Beneath the Surface

by Meredith Fletcher

  “We’re not here to kill you,” Shannon said softly. “We came so that we could understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand,” Kwan-Sook said. “I am what my mother made me.”

  “Your mother was Jackie Cavanaugh.”

  Kwan-Sook hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

  “Aldritch Peters altered your genetic makeup.”

  “Yes. My mother learned of his research. Since Marion Gracelyn destroyed the child that she carried, my mother wanted to have children. But she wanted them to be special.”

  “What…” Shannon faltered. “What did they do to you?”

  “My intellect was enhanced. My IQ doesn’t even register.” Kwan-Sook took a breath and the sound of the hospital equipment beeped around her. “But I was trapped in this body. For a while they experimented on me, trying to find some way to counteract the weakness in my bones. But they couldn’t.”

  Shannon sipped her breath and tried to turn off the feelings of sympathy that swirled within her.

  “I think in the end even my mother would have let them kill me. But I was smarter than they were. I used my access to computers to create businesses for myself. I knew I needed money if I was going to protect myself. I hired a team of mercenaries to break me out of my prison when I was sixteen. They killed anyone who tried to stop them. And then, for the first time in my life, I was free.”

  Shannon listened, stunned. “You could have found someone to help you.”

  “No. No one could help me. I could only help myself.” Kwan-Sook’s eyes locked on Shannon’s. “So I helped myself. When Allison Gracelyn and her agents killed my mother, I became Allison’s enemy, as well.” Her eyes took on a bright sheen. “Even if she didn’t love me the way she was supposed to, Jackie Cavanaugh was my mother.”

  “But your mother knew about you,” Shannon said. “When she died, she sent you a package.”

  “She knew about me, but she didn’t love me. In my whole life I only saw her in the flesh a handful of times.” Kwan-Sook paused. “I know she was repulsed by me. Everyone is.”

  “Ask her what was in the package,” Allison prompted through the earwig.

  “Your mother cared about you or she wouldn’t have sent you that package,” Shannon said, changing the presentation of the question.

  “She sent that to me so I could get revenge for her death.” Kwan-Sook opened her mouth carefully and laughed. Her teeth were broken stumps in her head. “We were born to be her revenge. The package contained a third of all the information she’d collected—all the blackmail victims and secrets—over the years.” She looked at Shannon. “That’s how I knew about you.”

  “Me?”

  “My mother was very clever,” Kwan-Sook said. “She broke into the Athena Academy’s computers and discovered you and Allison Gracelyn were driven to beat the other girls. My mother pretended to be Allison and sent you e-mails to frame one of the others.”

  “Josie Lockworth,” Shannon said.

  “Yes.” Kwan-Sook did the obscene laugh again. “Is that not the most clever thing you’ve ever heard?”

  Shannon didn’t say anything.

  “And then you were reborn,” Kwan-Sook said, “as the academy’s only failure and the greatest enemy they could ever hope to have.”

  Shannon shook her head. It was all so sick and twisted.

  “Now what are you going to do with me?” Kwan-Sook asked. “If you try to move me from this place, you could break every bone in my body. You might even kill me. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Shannon said.

  “Why? Because you pity me?”

  Shannon didn’t bother to deny the charge. She did pity the woman. Not just her physical state but the way Jackie Cavanaugh had brought her into the world and then didn’t bother to give her a mother’s love. She realized how close she and Rafe had come to being just like the hideous creature lying on that hospital bed.

  “I don’t want your pity,” Kwan-Sook stated angrily. “Save it for someone who is weak. I have millions of dollars. If you’re not willing to kill me, my lawyers will eventually get me out of prison and make all charges go away.” Her eyes brightened.

  “You’re here in China illegally. As spies. I think you’ll all be shot before I even have to go to court.” She laughed again.

  She’s insane, Shannon realized. But Kwan-Sook was a functioning madwoman. She was dangerous.

  “In fact, how do you know I haven’t already sent for the Shanghai police?” Kwan-Sook asked.

  Abruptly, all of the dozens of computer monitors changed to exactly one scene. They all showed Allison Gracelyn seated at her desk. She looked tired and worn, but she also looked indomitable.

  “I know,” Allison said in a harsh voice. “I’m inside your head now, and you can’t do a thing unless I let you.”

  Shannon felt a surge of pride as she looked at her friend. And she was surprised to discover that she thought of Allison as exactly that: her friend.

  Kwan-Sook opened her horrid mouth and screamed. Without warning, something metallic and inhumanly quick darted from beneath the bed.

  It was an appendage of some sort. Shannon had read about experimental robot arms that would be under the control of paraplegics. But none of those were as sleek and efficient as what streaked for her.

  Or as deadly.

  She saw the barb at the end of it and knew that it was a weapon. Instinctively she swept her right arm across her body in a blocking maneuver. Her forearm knocked the metal whiplike arm off course. It streaked across her shoulder, cutting into the flesh, then struck the wall behind her.

  By that time, Rafe and Xiaoming had their weapons up and firing. Bullets chopped into the gargantuan body and soaked the sheets with blood.

  The arm had embedded in the wall behind Shannon. It gave a couple fitful tries to pull free, then went slack.

  The hospital machines all filled the room with a steady warning chirp.

  No one came to help.

  “Are you okay?” Rafe was at Shannon’s side, examining her wound.

  “I’m fine.” Shannon couldn’t take her eyes from the corpse lying on the massive bed.

  “Something’s wrong,” Allison said. Her voice came from the earwigs as well as the room’s speakers. She worked her keyboard frantically. “Someone else is in the computer. They’ve hacked in from outside.”

  The computer monitors went blank.

  “Where’s the hack coming from?” Rafe demanded. He jogged out of the room.

  “Upstairs,” Allison replied.

  Rafe ran, and Shannon was at his heels.

  By the time they reached the cargo lift, a group of armed men was waiting on them. They lifted their weapons and fired down into the hallway as the lift rose.

  Rafe tried to stop. Shannon saw him dig in, but the weakened knee went out from under him, stranding him in the path of the bullets.

  Instantly Shannon launched herself at his back, throwing her arms around him. They went down together, sliding in a tangle of arms beneath the cargo lift, which was already up a couple feet and rising.

  Bullets slapped the hallway floor where Rafe had been. The lift shielded them from the gunners just as Shannon had hoped.

  Xiaoming pulled a grenade from her combat vest. “Grenade!” she yelled as she threw it onto the rising lift.

  Shannon wrapped her arms around Rafe. The grenade exploded and the noise sounded impossibly loud in the enclosed space.

  Rafe broke out of her grip and pulled a knife from his boot. He slashed the hydraulic lines attached to the lift. Thick viscous fluid poured out, but the lift quit rising.

  “Someone is capturing Kwan-Sook’s files,” Allison said. “I can’t get them. I’m blocked.”

  “We’re still moving,” Rafe said. He sheathed his knife and picked up the submachine pistol. He looked at Shannon, then kissed her. In the next minute he was gone, hauling himself onto the lift.

  Shannon followed, but Xiaoming and Hua blew past her.
Jintao paused on the lift and offered his hand. She took it and he pulled her up.

  “I’ve got a lock on the download,” Allison said. “It’s in the main building.”

  Rafe got his bearings, remembering the blueprints Allison had given them. He ran, but his leg throbbed mercilessly and threw his gait off. It worked all right in front-to-back motion, but he knew any lateral movement was going to be nearly impossible.

  Xiaoming was at his side and matched his pace.

  A trio of gunners stood at the doorway to the main building. Rafe brought up the submachine pistol and squeezed off three-round bursts as Xiaoming did the same. He felt at least two rounds hit the Kevlar and another plow through his side.

  But the three men went down.

  Inside the main building, Rafe slowed his pace and went to the left. Xiaoming went to the right. They created an overlapped field of fire as they went more deeply into the building.

  “At the back of the building,” Allison said.

  They kept going, moving quickly. Two more gunners held positions, but they went down, as well.

  Then they reached the back office and saw the woman standing at the computer terminal. She was tall and beautiful, with café-au-lait skin and short-cropped black hair that framed her face. She wore counterterrorist BDUs and carried pistols at her hip and under her shoulder.

  “Hello, Captain Santorini,” the woman said.

  “Step away from the computer,” Rafe ordered.

  The woman lifted her left hand and showed the grenade she was holding. Her thumb flicked and the pin fell to the floor with an audible ping.

  “Oops,” the woman said and smiled to show even white teeth.

  “I’d advise you not to shoot unless you want us all to go boom.”

  “We might survive,” Xiaoming said. “I guarantee that I’ll shoot you between the eyes. You’ll expire before that three-second fuse does.”

  The woman looked back at the computer. “I’ve been following you people for days,” she said conversationally. “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to find my dear sister.”

  Rafe held the submachine pistol steady. “Kwan-Sook was your sister?”

  “Was?” The woman smiled. “So she’s dead, is she?”

  Rafe didn’t say anything.

  “It’s just as well. I wasn’t going to let her live anyway. She was far too dangerous. Even to me.” The woman smiled.

  “So which one are you?” Rafe asked, thinking if he opened a dialogue, it would buy them a little time.

  “I’m Echo,” the woman said. She raised her voice. “Did you hear me, Allison? It’s going to be a name you’ll hear again and again.”

  None of these women are sane, Rafe thought.

  “Well,” Echo said. “Looks like my download is all done. Time to go.” She tossed the grenade at them.

  Xiaoming was quicker on the trigger than Rafe was, but he fired, too, already starting the three-second count.

  One…

  But instead of going down with her face blasted into ruin, the woman smiled again. Somehow, even at the short distance, Rafe knew that he and Xiaoming had missed her.

  Or had they?

  As he watched, another of Xiaoming’s bullets stopped in midair right in front of Echo’s face. Then it fell to the ground. Echo leaped up and caught a rope that trailed through an opening in the ceiling.

  Two…

  Rafe went to ground, wrapping a hand over his head.

  The grenade went off. Thankfully it was a high-explosive grenade instead of an antipersonnel one.

  Dazed and deafened, Rafe got to his feet with difficulty. He ran to the computer terminal with the submachine pistol and gazed up through the hole. As he watched, the woman climbed up a rope ladder to a helicopter that was already flying away.

  “It’s too late,” Rafe said. “She’s getting away.”

  “I see her,” Allison said. “I see her, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  Rafe lowered his weapon. There wasn’t anything any of them could do. The game, whatever it was that Allison was doing, wasn’t over.

  “Get your team out of there,” Allison instructed. “Get safe.”

  Rafe turned and limped out of the building. Shannon met him, then slid up under his arm and helped him walk to the waiting speedboat. She squeezed him and he hugged her back.

  Epilogue

  S hannon walked through the receding tide along the North Carolina beach. Although Jacksonville wasn’t Rafe’s home, he’d wanted to redo his rehab there.

  She’d missed him when she’d had to return to New York and make sure she still had a job at ABS. Corporate had been angry at first, but while she and Rafe had been forced to wait for Allison to arrange passage for them back to the United States, she’d filmed several pieces about Chinese women and their pursuit of equality not only for themselves but for the baby girls that were habitually put to death there.

  When she’d shown the pieces at ABS, there hadn’t been a dry eye in the room. It was, Shannon had had to admit, some of the best work she’d ever done.

  But that was because she was in a good place in her life. So much of the old hurt and confusion was gone.

  More than that, she was in love in a way she’d never known before.

  Rafe had left her alone to fight her own battles with the production company. She’d loved him even more for that because she knew it was in his nature to champion the battles of others.

  Instead he’d concentrated on getting healthy.

  And he’d sent her flowers at work every day.

  None of them had had a card, but she knew they were from him. They couldn’t be from anyone else.

  He hadn’t been at the cabin when she’d arrived. It was her fault for arriving early, but when the flight had opened up, she couldn’t resist. She gazed out at the rolling waves of the Atlantic Ocean and felt more complete than she had in a long time.

  She was even talking to Allison on a regular basis. And, through Allison, she was starting to talk to others who had graduated from Athena Academy. She’d even had a good talk with Christine Evans.

  It was like returning to a family she thought she’d lost.

  She smiled at the setting sun. Life couldn’t get any better.

  “Hey.”

  Recognizing the voice behind her, she turned to find Rafe standing there.

  He looked tanned and fit. He wore only swim trunks. He carried his scars proudly. They were part of him, and she knew he’d paid a price for them. They’d all contributed to making him who he was.

  And she loved who he was.

  “You’re early,” he said.

  “Are you complaining?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “No. Just don’t like the idea of not being here if you needed me.”

  “I’m fine.” Shannon nodded out at the ocean. “There’s a lot of peace here. I can see why you enjoy it.”

  “If I stayed in New York, we could probably see each other every night.”

  “No,” Shannon said. “You’re more complete out here right now than you would be there.”

  He took her hand. “You can hear yourself think,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of thinking to do.”

  “Oh? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Not yet.” He grinned at her. “The phone works. You could have called, let me know you’d be a couple hours early.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You don’t surprise me,” he told her. “You make me happy.”

  “A woman likes to be mysterious.”

  “Okay. You make me mysteriously happy. Or you mysteriously make me happy. Take it however you want it.” He put his hands on her sides and drew her close.

  “I got your flowers,” she said.

  “You did.”

  “Every day.”

  “Every day?” He shook his head. “I didn’t send flowers every day. I didn’t send them Tuesday.”

  “Maybe I didn’t get flow
ers Tuesday.”

  He smiled at her. “Then I’ll have to have a word with the florist, because I left strict orders.”

  “The flowers were wonderful,” Shannon said. “No card. That made them mysterious.”

  “Well, your mysterious ways left me inspired.”

  “Nice try.” Shannon ran a finger along his lips. She felt his body responding against hers and she liked that he could lose control that easily around her. “The flowers made everyone in the office talk.”

  “I know. That’s why I sent them. You give a woman flowers, she knows she’s loved. You send them to her work, she knows everyone knows she’s loved.”

  “You’re a very smart man.”

  “I try,” he whispered as he bent down and kissed her.

  In that kiss, Shannon realized that he wasn’t the only one who had little control over personal responses.

  “Well,” she said huskily, “do you want to go back to the cabin or leave interesting impressions here in the sand?”