CHAPTER THIRTY
Appearing at the coordinates given to him by Powell with seven minutes to spare before Cassandra’s next shock treatment, Michael found himself at the back of a vacant house. Two soldiers stood in his path. One pointed him forward.
As directed, Michael walked toward the basement entrance, but they bypassed the door. Instead the soldier opened a trapdoor covered by grass and exposed a stairwell leading underground before motioning Michael forward. He walked down several feet before entering a narrow tunnel, the soldiers on his heels. It didn’t take him long to surmise that it connected at some junction to his mother’s basement. He tested his boundaries, reached for the wind. If there was the tiniest of cracks in the surface above them, he could call on it for aid. But he found nothing.
The tunnel was long, a good mile underground between the vacant house and what he assumed to be a lab beneath his mother’s place. He’d barely made it in the door when he saw Cassandra. “Damn you, Michael, I told you not to come!”
Michael would have laughed at Cassandra’s ability to challenge him even under duress, if she wasn’t inside a cage, and he wasn’t so damn pissed. Powell had proven he would do anything to control the GTECHs, and who knew how much more from there, even to hurting his own daughter.
“You know I had to come for you, baby,” he said softly, checking the lab for possible exits and finding only the one he had come through. “Are you okay?”
Anguish lanced her voice, tears pouring down her cheeks. “No. No, I am not okay. I would rather be tortured than have you come here.” She was sitting with her arms tied behind her, electronic wires attached to various parts of her body. No one else was in sight.
“Step into the cage,” came Powell’s voice over an intercom. Michael inhaled sharply. Once he was in that cage, he couldn’t do squat to get them out of here. “She’s on remote control,” Powell added. “One punch of a button, and those wires will jolt her. Would you like a demonstration?”
“You sonofabitch!” Michael growled. “She’s your daughter!”
Cassandra was crying harder now. “Don’t, Michael. Don’t come into this cage.”
He was going in all right, but he wasn’t staying. Michael charged at the cage, crossed the room with the agility of a GTECH on speed, his extra chromosome giving him an added jolt. He picked Cassandra up, chair and all, and then froze. Cassandra gasped and buried her head in Michael’s shoulder. Brock stood in the cage doorway holding a gun, his eyes as black as coal. He was a GTECH, which was impossible. That took months of injections.
“Green Hornets,” Brock said. “Compliments of your mother.”
Michael noted the shake of Brock’s hand. Whatever Powell had done to him wasn’t going over so well, and judging from the crazed look on his face, the man wasn’t stable. “Easy man,” he said. “I’m backing up.” Slowly, Michael moved back into the cage and set Cassandra down. He reached for the wires attached to her, not about to let her get tortured again.
“Step away from her, Michael,” Powell ordered through the intercom.
Brock cocked the gun. “You heard the man.”
Reluctantly, Michael did as commanded, holding Brock’s stare. “So this is your plan?” Michael said to Brock. “To be some souped-up GTECH doing Powell’s bidding? He’s using you, man. This isn’t going any place good for you.”
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up!”
A clicking sound sent Michael whirling around to face the weapon extending from a hole in the ceiling. Cassandra! His mind reached for hers, trying to shield her from whatever was about to happen as he could shield her from the Trackers now that they were lifebonded. Seconds passed as he reached for her mind, used their new bond, and connected, mentally forming a protective barrier around her. And just in time. A red light flashed on his chest. Powell’s laughter radiated through the room a minute before Michael’s body began to shake. Michael fell to the ground, blackness threatening to consume him. He focused on one thing and one thing only—keeping that barrier around Cassandra. Yet…somewhere in the distance he heard her scream. I’m going to kill you, Powell, he shouted in his mind before the shadows consumed him.
“Michael!” Tears rolled down Cassandra’s cheeks as she watched Michael lying face down in that cage, shaking from head to toe—her fierce, wonderful warrior taken down by her own father. Yet she could feel him in her mind, somehow protecting her through it all. Brock was down too, floundering around on the ground just like Michael. Whatever Red Dart was, it didn’t distinguish between one GTECH and another. If it impacted one—it impacted all.
Another soldier stomped into the room and picked up Cassandra, chair and all, and carried her out of the cage, the doors shutting behind her.
“He’s going to do that to you, too,” she said as he set her down a few feet away. “Do you want that?”
The soldier ignored her, walking away as if she hadn’t even spoken. Of course. Her father owned him in some way. Her father, the manipulator.
The sound of a voice had Cassandra looking to the door. Powell, Jocelyn, and Chin all entered the room. Jocelyn rushed to the computer panel and punched some buttons on the computer, speaking to Powell as she did. “You cannot leave him like this without damage.” She turned to Powell. “General!”
Her father grimaced. “I left West like this far longer than Michael,” he said. “Are you going soft because he’s your son?”
“Look at what Brock’s become!” She pointed at Brock, her hand shaking. She quickly folded her arms in front of her, as if trying to hide her reaction. “If you want him to lead us to victory,” she said, “he needs to be of sound mind to do it.”
“Father,” Cassandra said. “Stop! Stop hurting him!” She knew it was a mistake, but she was scared for Michael. “He’s my Lifebond. If you kill him, you will kill me, too.”
Everyone turned around and looked at her, stunned silence overtaking the room. Powell motioned Chin forward. He checked her neck and then nodded. “She has the mark.”
Powell arched a brow and then smiled. A laugh followed. His lifted his hands to his sides in celebration. “This is perfect.” He grabbed Jocelyn and kissed her. “Don’t you see? Michael will do whatever we wish in order to protect her.”
Cassandra’s stomach rolled. Her father was sick. Insane. She squeezed her eyes shut against the nightmare this had become, wondering where the Renegades were, knowing they weren’t coming. Her father had made sure of that.
The general set Jocelyn back from him, and Cassandra’s eyes met the other woman’s. To Cassandra’s surprise, she saw real regret. Both Brock and Jocelyn were having doubts. That had to equal hope. But then again, Michael was already marked with Red Dart. Hope didn’t matter. There was no escape.
Rubbing his hands together, Powell looked at Chin. “We have some time before we move them. Let’s test the new creation against the old creation, shall we?” Chin smiled his approval.
“What are you doing, Father?” Cassandra asked desperately.
“Relax,” the general said. “Michael heals quickly.” He arched a brow. “I imagine you do as well.” It was a subtle threat that had her recoiling and trying to work the rope at her hands. Either she wasn’t one bit stronger than before her lifebonding, or those ropes were enforced.
Cassandra watched her father turn the dial attached to his neck, her eyes going to Jocelyn’s. “What is that thing? What is he doing?”
Jocelyn, to her surprise, answered by motioning to the cage where Michael and Brock were now alert and starting to get up.
“Michael!” Cassandra cried out in relief. He turned to her, awareness washing over his face.
Powell hit a button on the computer and spoke through an intercom. “Lieutenant Colonel West. You will attack and defeat your enemy.”
Suddenly, Brock lunged at Michael, throwing punches, kicking, growling like some sort of animal. Michael dodged and maneuvered. “I don’t want to fight you, West!” He shoved West against the bars and yelled to the room. “I will not fight him like some kind of animal.” Then to West again, “Don’t let him turn you into this.”
“Help them, Jocelyn,” Cassandra pleaded. Jocelyn cast her a helpless look, and Cassandra tried to get through to her. “Don’t force Michael to hurt him. Please. Before my father shocks them again.”
“I…” Jocelyn whispered. “I can’t believe Michael isn’t fighting him. I can’t believe any of this. It’s not what I thought…”
“You will fight!” Powell screamed, stomping closer to the cage.
Cassandra focused on Jocelyn and tried not to think about her father using that remote control again. “Michael is a good man, Jocelyn. He’s a good man. My father is not. Don’t help him.”
“Fight!” her father shouted again, and Brock went down with a bloodcurdling scream that ripped through Cassandra’s nerve endings and drew her attention to the cage. Brock was shaking, lying face down. Again Michael was not.
“What is going on, Jocelyn?” Powell demanded, still messing with the controller around his neck. At that point, Brock was shaking to near convulsions. Michael didn’t so much as flinch. Her father stormed toward the lab table, his face red, fury turning his features to a harsh grimace. “I said…what the hell is happening?”
Jocelyn was standing with her hand over her mouth, and her father shook her. “Jocelyn!” her father yelled.
“I don’t know,” Jocelyn said, jerking into action and racing to the computer, keying some strokes. “I don’t know.” She pressed her hand to her forehead, and looked at Powell. “It’s like Red Dart disappeared from his system.”
“How is that possible?” he demanded.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” Jocelyn said, rushing to the computers that covered the wall to the right. “I need to look at my research. I need—”
“Where is Chin?” her father yelled, cutting her off. “Chin!”
Nothing. The doctor had disappeared.
“Oh my God,” Jocelyn murmured.
Cassandra twisted around to bring the pale features of the other woman into focus. “What?” Her gut twisted in premonition. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Chin left his email up,” she said. “The Zodius soldiers are coming.”
“We have a green light on trouble,” Sterling said, leaning back from his computer. “We have action. Lots of it. Four miles from Jocelyn Taylor’s house. At least twenty soldiers who appeared out of nowhere.” Which meant Wind-walkers. “Bold bastards. It’s broad daylight.”
Caleb and Damion appeared over Sterling’s shoulder, both mumbling curses before Caleb hit his earpiece to contact the standby team they had prepared to rock ‘n’ roll into action.
Sterling was already on his feet ready to join them, his attention on Caleb. “You realize this could be a trap,” he said. “We could all get tagged with Red Dart.”
“I don’t plan to worry about a Red Dart trap every time we leave Sunrise City for the rest of our lives,” Caleb said. “We came here to end this. Let’s end it.”
“I love how you think,” Sterling approved.
“If we aren’t too late,” Damion said grimly.
Sterling cast him a hard look. “Stop talking that kind of crap. We won’t be too late.” He pointed a finger at his head even as the three of them headed to the launch pad of Neonopolis, the area they used to run missions. “You have to think positive, man. We are Renegades.” And they were going to bring their men home. Or die trying.