CHAPTER FOUR
Monday morning, dressed for work, her purse on her shoulder, Cassandra was in heavy pursuit of her keys, which she’d somehow misplaced, when she stepped into the slim hallway leading to the living room and stopped dead in her tracks. The scent, so uniquely Michael, laced the air.
A memory took shape in the shadowy recesses of her mind—of waking up with a tingle at the back of her neck that she’d only recently started to feel when he was near. Had he been here? While she slept? She shook her head. No, that was nuts. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since Saturday night. She glanced at the clock on the wall and shook off the memory, cringing with her tardiness. She’d arranged to have ten lab techs begin a round of brainwave testing on the soldiers as of mid-morning, and she still had preparations to do.
Another ten minutes of searching for her keys, and she gave in and called Kelly to come get her. “You lost your keys?” Kelly said. “How very unCassandra-like of you.”
Five minutes later, Kelly pulled her blue Camry to the curb and shoved the passenger’s door open.
“Something is going on,” Cassandra said the minute she slid inside, as she started replaying the events of the weekend.
“Adam’s involvement is enough to make me nervous,” Kelly said, cutting her a worried look. “I don’t care what your profiles say about the man being within normal aggressive range. When you look into his eyes, pure evil looks back. I am betting these brainwave tests of yours are going to be far more revealing than discovering the X2 gene has been.”
Cassandra’s cell phone rang, and she fished it out of her purse, silently wishing for a call from Michael. Instead, it was one of her staff members. The call was quick, and she hung up more worried than ever.
“Okay, Kelly. Now I know something is wrong. My staff received a memo that all soldiers scheduled for the brainwave testing were indefinitely reassigned.”
“Reassigned?” Kelly quaked, whipping into the main parking lot. “What does ‘reassigned’ mean? As in another military base? The GTECHs?”
“I don’t know,” Cassandra said, motioning across the parking lot as she spotted her father in deep conversation with a ranking officer. “But I intend to find out.” The minute the car stopped, Cassandra was out of the door, purse over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you in the lab.” She slammed the door and took off across the pavement, her black high-heels pounding across the concrete slab.
“Father!” she yelled, making sure he knew she was here and wasn’t about to let him get away.
With a barely-there glance over his shoulder, he offered a short wave of acknowledgement and continued speaking to the officer. About the time Cassandra reached the two men, the officer saluted and then headed across the parking lot.
“I’m on my way to a meeting,” her father said. “Whatever you need is going to have to wait.” He started walking away, dismissing her.
She double-stepped to keep up with him, firming her voice. “I just heard that some of the GTECHs in my studies have been reassigned. Why wasn’t I told?”
“You’ll get a briefing when everyone else does,” he said, quickening his pace.
She grabbed his arm, drawing him to a halt. “Don’t dismiss me like I’m one of your soldiers.” He’d apparently forgotten she could be as dogmatic as her mother when she wanted answers. “You brought me here to do a job. I need to know what’s going on to do it. I can quit. They can’t.”
“You try my nerves, Cassandra. You are my daughter, but you are also an employee of the base who will get the information as I deem it necessary.”
“I can’t do my job without proper communication. I had expensive, specialized testing scheduled this morning that just got flushed down the drain.”
“Duty first, Cassandra,” he said tightly. “I’ve taken command of a secondary base which required immediate high-level security. You’ll find a list of soldiers removed from evaluation status is already in your inbox.”
“How many soldiers?” she demanded.
“Fifty.”
That was one-fourth of the GTECHs. “What about our research? We don’t know enough about the GTECHs to simply send them off to duty like any other soldier.”
“Dr. Chin left this morning with the troops,” he said. “He’ll oversee the scientific monitoring and research of the GTECH program. Dr. Peterson will be promoted in his absence.”
Nothing about this felt right. “You relocated Michael, didn’t you?”
“He met certain requirements for the assignment, yes.”
Yet Michael hadn’t said he was being relocated. Michael would have said good-bye. “What requirements?”
“He’s a cold-hearted killer,” he said. “Never blinks an eye at a command, no matter how bloody it may be.”
She all but visibly flinched at both the tone and content of the statement. He knew she was seeing Michael and had made his disapproval known, but now he was going too far. “If you have something to say to me, Father, say it, but don’t involve Michael. And don’t judge him for doing what you order him to do.”
“I don’t remember saying I was judging him at all,” he replied dryly. “I simply answered your question. You wanted to know what requirements Michael met for his relocation, to which I replied—he’s a cold-hearted killer.”
He’d said it again and added even more bite. Her mind tracked back to the night before. To Michael’s words. No matter what happens to me, do not tell anyone you wear my mark. And considering Caleb and Adam’s visit had sparked the warning, she was beginning to piece this together. “Were Caleb and Adam also relocated?”
“Adam, yes,” he stated. “Caleb, no.”
That horrible feeling in her chest spread to her stomach. Adam, the man Kelly had just referred to as “evil,” had gone with Michael. Caleb had not. And now her father was basically accusing Michael of enjoying the act of killing. “What have you done, Father?”
The question was swallowed as the humid Nevada wind rushed against them—unnatural, violent—a second before Adam Rain solidified in front of them and dropped a limp body onto the hood of the Jeep.
“He tried to lock me in a cage,” Adam declared, glaring at her father, black eyes framed by sculpted bone structure. His full lips twisted in contempt. “That’s a good way to piss me off.”
Shock held Cassandra, eyes riveted on the broken man on the truck, blood trickling from his mouth. The wind lifted again, tangling the loose hair around Cassandra’s neckline and throwing dirt and rock from the nearby desert terrain at her feet. Relief washed over Cassandra as the mark on the back of her neck tingled with the certainty that Michael approached. Michael could control Adam, where her father could not.
Michael appeared beside Adam, and four more GTECHs formed a V formation behind the two of them—as if they were standing behind their leaders, as if Michael stood with Adam. Cassandra rejected the warning sizzling down her spine. Michael worked with Adam, ran missions with Adam. To see them together was not abnormal. But there was that warning, growing stronger by the second. And he wasn’t looking at her. Why wasn’t he looking at her?
“Michael?” she said, needing him to look at her, to reassure her everything was okay.
“Go inside, Cassandra,” her father ordered.
“Yes,” Adam agreed. “Go inside, Cassandra. That is, unless you want to watch your father bleed to death.”
Cassandra’s gaze rocketed to Michael, and she stepped toward him. The wind gusted, as if in response, pushing her backwards several steps. She stumbled and somehow regained her footing, only to be pushed backwards yet again.
Her chest tightened as she saw her father step toe-to-toe with Adam, and desperately she searched for help, finding that the parking lot had turned into a ghost town. Everything about this was wrong. Everything spelled disaster in the process. She forced herself to turn and run toward the elevator, telling herself Michael would protect her father, Michael would handle Adam. She had to warn the others on the base, to call for backup. She punched the elevator button and refused to look behind her, unable to face the prospect that her father might be lying dead on the ground.
“Michael will save him,” she said, the verbal assurance allowing her to rush into the open elevator.
The minute the car hit basement level, she charged out of the doors. “Help! I need help!” But there was no one where there were usually many, and the red emergency phone was ripped from the wall.
“Kelly,” she whispered and took off running, her heart in her throat. Please let Kelly be okay.
Cassandra burst through the doors of the lab where she’d told Kelly she would meet her and stopped dead in her footsteps. Ava Lane, with whom Cassandra had never shared more than an uncomfortable greeting, stood alone, arms crossed in front of her full bosom, the glint of evil in her pale green eyes enough to send a chill down Cassandra’s spine.
“In a hurry?” she asked.
“Late for work,” Cassandra said, trying to act nonchalant as she started to rush past Ava, with one intention—to call Caleb. Michael trusted Caleb.
“At one point I thought you were Michael’s intended Lifebond,” Ava said. “But no Lifebond would keep the secret you kept from him. I would certainly never keep any secret from Adam.”
The biting accusation, along with the obvious proclamation that she was Adam’s Lifebond, stopped Cassandra in her tracks. She and Ava were nearly face-to-face now, only a few steps separating them before Cassandra would have stepped around the lab table. “What are you talking about?”
“Michael knows he’s X2 positive,” she said. “And he knows you knew and didn’t tell him. Did you know your father was going to lock him away because of it?”
“No,” she said, her throat dry. “No. That’s not what was supposed to happen. My father—”
“—should be thanked,” she said. “He gave us a reason to act. Once we’ve claimed control of the base, we will begin to create a new world, free of weak, useless humans like yourself. It is the nature of evolution, a chance for a better Zodius race.”
Cassandra pressed her hand to her temple, willing herself to think logically, to remain calm. Again, she replayed Michael’s words in her mind. No matter what happens, do not tell anyone you wear my mark. It had been a warning—about this, about Adam and Ava.
Ava’s cell phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen. “Darn,” she said. “Adam needs me. I was really hoping to stick around for the special treat Michael has lined up for you.” She laughed. “Bet you can’t wait to find out what it is.” She waggled her fingers and headed for the door.
The instant Ava was gone, Cassandra bolted for her office to call for help, only to find her phone and computer ripped from the wall. She raced around her desk to the bottom drawer where she kept the Glock her father had taught her to shoot when she was twelve, only to come up dry again. The drawer was open, the gun gone.
She leaned on the desk, defeated. “Think Cassandra. Think. What now?”
The mark on her neck began to tingle, and she reacted immediately. “Michael,” she yelled, certain he hadn’t betrayed her. Certain he was here to save her.
But when she rounded the doorway and brought the lab into view, her hope and her world crumbled at her feet. Michael was, indeed, there, but he wasn’t alone. He had her father in front of him, and he held a blade at his throat. Blood trickling from an open wound, no doubt the method used to keep him from warning her.
“Michael,” she whispered, her eyes prickling with unshed tears. “Please don’t do this.”
The plea had barely left her lips when Michael lifted a gun and pointed it at her. Time stood still as she stared down at the tranquilizer in her arm, and then the world that had crumbled went black.
Cassandra woke abruptly, climbing through the darkness of a deep sleep to jerk to a sitting position, quickly registering that she was in a bed, steel rails on either side of her. An IV hung from her arm. Green curtains covered the windows to the right. She was in the hospital.
“Easy, sweetie,” came Kelly’s gentle voice, as her friend rushed out of the nearby restroom. “I knew you’d wake up while I was in there.”
Kelly. Kelly was here. Cassandra cut through the tangled memories weaving through the blank spots of her mind. Michael’s betrayal. The knife. “My father!” she exclaimed urgently, adrenaline rocketing her heart monitor into a series of fast beeps. “Is my father—?”
“Alive and unharmed,” Kelly said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were red, her attire casual jeans, and an out-of-character, wrinkled T-shirt. “He had to fly to Washington to deal with the aftermath of Adam’s takeover of Groom Lake.” Her gaze took on a distant look. “I swear, that day was a nightmare I will not soon forget.”
“That day?” Cassandra queried quickly, her hands going to the steel bars. “How long have I been out? What happened to me?”
A nurse rushed into the room. “You’re awake!”
“Please,” Cassandra said, holding up a hand. “I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”
“Miss—”
“I need a minute,” Cassandra said forcefully.
Kelly flashed the badge on her chest. “She’s in good hands. Give us that minute.” Reluctantly the nurse nodded and exited the room.
The moment she was gone, Cassandra asked again, “How long have I been out?”
“Three days,” Kelly said. “You hit your head when, ah, Michael tranquilized you.” She stood up and filled a glass with some water and handed it to her. Cassandra waved it off. Kelly stood her ground. “Drink.”
Cassandra accepted the glass, the cool liquid soothing her throat, but not her heart. Michael had tranquilized her. That part she remembered all too well. She could still see his black eyes in that moment when he’d fired the gun—cold and calculating. She shivered and handed the glass back to Kelly before leaning against the mattress and crossing her arms over the hospital gown.
Her voice softened as she asked, “How did we get out?”
“Caleb,” she said. “And thank God for him, though I cannot imagine what it must have been like to stand against his brother. Apparently, Adam had been planning a revolt for some time. Caleb had been working to head it off. But when your father suddenly decided to throw the X2 positive men into confinement, he forced Adam’s hand.”
“Michael…” A lump formed in her throat, and she had no idea what she’d wanted to say.
Kelly squeezed her arm. “He’s alive, if that’s what you want to know. With Adam, Cassandra. At least seventy-five GTECHs and almost the entire medical and military staff at Groom Lake followed him.”
She remembered Ava’s vow. “Did they get the serum?”
Kelly nodded and rolled the doctor’s stool to the side of the bed before sitting down. “Enough to create two to three hundred GTECHs. That’s a lot of GTECHs, but not enough for the world domination that Caleb says Adam has his sights set on.”
World domination. This could not be happening. “Can’t he duplicate the serum?”
“I’m sure he thinks he can,” she said. “But he can’t. And neither can we. The original sample was destroyed, and the alien DNA we are dealing with is nothing like human DNA. It protects itself from duplication. Almost as if it defends itself against imperfection. So once he hands out the serum that he has on hand, he’ll have to find another way to grow the GTECH population.”
Kelly grimaced. “It’s easy to talk big, but execution is another story. Three hundred men is hardly a new race.”
“Who says humans won’t follow him, Kelly? The GTECHs could become like royalty. The humans will hope to be made into GTECHs.”
“Zodius,” she said. “That’s what the army is officially calling the GTECHs who are under Adam’s command to distinguish those who follow him and those who follow Caleb. Caleb’s followers are the Renegades because they’re standing against Adam, but outside the veil of the government.”
“That’s because my father destroyed any hope Caleb will ever trust us again,” she said, still reeling from what he’d done.
“Regardless.” Kelly said. “Caleb is going after Adam, Cassandra. He’ll stop him before he becomes a bigger threat.”
“Surely we can end this with some sort of covert attack?”
Kelly sighed and reached for the remote control on the nightstand. “Once upon a time, I had a good bedside manner, but I don’t seem to be doing the comfort thing well today.” She flipped to the news where they were showing a Casino up in flames and then flashed to a high-rise in downtown Manhattan, also on fire. “That’s how Adam managed to get Caleb to back down. He promised every attack on Area 51 would be met with double retaliation.”
“You’re right,” Cassandra said. “You really aren’t good at the comfort thing today. So, if there is anything else, just spit it out, and let’s be done with it.”
“There’s an inquisition into your father’s actions. He may face court martial. And…there are guards stationed at your door in case Adam tries to kidnap you.” Translation—Michael might try and kidnap her, but Kelly didn’t want to say that. “Not that anyone has any reason to believe he might. Caleb says Ava was planning to use you and me and any female they could get their hands on to re-create the fertility testing she’s been working on at Area 51 by trying to find lifebond connections.” She shook herself. “That woman was going to offer us up to their entire male population. Bottom line here is that you’re safe. You were convenient, and now you’re not. We’re just being cautious until things settle down a bit, in case they try to use you to lash out at your father.”
Cassandra’s chest tightened. Michael had said he wouldn’t tell anyone about their Lifebond, but he’d tried to kidnap her. That could mean only one thing. He must have told Adam. And if she had been captured, he would have used her to reproduce and build Adam’s new Zodius race. Which meant he was going to come for her. It meant she should confess her lifebond connection to Michael and plan for protection. But even as she had the thought, she couldn’t find the words. Cassandra wasn’t ready to let go of the hope that everything wasn’t as it seemed. No matter how things seem, Michael had said. No. She wasn’t ready to let go of Michael or their vow of silence. The takeover of Area 51 might have been Kelly’s personal nightmare, but Cassandra had a horrible feeling that this was only the beginning of hers.
Inside a covert warehouse location, two weeks after his successful takeover of Area 51, Adam sat at a conference table with Ava to his right, and Michael, now his second-in-command, to his left. Also present, twelve of the country’s most influential powerhouses—men who represented banking, technology, pharmaceuticals, even government.
“As you know from prior conversations,” Adam announced, “we are here today because our government is failing our people, and you want to be a part of a better nation. You want a country free of corruptness, free of human illness.” He tapped the table. “You want a Zodius Nation. Each of you is so close to a perfect world. I know you can taste it. All you have to do to ensure that you’re one of the first one hundred conversions to Zodius is to dedicate yourselves to our success.”
An immediate rumble of assurances quickly followed—promises of generous donations that bordered on begging. Adam leaned back in his chair, satisfaction filling him. He quite enjoyed having these humans—high-ranking amongst their race in power and prestige—beg for his approval. Let the bidding war begin.