by Ronie Kendig
“What’s going on?” Leif lowered his weapon.
Andreas shook his head. “He says we are late.”
“Did we need a reservation?”
“Do your job.” Andreas glared at the guy, then at Leif. “Come.” He stormed down the hall to the last room, which contained blacked-out windows, a rumpled bed, and well-read books cluttering a corner. He opened a smaller door. A closet?
Andreas leaned inside and reached up over the doorjamb. A distinctive shunk reverberated through the wall. He stepped in sideways, then moved forward—and vanished.
What on earth? Though Leif expected him to reappear, only the creak and groan of steps came. He peered in. Stairs too narrow to be called a stairwell sank into the darkness. The glare of Andreas’ cheek was the only hint that he hadn’t disappeared altogether.
Leif’s old buddy Tox hadn’t been fond of tunnels, and he could suddenly relate. He had to descend sideways to fit into the rail-thin passage. A dozen steps delivered him into pitch black. Had he missed a turn?
He hesitated, trying to hear which way Andreas had gone. Inching forward provided a smidgen more light. He paused to sort out his surroundings, which included black, dark gray, and oppressive gray, wood in various states of decay, and smells—musty, dank. Those odors surprisingly gave way to . . . yeast, bread. Laughter from above.
Disoriented, Leif recalled a bakery on the corner of the street. He should’ve hit bottom or a foundation by now. A dozen more steps had dirt crunching beneath his boots. He paused. Had he stepped into some time-dilation tunnel? Because this didn’t make sense.
Where were they? What was this? Where had Andreas gone?
Dead ahead, darkness surrendered to a dull glow. Shapes shifted and rose. Through the sights of his weapon, Leif assessed the figures.
“Relax,” Andreas said, pressing down Leif’s gun. “You are among friends here.”
Unease latched on as his eyes adjusted, transforming those before him from shadowy forms to . . .
Recognition punched the air from his chest. He stepped back, a chill cracking his bones. “No freakin’ way.”
SEVEN
STUTTGART, GERMANY
Andreas shifted aside and swiped the wall. Light forced its way through the space, chasing away darkness and any doubt in Leif’s mind that this was really happening. “There . . . this . . . It can’t be . . .”
“Real?” Andreas arched an eyebrow. “It is, just as they are.”
They. Men Leif knew, had known. But it wasn’t possible. These men were dead. Supposed to be dead. “How . . . ?” This couldn’t be. They had enhanced abilities, but they weren’t immortal.
Andreas moved farther into the room, bypassing answers as smoothly as he did the sealed-off medical bay with hospital beds and IV drips. In what looked like a small cafeteria were three more men, their food ignored.
A sickening knot formed in Leif’s gut as he met the gazes of men he’d trained with. Harcos, Muharib, Esger. The men from the Sahara Nine.
Neiothen. They were Neiothen. All of them.
All of us.
They were also the men he’d hunted with Reaper: Kampfer, Harbah, Dreng.
A sharp, daggerlike pain stabbed his skull with each heartbeat. It didn’t make sense. Did he know these men from training with them or from hunting them? Both?
But . . . he didn’t.
“Once we talk,” Andreas called from the far side, “it will make sense.”
“Really messes with the head, doesn’t it?” said a dark-haired man.
“Esger.” Who was supposed to be dead.
The very-much-alive man smirked at him. “Vidor, good to see you again.”
Vidor. The sound of that name—his own call sign—hurt as much as the trigger call in the amusement park. Fear and adrenaline combusted, shoving Leif forward. “What is this? What’s going on?”
Andreas stared him down with preternatural calm, as if waiting for him to step off. It was not until Leif eased back that Andreas motioned to the table and folded his six-three frame into a chair. “What do you recall of the accident that destroyed your career?”
Annoyed that Andreas had skipped past the whole dead-men-walking thing, Leif did not respond. He sensed a lot more behind the question than simple curiosity. And it irritated him. This whole thing irritated him. Told him to leave.
“Chopper crash.” The chair next to him squawked as a scraggly man deposited himself there. “Wedged—”
“—on the cliff above,” another said. His eyes were familiar. Very familiar.
He held his arm protectively to his side, hand fitted over the barrel of his M4. Glistening movement betrayed the blood gushing . . .
The assault of that memory made Leif’s nerves jounce.
“You okay, Chief?”
Leif’s brain sizzled with a deadly sense of déjà vu. Those words—that question. This guy had asked him that before. “Kampfer.” But he’d been at The Hague. “Turi Vega.”
“You knew me as Harcos.” A half shrug. “Once. A while back.”
“You died—I saw my guy trying to save you.” Leif blinked, looked at Andreas. “You told my team Veratti had a sniper trained on him. Shot him.”
Vega smirked.
Leif skipped his gaze to the guy in sweats and a T-shirt dragging an IV tower over the floor. When their eyes locked, Leif hopped to his feet, wanting to get away, feeling like he was trapped in a haunted house. “Huber.” Bile rose in his throat.
“Easy,” Andreas said, touching his arm. “Just breathe.”
Hearing hollowing, Leif fought the order. Fought to understand. To make sense of this. “How . . . ?” He pressed his hand to his forehead. “You’re all dead. I saw your bodies.”
“You saw what we needed you to see.” Andreas had a voice that could convince a rabid dog to lie down and show his belly.
Turi Vega, who used the call sign Harcos yet hunted as the Neiothen Kampfer.
Wafiyy Ibn Sarsour, call sign Muharib. Neiothen: Harbah.
Harald Elvestad, call sign Esger . . . Dreng.
Herrick Huber . . . Krieger . . . Bushi.
“What?” Leif scoffed. “You going to tell me that guy with his head bandaged is Guerrero?” He could still feel Dempsey’s gray matter splatting his face.
“No,” Andreas said quietly, his expression dark. “There was nothing we could do for Guerrero. I didn’t reach him in time. Almost didn’t make it in time for Kappi either.”
Kappi. Leif recoiled, the face of Carsen Gilliam snapping to the fore. “He was . . .”
“Dead?” Andreas finished. “Thanks to your unwitting team and its actions in The Hague, we were able to intercept and save him.”
“No way! He was dead.”
“Yes, mostly.” Andreas’s lips quirked. “He will have visible, unsightly scars, but thanks to the enhancements, he is alive to fight another day.”
Why did Leif feel like he’d stepped into some bad sci-fi movie?
“What?” Vega asked. “Did you think you were the only one who could run indefinitely and heal fast?”
What they were saying made sense in one respect and was absolute lunacy on the other. Light-headed, Leif tried to wrestle the situation into something manageable, something . . . fathomable.
“Kolya.” A young woman entered a far door. “They’re ready.”
That was what Leif had called Andreas in the park—Kolya.
Though Andreas inclined his head at her, he didn’t move. He sat quietly, as if thinking something over. Then his gaze met Leif’s. “I’m not sure you’re ready for this, but there is no more time.”
“Ready for what?”
“You still cling to your idea of the truth, what you want to be the truth.” Andreas shrugged. “I understand. What they did to us”—he shook his head—“should never have happened. But it did. And now we use it against them.”
“Use what?”
A dark smile carved his face. “Everything.”
* * *
> Moving from the dank underground hideaway, up a flight of stairs, and into the open conference room felt more symbolic than Leif cared to admit. Behind him, the past, the once-thought-dead Neiothen. Before him, a half-dozen unknowns sat around two rickety six-foot tables pushed together. Two Asian males, another male and female, a disheveled guy who looked homeless, and finally, a woman, so pale she might not have any blood in her veins, whispered to Rutger Hermanns.
The thorn in Leif’s side lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “Mr. Metcalfe.” He motioned to a chair. “Please.”
Resistance was pointless because he had nothing to prove, and he’d already learned more from Hermanns in two encounters than he had in four years with Dru. So he did as instructed, eyeing the able-bodied Neiothen who’d come with him.
“First,” Hermanns said, “let me introduce my team.”
“I really don’t care about them,” Leif countered. “I want to know about them.” He indicated the Neiothen. “They’re dead—multiple times over. Explain that.”
“I will,” Hermanns said with a smile. “But first, trust me in the order of things, ja?” He placed a hand on the pale woman’s shoulder. “This is Dr. Hanna Sommer. I could give you her litany of accolades and degrees—and you would recall them all—but believe me when I simply say she is a brilliant geneticist.” He then stood behind the homeless-looking man. “This is Alaric Stein, a biochemist with a number of specialties. And what he lacks in appearance, he more than makes up for in the lab. Beside him is Dr. Danek Pohl.”
Leif recalled seeing Pohl on a magazine cover. “You wrote the article on war and the brain.” The one that had really ticked off the guys at the FOB where Leif had been stationed.
Pohl held his gaze, unflinching. “I did.”
“Danek is a retired brigadier general and neurosurgeon,” Hermanns said. “He teaches at a couple of universities in the States.”
“Head doctor,” Leif taunted.
“In more ways than one,” Pohl said with a grim smile. “However, not as a shrink. That falls to Selma, our resident psychiatrist.” He nodded down the table. “She has a specialty in brain-injury medicine.”
Leif glanced at a woman who seemed to have at least a little Latina blood, if her dark features were any indication.
“A shrink,” Huber said with a sniff. “Never could get away from them.”
Leif wasn’t letting Pohl go—the redirection wouldn’t work. “Are you responsible for the technology in our heads?”
A hesitation. “In part.”
“Which part?”
“Before we get into that, let me finish,” Hermanns said. “To Danek’s left are Sora Tanaka and Asahi Kimura, extremely talented biochemists recruited from Japan.”
The introductions were a waste of time and changed nothing. “Explain to me how these men were dead—multiple times—yet are sitting here living and breathing.”
“You were dead, too,” Vega asserted.
Leif jerked toward him. “Come again?”
“Wait,” Hermanns said, inclining his head to the Neiothen. “Please, let me explain first.”
“Why are you controlling the dialogue?” Leif asked, agitation rising. “You afraid they’re going to say something that’ll tick me off?”
“Yes,” Bostwick asserted, her brown eyes fierce. “If Rutger is allowed to read you in, things will make sense. If the pieces come together in a random disorder that has no meaning, the reaction you’re likely to experience may be significant and significantly different.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t want us mad, would you?” Huber had a bite to his words. He met Leif’s gaze. “They’re scared of us because they know what they did to us.”
It was affirming in a strange, twisted way to have Huber and Vega—men he’d hunted down with Reaper—saying the very things that had been burning in his own head.
“My sister,” Hermanns said, his voice pitched and commanding, insisting he be heard, “developed a serum about ten years ago that enabled soldiers to ignore their pain receptors and power through missions.”
“Interferons in the parietal lobe,” Leif muttered, connecting the dots.
“Yes,” Hermanns said. “Her serum was so successful, it caught the eyes of the wrong person.”
“Veratti,” Leif suggested.
“No, not yet,” Hermanns said with a raised finger, the weight of this story heavy on his shoulders. “Before Veratti there was someone else who encouraged Katrin, said she was onto something big—”
“Wilhelmina.” Sneering made Hanna Sommer look all the more pale and deathlike.
After a slow nod, Hermanns continued. “She told Katrin that with this project, they could help soldiers around the world to return home to their families and loved ones. With her fiancé and some in this very room, she worked night and day on this project, unaware of what her sponsor intended to do with the work. When she learned the truth, Katrin decided to get out, take the research with her, and free the men she’d treated.”
“Except Wilhelmina turned on her,” Selma said with her lip curled. “She thought it poetic that Katrin be killed by the men she’d created.”
“The subjects,” Alaric Stein finally spoke up, his words intentional, “were dosed with a steroid cocktail that amped their responses and instincts. That, combined with the further-faster technology, turned them into . . . monsters. When Katrin fled, Wilhelmina sent them after her.”
Face surprisingly devoid of emotion, Pohl seemed unaware of the tear sliding down his cheek as he stared into space.
“And the Neiothen?” Leif asked.
“The attack that night was brutal. Authorities had no choice—kill or be killed,” Selma said, her expression dark. “The program had turned honorable men into tools of murder. That was never the intent for the Neiothen.”
“A select few of us were chosen to remain and feign agreement with ArC’s purpose. We were relocated after that,” Stein said, “and discovered there were already more Neiothen in play—including all of you. Veratti started a new group, but they were impatient, unwilling to allow the body to assimilate to the changes. The Betas started failing. The technology wouldn’t pair.”
Bostwick nodded. “Behavioral enhancements weren’t adhering, infections were rampant, resulting in disorientation and delirium. Before anything could become permanent, we attempted to deprogram them, so to speak. When that didn’t work, we chose to block certain memories, a new and not wholly effective technology, which”—she shrugged sorrowfully—“did not work on all of them. Before Wilhelmina or ArC could learn of the failed attempts and order us to terminate them, we erased them from the program.”
“Carsen.” Leif recalled the story the guy had told him. “He was a Beta. But that doesn’t explain us or our memory gaps.”
“That’s where I came into the program,” Bostwick explained. “The serum had progressed to gene therapy, then technological enhancements, which all worked.”
“Our original plan,” Stein said, “was to return you to your respective units and governments.”
“Veratti had another plan.” Pohl had brushed away his tears. “So my task was to convince you of a certain order of events and program them into your mind, then release you back to your units with no memory of what happened, so that at a later time he could activate you.”
“And you were okay with that?” Leif asked. “Wiping our minds—”
“Don’t blame Danek,” Bostwick said. “We thought we had created a workaround, a way to help you recall what happened. But we, too, were betrayed by Wilhelmina.”
“The chips,” Leif whispered, no idea if that was right.
“They were only supposed to monitor biorhythms and dose you with serotonin to reduce anxiety and fears. Keep you confident, calm.” Kimura looked contrite, bothered. “Through threats against our families, they forced us to make them do . . . more.”
“Like they forced us,” Vega said.
Bostwick hesitated. “Actually, no. No participant
was forced into the program. All of you came to us as volunteers.”
“Bull.” Leif searched for some semblance of recognition. “I don’t remember you.”
“Not remembering isn’t tied to recruitment,” Stein asserted. “Each man in this room was approached about the project through indirect channels.”
“Meaning?”
“Because of your profile, you were invited to join the Netherwood project,” Bostwick said. “As to who invited you—well, we contacted individuals in your spheres of influence to vet you, then once convinced of your compatibility, to pass along the information. We could not directly invite you because that would compromise our team. And if we were compromised, the project was compromised. Everything done to you was carried out with your clear understanding and consent . . . until Wilhelmina.”
“Though you had a say, there are those who did not,” Hermanns said, grieved. “ArC has what we’ve been calling second-generation models. The Gen2s are perfected, precise, and merciless. No longer can they be considered men. They are machines.”
* * *
“What do you think?” Rutger stared out the window of the small conference room into the warehouse, where the Neiothen had equipment at their disposal to recover and improve.
“He wasn’t ready.” Andreas’s reflection loomed in the glass, superimposing itself on Leif making his umpteenth attempt at the climbing wall, sans harness. Then he leapt from the midsection of the wall and caught a beam.
“I think you underestimate him,” said Selma. “Leif Metcalfe has been waiting for this—in truth, he was programmed for it. Designed for it—all his life, if the Book of the Wars is to be believed.”
“I agree.” Rutger thought of the panels Leif had stolen, the ones that showed the great, bloody sacrifice that paired with the words from the book about blood and power in his hands. Leif was not the key, but he was integral to the success of any attempt against ArC. “And yes—it is undoubtedly to be believed.”
“Then once Leif embraces the truth, he will be a force to reckon with.”
“But against them?” Andreas argued. “None of us is prepared to face a Gen2. We’ve failed to stop Veratti, and that’s without being confronted by super soldiers.” He bobbed his head toward the gym. “Leif’s team encountered Gen2s in London and would have been slaughtered had it not been for quick thinking on the part of one woman.”