by A. K. DuBoff
Leon blushed. “Uh…”
“Maybe I worked myself into a headache.” Kira wished she could have waited around to see Marty’s reaction, but she took off at a brisk walk toward the exit.
Based on the redness of Leon’s face, however, she guessed that Marty’s jaw had hit the floor.
They broke into a jog as soon as they were out of the common area of the lab.
“Fok, Kira, that alert was tied to my work station. There’s probably a hold on my badge.”
She glanced over at him. “I’m not leaving you behind no matter what. You’re a member of my team.”
He nodded his understanding, but the worry remained on his face.
Footfalls from multiple pairs of heavy boots sounded from down the perpendicular hall between them and the exit.
Aaand there are the guards. Kira looked around for a potential hiding place and spotted a supply closet two meters ahead. She tapped on Leon’s shoulder and pointed.
They bolted to it slipped inside, closing the door softly.
Just enough light leaked in from around the edges of the door for Kira to see Leon’s rigid form. Standing a mere half-meter apart, she had the urge to hold him for comfort, but she didn’t dare move a muscle.
She held her breath as the guards—she counted six—passed by, showing no break in their pace to indicate they’d spotted them in the closet.
After a count of thirty, Kira cracked the door open. The corridor was clear.
“Marty will point them back this way,” she whispered. “It’s now or never.”
“What about my ID badge when we leave?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Before he could question what she had planned, Kira made a flat-out run for the exit. Two strides short of the door, she dropped to a jog.
“Shite!” she shouted while she burst through the doors. “Why didn’t you tell me what time it was?” She glared at Leon.
“Sorry?”
“Sorry won’t cut it! I’m going to be late for my wildlife expedition. What kind of vacation is it if I don’t get to go to the petting zoo?!” She stormed through the security archway. “Can you believe this shite?” Kira said to the security guard.
The guard looked at her, bewildered. “I wouldn’t worry about it, ma’am.”
“You too? All you men are the foking same!” she shouted.
To her relief, Leon took the chance to dart through the archway.
“I better make it by the check-in time, or you’ll never hear the end of it.” She gave one last glare at Leon for good measure and turned back to the guard to make sure he was still watching her and not his monitor. “And don’t you dare pretend you don’t want to snuggle with a baby cocobera!”
She spun back toward the door with a grand flourish and ran outside.
Leon ran after her, and they didn’t slow until they reached his car. He used the remote unlock, and they piled inside.
“Wow!” he exclaimed while starting the engine. The car sprang to life, and he sped to the exit. “That was epic.”
Kira wiped her hand down her face. “If Ari ever gets ahold of that footage…”
“Who’s Ari?”
“One of the guys on my team. He’s made it his personal mission to document my best moments and post them for all the universe to see.”
Leon smirked despite the tension from the last half hour. “So I can find you online?”
Oh, fok. Now I’ve done it.
— — —
Monica scowled at the MTech Security Chief, Tucker. “What do you mean they walked out the front door? There was a flag on that account!”
“Yes, ma’am. There was apparently a… distraction,” the chief replied with a quaver to his voice. He stood a full head taller than Monica, but he’d turned into a scared puppy the moment he saw her eyes flash behind her contacts.
“Then go find them.” She emphasized each word, rising onto her toes.
Tucker took a step back. “I’m afraid our jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond the lab, ma’am.”
Monica held in a curse. “Are you going to follow my orders, or do I need to go after them myself after I rip out your foking—”
“Doctor, what happened?” Jared wandered into the room, looking dazed.
She pivoted her rage to her assistant. “About time you showed up! What took you so long with that subject?”
“I’m… not sure.” Jared swayed slightly on his feet and brought a hand to his temple.
Monica turned to face him. “What do you mean?”
“I…” He looked around, as though to get his bearings in a place that should have been familiar. “I went to see Kira, we talked, and then I went to interview the subject.”
Monica frowned. His tone was too measured and mechanical. “How did your talk with her go?”
“She… wasn’t feeling up to the interview and left early.”
That much matched up, but clearly that wasn’t the whole story. “Jared, I need you to be honest with me.” She looked into his eyes, using the pathway to bore into his mind.
The confusion Jared was expressing externally matched his inner thoughts. He was thinking about his most recent actions, and there was a clear memory of him outside one of the holding cells, but everything between their morning briefing and that most recent memory was… blurry.
Kira was good—very good—but this was a rush job. Frankly, Monica expected better.
“We’ve been compromised,” Monica stated.
“What… how?” Jared asked.
“By you, obviously.” She groaned. “Little Kira is bolder than I’d given her credit for. She must have taken control of you and implanted a memory in an attempt to cover her tracks.”
“I wouldn’t…”
“But you did, Jared. This is why we haven’t tried to experiment on telepaths. They’re too unpredictable. Fok!” Monica paced next to the computer console. This development was a wrinkle in their plans, but not a disaster.
Jared’s face flushed with a combination of anger and embarrassment. “We’ll find Kira.”
“Tucker here was just saying how that’s outside of our jurisdiction.” Monica glared at the Security Chief.
“What did I do while I was under Kira’s influence? We might have grounds for an emergency intervention,” Jared said.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” Monica accessed the nearest computer terminal and brought up footage from Jared’s meeting with Kira.
She watched as Kira placed a device on the table, and then the two occupants just appeared to sit there for two minutes.
“What were you doing?” she questioned Jared.
“I don’t remember.”
Then, Kira’s arm suddenly withdrew from the center of the table—even though it had been at her side a moment earlier—and she and Jared rose from their seats and headed for the door.
“You weren’t watching them?” she hissed at her security officer.
“I had one of my men watching, but it didn’t seem out of the ordinary at the time,” he replied. “There wasn’t a physical altercation.”
Monica swore under her breath. “And then where’d Kira go?” She searched through the other video feeds until she found the one for the hallway outside. “Well, that’s foking great. You led her right here.”
The footage ended when Kira and Jared entered the observation room—one of the few areas in the facility not under surveillance. Monica would have to extrapolate. “If it were me, I’d question you about what we were doing here, and then you’d point me to… the lab.”
She glided across the room and opened up the secure room, going straight for the most prized item. Sure enough, a vial of the latest nanite strain was missing. “Fok!”
Had she any less control, she would have smashed everything in the room. Her hands balled into fists, nails digging into her palms. She took a deep breath in a vain attempt to calm herself.
“Bring her here!” she demanded as she storm
ed back into the observation room.
“But the authorization—” Tucker started to object.
“We have all the grounds we need for emergency action. Proprietary tech has been stolen from this facility, and we’re within our rights to get it back.” She stared down the two men. “But we’re not stopping there. We have less than a day to complete this assignment, or all our years of research will have been for nothing. Round up everyone on the list you can find.”
Tucker swallowed. “That—”
“We haven’t received the results from the latest subject—” Jared objected.
“I don’t want to hear another foking excuse! Submit the request to MTech HQ. We make a move tonight at 23:00. Get all the backup we can get.”
“But—” both men began.
“Do it!” she screamed.
Tucker nodded his understanding and departed to issue the orders.
“This will paint an even bigger target on us,” Jared said once they were alone. “The Guard will undoubtedly move in.”
“Then let them.”
“And if the nanites don’t take?” Jared questioned.
“All we need is one viable subject to bring to our benefactors. One of them is sure to be what we need. It’ll work. And if it doesn’t, we’ll still have the real prize.”
“Kira?”
Monica’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. She’ll be sure to come, once she realizes we have her parents. We’ll grab her then.”
CHAPTER 15
Kira’s heart rate had finally normalized by the time they parked outside her cottage. The peaceful little community had been a refuge from the danger she faced each day inside the MTech lab, but now she wasn’t sure anywhere on Valta would be safe.
Leon seemed to be thinking the same thing. “They’ll come for me, won’t they?”
“MTech doesn’t have jurisdiction outside of their premises.”
“Like that’ll stop them.”
Kira couldn’t bring herself to lie. “We stick together. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“What can the two of us do against the entire MTech security force?”
“We’re not alone.” Kira climbed out of the car. “We’ll call in the Guard and beat the shite out of anyone who tries to stand in the way of us rescuing those captives.”
“And until they get here?”
“We watch each other’s backs.”
Kira opened the front door to her cottage and beckoned Leon to follow her. She jogged into the bedroom and grabbed her travel bag from where she’d stashed it in the closet. Tucked away in an inside pocket was an encrypted comm system.
She set it on her bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress while Leon looked on from the doorway. After activating the device, Kira waited for its signal to sync with the Guard’s systems through the subspace connection.
“This is Guard Command,” a woman answered. “Please confirm your field auth.”
Kira stated her alphanumeric field identifier for the op.
“Greetings, Captain Elsar. What can we do for you?”
“I have the evidence in hand. Request immediate direct-action mission for hostage liberation and extraction.”
The woman on the comm didn’t reply for several seconds. “Transferring you to Colonel Kaen.”
“Kira, what’s your status?” Kaen asked after a ten second pause.
“Physically unharmed, Colonel, but my identity has been compromised and they’re coming for me. MTech has definitely been up to no good. I have a sample of the nanites—about to send you an analysis.” She pulled out the cloaking module from her pants pocket and connected it to the dataport on the comm system. Navigating to the appropriate subdirectory, she attached the files to an encrypted data packet and sent it on its way.
“What’s the situation?” Kaen asked while he waited to receive the files.
“Their research is well into live trials. They have a number of people being held deep within the facility—around one hundred.”
“And the facility defenses?”
“Light on personnel, but they’ve got enough small arms and ammo for an army stored in the facility. There’s a choke point at the entrance, and artillery above the one and only door. Also, the facility director, Monica Waylon, appears to be a former TSS Agent trainee—though I haven’t witnessed more than her telepathy for myself.”
“Stars!” Kaen sucked in a breath. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”
“Me either, sir. That was no doubt a major factor in my cover being blown. I don’t know how much time we have.”
“We can have a team there by 05:00. Ah, receiving the data packet now,” Kaen acknowledged
He was silent for a minute while he reviewed the analysis. Then, he let out a long breath. “I’m no geneticist, but even I know to be scared by this shite.”
“Yes, sir. It’s terrifying to think about what soldiers like that could do.”
“If the hostages have indeed been ‘turned’ into one of these Robus, they may not be entirely themselves. This might not be a situation where the hostages greet us with open arms.”
“We’re Guard, sir. We can handle anything,” Kira replied. “But you’d better send the powered armor.”
“You’ll get all the soldiers we can muster and the best tech we have to get those people out unharmed. I’m coming there myself to oversee the extraction.”
Kira glanced over at Leon with surprise. “Sir, you’re coming here?” She hadn’t known him to go into the field for years.
“After what I’ve been dealing with here, this one needs a personal touch,” Kaen replied. “See you at 05:00. Check in at 23:00 to confirm our landing coordinates.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Guard Command out.”
The connection terminated.
Kira rose from the bed and took a deep breath. “I hate that we have to wait until morning.”
“What more can we do?” Leon said. “We’re two people. You’ve seen what they have in there. I’d be next to useless, aside from maybe hitting someone over the head with a chair, and we’d be going against a group of possibly unstable alien hybrids that may or may not have an insatiable lust to tear our faces off.”
“That’s a little melodramatic, isn’t it?”
He sighed. “You know what I mean.”
She gave him a reassuring smile. “We need to make ourselves scarce until tonight, in case they come looking for us.”
“You did say something about the petting zoo,” Leon replied. “Though, I guess we should avoid the place you said we were going.”
“Like Monica would believe that for one second. That actually sounds like the perfect cover. We’ll pay with physical currency and keep our heads down.”
He brightened. “All right. Let’s get you some quality time with a baby cocobera.”
Kira grabbed her travel bag. “Let’s go.”
They made the drive into the countryside outside of Tribeca to the nature preserve with the most tourist activity. Staying in a crowd was likely the best way to stay safe for the time being, so Kira had no qualms about losing herself in play with the fuzzy baby animals of her native world. The animals of Valta had always had a natural affinity to her, being a telepath, and Kira soon found herself the envy of the tourist children when she got the most attention.
The park closed to visitors at 17:00, so they were forced to head back to civilization. In the interest of staying in a well-traveled place, they went to the town center and did some window shopping before getting dinner at one of Kira’s favorite restaurants from her youth. By 22:30, they were one of only two couples left in the restaurant. They needed to move on.
Kira considered finding a hotel or some other place to wait out the night, but everywhere she could think of was too inhabited; if MTech came for her, she didn’t want to worry about civilians getting caught in the crossfire. Her own cabin was fairly isolated, and she already knew the lay of the land. All in all, it wasn’t a bad
place to hunker down for a few hours of rest. With the scheduled check-in time approaching, they headed back.
When they arrived in the residential neighborhood, Kira instructed Leon to stay by the car while she checked out her cottage to make sure there were no unwelcome visitors. She scouted the perimeter and saw no sign of forced entry, then did a sweep inside. For good measure, she also examined Leon’s place. Both checked out.
“I can’t wait until this is over,” she groaned after meeting up with Leon and retrieving her travel bag from the trunk. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s not feeling secure in the place that’s supposed to be my home base.”
“I don’t know how you deal with this on a regular basis. Two days, and I already feel like I’ve had enough,” Leon admitted.
“You’ve been handling the situation really well.”
“I buckle down when I have to.”
“You do. I’ve always appreciated that about you.” Their eyes met for a moment, but she tore her gaze away. “Well, those cocobera are adorable, but that musk really lingers. I’m going to clean up and change.”
Leon looked down at a paw print on his pants. “Yeah, I should do the same. I’ll meet you back here in fifteen for the call.”
“I don’t think we should split up,” Kira said. “Safety in numbers and all that. I’ll go with you to get your stuff. We’ll get cleaned up at my place where there’s less clutter that might hide surveillance tech.”
After Leon gathered some items, they returned through the darkness to her cottage. Though there were no signs of anyone lurking nearby, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. They both searched for intrusive monitoring equipment inside Kira’s residence, but turned up nothing. As far as Kira could tell, the place was untouched.
Feeling more secure about their location, Kira quickly showered then dressed in casual pants and a fitted long-sleeve shirt. She waited by the comm system while Leon got cleaned up.
“Nothing yet,” she reported when Leon returned to the bedroom, looking refreshed. “Should come through any minute.”
Sure enough, forty seconds later, the comm lit up with an incoming communication. “This is Guard Command. Please confirm your field ID.” It was Kaen’s voice.
