The Infected: Ripped to Shreds (Book 1): Hush

by Power, P. S.

  Inside he really did want her dead, but it wasn't all that gruesome as to what he had planned. Just the end of her being, due to his rage. That was all. Not like her, who kind of wanted to torture people first, and play in their blood. Possibly masturbating at the same time. She'd never done that, but the idea wasn't too far off of what she would have done with unlimited time and no risk of being caught. Even the thought of it was a turn on.

  So Rigs was clearly a better person than she was that way.

  Cindy slid into place. Then she checked to make sure he wasn't working against them, which she did while looking at Bridget the whole time. After all, the kid wasn't planning to pull her arms off or anything. Brian let his leg touch hers, which she realized was on accident. She did it back on purpose, because there was no real reason for them to not be friends.

  "I was sent to keep an eye on you, Bridget. Just so you know, I'm not sure you were really wrong. Lauren isn't evil, but you kind of called that one. Can anyone keep her from escaping? I mean, maybe, but for how long? Still, leave her alive for now, and I can double check her information. We should get June to do that, too. If she wants, I mean." The woman wasn't her imaginary friend after all.

  Rigsby nodded, closed his eyes and sat still for about five seconds. Then a rather cute looking woman in jeans and a leather jacket showed up. She was made up, and looked like she was planning on going out on a date, rather than work. Her look shifted a lot however, because she was designed to not just read minds, but also be a shape shifter. That she only moved from one hot looking female character to another was all about how Rigs thought about her however.

  There was a raised hand, and a bit of a smile, then a grimace as June looked at Bridget hard.

  "You ripped her arm off? Ouch. I'll go see about what I can find from her. Seriously though, that's messed up." There was no real scolding in the tone about it.

  Then the woman vanished, before Bridget could do more than make a hard face about it all. She covered that by putting cake in the middle of it, rapidly. She knew what she was doing however, and that no one there would be fooled. Not even Brian.

  He was about to lecture her over the idea, when Cindy shook her head.

  "Anyway, Rigs, you'll be glad to hear that you aren't in on the latest coup. I can call you that, right?" She hadn't asked, but it was how he referred to himself internally, so it had kind of been picked up.

  His desire to end her life didn't change at all, but his words were calm and polite sounding. Nearly playful.

  "Sure. What do I call you? Cinderella?" As soon as the words were out of his pointy mouth, he had to fight a wince, since he hadn't meant to be a dick about things, and didn't want to make fun of her name in particular.

  She just shook her head, and kept a straight face about the whole thing. She didn't care what she was called.

  "Cin is good. Cindy works, too. Anyway, since you're in on the side of right and good, or whatever, we can use your help with some things. Babysitting me and Impulse here, for instance. I haven't gotten anything on it yet, but Bridget thinks there might be some kind of attack from Team Two tonight. She's been putting out subconscious prescient predictions the whole time I've known her, and they seem to be pretty accurate. This one could just be her worrying over nothing though, since I guarantee you the second to last person that I'd even want to bother fighting would be her." That got everyone to nod, even though they were all considering very different people for the number one space.

  Brian was thinking of someone called Tesseract, for instance. Rigs was thinking about Proxy, and Bridget was more worried about Penny Cooper from the front office than anyone else. That one was odd enough that Cin had to stop and try to figure out why that was, exactly. After all, the woman was just a person, even if she might not be seen all the time. That one was due to the fact that Bridget really liked her, and didn't want her to be hurt.

  It was a strange thing to consider, but honest enough, most likely.

  Brian looked at her, wanting to ask who was in her number one spot. He kind of feared that it would be him, but she shook her head.

  "Trivia."

  No one told her that was stupid, though it was clear that Rigsby didn't know who the heck that was. He kept eating, since he had to put food away about at the same speed that Bridget did, more or less. The big difference was that he didn't sleep. There was no down time for him to get away from his rage. Not even a moments rest, when he wasn't struggling to hold off and not take out a big portion of the world.

  Even knowing that he wouldn't survive the attempt for more than a few moments, it was a constant temptation. She nearly suggested that genetic treatment of Dr. Burrows, when it flashed up that he'd already had it. It would either start kicking in at any time, or not.

  On the good side for him, his subconscious mind already knew that it was working. He hated everyone still, but it was nearly half of what it had been even a week before. At that rate inside a week he'd be no worse off than he had been his whole life. Given that he'd managed to not kill anyone for the first fifty years of his existence, that would work pretty well for him.

  Brian looked at his little plate of food, and was contemplating not eating it, fearing that he'd get fat again if he let himself go for too long. It was a real eating disorder, which he knew, but that didn't make it easier for him to not take part in it. That kind of thing wasn't an idea that she would have really guessed at herself. He seemed so normal.

  For a person that went off to kill at random times like he did.

  Almost as if it were listening to her, the story, written on what seemed like a computer screen, told her that he was about to transfer out. Almost as if seeing the same script, he stood, and started to jog away, speeding up near the end. Then he was just gone. It wasn't even like vanishing really. He wasn't there, but it happened so smoothly that it was hard to track.

  The interesting part for her was that she could see what was going on with him, the screen describing it all. It was an interesting fight for him, since he was taking the place of an adult man, who'd been about to be mugged to death. The three guys had knives, but that wasn't helping them much, since two of them were trying to run, and the other wasn't much of a fighter.

  She winced, and shook her head, as she read the words.

  "Well, those aren't happy guys. Oooh." She looked at Bridget and explained. "Proxy just crushed a guys ball sack. Aaaaand they're down. Now he's breaking their arms and legs." It took a few seconds, but she was able to point at the right spot, more or less, just as he was coming back.

  Bridget started nodding then, and moved over to hug her. Then she waved at Brian, searching him for wounds. There were none. Not even a serious bruise on his hands from hitting people.

  "He's fine. The guy, um..." She had to cross link to find the person that was replaced, and found the business man, Bart Threwn, to be running away. He didn't know what had happened, but the older guy was happy enough not to be dead. "He's fine now, too. Jogging in a good direction."

  Brian picked up on what that meant, and smiled too.

  "Cool! You tracked me the whole time?"

  "Yep. It wasn't even hard. Just like reading a book."

  That meant she got to go with him to the head office to write up a report. Which meant Bridget had to come too. She wasn't thrilled about it, since it harkened back to the idea that she was a kid in so many people's minds, but moved along anyway, carrying a large plate of food with her, so she didn't waste anything. Like time in which she could stuff her face, or the good food. That was one of the things that seemed to be real enough, though Cin hadn't checked it out for herself yet.

  The food there seemed to be better than decent.

  Rigs opted to stay, not seeing the need to do anything in particular. His plan involved doing some baking for the next day, after the official meal. Bridget had come early, in order to not be trapped in the room with Lauren's angry, traitorous friends. To her that one just seemed right. Team Two was mainly made of
evil people after all. Her old friends, that had tried to kill her father. Over lies.

  Some of them needed to die, of course. It was written in blood red, and extra bold print. Bridget had plans for that, but taking out Level first made sense to her on a level that was nearly OCD. Lauren was probably a class six, and no one else on the team could match that. Few in the whole world really could. Bridget was one of them, but that didn't mean she could let herself be stupid about things with Team Two. Pushing them, letting them work as a group, or worse, forcing them to, was a poor idea.

  No, if she wanted to remove them from the world, or some of the worst of them anyway, it was going to take planning, patience and care. A lot of her meditation learning had been to allow her the control she needed not to fly off the handle and just attack like a moron. If she waited long enough, there would be chances to take them down, eventually.

  One by one, she would.

  The girl tried to act calm and collected, carrying her plate with both hands, to prevent the heaps of chicken and potatoes from sliding off. She moved at the same speed that Brian did, which meant that Cindy got to stretch her legs out a bit. They headed back to the same building she'd worked in that afternoon, to find that a meeting was going on off to the side.

  At least that seemed to be the case.

  Really, it was six people inside the room, which had an open door to it, and Marcia Turner screaming into a speaker phone.

  "No! We know that you're in on this Burkes. Report in now, or well be forced to come for you. You don't want that. This is treason." Her voice dropped an octave, and about fifty decibels suddenly, becoming nearly a whisper. "Damn-it. I trusted you. You have five hours to get here. If you try to do anything else..."

  There was a laugh then, from the other side of the box on the table. The people arrayed around it all seemed to be thinking different things. Two of them were military men, and neither was absolutely certain they weren't behind what was going on. Senator Roberts hadn't been told about anything, or heard any hints, but he had spoken to a lot of people that were simply afraid of Impulse now. That was ridiculous, since she was only a girl, and not that hard to get along with, but he could get the general idea.

  The man on the phone... Well, that part was interesting. He was a man, and was, indeed playing the part of Agent Burkes, but now that she had a point of connection to him, Cin was getting a dual overlay. The top level, which was the man in question, and the secondary one, which told a very different story indeed.

  About who the man really was. Cindy moved forward and spoke out loud, staring at the words of the second set of info. It did keep trying to overlay Agent Burkes words over it, but she focused and was able to work it all out, if with a bit of effort.

  She made her voice sound strong.

  "Sam Burwell. Three two nine Oakley street, Listell Nebraska. Age thirty-four. Wife Carleen Burwell, one son, Kennedy, age eleven." She got the attention of everyone in the whole room, including a gasp from the man that was supposed to be Agent Burkes on the phone. That was enough of a giveaway that Turner glared at the phone, then took a single deep breath, working some of it out. "He doesn't know what happened to Burkes, but had to make physical contact with him in order to copy him like this. He's been paid for this... Um... Let me see here... You have your account with B of A, right Mr. Burwell? I have the account number here." She really did. It was strange, because there was no way that this guy could have remembered it on purpose, but he'd looked at it recently enough that she could pluck it from the words on the page that floated over the phone.

  Pushing Turner out of the way she lunged for the paper in front of her and snagged the pen from her fingers. The woman was fast enough mentally to understand what was going on. Plus, this meant that her buddy, Burkes, might not be a traitor.

  Oh, he was probably dead, but that was still better than the other options. She could forgive him for dying on her. Not for betraying their own side.

  The Senator got things next, even though he didn't recognize her in the slightest. At first he thought that she might be June, of all people. They'd met before, and he knew that the woman could change shape. What he didn't know was that she was an energy projection and not a person. That was required to hide Team Four, which was basically just Rigs.

  One man, or bear, depending on how he identified, who could end them all. One filled with nearly total rage, which thankfully was dying down now.

  As soon as she scribbled the right number sequence down and the name of the bank, complete with branch, and the name of the branch manager, Cin dropped the paper and pen, then moved back.

  Then Turner spoke, her voice nearly smarmy.

  "Sam, is it? I think that you'll want to work with us now. Do you understand? You can't hide from us, and we aren't going to just let you walk away. It would be a shame for little Timmy to grow up without a father, wouldn't it?" The woman was smart enough to know the the name was Kennedy, so she was doing that one on purpose. Intending for Cindy to correct her, to show how much Marcia didn't care that much about the boy.

  She really did however, which was interesting. Cindy didn't, so she cleared her throat.

  "Kennedy Carter Burwell. He lives at home. His room is just up the inside stairs. The first door on the left, right before the bathroom. His teacher's name is Carol Lipscomb. He walks to school each day by heading over to Elm, cutting between the old warehouse, and the abandoned church. He always wears a blue and green coat." She could have gone on, and this was all stuff that the father knew, having touched his own kid often enough that he could completely copy his life if it came up.

  Still, that she knew all of that got a gasp.

  "Don't... Don't hurt my boy. I'll do what you want. I swear, it was just for the money. I didn't meet anyone though. Not in person. You can have the cash. All of it..." The man folded like a wet towel after that.

  Cindy moved back again, having crept forward a bit to speak. Director Turner smiled at her. It was a look that was almost friendly, for some reason. Happy that things had worked out so well. So was she, since it would be a lot more work to go and find the man and his kid for themselves than it would be for them to arrange to have him picked up.

  Except that they couldn't, of course.

  Normally they'd call in the local IPB agents to do that, but now that was all the way out of the question. Any of them could be doubles, after all. That was a thing that took her a minute to get, but she did, after a while.

  Sam Burwell wasn't Infected. Really, before six month prior to that date he'd just been an out of work factory laborer. Laid off from his job making car tires, which he'd had most of his adult life. So when a strange call came in, offering him a whole lot of money, with only a little danger, complete with super powers, he'd kind of jumped at it.

  That didn't get said however, until the conversation was done, and Brian Yi was tasked with going to collect the man. Brian. Not Proxy. Marcia was really clear on that point.

  Cin didn't wait, reading up on whatever projects that the military guys and the Senator might know about, of which there were several. None of them allowed for shape changing like that however. As soon as Brian was out of the room, heading toward the man in question a lot more rapidly than anyone would have suspected, teleporting like he was, the whole place went silent.

  Marcia Turner was smarter than she looked, it turned out, and had manage to put a lot of what Cindy had picked up from the man on the phone out all by herself, from some pretty small clues.

  "So, it looks like we have a new player in town?" That was spoken to Cin, directly.

  She nodded, her face in a faked up forced grin.

  "It looks like I chose the bestest of times to join up, doesn't it? People like Sam there, if there are more... They could be anyone. I barely even noticed that there were two people at first."

  Bridget tilted her head, and then shook it.

  "Not anyone. They can't copy powers. Just thoughts and faces, right?"

  Cindy shrug
ged then, and had to shake her head.

  "I don't know. It hasn't come up for Sam there yet, but my guess is that it won't matter all the time. If they can get people into place, then..."

  Well, then no one could be trusted.

  Not that she did, but it would probably be a little bit hard on everyone else, when they found out about it.

  Chapter nine

  It was strange, trying to sleep in a new place. Made harder by the raw fact that Cin didn't want to be there in particular. Worse, she woke up after about six hours of sleep, with nothing to do at all. There was no television in her room, which when she checked turned out to be because she'd need to buy one, if it was wanted. Books were out too, since while the base did have a little library, it mostly had e-books and would have taken her about ten minutes to organize for the week, given how few people used it.

  She took most of that from Bridget's mind, though as far as reading went she ended up with one of the cooks. Warren. The man had a head full of stories and seemed to be decent, as far as being kind went. When he wasn't feeling indignant about others being wronged. He did that a lot, but it wasn't his first mode. The man didn't have one. He was just strong willed that way. Like a normal person might be.

  She ended up lying in the dark, for about three hours, waiting for it to be light enough outside to go for a run. It was boring, but there was no point in getting up yet. No one interesting to her was around. Especially not Lancaster. If he had been... Well, then she would have been trying to end his life in bloody splendor. Most likely not living through the attempt either.

  The man might not have been the best fighter in the whole world, but he was way out of any league that would have her in it. Even if he hadn't been that good, his power would have made it hard to really get him. She'd always relied on her looks and the element of surprise when killing before. That wasn't going to work with this particular man.