CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Only a few minutes after being sprawled out on the floorboard of the truck certain she was going to die, Cassandra watched in surprise as Michael pulled off Las Vegas Boulevard and into the parking garage of the Neonopolis Entertainment Center. He cut a hard right to the lower level of the twenty-thousand-square-foot facility.
“Please tell me why we are in a shopping mall?”
“Neonopolis is more than a shopping mall,” he said. “It’s a full entertainment center with movies and games. It’s also a great cover for our inner-city operation in the basement. Crowds discourage wind-walking and battles. Even Adam doesn’t want to be known to the public. Not yet. Not until he’s ready to take over.”
She shivered with that comment. “Don’t say that as if it’s going to happen. Like it’s just a matter of time.”
He stopped the truck in front of a steel wall, and then punched a code into his cell phone. The doors opened with rocket speed. He put the truck back in gear. “I’d kill him before I let that happen.”
She frowned, realizing the question in the back of her mind that had been niggling with demand. “Why didn’t you kill him while you were in Zodius City?”
He pulled into a parking spot next to Carrie, and her chest squeezed with memories.
“Oh I wanted to,” Michael assured her, putting the truck in park and killing the engine. “You have no idea how I salivated to kill that man. Would have done it the day of the Area 51 takeover, but the bastard had enough explosives strapped on his person and planted all over the facility to kill everyone in the place if his heart stopped beating. Caleb and I both figured I’d kill him the minute he unhooked himself, but Adam is thorough. He has chemical weapons set to go off in several major U.S. cities upon his death. I’ve never been able to find out who holds the remote. That’s why he remains untouchable.”
This was almost too much to comprehend. “He’s frightening. All of this is frightening.” A realization came over her, and her gaze snapped to Michael’s. “That’s why you stayed inside Zodius so long? Trying to find out how to kill him without civilian casualties?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “And not just causalities, Cassandra. Mass causalities. Hundreds of thousands of people. I never planned to be gone two years. I was supposed to be in and out—I was going to kill Adam, and the Renegades would attack his followers. It would be over. But nothing is simple with Adam.” He shoved open the door. “We need to move. We aren’t far enough underground to keep the Trackers from finding you, and the high concentration of people above ground will only mildly dilute your psychic energy enough to slow them down, not stop them.”
Cassandra swallowed hard at that announcement and popped open her door. She was being hunted. Would this hell ever end? She stepped to the back of the truck as Sterling exited the elevators a few feet away and approached in a casual saunter, his long, blond hair tied at his neck, weapons strapped to his shoulder, one to his jean-clad hip.
Cassandra listened as Michael replayed what went down at her condo. “Holy fuck,” Sterling said, running a hand over his face and then casting Cassandra a teal-green apologetic look created by contacts. Unlike the other GTECHs, Sterling could not mask his eye color from humans. No one knew why.
“Sorry Cass,” he offered quickly.
She snorted. “I’m just glad to be alive to hear you curse, Sterling.” She’d known Sterling since Area 51 and always liked him. “Besides, I’m fairly immune to soldier talk. All I care about right now is getting that hard drive data decoded.”
“I’ve never met a government code I couldn’t crack,” he said with a cocky wink. “Michael might be better at scorching someone with a single dark look, but I’m the man with the computer skills.”
Cassandra laughed. She’d forgotten the way Sterling teased Michael and the way Michael scowled in return. She’d missed it. And the little hint of light in Michael’s eyes told her—he had too. She realized then that those two years inside Zodius must have been hell for him, and she wondered what kind of inner strength it had taken to survive that. For the first time, she felt something more than anger at him for what he’d done. She felt pride.
“I should have it open by the time you two head for the trams,” Sterling assured her. “Which better be all of fifteen minutes or the Trackers will be all over us.”
“Trams?” Cassandra asked, casting Michael a questioning look and trying not to think about the Trackers.
“We’ll travel through a series of hotels by way of the connecting trains,” Michael explained. “Then we’ll walk through each hotel. It should confuse the Tracker’s senses long enough to get a good start on the highway. A team of Renegades will travel ahead and behind us from there.”
She bit her bottom lip, her throat suddenly dry. “Because eventually the Trackers are going to catch up to us,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. Neither Michael nor Sterling denied that statement. They didn’t have to. They all knew—the Zodius were coming for both her and Michael.
A few minutes later, Cassandra stood munching on a power bar and drinking orange juice in a room full of computer monitors and electronic gadgets. Michael had put down six bars and some sort of liquid supplement drink and was popping the top on a second. Sterling sat at the computer panel, keying like crazy, all kinds of green and white code popping up on the screen.
“How do you feel?” Michael asked softly, studying her.
She nodded. “Better,” she said. “Just tired. Wishing I was like you guys right about now and needed only a couple hours of sleep here or there.” She really wished for the past right now—to be back at Area 51 before any of this happened, curled to Michael’s side after eating a great meal and watching a movie.
He stared at her a moment, as if he too might be thinking of the past, and then cut Sterling a look. “We’re on borrowed time here, man. What do you have?”
“Hold your breath and count to sixty,” Sterling said. “I need one more minute.”
Michael cursed and grabbed the newspaper under Sterling’s arm. Sterling cut him a look. “There are similar stories in four states.”
“What is it?” Cassandra asked. “What’s going on?”
Michael tossed the paper down. “More missing women,” he said. “Most of whom are probably already dead.”
Bile rose in her throat, and she set her PowerBar on the counter behind her. “Dead? I thought they were just experimenting?” Just experimenting. God. That sounded horrible.
“Ava has a new fertility treatment she’s developed from her pregnancy hormones,” he said. “Problem is—the women only have a 50 percent chance of surviving the process.”
“She’s pregnant?”
“Giving birth to the devil’s spawn,” Sterling said, over his shoulder, still keying.
“That was the unavoidable situation that kept Caleb from calling you the night we gave you that phone,” Michael explained. “We rescued fifty of the hundred women there. I had to blow my cover to get them out.”
“What about the other fifty?” Cassandra asked.
“So brainwashed they stayed,” Michael said. “At least half of them are probably dead now.” He scrubbed his jaw. “All we did was cause more women to be kidnapped.”
“That’s not true,” Cassandra said. “You saved fifty women, and it will take time for them to replace those women. No matter what, fewer women will die.”
“Not unless we stop Adam,” he countered.
Sterling turned around, running his hands down his legs. “I’m working with law enforcement to spread certain abduction profiles around the country. Bulletins are going out with public warnings.” He shifted subjects. “Okay. The backup data. To start, Powell has two hundred troops headed to Dreamland in a few days.”
“That’s right,” Cassandra said. “All training to fight Zodius.”
“I don’t like it,” Sterling said. “Not with the threat Red Dart represents to the Renegades.”
“Agreed,” Michael said. “I say Dreamland needs to have a little mishap that keeps those soldiers from reporting.”
Cassandra shook her head, pushing off the counter she’d been leaning on. “If anything happens to Dreamland, my father will be suspicious.”
Sterling grimaced. “I’ll see if I can hack West’s email,” he said. “I should be able to redirect their orders. Have them sent somewhere else. Make it look like a computer hiccup. That will buy us a few days to find Red Dart.”
Cassandra let out a breath. “That should work.”
“What else?” Michael asked. “Because we have to roll.”
“Powell has Green Hornets,” Sterling said. “I’m assuming Brock gave them to Zodius since we know he’s in bed with Lucian.”
“Maybe,” Michael said. “Or maybe it simply means my mother is as big a bitch as my father was a bastard. Selling to our government and the enemy at the same time.”
“What?” Cassandra and Sterling said in unison.
“Those bullets are made by Taylor Industries,” he said grimly.
“Your family business?” Cassandra asked, cringing in memory of the day she’d looked up Michael’s file and realized his family connection, acting on her concern that her father was using that connection for personal gain.
“That’s right,” he said with a short nod.
Sterling arched a brow. “You’re freaking kidding me.”
“I wish I was,” Michael said. “It’s technology that was back-burnered years ago. The bullets imploded inside the weapons and injured the user. Obviously, they found a way around that. And Mommy Dearest doesn’t think twice about selling to a terrorist if the money is good. If my mother is involved with the Green Hornets, a weapon being used against GTECHs, it seems highly probable that she is involved with Red Dart, another weapon designed to be used against GTECHs. One to kill and one to control. Powell is being thorough this time. I’m going to need you to find a way into their database, Sterling.”
“Jesus,” Sterling said. “And here I thought I had an effed-up family. I’ll get into Taylor’s system all right. I want all those bullets. Every last one ever made.”
“That means getting the ones on base, too,” Michael reminded him.
“Artillery goes in and out of base all the time,” Sterling said. “I’ll create a shipping order with the Green Hornet coordinates, and we’ll intercept the shipment before Powell ever knows they’re gone.”
Michael nodded his approval. Cassandra couldn’t stay silent. “What if my father really is taking a stand against Adam?”
“Those Green Hornets may be the only weapon that allows the soldiers to survive a confrontation.” Michael looked at Cassandra—a long, hard stare. “The Renegades, not those bullets, are the best chance this country has to stand against Adam. Your father has forgotten that. I won’t let those bullets be used against our soldiers, and they will be if we leave them with your father.”
He turned back to Sterling. “Did you find anything on that hard drive about the crystal?”
Sterling shook his head, lips thin. “Nada,” he said. “Not one damn word. But at least we have the location of the bullets, and the information on the incoming soldiers who are meant to stand against the GTECHs. Diverting their arrival will delay Powell’s plans and buy us some time.”
“Zodius,” she corrected. “The soldiers are meant to fight Zodius. I still don’t believe my father is turning against the Renegades.” Determination rose in her. “I know you think he is, just as I know you think Red Dart is about torture, but it’s not. I have to go back and prove that. Then we can work with my father and shut down Adam.” Then more decisively, “Yes. I have to go back. Tonight. I can’t run.”
Sterling and Michael looked at each other, and Michael nodded to Sterling who turned back to his computer and began to key again. “Cassandra,” Michael said softly. “There is no maybe to any of this. Red Dart is a torture device, and the Renegades and the Zodius are both the intended targets.”
“Damn it, Michael,” she said, cursing when she normally did not. “You don’t know that.”
Sterling rolled his chair back and motioned to the monitor. Cassandra walked to the computer screen and sat down, staring at the scanned paperwork.
Cassandra’s world crumbled down around her as she read the documents to the chiefs of staff, the definition of Red Dart, the directives for its use: tracking and remote, intense torture. Her eyes burned, her chest hurt. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop the tears from falling.
The past rushed at her and collided with the future. The immunizations. The God-like complex she’d seen glimpses of. Did he ever think they were just immunizations? The lies. The loss of a man she’d considered a hero. Every action he took was to better himself, and every action seemed to lead to lives lost, lives in jeopardy. Her gaze went to that newspaper lying on the counter. All those women already affected, torn from families. Lost forever. And the ones who would be in the future.
Her gaze focused on a certain paragraph, and her eyes went wide. Her father was testing it on humans and GTECHs. She could barely breathe with the implications. If Adam were to use this on humans, he’d rule the world. If her father were to use it on humans, he could too. That last thought sickened her more than any other. She had to consider that might be her father’s ultimate goal. Oh he’d call it protecting his country, but it was really about controlling it.
She swiped angrily at her tears. There was no time for emotions. Not now. She turned back to Michael and Sterling, but it was Michael she looked at. “I’ll help you destroy Red Dart, but I can’t do it from inside Sunrise City. I have to be close to my father.”
“You’re going to the Renegades’ headquarters,” Michael said, snagging her hand. “You’ll be safe in Sunrise City.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t care what kind of danger I’m in. This is potentially the end-of-the-free-world we are dealing with. I can’t go.”
Michael eyed Sterling. “We’re leaving.” And before she knew it, they were in the hallway, her back pressed against the door, his big body in front of hers. Cassandra wanted to scream at him for bullying her. To scream at him for making her see the truth about her father. And she wanted to bury her head in his shoulder and just be safe, if only for a minute.
His fingers laced into her hair. “I know this is hard, sweetheart,” he said. “But the Trackers are coming for you. We have to go underground. Then we’ll find a way to fix this together.”
“How?” she demanded. “How do we do that when you want my father dead, and no matter what, I can’t want that. I can’t.”
“Cassandra—”
“Do you want him dead? Say it. Say it because I need to know.”
He bent at the knees, coming eye-level with her. “What I want is your safety. You’re my priority right now. You won’t survive the night if you stay here. You have to survive if you want to fight.”
He was right. She knew he was right. But hiding felt wrong. Guilt was eating her alive. “I helped my father. I stood by him. I—”
He kissed her. A deep, passionate kiss, filled with the gentle strength she’d always loved in him. Gentle. No matter how demanding, how stubborn, he’d always been gentle.
“We’ll find an answer,” he said. “But we have to leave now. Okay?”
She nodded, unable to find her voice. She was running, but only because Michael was right. She had to survive to fight. And she was going to fight like she’d never fought before.
Lucian found Adam in the center of his coliseum—Tad by his side with a smug look on his face, as if he mattered or something. They stood between a row of thirty wolves and another row of as many soldiers—a formation Adam favored when training the wolves for combat. He planned to use them to herd humans when he was ready for takeover. To herd and kill as needed. Those damn wolves. Lucian would never get used to those beasts walking amongst them as if they were above higher forms of life, just because they were joined with Adam.
Lucian exited a stone staircase as Adam lifted his hand and then threw it down. The wolves and soldiers charged at one another. Adam and Tad backed away, walking toward Lucian, Tad by Adam’s side, as if he belonged there instead of at his feet. Tad couldn’t see he was just another dog, lapping at Adam’s heels. But he would. Soon.
Lucian would see to it. Because Lucian had a plan to turn Michael and Cassandra’s time together into their end and his beginning. By night’s end, he would not only see to it that Cassandra Powell was dead, he’d frame Michael as her killer. Powell would be furious, devastated—vulnerable to Brock’s Red Dart probes. And Michael would be captive, inside Zodius City, ready for his punishment. Lucian would be his replacement, and Tad would be nothing.
Brock pulled his truck to a stop under the bridge and killed the lights. Pitch dark surrounded him, and silence, but for the rush of tires over the concrete highway above. The whistle of the wind came soft and low, and Brock stiffened, flipping open his center compartment and removing a Smith and Wesson. It might be hard to kill a GTECH, but he knew how to make his shot count.
Abruptly the wind gusted. Brock tensed as the truck shook with the violent impact. A roar of thunder followed, providing some comfort that it was Mother Nature rather than a Wind-walker. He relaxed marginally, but with the comfort of that steel weapon against his palm.
From a distance, headlights turned down the street, high beams that cut through the fog. A white van pulled to a slow halt a few feet from his truck, lights illuminating the droplets of rain as they nosedived to the pavement.
He sat there and so did the driver in the other vehicle. A silent standoff of sorts, until Brock accepted with a twist of his gut that he had to get out. He had orders. He shoved open the door and held on to the gun.
Rain fell steadily now, and his shirt clung to his skin, but he ignored it. He aimed the gun at the panel door and knocked. It slid open, and to his shock, big blue eyes framed with long, sleek, raven hair greeted him. The woman was striking, the smile she offered him sweet enough to charm a battalion of soldiers. What the hell was a woman thinking, meeting a guy under a bridge alone?
“Come in, Lieutenant Colonel, before you wash away.” Her voice was smooth like whiskey, a throaty sensuality rasped from its depths.
His gaze shifted to the medical bed and monitors behind her. “Who are you?”
“The person who is going to hand you the world, Brock. If you want it. But you can call me Jocelyn.”
Slowly, he lowered the gun, and she backed away from the entrance to give him room. He climbed in and pulled the door shut behind him.
“Lie on the bed and roll up your sleeve,” she ordered, apparently unconcerned about the water he was dripping all over the place. His nostrils flared with the scent of her; it filled the cabin, the odd but arousing mixture of vanilla and cinnamon.
Jocelyn kneeled by his side and wrapped a rubber tube around his upper arm. Holy crap! This was happening; it was really happening. He was getting his injections. He watched her as she withdrew medication from a vial into a syringe, and his cock stood at attention. He was aroused. By her. By that needle about to deliver him to a new life. She was older than he first thought, maybe in her fifties, but could pass for forties. But it didn’t turn him off. No, nothing about this woman turned him off. She was fucking amazing.
Those amazing blue eyes caught his—amazing crystal blue eyes. “General Powell told me you are aware of the risks, but I’d like to hear that from you,” she said. “Because there is no turning back. Everything about this program is experimental.”
“No risk, no reward,” he said, lost in the sea of her stare.
“My philosophy, exactly.” She held the syringe up and tapped it. “Ready?”
“I was born ready.”
Her lips lifted at the corners. “I’ll bet you were.” She tapped the syringe once more. “But we’ll talk about the side effects a little later.”
Something about her words set him on edge. Didn’t doctors do that beforehand? But it was too late for questions. She bent her dark head and injected him. The liquid was cold. The anticipation, hot. The darkness, almost immediate.