Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2)

by Matthew R. Bell

  ‘What do we do?’ Anna asked, but before I could answer, my ears picked up a boy’s voice.

  ‘Anna?’ it pleaded. ‘Anna, please help me! Please!’

  ‘This way!’ I shouted.

  I tried to pinpoint the source of the sound, while the monsters kept on coming. Anna’s gun ran out of ammo, and we spun, switched places and she grabbed more from my bag. I took down an older man as he turned the corner.

  ‘Anna, where are you?’ the little boy pleaded. There was something about the sound though, it was rough and distorted.

  ‘Anthony!’ Anna screamed, and I felt her back leave mine.

  I turned, saw Anna sprint into a large room that was lit with white light rather than yellow. On the dirt-ridden floor with his back to us, was a small ten-year-old boy. It was Anna’s brother. It was also then I realised what was wrong with Anthony Gordon’s voice, the distortion. It was a recording.

  ‘Anna, no!’ I screamed.

  I tried to follow, but bars shot out of the side of the room’s entrance and blocked my path. I hit the metal hard, but it didn’t budge. I ripped the bag of ammo from my shoulder as Anna reached the boy, and I grabbed onto the horizontal bars and started to climb. Anna’s scream stopped me and I looked down to see her fly across the room.

  No!

  Anthony Gordon was exactly the way his loving sister had described him. Same dark red hair and vivid electric-blue eyes she had. But the boy she knew was gone. Tony’s face was a sickening snarl, his eyes narrowed and his shrieks pulled at my heart. What had my father done!?

  ‘Anna!’ I repeated.

  I started climbing again. A sharp pain flashed through my entire being, my breath burst from my lips and every hair on my body crackled as electricity threw me from the bars. I hit the floor and groaned while my gun disappeared out of sight. Before I was on my feet I heard Anna’s pleas; her heart-wrenching sobs and cries for Anthony.

  I looked into the room that reminded me of an arena, and saw the shell of Tony circle his sister. Anna was on her knees, head between them, shaking uncontrollably.

  ‘Anna, you have to shoot him,’ I cried, my voice faltering.

  I moved to take another run at the electrified bars when a pair of hands grabbed my top and yanked hard. I flew backwards in the air and smacked into a wall. A woman yelled in my ear as she lifted me off the ground again, and brought me straight back down. I tried to roll and grab my blade, but an earth shattering kick to my stomach sent me back into the wall, my weapon clattered to the ground.

  I hissed, and kicked out my legs. I missed and a fist connected with my jaw. I caught her next blow, twisted her arm in a way no arm should go, and as I rushed to my feet, heard the crack of its break. I brought my leg up, and it connected with her jaw, spinning her in the air before she crumpled to the floor.

  I couldn’t see my gun, so I raced over to my blade, only for a man to block my way. I didn’t stop, but instead ducked his fist and slid by him. I scooped up the sharp metal and stood, spun and sliced the man’s head in half. The woman was back on her feet and she screamed, throwing herself recklessly within my range. I drove the sword into her stomach and yanked upwards, letting the blade slice through her until it broke free at her shoulder.

  With my opponents down, I slapped the headset at my ear.

  ‘Paul!’ I cried. ‘I need Brian!’

  ‘It is Brian,’ a flustered voice came on the line.

  ‘What the hell have you done, Lucas?’ Chris growled in my ear.

  I filled them in.

  ‘What do you need?’ Brian asked.

  ‘I need you to get these bars open!’ I shouted.

  ‘I don’t know if that’s even possible!’ Brian cried. ‘If they’re tied in to the main electrical grid I might have a shot, but if they’re not…’

  I heard the distinct sound of a keyboard being abused, and Chris came back on.

  ‘Jessica’s on her way,’ he growled.

  I stared helplessly as Anna grappled with her changed brother. Her gun lay at her side. I took another run at the bars and bounced off with a sharp zap. I searched the floor for my gun, my eyes off Anna for a second.

  ‘No!’ I heard her scream, and as my head whipped back around, a gunshot filled the air.

  Anthony Gordon sank to the ground as his sister stared horrified. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open as tears streaked her cheeks. The gun slid from her hands, and she crawled over to her brother’s body. I watched as the hope drained from her, and felt even a part of my own soul die. We had failed.

  The alarm stopped, and with a clank, the bars slid back into their holes. I stumbled into the room.

  ‘Did it work?’ Brian called into my ear.

  I couldn’t speak. I just walked over to Anna and fell to my knees beside her. She repeated no over and over again. Tears fell from my own eyes. What had I done? I couldn’t even comprehend how long Tony had been changed, but Anna and I had almost lost our lives. It was so stupid. We knew it could have happened, knew how likely it was, and we’d still ran into danger.

  Miniscule voices berated my ears, but I ignored them. Anna gasped. My trousers became wet, and I looked down absently, assuming it was blood. It wasn’t, a transparent liquid pooled around us, and my gaze wandered to Anna. She was silent, and her hands cradled her stomach as her eyes met mine.

  ‘My water just broke,’ she whispered, and I almost collapsed.

  The Birth

  A few seconds passed, and all I was capable of was gawping like a fish. Anna stared back at me wearing a similar expression. I could still hear the snarls and screams of the creatures left roaming the maze. I looked down again, my eyes lingering on Anthony Gordon’s corpse, a hole in his forehead. Anna groaned, and her hand flew to her stomach.

  ‘Lucas,’ she gasped, ‘the baby’s coming!’

  It was horrible. I truly didn’t believe at that moment things could have gotten much worse.

  But they did.

  An alarm similar to the one before assaulted my ears. It was faster though, and sharper, a sound that tore at my insides. Something was wrong.

  ‘Security systems have been breached,’ a woman’s robotic voice accompanied the alarm. ‘Cleaning protocols have been activated. Can all personnel please make their way to the nearest exit, detonation is in five minutes.’

  You’ve got to be kidding me!?

  ‘Lucas!’ Anna cried.

  I shook my head and shot to my feet, my mind firmly focused on the task at hand. I needed to get Anna out of there. She was my priority. I put my arm under her shoulder and tried to lift her to her feet, but she groaned and leaned heavily against me.

  ‘Can you walk?’ I asked breathlessly.

  Anna moved her head side to side and looked at me. Her forehead was crunched and her eyes were wide. My heart stung.

  ‘Four minutes and thirty seconds until detonation. Please evacuate immediately.’

  As carefully as I could, I swept Anna into my arms and took off at a run. I sprinted through the labyrinth, cursed every time we hit a dead end, and worried about the people still in there with us. I couldn’t focus, my mind whirled. I looked up, hoping to find some way of figuring out where we came in, but the walls were too tall, and the only thing my eyes caught were the sickening yellow lights.

  I pressed the earpiece in my ear.

  ‘Brian, I’m lost and the baby is coming!’ I cried.

  I heard the slap of keys and Brian’s ragged breaths.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he repeated, ‘I’m trying to pull you up on the screen. Dad boot up that desktop, hurry!’

  A scream erupted not far from where I stood. I looked up to see an elderly woman blast towards me. I sat Anna down quickly but gently and met the woman as she reached us. I kicked out, my foot rammed her stomach, and she doubled over as she lifted into the air. I followed it up with my other leg and brought my knee against her face. She backflipped onto her stomach, and I pulled the blade from my trousers and drove it through her skull.<
br />
  ‘Now would be good!’ I screamed as I lifted Anna back into my arms.

  ‘He’s doing his best, Lucas,’ Chris growled. ‘We’re sifting through Richard’s notes, hopefully we can find… Yes! Brian, here.’

  ‘Your father’s files have a layout of the building,’ Brian gasped, ‘I’m using your earpiece to locate your positions. Hang a right, ten feet ahead of you!’

  I sprinted, took the right, and with Brian’s guidance, made it back to the staircase that we had taken down. I jumped the steps three at a time, listening closely for anyone following us before I passed through the silver door.

  ‘Ten, nine, eight,’ the robotic voice burst over unseen speakers.

  I drew deeply on the air around me and flew through the empty rooms we’d passed into on our way in. I didn’t stop when my feet hit the crumbling road outside, and when I’d made it to the car, an almighty flash burned the sky. I turned as the heat from the blast washed over us and burned our skin. I stumbled with Anna in my arms, but kept my ground. It was like a mushroom cloud engulfed the warehouses, and the sound of metal on metal filled the air as the buildings caved in.

  Holy crap that was close.

  ‘Anna! Anna!’ I said as I leaned her against the car. ‘How you doing, you alright? We need to get you to a hospital.’

  ‘No!’ she screamed in return. ‘They’ll take our baby! They’ll take our baby away from us. We need to, we need to-’

  Anna let out a painful scream and doubled over again. Her breaths were short and labored. I felt helpless. I had no idea how to deliver a baby.

  Over the sound of scraping metal, I picked up the hum of an engine, and the squeal of tires as a motorbike pulled to a stop beside us. Jessica’s face was covered in sweat, and for the first time since we’d met, she looked flustered.

  ‘Get her on this bike now!’ Jessica shouted. ‘She needs a hospital.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I know, but she won’t, she doesn’t want…’

  ‘Lucas, you’re gonna need to trust me right now,’ Jessica said. ‘I promise you, I give you my word, something I don’t give lightly, that I will look after Anna and your baby. She needs a hospital, trust me.’

  We stood there as precious seconds ticked by. How could I trust someone who’d tried to kill us? There was something about Jessica’s face, her words, the sincerity and force behind them. I hoped to God she wasn’t lying as I lifted Anna onto the back of the bike. I kissed her on the forehead before clasping on a helmet provided by Jessica. Once done, I turned back to our friendly neighborhood assassin.

  ‘Anything happens to her,’ I growled.

  Jessica nodded, and Anna reluctantly wrapped her arms around Jessica’s waist. The motorbike shot into the night and back down the road at top speed. The smell of smoke burned my nostrils, and I felt tears sliding down my cheeks. I rubbed at them hard and collapsed against the car. What had I done? Chris had been right, my personal vendetta against my father had almost gotten Anna, our child and I killed! I truly was leading them to destruction.

  But I couldn’t rid myself of my anger, my frustration. I had made promises I had to keep. My child was coming, right then. He or she was going to be born into a world filled with people who would do all they could to either kill, or grab for testing. We couldn’t run. We couldn’t hide. We had to take out the source of our problems, and that was my father.

  ‘Lucas?’ Chris’s gravelly voice interrupted my internal debate. ‘Lucas, you need to get out of there, now!’

  I was about to ask why, but it was a stupid question. I used my enhanced sense of hearing, and filtered out the crunching metal and roaring flames. In the distance I could hear their whine, the unmistakable sound of sirens. Another of our enemies was on the way.

  *

  I raced through the heavily wooded area. Flashlight beams and dog barks followed me. I was fast, and managed to keep a pretty good distance from my pursuers, but the woods disorientated me, and the number of armed police after me was more than I would have liked.

  After hearing the sirens Chris laid orders into my ear. The man with a plan had brewed a course of action up on the spot, and after retrieving the mobile phone from the car, I set off into the woods that sat beside the road. I’d taken the phone to stay in contact with the group, but also so that when the police found the car, they found nothing that could help them trace us to the hotel. The car itself was expendable; Chris had explained as I ran that the warehouse explosion would be pinned on us anyway.

  I turned into a clearing, straight into an ambush.

  ‘Fire!’ a voice screamed, and gunshots filled the air.

  I dove back the way I’d come and slammed into the ground. I forced myself to my feet and picked up the pace. It was going to be a long night.

  *

  I stalked the streets with my hood up. I hoped madly that no one would stop to pay attention to the blood that clung to almost every inch of my body. I’d escaped the forest and my hunters. Thankfully I was faster and harder to catch. I’d gotten away, and prowling the streets under a sheet of panic. There were too many people, too many things that could go wrong. I hated it, the feeling of being smothered, of being in constant danger and being able to do nothing about it.

  A few times people stared, but eventually they passed, skirting far around me. The police were on high alert, each time I turned a corner I had to double back and take a new route because of their presence in the streets. I eventually made it back to the hotel, and the air I’d held onto for far too long exploded from my lungs.

  I took the elevator up to the top floor, and when it stopped, the doors slid open, and there was Chris. I gasped when he grabbed me by the collar, swung me round and threw me against the wall.

  ‘Idiot!’ he screamed. ‘Do you have any idea what could have happened to you two!?’

  ‘Chris, I-’ I whispered.

  He banged me against the wall again.

  ‘Do you think I want to see you both get hurt!? We’re a family, Lucas! We’re a family!’ Chris shouted. His voice wavered at the end, and tears sprung from his eyes as his hand slipped from my top.

  I felt my own salty tears slide down my cheeks and I wiped at them. I didn’t know how to apologise enough to make it alright, because it wasn’t alright. Maybe Chris was right, in fact, I knew he likely was, but we had to do something. I knew how he felt, I could feel it too, the desperate pull to run and hide and search for a life elsewhere, but I was under no illusions. That wasn’t going to happen; my father, the government, they would make sure of it. We had to fight, and we had to win.

  They were all useless justifications.

  Chris skulked off back to the War Room, and I followed, dragging my feet down the corridor. I entered the main room and was faced with both Brian and Chris. Paul lounged on one of the couches and his head hung low, a black circle crowned his eye. I took another look at Chris, and I searched past the scars to find a small cut above his lip. Chris and Paul had come to blows.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered, trembling. ‘I was only trying to help.’

  Brian shook his head, a round lump protruding from his hairline, a wound inflicted by me. The wave of guilt was almost excruciating. Hurting the people I loved was the farthest thing from what I wanted, I just wanted to get them their lives back, to stop them living in fear.

  Or are you just selfish? This is all about your father, you just want revenge.

  I pushed the traitor voice from my mind and swallowed.

  ‘Leave the boy alone,’ Paul growled into the silence. ‘At least he’s doing fucking something!’

  Chris rounded on him, the cold fury in his eyes terrifying.

  ‘If we’d waited,’ Chris whispered, ‘if we’d looked through those notes more carefully, we’d have had some idea of what we would have walked into. The layout, what it was used for! Instead, Lucas showed how idiotic he is and charged in!’

  Chris then turned to me.

  ‘Your father doesn’t have to bu
dge a finger!’ he growled. ‘You’re doing all the running around for him. Think about it, Lucas! It was the same in Greystone. We’re being played. We were led to that information, easily if you remember, which means he wanted us to have it, and he knew you would charge in without even thinking!’

  I cast my eyes down. He was right of course.

  ‘The warehouse is like Greystone 2.0,’ Brian informed us once Chris was done. ‘Your Dad made it for your sister, Lucas. Straight after Greystone, he recreated a similar experiment to see if it was a fluke or just you. It’s all in his notes. He wants us to know what he’s up to. Plus, it tells us about Anna’s brother, he’s been gone for around a week, when those trials at the warehouses started.’

  It felt like molten lava was being poured into my brain. Did I truly have a twin sister? What the hell was my father’s endgame!? I would have known all of the information had I waited, and I had to refrain from lifting my arm to cover the pain that bloomed in my stomach. What made it worse was I knew I would do it again. I knew that as soon as we found my Dad I would commit the same idiocy Chris had spoken of. I needed to.

  Brian was about to continue, but Chris saw the gears turning in my head, he knew what I planned, and he cut Brian off. I slouched over to one of the empty couches and sank onto it. I had to put all that aside for the time being, Anna was likely giving birth right then, and we had no idea if she was alright.

  Please God. I’m begging you, from the bottom of my heart. Please, keep Anna and my child safe.

  Bring them home.

  *

  Grueling hours passed, and night gave way to morning. I showered and changed, noting the bruises on my check and stomach, souvenirs from the stronger than normal creatures we’d faced. All of us took turns pacing and fidgeting. There had been no word, no phone call and all of us had almost given in to the rising panic. Had Jessica been planning it all along? Was her word worth nothing? She was an assassin, paid to plan, track and kill for money, and I’d let her blast away from me with Anna in the middle of labour.