Chapter 22
Braxton sat with his bandaged feet up on Mark’s desk, tossing back a swallow of Mark’s expensive single-malt scotch. No reason not to enjoy life’s small pleasures now that he was closing in on the end game. He was exhausted after a bitch of a day slogging through the snow, trying to track D-14’s flight.
No blood trail. No dragging tracks of numb feet. No nothing.
D-14 had to be dead. There was no way he could have survived that snowstorm and those temperatures. Not in his condition.
Braxton’s swollen, stinging eyes were bothered by the rapidly changing sequence of random images on Mark Olund’s screensaver. They felt like a taunt. He hadn’t yet succeeded in hacking his way into the computer’s hard drive, and the fitful flashing of the bright, colored pictures made his stomach churn nastily.
Then the pocket of his lab coat buzzed. Fucking phone. He listened to it ring for a few seconds before he took it out. The metallic device gleamed, clean and luminous against the stained, grayish gauze wrapped around the sores on his hand.
He didn’t know the number on the display, but only those Obsidian assholes called him now. Some fat cat or other, wanting him to deliver something to them that they didn’t have the guts to just take for themselves. Lazy pricks.
“Who’s this?” he demanded.
“Braxton? This is Phillip Holt here.”
Braxton searched through his memory. Expensive suits, calculating minds. Some fatter, some thinner, but they all looked about the same. “What do you want?”
“Just checking up on you.” Holt’s jolly tone was fucking irritating.
“Here I am,” he said. “Get to the point.”
“Fine. Are you still in the business of tracking down rogue operatives?”
Braxton hesitated. “Why would you think that?”
“I’m looking over your order from our pharmaceutical lab out in Montana,” Holt said. “Ten vials of Finurol-19. Ten vials of Trib-Theta. Huge doses. So what’s going on?”
Those pharma lab pussies had sold him out. Braxton ground his jaw in rage, which made his loose teeth ache. “Nothing special. Just keeping my stash topped up. You never know when you’re going to need to take out the garbage.”
Holt paused for a second to take that in. “Then why was the order couriered to a new address? A rural route in … what is it, oh, yes. Wyoming. I didn’t know you’d moved out of Nevada.”
“I haven’t,” Braxton said. “Still at the same lab.”
“Ah. So. Vacationing then? Skiing, snowboarding?”
“Nah. Just needed fresh mountain air,” Braxton said.
“I see. Well, we’re having some trouble here in Seattle with a rogue operative.”
“Research group? Serial number?”
“Unknown,” Holt said. “We can’t place him. I thought he might be yours from an older set. You did some bold work back then. I remember those breathtaking demos you held back at the Denver headquarters. None of us could sleep at night afterwards. The possibilities were just electrifying.” He chuckled nostalgically.
Braxton had no reason to share in the laugh. He gave no shits about being buttered up after having been fucked over by those lying pricks. And he certainly didn’t care after losing his lease on immortality and downing three sloppy shots of single malt.
“We have video,” Holt said. “I’d like you to take a look.”
“Fine. Send a link. But my boys are all accounted for,” Braxton said. “The boys from all the older sets are dead. Lethal gene mutation. You know that.”
“Yes, I know. Except for the Midlanders,” Holt said. “You didn’t see them die. So theoretically, some might have escaped that fire and survived, right?”
“Theoretically,” Braxton said slowly. “But they’d be dead from the gene mutation by now. All of the test subjects died sooner or later. Where’s your rogue now?”
“We don’t know. He’s kidnapped Simone Brightman and he’s holding her in an unknown location. Obviously we’re desperate to get her back. Aside for our concern for her well-being, she knows a tremendous amount of confidential proprietary information. It’s a difficult situation. I’m sure you understand.”
Braxton ignored Holt’s attempt to bond. “What makes you think this rogue could be one of my boys?”
“His drug resistance. We shot six full doses of Corbatrix into him. He went down, but it took a while, and didn’t hold for very long. He recovered fast, took out a whole squad of ultimate gen operatives, and took off with the Brightman girl.”
Braxton felt a flicker of excitement stirring. Six doses of Corbatrix and still standing? That did sound like a Braxton Boy. “Let me see that video,” he said.
“Stand by. I’m sending.”
His smartphone pinged. The file appeared in his email. Braxton downloaded it and set it to play.
Holy fuck. He jolted upright. He did know that man. That was D-13. He’d recognize that scrappy, foul-mouthed shithead anywhere. Similar to his brother in looks and size, though D-13 was taller and thicker in the shoulders than D-14.
A huge pain in the ass. Never knew when to shut his trap. Zero impulse control. No matter how brutal the punishments became, D-13 just never learned.
Only the calming influence of his brother had made him halfway manageable. D-13 had been extremely attached to the older boy.
Probably still was. Hmmm. Braxton leaned closer, peering at the phone.
Fully grown, D-13 appeared to be in perfect health. So he had the same gene protection as D-14 did. Another fountain of youth running around on the loose.
Life, health, wealth, power. It all spread itself out in front of Braxton once again like a shimmering mirage. Excitement pulsed through him. Yes.
A fresh clip showed D-13 fighting in a kitchen. He slid down limply to the floor, leaning against a butcher-block table, trickling blood from multiple darts still stuck in his body. Eyes closed. Not seeing the young woman with messy blond hair—yes, Simone Brightman—who cowered in a corner and then scrambled across the floor to D-13, pulling a dart from his cheek. Gently, as if ministering to him.
That was sure as hell not the action of a terrorized victim.
“ … damn it. Are you there? Braxton?”
His phone was squawking. He’d forgotten about the call parked in the upper green bar of his screen. He waited a few more seconds to tap it, staying with the video, appalled by the cheap cuffs they’d slapped on him, when monster-grade was required. For fuck’s sake. He’d exhaustively documented the strength of the Braxton Boys. The info was all on file and readily available. Obsidian always underestimated him.
Assholes. They deserved this pounding.
“ … even listening to me? Hello! Braxton?”
Tap.
“Yeah,” Braxon said. “It’s a bad connection. But I can hear you now.”
“Good,” Holt huffed. “You’ve seen the footage?”
“Still looking at it.” He parked Holt and went back to the video just as D-13 snapped through his bullshit cuffs and promptly flattened the rest of the squad.
The newer mods were more controllable. They were extremely tough, fast, and strong, but they just didn’t have that mad killer edge he’d forged into the Braxton Boys. In fact, Obsidian had eventually scrapped Braxton’s projects because they were afraid of his results. The video demonstrated exactly why.
“So do you recognize him?” Holt asked. “Could he be one of yours?”
Show over, the video went to black with a replay icon.
Braxton tapped back to Holt. “I can’t be sure,” he said. “My subjects were teenagers when I gene-vectored them. He’s a grown man now, obviously. Could have had plastic surgery since then, for that matter.”
“You mean to look worse? More like a thug?”
“How the hell would I know, Holt? I went through hundreds of boys. And it was years ago. Their ID photos and all the other data were lost in the fire. You know that.”
“So you don’t recognize him.” Holt had an edge in his voice. “But you can’t rule it out either. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I suppose,” Braxton said reluctantly.
“Could you match his control codes to him, if you positively identified him?”
Braxton’s lips stretched across his aching teeth. He would never forget those codes. Not while he was still breathing. “I’d have to see him face to face and then do a DNA analysis to be sure,” he hedged. “Where is he now?”
“If I knew that, we would be having a different conversation. He and Brightman are still at large. We fear for her safety. Any timely insights on your part would be extremely welcome. We need to bring him in as quickly as possible.”
“Got it,” Braxton assured him.
“Well, if that’s all you can contribute … ” Hold paused. “Just study the video again. Send me a list of possibilities and relevant data. Control codes in particular. Can you do that for me? Quickly?”
“Sure. On it.”
Braxton ended the call and went back to staring at the flickering cycle of images looping endlessly on Mark’s monitor. He started to laugh but it disintegrated into a wheezing, hacking cough. Too much icy wind and snow today.
D-13 with Simone Brightman? So that tight-assed, high-strung doll was getting nailed by a Braxton Boy. Trained to be rough. There was something deeply satisfying about that image. She was probably naked and sweaty and moaning right now, with D-13’s dick shoved all the way up inside of her. Pick a hole, any hole.
Instantaneous, long-lasting erectile response was a hallmark of his gene cocktail. A special bonus treat for his boys. Dead or not, they could never say he hadn’t given them something.
But D-13 had to have targeted Brightman for something besides her big, dewy eyes and her bouncing tits. He must have learned from Mark about the prototypes she’d designed that were in Mark’s collection. No mistaking that distinctive yellow striped laminate she used to personally mark her designs.
All of which were tagged with an active RFID beacon.
Yes. That was what D-13 wanted from Brightman. He was dead sure of it.
He knew those Brightman designs down to the last byte and bit. He’d worked long and hard for years, tweaking them into alternate versions that were actually useful for something other than medically supervised treatment for miserable lunatics.
Fucking around with a highly-functioning brain was so much more fun.
Rising from the desk with some difficulty, Braxton took the elevator down to the deepest level and entered the shielded room. He took the two gadgets with Brightman’s yellow striping and loaded them into a box to take upstairs.
All the while imagining her whimpering on her knees, pounded hard from behind by one of his own personal creations.
Simone Brightman was the embodiment of the play-it-safe concept that ruled Obsidian lately. They were all about profit. Staying in control. Leery of cutting-edge innovation, Braxton’s specialty. He despised those fucking bean-counting cowards, and her along with them. Pretty and bland and prim and obedient. So easy to control and contain. Just plug her in and watch her work. No danger. No downside.
Other than mind-numbing terminal boredom.
But he had created ruthless, unstoppable warriors. The most dangerous in the world. And no one thanked him for his efforts. Or rewarded him accordingly.
No. They just cut his funding and sent him out to hunt down escaped cockroaches. Out of sight, out of mind. Pussies.
He needed to get D-13 here and bag him fast, before Obsidian got its soft and bloated hands around his masterpiece’s throat and squeezed all the life out of it.
His last hope. His greatest achievement. D-13 belonged to him alone.
He placed the box on Mark’s desk. No barriers in here but a few panes of weatherproof glass. Those RFID beacons could just ping and keep on pinging to any satellite in range.
Calling D-13 back home to Daddy.
* * * *
Jordan Holt frowned at the video feed that showed Braxton pawing through a box of electronic equipment. “Dad, what are you trying to accomplish with this? I don’t get it,” he said. “Why bother using micro-drones to monitor him? He’s no longer a player. Come on.”
“I have excellent reasons for everything I do.”
“Really? We need to keep an eye on that?” Jordan gestured at the screen.
Holt peered at the shifting image as the hovering micro-drone adjusted its vantage point. It had maneuvered through the front door behind Braxton a couple of hours ago, when Braxton returned from a pointless trek out in the snow.
Braxton was limping across the room now. A gruesome, shambling horror.
The other drones still buzzed ineffectually outside the big house. Holt regretted not having dispatched them sooner. Clearly, Braxton needed watching.
It had been a mistake to dismiss him as he had, but it was only human, to turn away from … well, that. The man’s unsightly illness was painful to witness. Braxton’s outcome was the worst nightmare of those who had chosen to get modified. It didn’t always work out. Braxton was a walking cautionary tale.
No one wanted to think about his fate.
“Since I have to explain, you should be aware that I get auto-alerts when any of our agents order a Class Y pharmaceutical.” Holt was annoyed that he had to spell it out. With all his cognitive enhancements, Jordan should be quicker on the uptake. “That big an order of Trib-Theta suggests that he’s plotting something.”
Jordan perked up. “Yeah. He recognized our man when he saw the vid-clip. Jumped three feet into the air.”
“I agree,” Holt said. “So? What’s your recommendation?”
“I say we take a deep breath, hold our noses, and bring Braxton in,” Jordan said. “Have him identify the rogue and give us the control codes. Then kill him.”
“Just like that,” Holt said.
“Well, yeah!” Jordan sounded defensive. “Diminishing returns, right? What’s the point of letting him live?”
“Listen to me,” Holt began. “Self-interest is the most powerful force on earth. Keep that in mind if you want to lead and succeed. You look at Braxton and see a horror show, close to dead, useless in every way. I look, and I see a man who has nothing left to lose. And absolutely everything to gain.”
“Why? What does he gain out of identifying the—”
“If the mystery man is from one of Braxton’s groups, and he’s still healthy, that means he’s been modified with the most extreme gene cocktail Obsidian ever attempted, but he’s immune to Braxton’s rot. That so-called gene cocktail of Braxton’s, revised and improved … it’s potentially worth billions.”
Jordan’s mouth fell open, which made him look annoyingly stupid. “So, ah, then he’ll want to study this man and duplicate the—”
“Yes, exactly. At last, you arrive. Better late than never, I guess.”
“But you didn’t need to set Braxton on those two.” Jordan sounded peevish. “It’s overkill. I’ll be looking for them myself with top-level operatives. Do you really think that mind-fucked zombie nightmare is going to zero in on them faster than I will? He’s too sick to even move fast!”
“That doesn’t matter. He has one last chance before he dies in agony to show the world who came so close to ruling it.”
“Braxton did that?”
“Some think so. He sure as hell does. And I want you to watch and learn. What Braxton does now will show you what true motivation looks like. Remember. The strongest force in the world? What is it again, son?”
“Self-interest. I know, I know. You think I’m not self-interested?” Jordan looked faintly hurt.
Holt rolled his eyes. He walked out, and let the door snap shut without waiting for a reply.