in similar fashion, with Dom disregarding his camouflage as he execute the final one. Sai can’t help but wonder at the way the four of them fell like a domino trail. Quick and fatal. Necessary.

  Sai will forever be glad she’s on the right side of the dominos. The four soldiers lie in pieces on the ground, their legs twitching in death throes far too similar to a human body. Their once red and vibrantly lit eyes glow duller as the seconds pass until there’s no light left in them at all.

  “Wow. Next time remind me why we’re going in there with a troop of psionics,” Sai whispers.

  Dom shakes his head. “These guys aren’t normal by a long shot, Sai. Their reactions were dulled, as if something interfered with their reception.”

  The door cracks open behind them, and a bespectacled man, complete with freckles and a lab coat, pokes his head out. “Uh…” He raises a hand. “That would be my fault. Did I do something wrong?”

  “Owen?” Sai smiles and moves forward, her hand outstretched. “I’m Sai. Is…is Bastian in there?” She almost doesn’t want to know the answer, just in case it’s not the right one.

  “He’s in here.”

  She rushes in almost before the sentence is finished, and it takes her eyes a while to focus in the dim light. Dom is still talking to Owen behind her about just how he managed to subdue the soldiers to such an extent, but she’s not really interested. They can fill her in on that later.

  Dael enters the room behind her, and Sai registers it off in some other corner of her mind. Her complete focus is on Bastian, leaning awkwardly against the large table in the room, his right pant leg soaked in blood. “Bastian,” she says and shortens the distance between them. Sai hugs him, tightly, instantly probing his leg with her mind to find where she needs to fix it.

  “Sai, stop squeezing so hard.” Bastian gently unwinds her arms from his neck.

  “Sorry,” she says, not really feeling the apology at all. “Damn, this did a number on you. Hold still.” She reaches down and pulls back the trouser leg, laying both hands on his shin. Bastian’s whole body tenses, waiting for pain.

  “Stop that,” she chides him and dives into his wound with her mind. It’s really not that bad, just painful and bloody. But it does take several minutes to bind the vessels back together and to staunch the blood flow completely and form the scab over the entry hole. She frowns as she pulls out and backs away.

  “I can’t repair the nick to the bone, but it’s not a bad one anyway.” Sai smiles tiredly and pats him on the shoulder. “You should take better care of yourself. Aishke would kill me if you died.”

  Bastian mouths a thank you to her and looks around. “Where is Aishke?”

  The girl steps out from behind Sai, her skin even darker in the dim light. “Hey.”

  Bastian’s expression softens, and he holds out a hand to her. Aishke’s bottom lip trembles ever so slightly as she hugs his chest like she won’t let go. A pang of jealously assaults Sai for a split second, catching her off-guard. She knows all too well the security in one of Bastian’s rarely given hugs.

  She eyes him critically and frowns. “You haven’t been abstaining.”

  He shrugs and gently disentangles his niece. “I don’t have the luxury.”

  “It’ll eat you up, Bastian.” She meets his gaze briefly before turning to examine some of the Damascus parts on the table and changing the subject. “How are you feeling? Are you up to moving as soon as we need to?”

  He nods, a real smile spreading over his face. “You’ve grown since you left.”

  Sai returns the expression, a tiny piece of joy dancing in her chest. “I’ve missed you more than you realize.”

  “How long do we have down here?” Dom asks, his eyes briefly assessing Bastian.

  Owen scrunches his face. “That really depends on how many alarms you triggered.”

  Aishke scowls at the young scientist. “We don’t generally—”

  But Dom holds up a hand. “We disabled most of them. Is that a problem?”

  Owen shrugs. “Not particularly, but if they’re not occupying the forces by sending them out to alerts, we might find another patrol sent down here. Then again, we might not. A large portion of the patrols are charged with finding the Exiled, so they don’t really have many to spare. The one they assigned to watch over Bastian was actually a great compliment as to how dangerous they think he has the potential to be to their cause.” Owen smiles enthusiastically, and Sai decides she likes this odd, sheltered genius, despite his inadvertent helping of the Damascus.

  Dom spreads out an old set of blueprints on the large table in Owen’s laboratory. Sai glances at it dubiously.

  “Paper plans? Why are we looking at these?”

  “These were drafted a very long time ago. So long, in fact, they show passageways that have since been bricked or walled over. With enough force—” He grins at that comment while Dael and Evan chuckle. “—we can make our own way, anywhere we want.”

  “With enough force, or you mean, with enough noise, right?” Sai glares at him. “Seriously, sometimes you guys are like children.”

  Dom seems deflated. “You just have to go and take the fun out of everything.”

  “We have to coordinate so Mathur doesn’t move Alpha i
nto position too early to use the device.”

  “He has it ready?” Bastian interrupts her flow of speech.

  “Not quite yet.” Dom looks away. “But he should have it any moment.”

  “Why is he moving it into place?” Owen asks, the light refracting oddly through his glasses making his eyes appear machine-like. Sai shudders inwardly.

  “Because he wants to make sure it has a significant impact in the right circumference. Even with the amplifiers you attached to the new lieutenants, he wants to make sure that, when we do this, we do it right. Last time it was sent out from Central and the majority of the Damascus were directly in the district. He needs to be as close to here as possible for it to work.”

  Owen nods. “He’d know that part better than I. I only know what I’ve adjusted will cause them to be permanently disabled, once and for all.”

  “I like the way you think,” Dom says and pats the man on the shoulder before turning his attention back to Bastian. “It’ll be ready shortly. We need to be in position when it is. Once the Damascus are no more, we’re going to need to move rather quickly.”

  “Understatement much?” Bastian murmurs under his breath and laughs at Dom’s glare. “All right, all right.” He moves and Sai catches a glimpse of the scar on his cheek, glimmering in the light. It doesn’t mar his beauty, but enhances it. She smiles and he catches her eye.

  “Sexy scar, isn’t it, Sai?” There’s resentment in his eyes, but it’s not directed toward her.

  “I could heal it if you like. Make it barely noticeable.”

  For a second Bastian hesitates, and then he smiles softly. “No, I think I’ll keep it as a reminder to not get too full of myself and pay attention to everything around me instead of believing I’m invincible. But thank you.”

  “I know some other people who could benefit from a scar like that,” Dom says half-seriously. “Back to the plan. We need to make sure that for every life this costs us, we’re going to gain some ground.”

  Bastian stabs a finger into the map, directly on the heart of Central’s main building, near the ground floor. “This is the battle conference room. It’s rarely used and has fortifications. They’ll meet in there once they realize they’re under attack. If they don’t realize it yet, they will soon enough. This is the perfect place to ambush and hold them. Keep in mind, though, until we disable the Damascus, nothing is safe.”

  “What do you mean?” Sai asks. “We can’t just take the board hostage and get everything else to back off?”

  “No.” Bastian shakes his head. “You have to realize what they are, Sai. The whole problem with them in the first place is their orders. They are very literal and will not deviate from their objective. At the moment, they’re listening to the board because the board helps them directly accomplish their goals.”

  “And their goal is to wipe out the Exiled, correct?”

  “Exactly. So what do you think they’re going to do if the board members are being held by the Exiled?”

  Sai pales. “No way. Seriously?”

  Bastian nods and sighs. “They will step through them to accomplish their directive. They’re not stupid. They’re fully aware that, once this program runs its course, they’ll be free to do as they please.”

  “Which means they’re also fully aware of what a pulse device does, correct?” Dom interjects.

  “Pretty much.” Bastian stands up and tests his leg. “Thanks for this, Sai, though I’m not sure you should have wasted your energy on this.”

  She shakes her head. “You’re never a waste. Besides, that barely used any of my power.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t say?”

  She flexes her bicep and grins. “I have stamina now.” And then she pauses. “I’m just still not quite clear on this.”

  Bastian attempts to explain it. “If you’re giving something an order, how do you phrase it, Sai?”

  She frowns at him, shifting on her feet, a seed of unease settling in her stomach. “I order it to do the job I need it to?”

  “Yes, but do you give the person or people any type of enclosing directives? As in, do this, but while you’re doing it, don’t kill a, b, or c?” Bastian’s eyes are narrowed, like he’s giving her some kind of delayed assessment.

  “No, that’s common sense,” Sai says and suddenly realizes, her brain clicking. “Oh, I see what you mean now. That’s horrific. They don’t have common sense, do they?”

  “Exactly.” Bastian shakes his head. “If the order had been set up properly—like, ‘You will defeat and destroy all of the Exiled; take back the pure Shine sample; and not injure, hurt, or maim any of the board or the people of the PC in the process—then that would have made our job easy. As it is, the order makes the Damascus’s orders easy, not ours.”

  The ripple of tension in the room rises. Sai can feel it in the prickle down her back.

  Dael is suddenly next to them, having left Evan in the corridor. “Unless we want to kill everyone, unless we want to be no better than those we seek to bring to justice, we have to be cleverer than the Damascus.”

  “In a nutshell.” Bastian smiles grimly. “I like this one.”

  Sai smiles, but it’s not enough to belay the uneasy feeling in her gut, and the last time she had one of those, Dom almost ended up in pieces.

  It’s been two hours since they arrived, and the trepidation in Sai’s stomach grows every minute. But she pushes it aside and concentrates on the task at hand.

  Owen’s assistance is proving invaluable, and Sai can’t help but warm to the guy. She thinks Darrien has in fact developed a crush on him. If it helps him take his mind off the tasks they have ahead, then it’s probably good for both of them. Setting up is just the first step. Next comes the bloodshed, regardless of how much they might not want it to. Every time she thinks of the incidental death-toll, her stomach does a queasy roll. They have to make sure they don’t leave carnage behind them. Otherwise they’ll be just as bad as the GNW.

  So far, it seems the alarms haven’t been raised yet. If they can keep their presence on the down-low while they wait for the greenlight from Mathur, everything else should fall into place.

  “Hey…” Evan motions them over. The comm fills with scratchy static as the broken message comes across.

  “Recalled…troops…here…shortly.”

  Sai squints at the device. “Let’s hope that means what we need it to mean.”

  “Are you okay?” Dom’s hand rests lightly at her back, the close contact making her jump as much as his voice so close to her ear. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Sai peers out into the dim hallways ahead of them. “It’s okay. I was just thinking.”

  “You seemed sort of out of it. I should have coughed.”

  “You don’t need to cough.” Sai laughs at his attempt at humor. Most people would think he was serious. “Just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “How far we’ve come. How far we have yet to go. And how much could go wrong.”

  “Ah, then I regret to inform you, the latter thought is entirely incorrect. We have a lucky charm called Sai. I believe you may have heard of her. With her on our side, we’re going to win.”

  She laughs, and this time it releases some of her pent-up tension. “Thanks, Dom.”

  “What for? I’m just telling the truth.” He winks at her and walks away. She follows his back until he turns the corner and then spots Bastian looking straight at her, an unreadable expression on his face. Sai raises a hand to wave, only to receive a curt nod before he turns and vanishes into the dark hallway beyond.

  “What did you do to upset my uncle?” Aishke frowns at her, suddenly in the space Dom vacated.

  “I’m not sure. He seems out of sorts.” Sai watches him and the slight sheen of sweat on his brow.

  Aishke opens her mouth and closes it, that frown still etched there.

  “Spill it.”

  “He’s not… Is he coming down off something?”
Ash’s words are hesitant, like she thinks her allegation is preposterous.

  Sai peers closer at him, but hesitates to reach out with a tendril of healing. He’ll catch her—he always does. “He might be. Probably because he doesn’t have to dull with Shine anymore.”

  “Yeah. Makes sense.” Aishke’s face lights up, and she squeezes Sai’s arm. “Thanks. I’ll go check over the communications with Evan.”

  “Conserve your energy,” Sai calls after her, but she’s still frowning in thought when Dael comes up to her.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “What?” She shakes her head to clear it. “No, not at all. What is it?”

  “The psionic partners in each division are waiting for your directions regarding our next steps.”

  Sai twirls a stray strand of hair in her fingers, rapidly pulling it tight. “Their focus is the lieutenants. They know how their anatomy works—just focus on the kernel and melt it out of its casing. Probably better that they’re engaged in combat while this is done. Lieutenants are the hard ones to take out. Remember they’re only looking for the few patrols without an upgraded lieutenant. All the rest will be neutralized by the amplification.”

  Dael nods and smiles at her. “It’s good that he has you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s good that you’re there for Dom. He’s not quite like us. His nature is far more solitary and his tendencies far lonelier. We take too much from our human DNA to be like that, and so you are good for him.”

  Sai blushes, glad it’s not visible in the dim light, and watches thoughtfully as Dael walks away.

  Her relationship with Dom is confusing. If something happens to him, she isn’t sure how she’d deal with it. So, therefore, nothing can happen to Dom, because flattening Central isn’t exactly on her to-do list.

  A whirring red light and dull siren rip her out of her contemplative thoughts. Sai blinks before registering what it means and jogging toward the lab where the others have been sending out instructions to coordinate the launch of their attack.