The Infected [Books 1-6]

by P. S. Power

  "I guess we could do that. Technically speaking I'm not allowed to have that kind of relationship with an Operative. In case I have to shoot you one day. Vice versa as well, since you're the new go to person for disposal if we have to control people. Agents do that part, mainly, but there are some people that we just can't handle, if they go off the rails, so you're up for that duty."

  That was news to her.

  "Oh? I guess that makes sense, there are only a couple of people that I can't possibly take out at all either. A lot I wouldn't want to try though. It's kind of a dismal thought, isn't it? I mean, I don't want to kill anyone, especially my friends. Or you know, the people I know at least."

  She kind of expected a lecture then, about responsibility or possibly their age difference, but he just got the small laminated menu form the night stand and started making suggestions. It was pretty pricy stuff, but he had an IPB card and while they weren't supposed to spend more than thirty dollars a day per person on it, it would cover their dinners that night.

  Even the sparkling apple cider.

  The man that came was young and polite, but fairly goggled at her outfit, which, given the context really fit in with the dominatrix thing. She decided to remember to needle Lancaster on that fact later. He'd picked it out after all. Clearly it indicated that he had more than a few kinky fantasies. Some of which might even involve her, she realized. He chosen this for her specifically.

  The food was bland and not all that special, but by eight in the evening she was able to take a copy of Hooper's address and start across town, just hopping into the back of a cab with a nicely dressed man. He smelled like cigars and was about fifty, she thought. His wallet said that he worked for a tobacco company, after she gently lifted it and took about half the bills in it for herself. She would have taken it all, but someone still had to pay for the trip, and she had no problem with the tobacco man doing it. From his phone conversation, he was a lobbyist.

  "No, Bill... we just need to keep things in a holding pattern." He worked as they rode, clearly talking about some kind of upcoming law they were stalling out. "We own the situation on the ground here for now. Our friends on the House floor won't let it come up before the session ends." He chuckled, which didn't sound all that evil to her, until he spoke the next line. "Oh, you've got that one right my friend. Those kids with cancer aren't our responsibility. They won't be either, at least as long as we keep the studies suppressed."

  Penny nodded, not certain she got it all, but not really caring. She took the man's wallet then, leaving him with nothing. It was petty revenge for helping to kill kids with second hand smoke, but it was all she could think of at the moment. She hadn't taken a weapon with her and while she might have managed to beat him to death with her bare hands if given enough time, that really wouldn't make anything better. Plus, it would look suspicious.

  Her new outfit had pockets, but was also visible on camera, so after the cab stopped and the driver started yelling at the man and offering to call the police when he couldn't pay, Penny hopped out and threw the wallet across the street. All the cash was tucked into her pocket, but that wouldn't last for long. Finding a small space behind a convenience store she stripped, making certain her clothing was well hidden. It would be a pain to lose it on the first day. There was a handy pile of boards that she used for that, then covered with some bags of trash that hadn't made it into the dumpster yet. It smelled a bit ripe, but would serve, she hoped. No one would want to look under them overly.

  Infiltrating the Hooper mini-compound proved to take longer than it should have really, since the building required a key, and had guards on the doors. She knew it was on the sixth floor and that it was unit sixty-three. Other than that she had no clue about the layout. It took a while to move past the doorman, who wore a silly looking outfit in red with gold tassels on the shoulders. It wasn't like she had to use any high level skills though, she just waited for an older woman to walk out and darted in carefully. It made the woman stumble a bit, but she caught herself and didn't go down.

  Then she just needed to get to the door in question. The stairs were easy enough, though each landing had a camera on it. Right over the door, so her opening things wouldn't show overly later just because of that. The angles were wrong, meant to show a person as they walked up to it, not the things swinging open. There was no camera on the other side of the doors either, though the one down the hallway would be able to pick up movement. Penny filed that away. For now it wouldn't be a big deal, but later, when a Senator died, little things like that might make a huge difference. Even if they couldn't prove it was her, that didn't mean no one would blame some Infected person for it.

  There was an armed man in a nice suit standing outside Hooper's place, meaning he was already in for the night, most likely. The guy was doing a very good job of it too, just hanging out in place, right in front of the door, without moving. Hooper had a camera trained on his from directly across the way too. On the wall, just watching. It wasn't that high, so she could disable it, but that might work against her plans later. It was frustrating, but she just had to wait for the door to open on its own. Otherwise it might look a little strange if anyone was watching the video feed.

  Hours later a man came, one that she thought was the door guard's replacement at first. He was a bit older, but had a similar look. Short hair, with just a hint of gray showing at the edges, a trim body that spoke of a lot of working out, and a nice suit. It wasn't dark colored though, having a brown jacket. He also didn't have an ear piece in.

  "Dan Tracer. I have an appointment with the Senator at midnight." There was no question to the voice and if the man protecting the door had doubts about anyone walking up that late, it didn't show on his face. For some reason the man seemed familiar to Penny, though it was a bit hard to place.

  Touching his ear the guard mumbled a bit.

  "Twelve o'clock? A man named Dan Tracer." There was a moment of waiting and the door opened to let them both in. They didn't know that part, of course, but it worked that way. Penny hugged the new man's body with her own, almost touching him the whole time, so that the large fellow that stopped him actually touched her back when he started to frisk the guy. She had to slip off to the side, but was so far gone into invisibility that no one noticed her being there at all.

  That got her in. It wasn't anything she'd want to count on though. She'd need to come in with Hooper himself, if she could. That would work better, since he was always going to be there. It might mean a lot of waiting, but that was the job.

  The inside of the place was nice, and familiar looking, since the style was the same one that she, and almost everyone in the nation, had seen on the video where Hooper had raped his little girl and then killed the nanny. Just because she was curious and wanted to see if she could find a weapon to kill the man with, she checked out the bedrooms. Sure enough, the one that seemed to have some kid things in it was exactly the same as what she'd seen before. Precisely so. It made her feel a bit weird, standing there really. The video camera had to have been sitting on the dresser for the angles to work, but no one had ever claimed it was a permanent thing at all. A nanny cam stuffed inside a bear or toy maybe? In this case possibly brought in by the woman herself, not the parents.

  She didn't linger all that long, since the man wasn't going to hide a gun in his kid's bedroom. Especially if he was raping her every now and then. That might leave her armed, which would be too dangerous. He didn't have anything in his room either, except for a safe, which was locked, of course. It could have weapons in it, or possibly just secret papers. Cash too. It was an oversight in her training, but she didn't know how to break into things like that. It was in the back of a closet, built into the wall. If it was possible to take the whole thing she couldn't tell and it didn't slide when she tugged on it. She wiped it down with a white button up shirt, since she didn't want to leave fingerprints. Penny didn't know that she could, to be honest, but just in case it was better to be safe, wasn't it?


  The man had a computer, a laptop that sat in a small office space next to the large bathroom, but it was password protected. Whatever it was he did, day to day, he really wanted to keep it a secret, didn't he? That meant he felt guilty about what he did, of course. Still, was he guilty of being a monster that was intent on genocide for all Infected everywhere who also liked kiddy porn, or was he just ashamed of being a politician? Either way would cause similar precautions to be taken.

  It was pretty clear that she wasn't going to find anything useful that night, so she went back to the main room to find the two men sitting and chatting, Dan on the sofa, Hooper in an easy chair. He didn't recline or anything. Instead he leaned forward and seemed sinister.

  It might have just been Penny thinking that because she didn't like him, since really he looked like a rather stuffy churchgoer more than anything else. He was balding on top and had gold, wire rimmed glasses. He was about sixty and looked it, having a little bit of a sour cast to his broad face. He'd taken his jacket off, but still had a vest on, which was brown and made him look about fifty years out of date style wise. It softened the whole picture too. Who'd think that a man in a vest was particularly bad or evil? It was a vest, for goodness sake.

  "We need to get this done Tracer. The school operation was a flop. That Infected bitch shut it down too soon. A shame that we couldn't have taken her out with the building. We can't afford to have another mistake like that happen again. Next time we need to hit fast and hard, so that no one will have a chance to stop us. I'm thinking bombs. Take out ten elementary schools at once and blame the Arabs again. It doesn't matter who we go after, we just need to increase the fear level enough that people will ask for the legislation to go through. Once we have a solid anti-terror bill, the Infected program will be in play. We've made certain the two things are linked well enough already."

  The other man looked at him silently, while Penny worked out that the Senator had been talking about her. Infected bitch? She wasn't that bad, was she? Maybe a little. She was planning to kill him after all. Smiling, she kept listening, even as they discussed how to kill little kids. If she hadn't had a clear reason to kill the man before, and she really had, this would be enough. If she'd had a gun she would have shot them both right there and made it look like they'd killed each other.

  Tracer never cracked a smile, but simply watched the man, his face bland. His hair was perfect too, and he didn't have any lint around him at all. Penny thought she did and she was freaking naked. It was a sign of something. After a few moments she got the idea. This man, Tracer... He was Infected. Worse he was a person that she'd been warned about. One of the IPB's big enemies. Stillness.

  That was an old code name, but it was a property of his first mode to force himself into tightly controlled behavior, like OCD almost. Hence being perfectly tidy all the time. Even his body language was subdued, though he still had it. It was just perfectly managed. Tidy all the time.

  So, creepy.

  His power was truly fierce though, since he could control the mind of anyone, anywhere in the world. He had to know about them to do it, and have some kind of sense about who they were, but that took very little, from what Penny had been told. He was considered one of the most dangerous people on the planet at any given moment. She wasn't really certain why he was even there, to tell the truth. He could have just made Hooper do whatever he wanted, right? Unless she had the wrong guy. She'd seen some pictures, but that wasn't the same thing, was it? Right now he looked less gray and a bit younger. He had make-up on though, when she examined his skin. Not a lot, but enough to make him looked more youthful.

  "We can do that. Are you sure we should target children? People tend to become protective of the little ones and while it will get a lot of action, it might be more than we want. It wouldn't serve to have the Middle East nuked for instance. Perhaps we should pull back a bit. Go with older kids, or shopping malls? Get some soccer moms in the mix, or perhaps a few janitors. That will bring the fear home to the average person, without causing pure anger as the first response. "

  That idea didn't make the Senator angry, even if it wasn't his. In fact he sat back a bit and started nodding after a few seconds.

  "That might make sense. I do want this to hit home however. We can't allow anything to happen that Proxy or his people can stop again. We came dangerously close to that with this last project. That girl was seconds away from becoming a national hero. Do you know how hard it was to suppress her involvement in things? I had to call in hundreds of little favors for it. Why didn't your person handle it? This Braid woman? She should have seen it coming, isn't that what you said?" There was no real accusation in the words, just a man fighting to understand things. It seemed a lot more reasonable than Penny would have guessed coming from the bigot in front of her.

  "Cooper, the invisible woman known as Cellophane, seems to be able to beat that. Devorah is good, probably the best predictive psychic in the world, but that doesn't mean she isn't a person first. We all have our weaknesses and strengths. It does mean that your plan probably makes sense. We need to hit so hard and fast that it can't be stopped, with multiple targets, so that Proxy can't simply show up and undo our work. Tomorrow, I think. Can you have things ready on the political side? Are you out from under the glare of suspicion enough to handle it?"

  Those words made her skin crawl. Tomorrow they were going to slaughter hundreds of innocent people? Just so that some anti-Infected crap bill could be put in to an anti-terror act? What the hell? That was insane. Evil too. Enough so that she made up her mind right then. She needed to take out both of these men. There wasn't time to wait and do it later. It wasn't going to be easy either. If Stillness realized that she was there, he could, possibly at least, take over her mind. That meant he had to die first.

  There were also two guards by the front door. Out of earshot, but still there, and armed with guns. She wasn't bulletproof, so if they started firing wildly, it could be a problem. They were innocent too, as far as she knew. They were assigned the detail, but that didn't mean they were Hooper's personal butt monkeys. They'd kill to protect him though, if they had to. Chewing on her lip she tried to think it all through and come up with a plan.

  The simpler the better, right?

  The first thing she did was walk over to the Secret Service men, if that's really what they were, and took their firearms. She even patted them down, finding that one of them had an extra at his waist, near the back and the other had one on his left leg, near the ankle on the inside. She took them all, which made her feel a bit better. First she had to shoot Stillness in the head, possibly several times. It wouldn't shock her to find out that he had some kind of special protection at all. A physical or mental power that would protect him or some tech that Penny hadn't encountered before. Then she'd hit Hooper and return the weapons to the men... Except... that would have them framed for the killings. Maybe if she put the guns in the hands of the men she killed?

  No matter what she did, this was going to be rough on the guys whose weapons she was using, wasn't it? Nothing she did would actually save them from that. She couldn't wait either, since Dan Tracer looked to be about to leave.

  "I'll get it done. By six tomorrow evening the nation will be focused on you. Make sure to use it well. We can't afford to bail you out again, like we have with the video. That was sloppy, letting that out."

  For the first time that evening that she'd noticed the Senator actually glared a bit, clearly angry.

  "Let out? It's fake. I would never hurt my daughter, or Miss Fields. She was a trusted employee and had a bright future ahead of her. I was helping her with a college fund, so that she could attend in a few years. It's only a good mock up, but that's even more reason to get a handle on the Infected threat. We know who has to be behind this."

  Because computer skills were all in the hands of the Infected. Penny nodded to herself about that and smiled. It only made sense. If she had to guess though, she would have said the same
thing, so maybe the man had a point? Who wanted him gone? A whole lot of people that had super-powers and possibly a lot of others that wouldn't always play fair.

  Stillness didn't roll his eyes though, which meant they were looking straight ahead when she shot him. No one in the place could hear the sound of it, though people down the hall might, if they were far enough away. It was D.C. though, so people were used to hearing gunfire, weren't they? Probably not in this part of town, but that couldn't be helped.

  Hooper didn't respond physically for a bit, and neither did the guards, even with half of the man's head splashing over the back of the light tan sofa. It wasn't very tidy of him at all, Penny decided. She started to pull the trigger again, changing positions so it would look like Dan shot him, when the other man went pale suddenly and let out a little yelp.

  "Help!" He sounded panicked, but strangely enough he closed his eyes, rather than jumping up or trying to hide. It was a bit of a strange reaction. Or it would have been, if a shadowy form hadn't started to come into being next to him. It was kind of impressive as it took shape, being nearly seven feet tall and covered with both scales, which were on the head and face mainly, and then hair down below, making it look like a lizard bigfoot. One with bright red glowing eyes. A strong chemical scent washed over the room too, though it wasn't exactly like gasoline. She could see how someone might have made that mistake though.

  "Protect me!" The Senator sounded a little worried, but the creature swung into action instantly, attacking the men at the door, who scrambled for weapons that they just didn't have. They were clawed to death even as they tried to fight, Penny watching, amazed at the turn of events. After a bit she recovered and shot Hooper in the head. After all, she'd seen energy projections like that before. She worked at the IPB. She'd seen a lot of things.

  It went away, like she'd figured it would, as soon as the man died. A lot of Infected people's powers did that, especially if they were psychic in nature or had to do with energy manipulation. This was probably both. She took time to wipe the weapons off and put them in various hands. Stillness and Hooper at least. The others she just put back in the holsters, not really able to think about how anyone else would assess the situation. The man from the hall ran in and left the front door open, so she walked out, shaking from the events as she did it.