In The Requiem
Hailey Turner
Copyright © 2018 by Hailey Turner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Kasmit Covers.
Professional Beta Reading by Leslie Copeland: [email protected]
Proofing by Courtney Bassett: LesCourt Author Services
Edited by Jersey Devil Editing.
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In the Requiem is dedicated to
Leslie Copeland
because you made this story and all the others better than they would’ve been in so many ways.
Thank you for your support, your encouragement, your whip-cracking,
and for being an absolutely amazing friend.
Contents
Quote
BEFORE
Prologue
AFTER
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
NOW
Chapter 24
INDEX
Author’s Notes
Connect With Hailey
Other Works By Hailey Turner
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
—Thomas Paine
BEFORE
2272
___________________
Prologue
Never Look Back
He stared at the imposing buildings of the United States Naval Academy rising up behind old walls that had stood for several centuries. Annapolis was everything his father had said he’d need for the path laid out for him. The next four years of his life would unfold here once Induction Day was over and Plebe Summer began. Soon he would exchange his bespoke suit for a uniform that he hoped to wear with pride.
A United States senator who was a close friend to his father had gladly written a nomination for his application, one senator out of a dozen who’d offered their help. Every step of the way seemed easily handed to him, but after today, whatever he’d make of himself would be on his own merits.
After today, his life would never be the same.
“Honey, wait a moment.”
His mother’s voice cut through the buzz in the air that came from dozens of other families surrounding them. Everyone was headed toward the gate that would separate the civilian world from the military until graduation day four years in the future. He paused, looking over his shoulder at his father and mother and little sister. The Maryland summer heat had wilted his mother’s delicate curls but not her smile.
She stepped closer, reaching out to adjust his tie and collar as if he were still a child, when he was eighteen, ready to make adult decisions. Four years committed here and then four years after dedicated to the United States Marine Corps. Decline a re-up and begin work on a congressman’s political campaign for an eventual run of his own in the future. He knew what was expected of him.
He grabbed his mother’s hands in his, giving her a gentle smile. “I’ll be fine, Mother.”
She didn’t want to leave him, so he let her go, turning to face his future.
Annapolis called, and he kept walking forward.
AFTER
2286
___________________
1
Leave the Lost and Dead Behind
The Mojave Desert in April was less hot than during the summer months, but that wasn’t saying much. At night, the temperature dropped considerably, but not enough to stop sweat from trickling down the back of Staff Sergeant Kyle Brannigan’s neck. He adjusted his grip on the AKR-75 assault rifle he’d gone into the field with in lieu of his sniper rifle before easing around the corner once the area ahead was cleared.
As Alpha Team’s sniper, he should’ve been in overwatch, lying low on a rooftop of one of the many dilapidated buildings in the abandoned warehouse distribution center the rest of the team was in the process of securing. Instead, Kyle was relegated to a ground role, partnered up with a pair of Strike Force operatives as they cleared the southwest section of the distribution center. The snipers on the rooftops were Strike Force, so Kyle wasn’t worried; he knew their capabilities were on par with his own.
The world around him was lit up green through the HUD of his tactical goggles, the night-vision option running at full. Kyle scanned the crumbling loading dock area, noting debris near the buildings on either side, piled there from collapsed sections of the roof. He switched his HUD to an overlay of infrared but saw no heat signatures, which meant no life signs. He hand-signaled for one of the two women he was partnered with to scout out the right-hand side while he took the left-hand side. The other woman stayed put to watch their six.
Intelligence gleaned from chatter indicated the distribution center had been a staging ground for weapons trafficking by the Sons of Adam, a homegrown terrorist group, as recently as last week. A delay in decision-making by the Joint Chiefs had resulted in the MDF getting boots on the ground too late to make a difference.
But they were here now, and they still had a job to do.
“Why does every criminal group insist on owning some out-of-the-way building where they perform illegal activities? Can’t they do it closer? Like in New York City?” Kyle asked quietly over the comms.
“Do you know how much real estate costs in New York City? Too fucking much, even for some hotshot terrorist group,” Madison Chan replied. The team’s demolitions specialist sounded annoyed about that.
“Pretty sure they could afford it, Nova.”
“Not without selling body parts, and if that’s the case, they better be made out of solid fucking gold.”
Laughter filtered over the comms from the other members of Alpha Team and the team of sixteen Strike Force operatives the Metahuman Defense Force had requested from SOCOM as backup for them. For all their powers, the maze of buildings in the abandoned distribution center in southern Arizona was too large for the MDF field agents to cover in a timely matter.
Sergeant Ekaterina Ovechkina, Alpha Team’s second-in-command and communications specialist, was their commanding noncommissioned officer in the field for this mission. Captain Jamie Callahan, the team’s leader and Kyle’s fiancé, had been called away by familial duties he couldn’t ignore. Considering the political mess that had erupted after Richard Callahan’s campaign rally in Boston devolved into a Splice attack on domestic soil last November, Kyle understood why most of Jamie’s focus had been on his family the past few months.
Congressional investigations were a bitch.
“Let’s keep the chatter to a minimum, everyone,” Katie said. “I want to finish this mission before dawn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Captain Matthew Gailani replied cheerfully.
Kyle smiled briefly at the easy way Matthew obeyed her order. His old team captain was an honorable man, a good soldier, and an officer he’d been p
roud to serve under. Despite Matthew’s rank, he wasn’t a metahuman, and Strike Force had ceded command of the mission to the MDF. Unlike some officers Kyle had previously worked with, Matthew hadn’t argued about taking orders from an NCO, and neither had anyone else on his team. If they had, they wouldn’t have been cleared to take part in the mission.
The easiness between Alpha Team and these particular Strike Force operatives stemmed from the years Kyle and his older adoptive brother, Staff Sergeant Alexei Dvorkin, had served with them in that military branch. It helped as well that Matthew and Katie had been dating since last summer. They’d met when Strike Force had aided several MDF field teams in the raid on the Splice lab Vitae Neurotherapeutics had been running in Montana. From what Kyle could tell, their relationship had turned serious in a short amount of time, despite the hectic natures of their jobs. He was happy for them, and he knew Jamie was too.
Kyle pushed his thoughts about Jamie to the back of his mind, not wanting to get distracted. While Katie had telepathically cleared the area, that was no guarantee the Sons of Adam hadn’t left behind any surprises. He couldn’t afford to be anything but on top of his game.
Focusing on the job at hand, Kyle took note of his immediate area, looking for anything out of place. Multiple tire tracks crisscrossed the dirt-covered area, the depth and tread pointing to semi-trucks. Considering the illegal merchandise they were probably moving, Kyle bet the vehicles weren’t driverless like the majority of long-haul trucks on the nation’s highways.
In one spot, the clear impressions of a helo’s landing gear could be made out, the desert wind having yet to wipe them away. Kyle knelt down and studied the divots in the dirt that covered the broken cement.
“They were here as recently as yesterday,” Kyle said over the comms.
“Y’all, I think they were movin’ weapons. Lots of them,” Annabelle Brown replied in her drawling voice. “Someone missed a transport crate. Looks like they didn’t empty it or couldn’t move it because of load weight. Got a goddamn M42 Brownin’ in here.”
“Wonderful,” Katie said flatly.
“Gettin’ pictures and uploadin’ to base. If the Sons of Adam are movin’ heavy weaponry, that ain’t good.”
“Weapons of war in the hands of a domestic terrorist group never is,” Matthew grimly agreed.
Kyle half-listened to the chatter on the comms as he straightened up. He and his temporary partners finished clearing the loading dock area. When they rounded the next corner, they met up with the small group Donovan Williams had been paired with. Alpha Team’s transportation specialist was a tall, built, African-American man who’d served with Jamie, Katie, Madison, and the team’s medic, Trevor Sanchez, in the Recon Marines. When a mission went wrong years ago, the five of them had been turned into metahumans after a horrific Splice attack in the field.
Annabelle, the team’s pilot, had come to them through the Night Stalkers, an aerial special operations group. Their newest member, Agent Sean Delaney, had been on secondment to the team for almost a year before the events in Boston took him and Alexei off the field for several months. Jamie was notorious for not liking anyone the brass assigned to Alpha Team, though Sean was the latest exception.
Kyle knew part of that was because Sean and Alexei were in a relationship, though that didn’t impede their ability to do their jobs. They weren’t in each other’s chain of command and had already proven in February that they could work in the field together without their relationship taking priority.
Alpha Team was at nine members now, but some days Kyle felt they still weren’t enough to stand against the enemy.
“Find anything, Tank?” Kyle asked as they approached.
Donovan’s enhanced eyesight came with the ability to see in all spectrums. It wasn’t as flashy a power as Madison’s energy blasts or Alexei’s pyrokinesis or even Sean’s ability to phase through solid objects. But in the nitty-gritty of a mission that required stealth, Donovan’s power always came in handy.
“Maybe. I’m seeing space underneath this building,” Donovan said.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Kyle looked past him at what appeared to be a wing extending off a more centralized administration building rather than the loading dock warehouses.
Records indicated the distribution center had at one time employed thousands of people to ship out goods from an online sales company. Out-of-the-way places like this had come cheap in the past because of the location. The towns that had popped up around the distribution centers tended to house the influx of workers who’d come to earn a minimum wage.
This particular distribution center had closed its doors some fifty-odd years ago, past the time when the desert became too hot to sustain a comfortable environment for the workers due to climate change. After multiple heat-related deaths and dozens of lawsuits by employees, the courts had ordered the closure of the distribution center after a years-long fight.
That didn’t mean it had sat empty over the past few decades.
Located near the border between the United States of America and Mexico, the distribution center was within the trafficking routes used by Mexican cartels and other domestic gangs to move drugs, weapons, and people between and within the two countries. The distribution center may have been abandoned by a legitimate company, but a vacuum always needed to be filled. High desert temperatures were a risk criminals were willing to take in return for the millions of dollars they could make by running their enterprises through here.
The Sons of Adam had a stranglehold in some northern and southern states, but the southwest was usually dominated by Mexican cartels. Chatter had indicated their presence was growing in all states though, and a lot of that had to do with the man now heading that group.
Declan Wolcott had been secretly married to Dr. Valerie Hayes, the former leader of the Sons of Adam. He’d taken over after her death last year. As an ex-Army Ranger who’d lost millions when his private military company, North Star International, was raided by the government last year and his older brother was indicted on separate charges, Declan’s supposedly clean reputation had been destroyed. Labeled a criminal and a terrorist, wanted by the government, he’d fallen in with Stanislav Pavluhkin and the Presnenskaya Bratva.
Trying to outmaneuver a precog of Stanislav’s caliber was a pain in the goddamn ass.
“Viper, we may have something over here,” Donovan reported over the comms. “I don’t recall schematics showing a sublevel.”
“They didn’t,” was Katie’s prompt response.
Kyle jerked his head at the building. “Let’s go take a look. Viper, can you send Wraith our way?”
Copy that, Sean said over the telepathic links Katie had threaded through the team’s minds. Heading your way.
Sean’s phase power disrupted everything electronic, including bioware. Comms were useless for him in the field, which was where Katie’s telepathy came in. He used to be a CIA operative before a Splice attack in Belfast, Northern Ireland turned him into a metahuman. Sean wasn’t supposed to survive that attack, but he had. The man behind it all had also been linked to the attack on MDF headquarters nearly two years ago when a shapeshifting metahuman infiltrated their ranks.
The quiet war the MDF had going on with a rogue faction of the CIA was escalating, and Kyle didn’t have any hope it would conclude quietly.
“I’ll take point,” Kyle said, already moving forward.
“Copy that, Reaper,” Donovan replied.
Kyle’s rapid healing ability meant he could take more damage than most people and survive. He wasn’t invincible, not by a long shot, and it still fucking hurt every time he got wounded, but in his mind better he took the hit than one of his teammates.
Kyle entered the building through a hole in the wall after scanning for any potential tripwires or sensors. All scans came up negative. The hallway he came into was surprisingly clear of debris, and the holes in the roof had been recently patched. Some sections were shored up by metal support
s that weren’t rusted through, unlike in other areas.
Donovan covered his six while the Strike Force operatives spread out to clear the immediate area. Kyle listened to the quiet directions Donovan gave him, running off his enhanced sight, to arrive at a metal trap door welded shut in the cracked cement floor.
“I could shoot it open?” Kyle wondered out loud.
“Or I could phase you through it. You won’t waste any ammo that way,” Sean said as he walked through the wall on their left.
“Reaper likes shooting things,” Donovan drawled.
Sean laughed, the sound coming through his facemask a little raspy. “I never would have noticed.”
Kyle’s finger automatically moved off the trigger guard toward the trigger itself before his mind registered Sean’s voice. He knew Sean was on his way over, but instinct was impossible to break some days.
“Sniper,” Kyle said with an unapologetic shrug.
“We know,” the other two chorused.
Sean closed the distance between them, the AKR-75 assault rifle in his hands looking like it belonged there, for all that he hadn’t come to the MDF through the military. He’d been re-outfitted with new gear upon his secondment to Alpha Team turning into a permanent position.
In the Requiem (Metahuman Files Book 5) Page 1