Unwilling to Back Down (Survival of the Fittest Book 2)

by Shawn Keys

  Hoping to salvage their opinion of his investigative skills, he dredged up a random factoid from out of the depths of his memory. On one of the lines for Sanya Oleski, he noticed she had mentioned spending time at a place called June Springs. Kyle said, “Hey, I know that name. She says she was being treated there. But that’s not a normal hospital. It’s a recovery center for substance abuse.”

  Jackie said, “Hmmm. Not all such problems are genetic, but it would be a red flag. Especially for a pilot. What are the chances they don’t already know?”

  Kyle shrugged. “It’s a small place. Only reason I know about it is from a television special about Betty Marks, the actress who spent a while there.”

  Chloe said, “I’d hate to bet against her relapsing. Messy thing to do.”

  Dazz snorted. “Considering that otherwise she’ll become a trained killer with flying skills, I’m not quite so sympathetic.”

  Soo-Yun offered, “It would be a weak point, for sure. When it comes to addiction, it’s generally never considered cured, only managed.”

  Kyle recalled Nathan’s father and brothers. Granted, they were assholes who barely even made the effort, but he had watched the lure of the bottle crumble their resistance all too easily. “Real question is how much the shadow-FDPC know.”

  “Shelf that one for now,” Jackie said. “It’s an option, even if it’s a crappy one for us to leverage.” She pursed her lips, looking unhappy with herself. “Speaking of crappy pieces of leverage, here’s another one. I’m pretty sure Noah Levin is gay and hasn’t come out yet. Not a lot of factors that disqualify people in eugenics circles faster than that.”

  Kyle objected lightly, “I have no idea about how these scumbags might think about all that. But we know from these conversations that all of the males under consideration are positive for Persterim effects. They’re all sterile. We have no idea if they actually hope to reverse all that one day, but being unable to reproduce doesn’t seem like a disqualifying factor for the moment. So, I’m not sure being unwilling to do so would matter all that much to them.”

  “People have hated same-sex attraction for all kinds of reasons,” Jackie reminded him.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know. If he isn’t aware that this is a eugenics movement, he could be a great ally once he finds out. But what if the students do have some idea? Or, at least, what if he does? He was ID’d by a mentor. What if he’s hell-bent on showing that since being gay doesn’t disqualify him, he can match any of the others beat for beat?” He sighed. “Honestly, it’s not even that. I would just feel crappy going that route. Feels like a betrayal of Nathan after all I’ve seen him going through with his parents.”

  Chloe smiled at him, nodding supportively. If anyone could possibly claim to be closer to his best friend, it would be his sister who had shared their troubled childhoods. “Let’s leave that one on the back-burner, too. Only if needed.”

  Dazz glanced at them all. “As long as we agree that if we see his name later on, and he’s become one of them, you can be sure I’m going to go full equal rights and kill him right along with the rest of them.”

  Reminded of the stakes, they got back to work.

  It was a half-hour later when Soo-Yun growled in frustration. “I can’t find anything about this Landon Curtis that makes me question him at all. This guy fits the bill for a neo-Nazi warlord right down to his pretty blond hair and blue eyes. He even dressed in black with a red pocket handkerchief on their formal dinner night two days ago. This guy gives me the creeps.”

  Chloe agreed, “Haven’t found a thing.”

  “Me neither,” Kyle added.

  “Not a whisper from my online friends,” Dazz reported. “They haven’t dug up even a little dirt on him, except for things that indicate he might have tendencies toward egocentrism and thinking he is too good for everyone else. For a wall-street guy, that’s impressive.”

  Jackie sighed. “I’ve already figured everyone has a pressure point to push on, but we might not have the time and resources to find this guy’s weakness. Probably would have seen this a few more times, if we hadn’t already eliminated a bunch.”

  Soo-Yun suddenly sounded hopeful, “That said, I think we might have a chance with this Rebecca Bruice.” She gave a throaty laugh. “Oh, yeah, I can see Daddy’s paw prints all over this.”

  Kyle glanced down at his newest lover cackling by his side. “What are you seeing?”

  Soo-Yun let out a pained sigh. “Well, two things. First, there was this video from in the elevator.” She sent it to the projector and selected ‘play’.

  One the screen, a woman with red hair so dark it was almost black leaned into the wall, resting her forehead against the wood. “What am I doing here?”

  It was a short clip. Soo-Yun paused it. “She’s second-guessing something.”

  Chloe didn’t look totally sold. “Come on, Soo-Yun, who hasn’t felt like a fish out of water in some places? Even these eugenics pricks might have ‘in-crowds’ and ‘outcasts’. Maybe she isn’t making any friends or failed one of these tests they are taking and she feels a little lost. Doesn’t mean her superior, elitist attitude won’t make a comeback.”

  Soo-Yun didn’t argue too much. “I get it. But it also says here she has a legacy father in this shadow-FDPC. Who heard that?”

  Chloe said, “I think I remember catching her saying something about that in a recording.”

  Soo-Yun asked, “Do you remember her tone of voice?”

  “Hmm?” Chloe asked. Then, realizing what the doctor was asking, she said, “Oh, I guess I would have called her… grudging. Yeah. Like she found it hard to say anything bad about someone looking after her, but not jumping for joy, either.”

  Soo-Yun actually smiled. “Look at Dazz’s background research on her. She had a free ride to university in theater production, even without being pregnant. That’s incredibly hard.”

  Chloe groused, “You have no idea. And they can take it away like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  Soo-Yun offered a sad smile of sympathy, then said, “She turned it down.”

  “What?” Chloe darted into her files, obviously having missed that. “Why? She would have worked incredibly hard to get in. You don’t throw that away!”

  “Well, it might have been because she was offered placement by Northwestern, Columbia and Sarah Lawrence Colleges. None of them are anywhere near Raleigh, North Carolina. Instead, it says she took her firefighter exam and got her helicopter pilot’s license in order to become part of a fire-rescue team. She was good, which led to her being offered a few highly respected positions dropping suppressant on wilderness fires and doing high-altitude rescue flights,” Soo-Yun summarized.

  “Sounds exciting,” Dazz admitted, using one of her infrequent compliments.

  “And she turned those jobs down, too,” Soo-Yun said. “Instead, she took a liaison job with the Army at Fort Bragg, working with their pilots to land under adverse conditions. It exposed her to a bunch of different aircraft, but she wasn’t helping anyone. Look, Dazz got her hands on an essay she wrote for a job application. Becoming a fire-rescue pilot might not have been her idea, but she really embraced the idea of getting into the smoke and heat and pulling people out.

  Jackie caught on. “Instead, she ends up teaching Army types how to find new chances to kill people. I appreciate what our soldiers do, but it does seem opposite to what she was hoping to be part of.”

  Soo-Yun nodded. “Doesn’t seem like an arrogant elitist waiting to take her proper place in the world, either, does it? What does it sound like?” She ticked off on her fingers like a checklist. “Not allowed to move away. Forced to ignore the school path she wanted. Forced to do a job she showed no interest in at first. Directed toward a specific career placement that doesn’t suit her personality. And when we look to see who identified her as a good candidate for being here? Even us, the outsiders, came up with the answer as being ‘her father’.” She sighed. “Trust me, I’ve been there.”

/>   Dazz issued a knowing, even empathetic laugh. “Preach it, sister.”

  “Well, I guess I never became the ‘useless, fucking whore’ my father seemed to call me all the time,” Chloe huffed. “Guess I let him down, too.” She rolled her eyes.

  Jackie didn’t add her own backstory, never quick to share. But she was nodding carefully, processing what the others had said. “So, it’s possible she is under intense pressure to be here. She’s gotten used to being pushed around. She’s on a slippery slope, and by the time they start asking her to do things that she might have rejected, she’ll be faced with the choice to do it or face whatever punishment this shadow-FDPC might level at a failed agent. I’d bet they aren’t known for their mercy.”

  Chloe said, “This doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. She has given in to her father at every turn. She might have been disappointed, but each time she has excelled in the spot she ended up. She’s even learned to be happy there. Look, here’s one of her smiling with a bunch of Army guys hanging off this helicopter. If she’s faking it, then she’s a good actress. She’s learned to be a chameleon. Part of that theater training. There could be angst at being pushed around, but who’s to say she will embrace a chance to stick it to her Dad and the organization he has been grooming her for?”

  “That’s going to come down to her being what her father has tried to make her,” Dazz said. “I’m sure he’s tried to pile on all the psychological tricks he could to make her think she’s better than others. Did those lessons sink in deep or not?”

  Silence descended as they all traded looks, waiting for anyone to object.

  Kyle drove home the risk. “We’ll probably only get one shot at this.”

  Chloe said, “Maybe not. If we probe Rebecca gently at first and find that she’s a more willing recruit than we hoped, maybe we switch tactics before revealing our hand to her.”

  Kyle didn’t look certain. “Jackie is the closest thing we have to a professional at this sort of thing. We can’t count on being smooth enough to fool her. Look, I think she’s our best chance. Not only because she has a reason not to be a true fanatic, but also because we might be able to shock her when we tell her what her father really believes in. Blackmailing one of these bastards won’t make me lose sleep, but prying someone away from them before she can get fully brainwashed sounds even better. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to assume we only have one basket for all our eggs. The rest of these are either thin or would leave a bad taste in my mouth to go after them… even if we ended up saving them in the end.” He shook his head. “Damn, this is a hard choice. In a way, by not fucking with these other people, we’re damning them to hell.”

  Chloe nodded. “I’m seeing this the same way. I know it sucks, but we can’t risk trying to turn more than one. It’s a huge risk to try even once.”

  “You know my vote. I brought it up,” Soo-Yun said.

  Kyle focused on Dazz. “What do you think?”

  “Might be like looking in a mirror when I hear her griping about hating her father. What’s that old saying about seeing your own reflection? Might get annoying. But at least we’ll have something to girl-talk about.”

  With their opinions aligned, Kyle looked to Jackie. “Tell us we’re being stupid about this.”

  She laughed. “We’re so far off the map of proper procedure, it isn’t even funny. This is all hunches and intuition mixed with just enough facts to be dangerous.”

  “Which is all we have time for, and you know it,” Kyle reminded her. “Look, it’s just like after the shoot-out on the road. We can either take the plunge or pack-up and go home. There is another option. We know their names. We could wait. Do more research. Really solidify our knowledge of them. When they come out of the camp, graduated or just on weekend vacation if it’s allowed, we can have a better idea of who to approach.”

  Jackie shook her head. “No. That’s a bad bet, and we all know it. Hell, every organization including the DOJ has a little indoctrination laced into their boot camps. It’s part of the tribal ritual, to bring you into the fold. To make you feel like a Marine or an FBI agent or… well, hell, even like a baseball player at spring training. It’s part of what makes the team work. It lets you know that ‘this is them’ and ‘you are us’. There’s a line that gets drawn, and it happens fast. Within the first month, these people will know who is responding and who is not. After that, turning them will be a hundred times harder. We’ll need real evidence. Real pressure. The sort of thing you can’t bluff and that needs the backing of official paperwork to make it stick.”

  Agreement floated around the room. They all knew it was a risk, but none of them were in the mood for patience.

  Another moment was spent in self-reflection and silent challenge as they all gave the idea once last consideration. Expressions among them moved from consideration toward resolve.

  Kyle let out a long exhale. “Alright, then. We know what we’re going to do. Now, all we have to do is find our chance. We’ve heard these students admitting to a few of the rules they are under. They aren’t supposed to be alone, even when outside. Probably a defensive mechanism against people like us. Which means we either have to find a point where she’s breaking the rules or generate a situation where she has to break the rules. We don’t know how much longer we have. Their reservations are for two weeks, and there’s a week left, but that could have a safety margin built in for the instructors to deliberate. Think about it tonight. We’ve been killing ourselves, so let’s get a good bit of sleep and then attack this at first light. Sound good?”

  There was a general sense of acceptance around the room. Jackie put certainty behind it as the only one who wasn’t part of the fully loyal group. “Let’s hope we find something fast.”

  Chloe unfolded from her huddled posture in her chair, her paired legs slipping down over the front to touch the ground. “Well, I think it’s a good time for Dazz and Jackie to go get themselves something to eat.”

  Jackie’s head tilted to one side. “Why us?”

  “Two reasons. It’s even more important not to be out in public together. In here, we can keep our implants off. Out there, we have to wear them on, and the less time we spend with all five of our implants broadcasting together, the better off we’ll be.”

  They had had that conversation a few times, and Kyle certainly agreed with her. They had turned of Soo-Yun’s on the first day she had joined them. They had copied her information onto one she could wear on the outside of her arm. They didn’t have a fake ID for her yet, but the bad guys didn’t know she was on their team. Even with her throwing confusion into the mix, the other four of them staying together all the time would only help the shadow-FDPC link their false IDs together.

  Jackie was apparently thinking the same thing. Giving a nod, she said, “Reasonable. And second?”

  Then, Chloe stood with the fluidity of living silk. Her knee on one leg angled in, striking a provocative pose. “Well, it’s up to you of course. But neither of you have been as enthusiastic as me about watching. I need to help Kyle with his problem.”

  Kyle’s mouth went dry. “Problem?”

  Jackie’s eyes narrowed, suspicious as to what she meant. “Problem?”

  Chloe’s smile was that of a sweet devil planning the best kind of mischief. “He’s missing the others, and he’s being the gentleman around Soo-Yun. Such a sweetheart, isn’t he?” She gestured up at the screen and the unquestioned beauty of Rebecca Bruice’s oval-shaped face, full lips, sweeping dark-red bangs and bright-hazel eyes. “In his state, she’s going to melt him into a babbling puddle. Can’t have you distracted by stray fantasies.”

  Kyle started to argue, “Hey, I’m not –”

  Chloe’s eyes dropped to his loose khaki pants and the still-heavy bulge pressing out from beneath. Her suggestive glance and sexy pose were only making it more painfully apparent. “No shame in it, Kyle. Partly our fault, after all. So, I’m going to do my part and take care of it.”

  J
ackie gave a low groan and grabbed her jacket. “Have fun, kids. We’ll take our time. Dazz?”

  The hacker girl was gawking at Chloe, looking a little outraged. She complained, “What the hell, traitor? What happened to watching being enough for us, huh?”

  Chloe ran a slippery tongue out and over her lips, not saying anything.

  A glimpse of those moist lips made Kyle swell several inches almost instantly.

  Dazz saw the visible movement of his pants struggling to accommodate him inside. Her mouth parted just a little, letting out the tiniest of pants… then, she pushed off her chair, snatched her leather coat and stalked for the door. “Can’t fucking believe this…” Grumbling the whole way, she brushed past Jackie into the corridor.

  Jackie let her go by, then held the door and prompted the woman curled around Kyle’s waist. “Soo-Yun, it’d be safe for you to come, too.”

  A soft purr came up from her. “Ohhh… I think I’ll stay.”

  Jackie rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable.” She walked out, letting the door close, but… as she went, her gaze lingered on the developing, potently sexual scene with a last, lingering gaze that wasn’t all frustration.

  Chloe waited until she heard the click, then took two swaying steps toward Kyle.

  He was certain nothing could ever look that sexy as seeing her legs strut one in front of the other, half-sheathed in those long grey socks which only drew additional attention to her slender, supple thighs.

  With a rich smile, Chloe seemed to read his mind. With her next liquid motion, she sank to her knees. Her body never lost its serpentine grace as she crawled the rest of the way across the room to him.

  Which of course, immediately destroyed any certainty about how sexy she could be. He swore his heart stopped at least once as her stunning blue eyes fixated on him, pinning him in place and making it hard to breathe. Those eyes that had been watching him for months now, letting the anticipation for her joining in to build.

  Her hands found his lower legs, then slipped up and over his knees. Sliding inward, her hands didn’t fumble at all. She knew what she wanted, and there was only absolute self-assurance as she unbuttoned his pants, helped the strained zipper down, and then reached higher to tug both pants and underwear down off his ass and along his thighs.