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

by Power, P. S.

  Hobbs, who had just stood there, focused on what was going on the whole time, smiled at her, meaning it.

  "Aye. There is fairness to that. This is not such a harsh keeping for her crime of betrayal. When called, ere she not flee first, we shall explain this to her. Perhaps it would be best if Lady Bridget does not attend at this time?" That was spoken not to Bridget, who was right there, but to Cin. Like that made any sense in the world.

  She nodded however.

  "Good plan. Bridget, why don't you go and report all of this to Marcia? Tell her that we're leaving Lauren locked up for a while. At least a month or two. She'll agree to that." She meant Turner, though that was a guess, but Bridget wasn't convinced, or on topic.

  "Why should she? She's fixed now. She can just leave and no one can stop her from doing it." There was anger and misery in the words and more arm crossing. She looked nearly ready to cry about it, which wasn't in keeping with what the girls reputation said.

  So Cindy shook her head. It got attention from everyone, but her words were still going to be a surprise.

  "I meant that Director Turner will agree. Lauren is staying here, and won't even try to get out without permission. If she does... We'll leave her all alone." It seemed like a small enough thing, but Denis grimaced at the words.

  The reasoning was what she was using, though he had a bit more personal insight into the whole thing. The words appeared for her, like a story being told. About how Lauren's first mode was loneliness, but was similar to his own of greed. People didn't understand it really, thinking they did. With him, he wanted everything, but getting it gave him no relief. He just desired, manically, something else.

  Level, on the other hand, always felt alone, even if surrounded by friends. Unless Den stood there and used his emotional control powers to overcome that, which he normally did several hours a day. If he wasn't allowed to visit her, she'd be stuck, and sink into depression over it.

  A moment later, the words that she could see through the solid wall we called out.

  "You can all come back?" There was hesitancy, since she was afraid of what was coming.

  Cin slapped Bridget on the arm, to get her moving.

  "Go report this for us? We'll be over shortly." She didn't know if Bridget was actually going to do it or not. After all, sending her along to run the errands could work out too. Cindy wasn't in charge of anything, especially not Impulse.

  She was just trying to make herself look good. In the moment that meant playing to her strengths. Things like being able to know how people were going to jump, for instance. Most of the time that worked for her or had been, even with the girl in front of her, but at this instance, in this case, even she didn't know what was going to come next. She could just storm in and kill Lauren for instance. Even if the others tried to stop her, if she did it fast enough it might just work. Instead she took a deep breath and started to meditate.

  Then she nodded once and walked out, in control of herself. Even with her mode beating at her brain, trying to get her to do what felt good to her. In this case, killing the source of her perceived anger.

  As soon as she got out of the building, Cindy turned to lead them all back in, her face set into a bit of a smirk.

  "All right. You're in here for sixty days. Right now Denis is going to come and see you for an hour in the morning, and the same at night, unless he gets called away. If you try to escape, you get nothing that way. He'll be ordered not to help you, ever again. Not that it will be a problem, but just in case, you need to know that. Also, just to be clear, the person you were working with?"

  She was fixed by large black lenses, the woman sitting on her cot.

  "Agent Burkes?"

  She nodded, "it isn't him. Someone was faking it. A mimic. Proxy is off with Lancaster dealing with the man right now. Anyone could be one of them. We don't know what happened to the real Agent Burkes. I need to go and try to find him, if I can. So, do you agree to stay here and not give these men any problems? If not, let us know now and we can handle this in a very different way."

  What that would be... Well, the only thing she could think of involved having the woman's arms and legs ripped off by Impulse. That sounded fair to her, but messy. Wonderfully so, along with splendid screaming.

  There was a large nod from the armored giant then. Like she knew all that.

  "Yeah." Her voice was soft, and she was pretty convinced that Denis really would leave her alone if he was ordered to. Really, she wasn't certain that he wasn't being forced to do things for her as it stood. "I... Don't really know why I did it. I shouldn't have. I was just so... Alone."

  Which she always would be except for the brief moments she was with her buddy, Den. Cin wanted to say that it was a stupid nickname, but hers was worse, so she didn't let herself go there for long. Denis was even a real first name, unlike hers.

  Waving, she walked out, calling back to the woman.

  "Sixty days. Then you'll be on probation. Don't think of this as anything other than people being nice to you. Bridget was calling for your death, or at least a trial for treason. The only thing that might get you out of that is doing everything right, from now on. So, I'll have some paper and a pen sent over. I suggest you start apologizing for everything, ever, and keep doing it every day for the time being." The lady could write, though it was really big printing, and bold since she was so powerful. It would work, so Cindy just left. Then she wondered how the heck she was supposed to get anything done there.

  Smiling she waved at the man that liked to read.

  "Agent Mathews? You'll need to run things past Director Turner, but we should let Denis in twice a day for treatments, so that Lauren won't give you problems. That isn't really my call. Can you get her a pad and some pens? She needs to write letters to people. Then make sure they get delivered? I know it sounds like a small thing, but..." Well, it probably was, but not letting the woman do something would drive her insane, and that could lead to escape.

  The man just shook his head.

  "I'll call it all in. This is about as screwed up a thing as I've ever heard of. You can't hold a class five. They'll always find a way, eventually." He was pretty certain of that one. Like it had been trained into him.

  It was probably even true really. Eventually someone that powerful would manage to get away. If that happened this time, then Proxy would have to go and kill her, or take someone else to her for that reason.

  So, lying, she smiled at the man.

  "She'll be good. This isn't about locks and doors. It's about the loss she'll have to deal with if she doesn't toe the line." It sounded good.

  Everyone else seemed to think it was about right too, though after ten minutes of walking, as soon as she got inside the main office building, having been planning to try and find Agent Burkes, Turner stuck her head out of her office and yelled to her.

  Not at her. The tone was no worse than what Glenda would have used with her. If a good bit louder, since they weren't in a library. That reminded her that she needed to call in and explain why she hadn't been there. Some of the women there might actually worry about her. Wally would, she thought.

  "In here, if you have a moment, Ms. Mableton?"

  That kind of indicated that she was supposed to go alone, and when she got in the room, there was no one else there. No Bridget or anything, waiting to ambush her for overstepping far too soon.

  The woman played with the papers on her desk, not really reading them. Ignoring her for a moment, on purpose.

  "So. What's your plan here? You've been coming out of the gate pretty strong. It isn't a bad thing, but I can't trust it. Serial killer, so you know..."

  The odd thing was, as the woman looked at her, suspiciously, she really did.

  Making a face that wasn't too unpleasant, Cin nodded.

  "Trying not to get killed? This gene therapy thing might not really work for me. It also might, but I get that I have to give up the only good thing in my life in order to make it. It's hard, but in
gratiating myself to you, to all of you, just makes sense. That's pretty much all of it. No special plan or anything, other than making myself so valuable that keeping me around might eventually seem worth it." Which meant she couldn't kill Lancaster. No matter how much she suddenly wanted too.

  Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus like Hobbs had shown her, and failed at it, but kept going.

  In case it worked better with practice.

  Director Turner nodded then, her features softening.

  "That sounds honest enough. Then, no one said you were useless, just a killer. What are your plans for the day?" She actually asked, even though she wanted to set up a list of targets for her. That was fine enough. It was still just about the weakest part of her skill with her power.

  "I was going to see if I could find Agent Burkes. I don't really know if I can. If he's dead I might not get anything at all. We know that Sam the mimic had to touch him, for several seconds, and that his whole body was there at the time and seemed to be alive. For all we know he has to stay that way for the whole thing to work." She tilted her head, since other than that she didn't know what the plan really was. There was a hand written list on the desk, which was slid over to her.

  "Good, after that, find what you can on these people. I have Chris Pours working on a different part of this right now. Normally she'd be doing this, but we have you, so make it or drown." The words sounded cold, but the ones above her were actually almost kind.

  The woman didn't like that she wanted to kill Lancaster, but did appreciate that Cin had sent him away, to protect him. The woman also knew that if she went for him, she'd just die, but it showed an effort having been made. Secretly, even as the woman expected her to fail and have to be killed, she was rooting for her to beat her problem.

  It was almost nice of her, really.

  "Well, let me see which it is? Burkes first though, since he should be the easiest for me to find."

  Really, if she were a better person she would have done more on that earlier. Instead she'd looked in on Lancaster, and got sidetracked by the delicious thought of stabbing him in the throat. Then telling him all about why she'd done it as he died. Even if that part was sometimes ridiculously silly sounding, even to her. It was fun though. It would be with Darryl, too. He had so many skeletons in his closet that it would even seem nearly fair.

  Wrong however. Even as part of her was willing to die to make that happen. She tried more of the ineffective meditation, hoping that it would take enough to drive her back to at least not wanting that one man dead. She truly did want to do that.

  Taking the list she went to use her office, or at least the one that she'd been shown to the day before. Getting her name on the door would help make having her there seem real and right, she knew. That would take a while to set up however. At least until she could work out who was responsible for that, and get them in to do it. She had work to do first however.

  Agent Burkes didn't take long to find, and the news wasn't even that bad. He was drugged out of his mind, and stuck in a dark cell that wasn't much bigger than a box, but he had food and water in there with him, and people checked on him constantly. It smelled, from what the story said, but when she worked things out, she was able to do something that surprised her a lot. Even without a name, she was able to work from him to one of his captors. The man that made certain that the drugs didn't wear off too soon.

  That man, Willy Gomez, wasn't any too certain about the whole thing, but he needed the money, having snuck into the country a year before, and not having a real job in all that time. His family needed the cash, so he'd worked at anything he could find. When the men came and offered him this job, they'd promised him one hundred thousand dollars a year, and had paid up front, before taking him there, to the secret location. He had no clue where it was, however.

  Someplace in the north, but how far, was too hard for him to guess.

  Following him as he moved, the words changing and describing what he was seeing, from the tiled hallways done in light blue and white, like a hospital, to the next little cell, where there was a woman being held, also drugged.

  He spoke to her, trying to be calming and relaxed about the whole thing. It wasn't hard, since all he had to do was keep the people alive, and clean enough they didn't get an infection.

  Inside, the older woman didn't look too good. She'd been there for a while now, being kept by the people that he was working for. He'd never been told why, but the woman looked a little familiar to him. Not enough for him to actually place a name to her. He had a picture in his head, which did seem like someone that Cin had seen before too.

  When she cross connected to the woman, she got it. The whole idea made her blink for several seconds. Then she double and triple checked the whole thing.

  Standing, she yelled.

  "Marcia! Get in here, now!"

  Then she sat at the computer and tried to take notes, making certain she didn't let go of any of the people involved as she found them. This was too big for that.

  Way too big.

  Chapter ten

  The next several days were intense, and largely lacked in things like sleep, or even exercise for Cindy. She was liberated for a single hour each morning by Hobbs, who alternated running while meditating, with fighting while doing the same. It would have been nearly fun, if she wasn't starting to lose her mind after the first few days of the situation.

  On the sixth morning, sleeping on the floor of what was pretty officially her office now, she woke up being stabbed. There was no ceremony to it, and whoever was going for her had failed to hit any vital organs at all. Then, the crazy bitch was using needles, and didn't stop even when she woke up, gasping.

  Dr. Burrows smiled down at her, with a gleam in her eyes. It really let the insanity she held inside show through. More to the point, it let her inner brilliance come out. That she had very little concern for people as people was in there, spilling out as she stabbed with fresh needles even as Cin tried to struggle. Causing pain wasn't really her end game, however. Fixing the broken woman who had tried to sleep on the floor was.

  "Hi, Sleeping Beauty. This is the first of your treatments. You'll need three sets of them. It will take a few months to really kick in, but we'll probably know if it's going to kill you long before that. Two weeks or so? Now, let me finish here and you can get back to sleep?" There was more stabbing, but after her current work load, she really did drift back off. Even with pin pricks of blood all over her in different places.

  Later, after Hobbs and Bridget came to get her for a meditation session that involved simulated drowning, she got yet another surprise. Brian Yi.

  Cindy hadn't seen him for so long that she'd started to wonder if he was coming back at all. She knew he was alive, having checked on his story a few times, but he'd been off trying to find the people that were locked in the boxes. With Darryl Lancaster, who she still wanted to kill. Not as badly as before, but that was probably all about exhaustion, rather than the treatments being extra useful for her or something like that. They really should work about the same as they did on the men, she knew. It was all over Burrows story, every time the woman came into view.

  She was still outside, and covered with a fine mix of sweat and water that had been poured over her face while she'd been strapped to a board with her head tilted back. That meant her shirt, a white and blue t-shirt that was too cold for the winter really, was sticking to her chest as she walked, and Brian jogged over, looking at her seriously.

  "Cindy?" He was about to ask if she remembered him, only being half serious about it. After all, she'd spent so much time working in the past week that it was kind of clear her mind had been stressed to near the breaking point. Not that anyone cared. Not after what she'd found.

  She glanced over and tried to fake smile at him, her face barely registering the movement.

  "If you want a blowjob, come back tomorrow. I can probably manage sex, if you don't mind me lying there like a corpse. That sounds sexy
, right?" She yawned, and then gasped a little, the memory of being tortured for meditation purposes hitting her about then. That part was insane. Hobbs was always like that too. In fact he'd been being extra nice to her about the whole thing, since she'd been pushing herself so hard.

  Proxy looked at her, seeming not much better rested than she was really, which made sense, given that he literally hadn't rested for more than a few hours in the last week, either. His entire life had suddenly become about finding the prisoners in their little cells. Their coffins.

  Rather than reject her offer, which was real enough, he nodded and went on, seeing it as a joke. At least he tried to. A part of him wanted it to be real, regardless of anything else.

  So Cin shook her head.

  "I'm not kidding. We told the press that we're going out, so we both get all the dating perks. I'm just..." She yawned and flinched again. He didn't get it, just thinking she was embarrassed about being tired.

  For a moment he felt bad about asking her to do anything, but also had to help the people that they'd found.

  "We hit a dead end. We think we have the right town. Rockton, in Illinois. It isn't very big, as far as the number of people go. The thing is, we don't know where to start looking. An isolated underground facility." He really was stuck, but she smiled, and took his hand, then started walking back toward her office. She smelled, but he didn't care about that, being too concerned about helping people.

  That was the way to his heart, she knew. It was printed right there above him, scrolling on the fake computer screen of his mind.

  "They get groceries delivered, a few times a month. The man that works the facility there that I found, and his partner, both have seen the kid that brings the stuff out, a few times. They don't really know where they are, I don't think. There seems to be other people there, but they don't interact with anyone except each other and the prisoners. Mainly to keep people like me from finding them. It's clever, really." She'd written all of that down, including the next bit. "The guys have seen the delivery happen, once, when things got a little mistimed. It isn't enough for me to cross connect to the driver. He was just too far away from them for that kind of thing."