Spy Snow Leopard

Protection, Inc. # 6

By Zoe Chant

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Prologue

Justin

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Justin Kovac sat in a car parked alongside a lonely country road, trying to decide which of his enemies to track down first.

The sky looked hard as steel, and was about the same color. The leafless trees seemed to claw at it with bony black fingers. Hail rattled down and piled up on the dark earth.

When Justin’s gaze drifted to the rear-view mirror, he saw a face fit for the colorless landscape: skin pale as hailstones, eyes and hair black as winter ponds. Cheekbones like knives. A mouth that had forgotten how to smile.

He could barely see a trace of the man he’d once been. That man, whose buddies had called him Red, had laughed and joked his way through life. He’d loved his team and his life in the Air Force. He’d believed that he’d lay down his life to save his friends. Then he and his team had been kidnapped by the black ops agency called Apex. And he’d learned that being willing to give your life doesn’t make it happen.

The brave men and women who’d been captured with him had died trying to save him, leaving him the sole survivor. And then there was nothing standing between him and Apex.

Apex had made him into a shifter. Given him special powers. And taken away everything that made him who he was. He’d lost his friends. His career. His honor. His integrity. His hope. His laughter. Even the color of his eyes.

He’d become Subject Seven, their lab rat. And their assassin.

The only thing Apex had been unable to take from him was his longing for freedom.

Now he had his freedom. And he had no idea what to do with it.

I have an idea, hissed his inner snow leopard. We should hunt.

“You’re so literal.” Justin spoke aloud. His breath clouded in the freezing air. “I meant that I don’t know what to do with the entire rest of my life, not that I don’t know what to do right now.”

But his snow leopard was right. One Apex base had been destroyed when he’d broken loose, but he knew there was at least one remaining. He didn’t know where it was, any more than he knew the current whereabouts of the surviving Apex agents from the base where he’d been imprisoned. But he meant to find out.

“How do you think I should pick?” A streamer of mist fluttered from Justin’s lips as he spoke. “The one I hate most? The one who’s most likely to have escaped? The one I guess is closest?”

The one we hate most, hissed his snow leopard.

“Lots of candidates for that. Should I go with the biggest asshole, the most sadistic, or...” As Justin reached up to push a lock of hair out of his eyes, his arm brushed against the cold metal of the door handle.

Instantly, he was hurled into a memory.

The metal of the lab table was icy against his bare skin. He was strapped down, with the usual array of sensors attached to his body.

Dr. Attanasio approached him with a syringe full of blue-green liquid.

“What’s that?” Justin asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady.

“Something to make you stronger,” Dr. Attanasio had replied. “We hope.”

“Why the straps?”

“You’ll see,” the doctor said, with a sadistic smile hovering at his lips. He lowered the syringe to Justin’s arm.

The liquid burned in his veins. Justin gritted his teeth, waiting for the sensation to die down. But it didn’t. Instead, the burning spread throughout his body, getting more painful by the second, until he felt like he’d been engulfed in flame.

Maybe the stuff increased his strength a little bit, but it didn’t make him strong enough to break the straps, which had been designed to hold down shifters.

But even while he was screaming and struggling, unable to stop himself, he noticed when Dr. Attanasio came a little bit closer than he should have to replace a sensor that had been dislodged. Justin’s arms were strapped down, but he managed to stealthily move one finger to brush against the tiny bit of bare skin between the doctor’s latex glove and the cuff of his white coat.

Dr. Attanasio never noticed. But Justin felt that sense of imprint, impossible to describe but unmistakable, and knew he’d be able to find the doctor again, no matter where he hid.

There was a strap over his chest. A strap across his waist. Cold metal against his arm. He was trapped.

His snow leopard’s shriek of terror and rage rose to an unbearable pitch.

Justin grabbed the straps and yanked. They tore, freeing him.

He came to his senses kneeling in the snow beside the car, with the ruined seatbelt dangling beside him and his fists clenched so tight that his nails had bitten into his palms.

His snow leopard was snarling, frantic and furious. Kill! Kill! Kill!

“Calm down,” Justin said. His voice cracked; his throat was raw. Had he been yelling? “It’s all right. We’re free.”

His snow leopard’s blind rage cooled into hatred. The doctor. Kill the doctor.

Justin opened his mouth to agree, then forced himself to say, “I’ll find the doctor. Then we’ll see what happens.”

Kill him, insisted his snow leopard. He hurt us.

It was tempting. But he’d had enough of killing just because someone told him to. If there was one thing that could make the man he was now different from Subject Seven, it was making his own choices.

“We’ll see,” Justin said firmly.

He got back in the car, closed his eyes, and cautiously recalled touching Dr. Attanasio, keeping himself at a mental distance so he wouldn’t drown in his own memories.

Where are you, doctor?

Justin felt a tug inside his mind. It wasn’t the knowledge of a location, let alone an address, just a sense that his target was that way.

Our prey, corrected his snow leopard.

Justin began to drive that way, following that inner pull. He hoped it wouldn’t be too far. For all he knew, he was trying to drive to China.

But it turned out that Dr. Attanasio hadn’t gone far; he hadn’t even left the state. The sense of that way ended at an apartment in San Francisco.

Justin staked out the building until he saw Dr. Attanasio leave. Then he deactivated his security system, slipped inside, and searched the place.

Based on what he found on the doctor’s laptop and papers, Dr. Attanasio was no longer working for Apex, but had gotten himself hired in private research. And not even sinister private research, but a study on some new cholesterol-reducing drug.

Justin placed several bugs in the apartment, then replaced everything exactly the way he’d found it. He checked to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything and all his bugs were perfectly concealed before he stepped into a shadowy corner to wait for the doctor to return. 

We lie in wait, hissed his inner snow leopard, sending Justin a sense of his satisfaction. Lying in wait was the big cat’s favorite thing.

Justin sank into the calm, cool mindset of the predator within. He wasn’t bored or restless. He didn’t think. He just waited. It felt good. Almost like being invincible...

His snow leopard stirred in alarm. He hated Justin’s power of adrenaline invincibility, which had the side effect of suppressing his inner predator.

You don’t need invincibility, the big cat hissed. You just need to lie in wait.

I can’t lie in wait all the time, Justin returned. Now hush.

Hours later, the door opened. Dr. Attanasio stepped inside, flicking on the light as he shut the door behind him.

Justin closed the distance between them in an instant, twisting the doctor’s arms behind him with one hand and putting his other hand over Dr. Attanasio’s mouth.

Kill him, snarled his snow leopard. Rip out his throat!

Justin mentally distanced himself from the big cat’s rage. He kept his voice calm and low as he addressed the doctor. “Scream, and I’ll kill you. When I take my hand away, you can talk, but do it quietly. Nod if you understand.”

With his keen predator’s senses, Justin could smell the acrid scent of the doctor’s cold sweat. Trembling, Dr. Attanasio nodded.

Justin released the doctor and stepped in front of him.

“Subject Seven!” Dr. Attanasio gasped.

“Surprise,” Justin remarked, deadpan.

“How did you find me?” The doctor’s voice rose in terror. Justin dipped his hand, palm down, in a ‘lower your voice’ gesture. Dr. Attanasio continued, hushed but frantic. “I wore gloves every time I had to lay hands on you. And I never let you touch me. You never got an impression of me with your power. So someone must have sold me out! Who?”

Justin kept his face still, making sure he didn’t reveal anything with so much as a blink. “Who do you think?”

“Dr. Mortenson? She was always jealous of me, because my experiments got results.” Studying Justin’s face, Dr. Attanasio said, “Or was it one of the project managers? It was, right? Mr. Novak? Ms. Lim? Which one?”

Justin concealed his satisfaction. So Dr. Mortenson, Mr. Novak, and Ms. Lim were all alive, and knew where Dr. Attanasio was. And that meant that they might know where other surviving members of Apex were. It was his best lead yet. And a necessary one. Justin had only managed to touch a few of the Apex people, and some of them had already been killed when he’d broken free.

In case Dr. Attanasio hadn’t named everyone he knew about, Justin let one of his eyebrows raise slightly and made a small, involuntary-seeming head-shake.

Yesss, hissed his snow leopard, with immense satisfaction. We play with our prey.

“It wasn’t any of them?” Dr. Attanasio looked baffled, then even more scared. “Who was it, then? Who? There’s no one else who knows where I—” He broke off, obviously realizing that he’d revealed too much.

“That’s what you think,” Justin said. With any luck, Dr. Attanasio would get on the phone to his evil co-workers and demand that they tell him who else was out there.

Before the doctor had a chance to collect himself, Justin slowly reached out with his bare hand, letting Dr. Attanasio see it coming.

The doctor flinched. “Don’t hurt me!”

Justin had been trying to keep as cool inside as he looked outside, but something snapped inside him at those words. “Why the hell shouldn’t I? You hurt me until I hoped I’d die just to make it stop!”

Dr. Attanasio flinched again, but there was no remorse in his expression, only fear. Defensively, he said, “It was necessary. We made huge scientific breakthroughs. Anyway, look what you got out of it. The Ultimate Predator process gave you powers beyond anything normal humans or even shifters can dream of. Sure, the process wasn’t pleasant, but we didn’t do you any harm.”

“No harm?” A bitter rage burned through Justin, hot and painful as the chemical the doctor had injected into his veins while he lay strapped to the lab table. “No harm?  You—”

He forced himself to stop. He didn’t want to give the doctor the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to him. More importantly, he didn’t want to show weakness in front of the man who would undoubtedly be reporting back to his other enemies the instant he left the room. But inside his mind, the rest of his thought echoed:

You ruined my life. You broke me.

His snow leopard hissed reprovingly. None of that is true.

Rather than get into a pointless argument with his snow leopard, Justin forced his attention out of his head and to the enemy in front of him. He grabbed his prey by the throat. The doctor let out a shrill squeal of terror.

“I’m touching you now,” Justin said. “And you know what that means.”

The doctor just stared at him, his eyes bulging with panic.

“Say it,” Justin said. “Say it so I know you understand.”

“I can’t speak when you’re strangling...” Dr. Attanasio’s voice trailed off as he realized that Justin had only wrapped his fingers around his throat, and wasn’t exerting any pressure. “Uh, it’s your Ultimate Predator power. I mean, it’s one of them. You can track me now. Anywhere in the world, as far as we know. You don’t need to know where I am. You just follow my—”

Scent, hissed his snow leopard. With immense satisfaction, he added, You can run, but you can’t hide.

“—imprint,” the doctor concluded.

“That’s right.” Justin increased the pressure, just slightly. “Are you really studying cholesterol drugs, or is that a front for something along the lines of Apex?”

“Apex is gone!” Dr. Attanasio choked out. “You and Subject Eight destroyed it yourselves. It’s just cholesterol drugs, I swear!”

As far as Justin could tell, the doctor wasn’t lying. But he did seem to be holding something back. Justin considered seeing if he could squeeze more information out of him, then decided to stick with his first plan. Threatening him more might just scare him into saying whatever he imagined Justin wanted to hear.

“They better be,” Justin said. “If I ever find out that you’re involved in kidnapping or experimenting on unwilling subjects or anything else like what you did at Apex, I’ll track you down, just like I tracked down some of your other colleagues. And I’ll do to you exactly what I did to them.”

Dr. Attanasio’s eyes bulged even more, reminding Justin of a bullfrog. “What? Who else did you track down? Did you kill them?”

Justin stared into the doctor’s pop-eyes, silent and expressionless. He knew the effect his gaze had on people, even when he didn’t have them by the throat. Sure enough, the doctor gulped and looked away, blood draining out of his face until it went an unpleasant pasty color.

Without a word, Justin turned his back and walked out of the apartment, letting the door slowly close behind him.

Where are you going? His snow leopard’s hiss rose in frustration. Kill him, kill him!

An overwhelming weariness washed over Justin. He was so tired of arguing with his snow leopard. If the big cat wasn’t demanding someone’s death, he was all the way on the other extreme, insisting that too-good-to-be-true things like mates and packs and happiness were just around the corner.

They are not too good to be true, hissed his snow leopard. Remember how you insisted that your packmate had abandoned you, and I kept telling you he’d come back for you? Who was right about that?

You were, Justin admitted. But he didn’t want to talk about Shane. He could hardly bear to think about his old best friend. Trustworthy Shane, whom Justin hadn’t trusted. Loyal Shane, whom Justin had betrayed. He hadn’t deserved to have Shane come back for him.

To get his snow leopard off the topic, Justin said, Stop calling him my packmate. Leopards don’t have packs.

Shifters do, his snow leopard retorted. Go back inside, kill our prey, and then go to your pack. They will help us hunt down the rest of our enemies. We have spent far too long hunting alone.

Justin instead ran along the corridor, his soft-soled shoes making barely more sound than a cat’s paws. He opened the door to the emergency staircase. It had a sign warning that an alarm would go off if it was opened, but he had deactivated the alarm before he’d entered the doctor’s apartment.

He went up the stairs and on to the roof, where he lay down so no one could see his silhouette. Justin doubted that anyone was looking for him, other than possibly Dr. Attanasio, but stealth had become a habit, and he didn’t want to get killed before he’d made sure that Apex was gone for good.

Flat on his belly atop the sun-warmed concrete, he took out his earbuds, stuck them in his ears, and listened to the sounds inside the doctor’s apartment. He heard rustling, footsteps, and then the doctor saying, “Hello?”

Justin couldn’t hear the response; Dr. Attanasio must be talking on his cell phone, which Justin hadn’t been able to bug without the doctor knowing. But he could hear every word the doctor said, loud and clear.

“Subject Seven is alive! He broke into my apartment...” The doctor detailed what had happened, then said, “I’m only in touch with you, Dr. Mortenson, and Ms. Lim. Do you know anything about anyone else? They have to be warned... if it’s not too late already.”

There was a brief pause, then Dr. Attanasio said, “Mr. Bianchi is out of his mind if he thinks he’s safe in London! You want to bet that an ocean is enough to stop Subject Seven? I wouldn’t! Tell Mr. Bianchi to hire every bodyguard he can lay his hands on.”

Another pause. “No, I don’t know if he ever touched any of us. I thought he hadn’t touched me... until now. So either we have a rat or he got our imprints on the sly or his power doesn’t work the way he said it did and all he ever needed to do was fucking smell us!”

I wish all we needed to do was scent our prey, hissed his snow leopard.

I wish I’d had the sense to pretend my power worked differently, Justin replied. I should’ve told them I needed to lay my entire palm on someone’s bare skin for five minutes. Then they’d have been less careful around me, and I could’ve gotten all their imprints.

A wave of self-reproach swept over him, so intense that he could taste the bitterness in his mouth. It was such a simple idea, but it hadn’t occurred to him until it was too late. He hadn’t been smart or sneaky or quick enough to touch them all.

He hadn’t saved his buddies.

He’d betrayed Shane. He’d betrayed himself. He’d—

Pay attention, hissed his snow leopard. Our prey is speaking again.

Justin dragged his attention back to the doctor, who was saying, “What’s he doing there, anyway?”

Another pause. The doctor gave a bitter chuckle. “Of course. Mr. Bianchi’s getting fabulously wealthy dealing weapons, and I’m stuck making goddamn cholesterol drugs. And I can’t ever do anything else, or Subject Seven will come back and... No, I told you, he didn’t even say who he’d killed, let alone how he’d done it. But I saw his eyes. That’s not a man. That’s a predator—an animal. I’m on the straight and narrow from now on. Anything else would be suicide.”

Dr. Attanasio said no more. The conversation was clearly over.

Justin rolled over and looked up at the darkening sky.  At long last, he had a lead on one of the higher-up men at Apex, one of the ones he’d never been able to touch. London was a big city, but Justin felt confident that given enough time, he could find Mr. Bianchi there. And Mr. Bianchi might know where his old Apex boss was. And if Mr. Bianchi’s old boss knew where his old boss was, that might lead Justin straight to the top. He could destroy Apex forever.

Justin knew he should be glad. But he felt nothing but the pain that had been tearing him apart ever since he’d escaped Apex, a searing agony of rage and guilt, shame and loss, memories of a past he couldn’t stand to recall and fear for a future stretching out ahead of him like a million miles of bad road. It was in his ears like a shriek of metal on metal, in his chest like a knife in the heart, in his muscles and bones with an ache like he hadn’t slept in weeks. It was with him every moment of every day.

Except when he was invincible.

Don’t, hissed his snow leopard.

Justin barely heard him. Dr. Attanasio’s words were echoing inside his mind, loud enough to drown out everything else:

That’s not a man. That’s a predator—an animal.

All those cruel days and lonely nights at Apex, he’d dreamed and dreamed about escape. Then he’d gotten out, and realized that there was no escape. He could get away from Apex, but he couldn’t get away from himself. Everything he’d done—everything that had been done to him—everything he’d become—was irrevocable.  He couldn’t change it. The best he could do was make himself not care.

Luckily, there was a way to do that.

Don’t! His snow leopard gave a low growl that probably would have made Dr. Attanasio faint with terror. You are doing it too much. It will kill you.

Justin tried to squelch his automatic response, but his snow leopard caught it anyway:

Who cares?

The big cat’s anger, fear, and frustration surged through Justin as he snarled in desperation, I care! I want to live!

At that, Justin felt guilty. He fished for some reply that his snow leopard would find reassuring and that would be honest. His inner predator was a part of him, after all; he couldn’t lie to himself.

He settled on, I have no intention of dying just yet.

It was true, as far as it went: he had no intention of dying until he’d destroyed Apex and could be sure they’d never harm anyone again. After that, he didn’t care what happened to him. But since he was wildly unlikely to survive going up against an entire black ops agency all by himself, he didn’t have to worry about the “after that.”

He closed his eyes and pictured himself standing alone on a vast, featureless plain of blinding white. An ice field. He imagined the ice creeping up over his feet and up his legs, at first so cold that it burned, and then numbing. When the ice reached his heart, the burning flared into agony. Justin gritted his teeth, knowing that the pain would be brief. A moment later his heart went numb, and a blessed calm washed over him.

He opened his eyes. He was alone on the roof, as alone as he’d been on his imaginary ice field. Justin couldn’t feel his snow leopard. He couldn’t feel anything at all. No guilt, no anger, no shame, just a cool readiness to do whatever was needed.

No pain.

He could recall anything that had happened to him at Apex, and feel nothing. If someone shot him, he’d feel nothing. He wouldn’t get hungry or tired. He didn’t need to eat or sleep. Tranquilizers wouldn’t work on him. He was unstoppable.

Invincible.

I wish I could stay invincible all the time, Justin thought as he headed back for the stairs. It feels so much better.

The only reason he didn’t was that if he stayed invincible too long, he’d die.

You have to eat and sleep to live, and when he was invincible, he not only didn’t need to, he couldn’t. And while a man could go a month or so without food, Apex experiments had shown that if he went for more than four days without sleep, his body started dangerously breaking down.

Don’t worry, he said silently, though his snow leopard couldn’t hear or speak when Justin was invincible. I won’t stay invincible for long enough to do any damage. Just a few hours. Eight, max.

Though his snow leopard was gone, Justin imagined he could hear the big cat’s angry hiss:

Liar.

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