My Next Breath

by Shannon McKenna

  His head whipped up at their entrance. Zade studied him through the barrier, noting his haggard appearance. His sunken cheeks were dark with beard scruff. The high-and-tight crew cut of a few months ago was now a filthy, sweat-stiffened mess. Multiple blood vessels had burst in his eyes, which gave him a gruesome red-stained gaze.

  “Damn,” Zade said.

  His voice was close to a whisper, but Brenner leaped to his feet and hurled his body against the thick plastic barrier. He pounded it with his fists, kicked it with his bare feet. The room was silent but for the muffled vibrating thuds of contact.

  “How long has he been like this?” Zade asked.

  “A while. Got worse since last night,” Asa replied. “I’ve been trying to reach Noah and Sisko for days. Ever since he woke up from the coma.”

  Zade flinched as Brenner slammed his shoulder against the barrier hard enough to dislocate it, his face distorted with a silent bellow of rage.

  “He was weak for a while. Not anymore.” Asa’s voice was low and tense. “Getting stronger and crazier by the hour. He’s going to beat himself to death. I don’t want to be responsible. This is your shit-show, Zade. Yours and the rest of your pack of modified freaks. I want no part of it.”

  “Chill. Please. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Don’t tell me to chill. The only reason he’s here at all was because I transported those corpses as a favor for you guys. And the sneaky sonofabitch turns up alive. Like I need this shit!”

  “We wouldn’t have known what to do with him,” Zade said. “You had hospital equipment and a medical staff. He would’ve died without your team.”

  “No loss,” Asa snarled. “Listen up. I don’t give a fuck about your organizational problems. Keeping this guy alive is not, and never was, my responsibility.”

  “Yeah, I know. Look, we’ll fix it as soon as possible. And we’ll cover expenses.”

  “Damn straight. As in through the fucking nose. You should see the bill so far. This space was designed to hold your average homicidal maniac, not a tech-enhanced genetically engineered super-strong homicidal maniac. Take him off my property. And I mean now.”

  Zade stared into Brenner’s reddened eyes. Brenner was the last of Mark’s luckless slave soldiers. Somewhere in that guy’s tormented brain there could be a clue as to where Luke was.Or at least, where he’d been.

  The near-certainty that Luke was dead was something Zade knew he had to keep front and center in his mind. He could not let himself hope that he might still find his brother alive. Thinking that way would only drive him crazy and set him up for still more pain. If that was even possible.

  Fucking hell. Of course it was possible. There was always room for more pain. No cap on that. No cut-off.

  “Has he said anything?” he asked. “Anything coherent, I mean?”

  “No. Just screaming.”

  Zade took a step closer to the barrier. “What exactly is wrong with him?”

  Asa shook his head. “No one can get close enough to examine him. He must have catastrophic brain damage. It was bad enough when he was just in a coma. Now he’s suffering.”

  Zade nodded.

  “I can’t warehouse a psycho freak with superhuman strength. And it goes against my basic principles to lock up anyone who hasn’t actually committed a crime.”

  “You have principles?”

  “Yeah, fuckface. I do. And I act on them if necessary. If you don’t haul him away, I’m going to clear the place out and pop the locks remotely. He walks where he wants. Let the shit fly.”

  “Don’t do that,” Zade said swiftly. “Please. Hang on just a little longer.”

  “For what? Take him away with you. Your turn, pal. Aren’t you guys loaded up with mad skills and powers? Super strength, enhanced cognition, shit like that? Use ’em and get this clown out of my face.”

  “I can’t do it alone,” Zade said.

  “No? Here’s a fucking news flash for you, buddy. Neither can I. That settles it. I’m done. He walks. Today.”

  “Not yet!” Zade said hastily. “He’ll make a mess and people will get hurt. And when word gets out, Obsidian will come down on him like a ton of rocks.”

  “And this is my problem exactly why? Obsidian has nothing to do with me.”

  “They’ll euthanize him. At best.”

  “That’s real sad, man. Life’s a bitch. Pick him up out on the road, if you give a shit. Take him home. There’s lots of space in your giant industrial fuckpad. Just tell the girls to roll over and make room.”

  “Come on. Be reasonable. I don’t have the manpower or the equipment to subdue him by myself right now,” Zade said. “I’d have to come with a full crew and an armored truck and hardcore drugs specifically mixed to match his mods. Plus a structure that can hold him. I need time. Let me talk to the others and we’ll figure something out.”

  Asa made a growling sound in the back of his throat. “You’ve had two goddamn months already. You have exactly two days. Starting from … ” He looked at his watch. “Right now. You don’t come by then, I pop the locks.”

  “Understood,” Zade said.

  “Good. Now stay here. I gotta go get his beast chow. Even though he won’t eat any of it.”

  Asa stomped off, leaving Zade to watch Brenner.

  The beast was running out of steam, apparently. Brenner gave up on the transparent wall and sank down onto his cot, hands clenched on his battered knees, chest heaving. Weeks in a coma hadn’t diminished his incredible muscle mass and tone. Braxton had upped his game with the Mr. Muscle and Bones of Steel. Zade and Luke had been in the first subgroup that got his ultra-enhanced version of that gene cocktail. Or at least, the first subgroup with survivors.

  Brenner had probably undergone something much more advanced.

  He wondered if Braxton had upped the survival rate since their time. Probably not. At Midlands, that consideration was never a big priority.

  Zade didn’t blame Asa for being pissed. He hadn’t been prepared for the level of weird he’d been catapulted into when he signed on to help them fight Mark Olund.

  Olund was a Midlander like them. Implants, programming, genetic and nanotech mods acquired under horrific circumstances. The only difference being that the experience had turned Olund into a sadistic killer bent on revenge. He’d launched an ongoing rampage, mostly against Obsidian, the shadowy network of secret business interests funding the Midlands trials back in the day.

  First chance he got, Olund stole a squad of Obsidian’s most advanced slave soldiers. It had fallen to Zade, Noah, and the others to stop him. The plan had been to take Mark alive and interrogate him, since Mark had abducted Luke. Mark was the only person on earth who knew where Luke was—and a bullet had reduced his brain to red splatter. No one left to interrogate. And his slave soldiers had all died in that fight.

  Except for Brenner Jameson. Who just refused to die.

  Zade had to hand it to him. Brenner was a tough bastard. Had to be, to survive the gene vectoring, the mods, the brain stim. But where did you put a deadly maniac with the strength of ten men?

  Still, they felt responsible for Brenner. Partly because of the Obsidian kinship, partly because he was a fellow victim, and partly because they hadn’t stopped those bastards from hurting more kids. And they hadn’t put the brakes to Mark Olund years before.

  Some of it was on them. But none of it should be on Asa.

  Zade turned his head when he heard Asa returning. He set down a sack of something that looked like soft protein nuggets. Not too different from the Midlands chow.

  “Hey, something else. I’ve been studying that wand thing you took off Olund’s corpse,” Asa said. “I think he used it to control and punish the slave soldiers. Maybe the cerebral damage was inflicted with that.”

  “Maybe. Could be other things, though. Resisting core programming can cause all kinds of damage, and this guy is a newer model. Who knows.”

  “Fill me in. That blonde from Batello who was Noah
’s fiancée for a while. Wasn’t she the one who designed this thing? What’s her name?”

  “Simone Brightman,” Zade said.

  “And the headgear that Mark put on your brother in that video of the abduction—she designed that thing, right?”

  Zade felt hemmed in. “Yeah.”

  Asa looked expectant. “So what’s next with that? You on her?”

  “I’m working on it,” Zade hedged. “She’s hard to approach.”

  “Either she’s in up to her eyeballs on all their evil deeds—”

  “No. I really don’t get that sense from her.”

  “Is that so? Are you getting senses?” Asa gave him a slit-eyed look. “Maybe she could help. Either way, find out fast. Get her on board.”

  “I said I’m working on it,” Zade said testily. “Don’t tell me my business.”

  Asa gestured toward Brenner. “I’m not shutting up until this guy disappears from my life. At which point, having learned my lesson, I will vanish and never bug you guys again. Beyond sending you a motherfucker of a bill, hand-delivered by a monster courier who takes cash only. Got that?”

  Zade jolted back as Brenner thudded hard against the plastic barrier again.

  “Check it out,” Asa said. “He appears to find you real stimulating.”

  Brenner had hurt himself. Blood streamed from his nose down around his mouth and off his chin, splattering onto his naked chest.

  Thud, thud, thuddity-thud. The guy landed a flurry of flying kicks at the plastic, aimed at Zade’s face. His feet and knuckles were bleeding, leaving red splotches and swirls. They were now looking at Brenner through reddish smears of blood.

  “I can’t deal with anymore of this shit,” Asa ground out. He stalked out and headed back toward the stairs, muttering to himself.

  Zade followed. Once back in the kitchen, Asa started banging cabinet doors open, making coffee happen. His face was shuttered.

  Zade found a stool and sat, keeping his mouth cautiously shut.

  “Back to the blonde,” Asa said finally. “Simone Brighteyes.”

  “Brightman,” Zade supplied.

  “Right. You’re monitoring her, I assume?”

  “Of course,” Zade muttered.

  “As we speak?”

  “Yeah. Right now. All the time.”

  The coffeemaker beeped and Asa poured a cup, shoving it across the counter to Zade. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Who’s on the monitors now?”

  “Me,” Zade said. “It’s always me.”

  Asa scowled. “No one mans the monitors while you’re gone?”

  “I’m not gone,” Zade said. “I’m manning the monitors now. The signal’s transmitted to an implant in my brain and projected onto my field of vision. I can put the images anywhere I want.”

  Asa shook his head in wonder. “You guys never cease to creep the shit out of me,” he said. “So you’re watching her right now? This second?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “What’s she doing?”

  Zade’s attention snapped onto the inner screens, toggling through the various feeds until he found her in his bedroom again. He froze. Whoa.

  Simone was sitting stark naked on the rumpled bed, her shirt and skirt draped beside her, putting on her thigh-high stockings. Sweet holy fuck.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead as he caught a teasing flash of her pretty pink slit when she lifted her thigh to tug the stocking higher.

  “She’s, uh, getting dressed,” he said.

  Asa studied him keenly, having caught the vibe.

  “Getting dressed,” he repeated slowly. “So while you’re working out or driving or lying in bed jerking yourself off, you just keep watching her all the time. No need for hardware. No reason to take a break.”

  “Nope. What’s your point?”

  Asa stabbed his finger downward, more or less in Brenner’s direction. “The man in the cellar needs you to be on top of it,” he said. “Not eating popcorn while Blondie puts on her silky underpants. Move in on her. If making contact intimidates you, I’ll do it. I’m good at chatting up women.”

  “Seriously?”

  Asa serenely ignored the sarcasm. “When I first saw her with Noah, I thought, hmm, she’s fine, but kind of frigid.”

  Asa was one step away from a colossal sucker punch that he would not see coming.

  “Then I thought, hey, frigid could be freaky, and my dick can take some frostbite.”

  “TMI, dude.”

  Asa grinned unpleasantly.

  Zade had the feeling he’d just been tested and found out.

  “Tell you what. You babysit the screaming lunatic,” Asa suggested softly. “And I’ll bone the pretty blonde. It’s only fair.”

  “Won’t work,” Zade said.

  “You had two months to get her attention.” Asa was relentless. “You failed. Face up to it. Give me a turn.”

  They stared at each other. Zade’s hands were fists, his heart pounding.

  “I got it covered,” he said. “I made contact last night.”

  “Aha. So that’s what you were doing when I called. What’s she like? Is she sweet and hot and juicy?”

  “Shut your filthy fucking mouth,” Zade said.

  “Bulls-eye,” Asa said softly. “Fun new twist. You’ve got a soft spot for Blondie. Who may or may not be a soulless icy-hearted criminal mastermind.”

  “She’s not,” Zade said. “Absolutely not.”

  Asa’s eyebrows went up. “I hope you’re right, for all your sakes. Because you do not look like you have it together right now, buddy. By no means.”

  “I have everything under control,” Zade said.

  He endured the laser stare treatment, which made it that much harder to slow his heartbeat and slow down the data scroll. Simone was lacing her combat boots now, but she was still completely naked. Which did not help matters.

  Asa’s macho bullshit was no more than he should expect from a biological sibling of domineering Noah and ass-kicking bossy-pants Hannah. It was baked into their genetic code. His fists flexed with the desire to slam that knowing smirk off the guy’s face.

  But he wouldn’t. One, he deserved every bit of Asa’s harassment. Two, he needed Asa to contain Brenner as long as possible. Three, Asa was an unmod.

  Noah had a strict rule about not engaging in violence against unsuspecting unmods, no matter the provocation. Partly to keep things quiet, but mostly because it just wasn’t fucking fair.

  But Asa was so naturally dangerous, he might as well be a modified. Zade had seen him in action. Asa Stone was extremely bad news when he wanted to be.

  Nope, he would just have to grit his teeth and let assholes be assholes.

  Asa drained his coffee and slammed the cup into the sink as he turned to Zade. “You now have one day, twenty-three hours, forty-eight minutes, and twelve seconds until Brenner walks.”

  Chapter 13

  “Stop moving your head, or I’ll tase you again,” Braxton snarled.

  He readjusted one of the sensors snaking off D-14’s freshly shaven head. He wanted to record this moment with the hologram interface, for future study and analysis, but D-14 wouldn’t stop moving.

  He refused to speak, as always, but he writhed with jaw-cracking tension. His scraped wrists and ankles oozed blood against the restraints. And the slightest error in sensor placement rendered the interface useless.

  The fresh sweat on D-14’s scalp kept the adhesive on the sensor from sticking. Braxton reached for a plastic bottle of talc and shook it over the man’s head, coughing. This bullshit was ruining the buzz he’d gotten from having the meds delivered. Ten doses of Finurol-19 and ten doses of Tributan Theta.

  Today, the magic happened.

  D-14 obviously sensed what was coming.

  Would have been simpler if he’d just drugged D-14 to begin with, but he wanted a baseline of D-14’s vitals and brain function before the drug was administered.

  Braxton smacked D-14 across the jaw. D-
14 knew he was defeated, but he kept jittering anyway, just to be difficult. “Talk,” he growled. “Or else. I want to be entertained. Especially after weeks of your insolent bullshit.”

  D-14’s feet drummed ineffectually against the table. The nylon webbing straps strained, the heavy metal chain links rattled.

  “First, the new, improved Finurol.” Braxton prepared the needle, aspirating the fluid. “Remember the fun we had in the old days playing Simon Says? That was just Finurol 6. This stuff is far more powerful. You should thank me for saving your life and nursing you back to health. And today, I’ll make sure that you do.” Braxton leaned down, breathing into D-14’s face. “You’re going to open up so wide,” he growled. “Sweet surrender.”

  He still couldn’t get D-14 to look him in the eye. But Finurol would fix that.

  He stuck the needle into D-14’s throat. Those walls were coming down.

  The drug took effect almost immediately. In seconds, the tension in the bound man’s muscles relaxed and the heavy metal cot stopped its rattling dance.

  Braxton pulled up a chair, sat down, and switched on the recorder.

  “Tell me the name you used when Mark Olund captured you,” he demanded.

  D-14 opened his mouth and stopped, lips slightly parted.

  His eyes on Braxton’s face were faintly puzzled. “I don’t know.” His deep voice was thick and gravelly from disuse.

  Braxton felt a twinge of alarm. Maybe he’d started the questioning too quickly. “How many of the Midland rebels are you in contact with?”

  D-14 shook his head slowly. “I don’t remember any rebels.”

  Did Braxton sense a glint of triumph in D-14’s dark eyes? He looked closer.

  Yes. That self-satisfied prick was pleased with himself.

  What the hell? The part of his brain capable of opposing Braxton’s command had been disabled. Finurol was infallible. He’d never seen anyone resist its effect. The side effects were brutal, but the short-term outcomes were unbeatable. Braxton had done a good amount of the experimentation on the drug himself.

  He prepared another full dose, administered it. Sat there letting ten silent minutes pass. Seconds ticked by with syrupy slowness.