The MDF issued top-of-the-line tactical body armor and lightweight combat uniforms made out of military-grade spider silk and nanoengineered material for increased maneuverability tailored to every metahuman’s individual power. In Sean’s case, his field uniform carried no electronics due to his power. He ended up going through more minor surgery than the rest of them after every mission to replace his bioware and embedded comms, but that never took very long.
“Who am I taking?” Sean asked.
Kyle looked over his shoulder at Donovan. “Gonna need your eyes down there.”
“I’m all yours,” Donovan replied.
Sean let go of his weapon, letting it hang down from the heavy-duty strap secured to his tactical vest. He grabbed Donovan’s left hand and Kyle’s right, because Kyle was adept at shooting with both hands.
Viper, you’ll need to keep Reaper and Tank in the loop, Sean said through the mental link.
Kyle’s HUD winked out, the tactical goggles reverting to a clear view that only happened when the nanotechnology stopped working. The strange deadness in Kyle’s ears when his comms died out from Sean’s power was overridden by the echo of Katie’s telepathic voice.
I have them, she said.
Sean’s fingers tightened around Kyle’s wrist before he pitched forward, sinking into the floor and taking them with him. Kyle had to hold his breath as they phased through the floor, but it was only a few seconds before they emerged into darkness lit by emergency blue lights jury-rigged on the stair landing.
We got electricity down here. Possible emergency backup generator, Kyle reported.
What’s it powering? Donovan wondered.
Question of the hour. Nothing good, I bet.
Do not let go of Tank and Reaper, Wraith, Katie ordered.
Understood, Sean said.
They descended three sublevels before the stairwell ended at a final landing, the door there set with charges. Kyle eyed the explosives woven across the door, rightly figuring it would take even Madison some time to defuse it. For Sean, it was a matter of phasing them through the wires and explosives, coming out unharmed on the other side.
Place down here is wired, Donovan announced.
Need me there? Madison asked.
Hold position, Nova, Katie said.
Copy that.
The electrical hum of blue emergency lights echoed in the space in which they found themselves. Kyle squinted through his tactical goggles, taking in the surroundings with a hard knot in his stomach. At some point in the past it may have been a storage area; for what product, Kyle didn’t know. What it had become was nothing good.
Viper, they had a Splice lab, Kyle said.
Fucking hell, Katie growled. You’re sure it’s Splice?
Can’t be one hundred percent certain they made the chemical here, but we got bodies strapped down to gurneys. Likely scenario, at the very least, is that Splice was administered down here, Sean said.
We need proof and your helmet cams are dead.
I can head down, Trevor said, get a quick assessment of the bodies.
As the team’s medic, Trevor could better estimate a cause of death than they could. Kyle didn’t much care how these people had died, just that they were dead, and if it was by Splice, then contamination was a big issue.
Strike Force needs to clear the area, Kyle said.
As metahumans, Alpha Team was immune to Splice and its deadliness, but every Strike Force operative in the field with them tonight was human—and vulnerable to that chemical weapon.
Splice had been created during war over one hundred years ago and had evolved into a weapon used by terrorists to inflict horrific damage on civilian citizens in countries around the world. Adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention was nonexistent amongst terrorists, and Splice was one of the deadliest. It killed through rapid catastrophic cellular collapse, liquefying organs and killing a person in less than a day. Splice killed 95 percent of those who were unfortunate enough to be exposed to it. The last 5 percent were turned into metahumans, but surviving was never easy.
Kyle didn’t want his old team to suffer what he and Alexei had gone through—again. The mission in Geneva all those years ago that turned him and Alexei into metahumans was a bad memory none of them could shake. They’d lost good men and women during that betrayal, and Kyle was determined not to lose anyone tonight. But he also knew death was a risk everyone had to accept when they signed up for the military, no matter what branch they served in. Strike Force was no different.
Matthew knew the risk, but he’d still followed Alpha Team into the field without hesitation.
Base has been notified. Decontamination procedures will be initiated with our exfil, which has moved up. I’m pulling Killjoy’s team, Katie said through the mental link for everyone on Alpha Team to hear.
Kyle stepped forward, needing to canvass the space they were in. The people who had died on the gurneys were strapped down at the ankles, waist, wrist, chest, and neck. He couldn’t tell if the bruises blooming on the skin around the restraints were from their struggles or Splice ravaging their bodies. Either way, they’d died horribly.
Sean’s fingers flexed against his wrist as they tallied up the dead. Kyle didn’t offer the other man any comforting words. Sean hadn’t come to the MDF through the military; he hadn’t lived through and seen some of the nightmares Kyle had survived. The last couple of months had definitely been an adjustment period for Sean, coming from the MDF’s intelligence division, but he was finding his footing. Alpha Team as a whole was trying to make the transition as smooth as possible for him, but they couldn’t coddle him.
So Kyle kept his mouth shut and relayed the number of the dead to Katie.
Thirty-seven bodies. Probably trafficked from Mexico, he said.
Unsurprising. We—
Katie’s telepathic voice abruptly disappeared and Kyle didn’t know he was reaching for his weapon until the weight of it pulled on his arm.
Viper?
Her telepathic voice roared back through his mind with a vengeance, making Kyle wince. Retreat, now! Cruise missile incoming!
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sean exclaimed as he jumped into the air, yanking Kyle and Donovan with him.
His power was different than Annabelle’s anti-gravity power. While hers could make others weightless and float, they were still solid. Sean’s power made those he touched intangible, capable of moving with more focused intent. It still made Kyle’s body feel weird as they quickly floated toward the low ceiling.
“Hold your breath,” Sean told them.
They’d trained for several weeks with Sean and his power before Alpha Team went on a mission with him. While Sean could phase through solid objects, that didn’t mean he or anyone else he took with him could breathe through them. Even phased, they still needed air, so Kyle took in a deep breath and held it in his lungs as they passed through the ceiling.
Blackness filled his vision, the absolute void that was solid earth jarring to his senses. Kyle didn’t know how long it took for Sean to phase them back to the surface, but when they did, it was into the middle of the building they’d entered earlier. Kyle took a breath and two seconds later, everything went to hell.
Stuck inside the building, they couldn’t see the cruise missile when it hit. They didn’t miss when it found its target. The explosive boom that ripped through the air made Kyle’s ears pop even through the protective hearing portion of his hard helmet. He heard the rumbling of the deadly explosion even if he couldn’t feel it because of Sean’s power.
The building shattered around them, practically disintegrating in front of their very eyes as a wave of smoke and red-hot fire ripped through the area they stood in. Debris fell through their bodies as they ran through the smoke and fire, heading in the general direction that Kyle hoped would get them clear.
Sean’s grip was like a vise that Kyle had no intention of breaking. Fire crackled and burned all around them, the flames passing eerily throu
gh their bodies. Air was starting to become an issue; the filtration masks they wore were working overtime to clean out the smoke. Fire wouldn’t last long after an explosion like this without fuel to burn. It died out quicker this time around due to Alexei.
Kyle knew when his brother’s power was in use. The lingering fire abruptly collapsed, the smoke still difficult to see through. Sean lifted them higher and higher, trying to clear the debris by going upward rather than through. They needed air.
A flash of stars against inky blackness caught Kyle’s eye before smoke drifted in the way again. He spared a glance down at the mess they were wading through, the crumbling debris of old buildings broken into pieces. They hadn’t been at the epicenter of the hit, but it was still ground zero.
Status? Kyle asked worriedly through the mental links.
Everyone got clear. Icarus moved who she could out of range and Bones shielded everyone else, Katie assured him.
Trevor, code named Bones when in the field, was also the team’s telekinetic. He couldn’t use his power to fly, but shielding was second nature to him by now. Annabelle could make numerous people weightless at the same time and fly them to safety. Kyle breathed a sigh of relief that everyone had made it out of the attack alive.
I’d ask how they knew we’d be here, but I’m pretty sure we all know the answer to that, Kyle said.
You think? was Katie’s caustic reply.
Stanislav was a few seconds off.
You sure about that?
He wasn’t—he couldn’t be in the face of a precognitive power—and that pissed Kyle off.
For now, just get clear, Reaper.
They picked up the pace, running through the dark in the direction Donovan indicated. Their HUDs were dead, and the world was black instead of green-lit. Donovan’s eyes got them out of the destroyed distribution center to rendezvous with the rest of their team.
Even in the dark, Kyle’s instincts were running hard, and his keen eyes caught sight of a figure moving toward them in the dim moonlight. Even without his HUD to see in the dark, Kyle recognized Alexei.
“All right?” Alexei asked, sounding a little tense.
“We’re fine, Inferno,” Kyle assured him.
Sean finally let go of their wrists, shaking out his hands. “That was a fucking cruise missile.”
“We know,” Donovan said.
“If Declan and the Sons of Adam have a damn cruise missile launcher, what else do they have? If they’re hoarding weapons of that caliber, then we have to ask ourselves why?”
Kyle grimaced, knowing Sean had zeroed in on the issue at hand. He could guess at the answer, and it wasn’t one he liked.
They’re planning another attack, Katie said into their minds.
Question is where and when? Madison replied.
Kyle flashed back to Boston all those months ago and the moment he’d walked out of that apartment building to see Jamie on his knees in the street and Declan holding a gun to his head. The terror he’d felt at that moment was hard to forget, and he doubted he ever would.
Whatever they have planned, we’re not going to like it, Kyle said.
The quiet agreement by everyone in the mental link left a sour taste in his mouth. Kyle knew that it wasn’t only Declan they had to contend with. Stanislav was dictating everyone’s moves and Kyle hated being treated like a blind puppet.
He knew Jamie hated it even more.
The fallout from abruptly ending the Pavluhkin mission was still reverberating through their lives. Out of all of them, Jamie had it worst, but Kyle knew none of them could escape what was hurtling toward them.
“<
“<>” Kyle replied in the same language.
But it was a mess they had to see through—all of them, together—whether they liked it or not. Kyle adjusted his grip on his assault rifle, the weight of the weapon grounding him.
If Stanislav wanted a fight, they’d give it to him.
2
To Withstand the Ocean
The cacophony of sound echoed through the thick cement walls of the convention center in Dallas, Texas. Jamie Callahan, captain of the Metahuman Defense Force’s Alpha Team, cocked his head to the side and listened. At least this time all he could make out were the cheers mixing with music, but that would change once the rally was over and everyone left the convention center. The jeers and boos from protestors outside who were against what his father, Richard Callahan, stood for would carry them on to the next city and the next.
And the next.
Jamie stared down at the screen of his slim personal tablet as a notification popped up, alerting him to yet another article containing his name. The name of the site wasn’t familiar and he swiped the notification out of view, effectively deleting it. Jamie had set the search parameters for his name and his family’s name too wide some weeks back when The New York Times’ second exposé on his family had hit the media streams, and he hadn’t bothered to fix it yet.
It hadn’t come as a surprise to them—they’d known the story was in the works ever since the first request for comments were directed at the campaign—but the ferocity of the public’s response had finally given Richard pause. Since November, since Boston, the Callahan campaign had stuck to apologetic soundbites regarding Richard’s disastrous decision to hold the open-air campaign rally on Boston Common despite the threats to his person. Richard’s reasoning—that he wouldn’t bow to terrorists—rang hollow in the aftermath.
Hundreds of people had died from the Splice attacks Declan Wolcott had perpetuated against the citizens of Boston at the behest of Stanislav Pavluhkin. The only good thing to come out of that mess was knowing that Sean and Alexei, the two members of Jamie’s team who had been MIA, were found alive in time to ensure their survival. Even now, the memory of their absence made Jamie flinch.
Of everything he’d experienced in war, losing those under his command was his greatest fear. He’d lived it, lived through it, during the attack in Tripoli, Libya that had turned him into a metahuman. That didn’t mean he wanted to go through it again. His enhanced strength and durability weren’t a fair trade for that loss in his eyes and never would be. Jamie knew that war was a series of chances and bouts of luck. No one could hope to win every time and come out whole on the other side.
Surviving was never easy, as proven by the tangled mess of a mission the exposé had dug up. Adam Dixon, The New York Times’ lead investigator, had been a problem since the start of the Pavluhkin mission in London last year.
His first exposé had focused on Jamie’s supposedly near-criminal actions within the shadow of his father’s campaign. But Dixon didn’t have all the information, and the story he’d spun at the time—that of a rich son making possible black market business deals—had complicated their mission. That bit of journalism had been knocked down by the Marine Corps at the behest of the MDF after London, though it hadn’t stayed unbelieved for long.
All it took was another even more sensational story to hit the news streams and Jamie found himself back in the spotlight of public opinion. This time, Dixon had published pictures taken in Paris last November of the dinner Jamie had attended with his team and the Pavluhkin family. Granted, he’d been under orders by the MDF to show up, but trading on his family name for the good of the country was never easy.
The dinner in Paris wouldn’t be incriminating if one didn’t know that the Pavluhkins headed up the Presnenskaya Bratva, a criminal organization based out of Moscow. What’s more, the pictures wouldn’t have even existed if some divisions of the CIA weren’t operating under a vendetta by that agency’s deputy director.
CIA Deputy Director Carter Bennett was a man in power who knew far too many secrets for Jamie to ever be comfortable unless the other man was dead. The MDF had traced Bennett’s financial wealth to Vitae Neurotherapeutics stocks, a now-defunct company once owned and operated by Declan’s deceased wife, Valerie Hayes. Jamie had killed her last ye
ar during a raid on a black market Splice lab in Montana, earning him Declan’s hatred and painting a target on his back.
The crosshairs aimed in his direction were followed up by words instead of bullets these days. Between the pictures linking Jamie to criminals and the tragedy in Boston, his father’s campaign had been derailed after November. Polling had Richard at fourth place in a shrinking field of candidates, depending on the company that asked the questions. The difference was negligible; Richard was no longer the Republican frontrunner.
It was a stunning defeat that shouldn’t have happened—except the MDF had greenlit a long mission using the Callahan name and Jamie had agreed to it. Every negative rumor, every misstep dogging Richard’s campaign could be traced back to Jamie’s decision.
What a fucking mess, Jamie thought to himself as he locked his tablet and slipped it into his inner suit jacket pocket.
President Michael Rodriguez had had no choice but to direct the Department of Justice to look into Richard’s campaign decisions after the Paris pictures came to light and ethics lawsuits were levied against him. Considering no one in his father’s campaign had approved Jamie’s meeting with the Pavluhkins nor had any knowledge of the MDF mission, the charge of collusion being bandied about by the media was false.
Proving that, however, would require Jamie’s classified identity and that of his team’s to come to light.
MDF Director Amir Nazari had flat-out refused Richard’s request to do so on the grounds of national security. The mess the MDF had made of his father’s reputation would have to be fixed in a less noteworthy manner than the announcement that Jamie was a metahuman. That hadn’t stopped the Senate from opening up an inquiry into Richard’s actions and all the myriad ties linking him to Jamie. As his son, Jamie’s actions reflected back on both of them, and his ties to the company at the heart of this mess was already showing up in the news.
Root Source, Inc. was a cybersecurity company the MDF had put together for the Pavluhkin mission. The company had been disbanded in December, all identifying information of its C-suite officers scrubbed from public view, but that hadn’t stopped the CIA from leaking the information to the press, filling in whatever holes Dixon still had in his investigative notes.
In the Requiem (Metahuman Files Book 5) Page 2