“How come I felt that? I would have thought I’d be in a deficit right now?” I asked Spice as I went about searching them.
“I held back almost everything when they captured you. I figured torture and death were pretty much it—I didn’t want to waste power healing you if they were just going to keep cutting you up,” she said with a shrug.
“Nice,” I said with some heavily implied sarcasm. Searching them with only one arm wasn’t easy. My brain still hadn’t caught up to what happened, and I was purposely pushing down the implications.
“I’m sorry about your arm, Madi. But... it isn’t necessarily permanent,” Spice said. She had told me she couldn’t read my mind, but I guess it didn’t take a telepath to figure out what I was thinking.
“Yeah, how’s that?” I asked as I pulled a wad of keys from the first guy I killed. The cotton pants I wore didn’t have any pockets, just drawstrings. The shirt they had me in wasn’t much better… I’d barely call it a shirt as much as fabric wrapped around me to keep my bits covered. I stuffed the keys inside my shirt and grabbed one of the pain-sticks.
“When you’re ready, and if we have enough power, I can regenerate it... but it’s going to hurt like hell and take everything we have. You won’t be able to stay conscious for it.”
I nodded. “So right now is a no-go?”
“Yes, clearly.”
I stuck the pain-stick in my mouth, jumped up and pulled the remains of the light fixture down with my free hand. It crashed to the floor. Behind it was a small emergency hatch.
The lift shook as it started moving down again. It could only be because whoever controlled this place thought something was wrong. And they were right.
“No time like the present,” I mumbled around the stick. I leaped up again, knocking the hatch open and grabbing the lip with my only hand. It took considerable effort and I grunted and groaned the whole way, pulling myself up with one arm.
“Damn,” I said, spitting the pain-stick out on the roof and resting my chin on the lip for a second. I grunted again and pushed, bringing my whole body up and rolling over to land on my back, breathing hard and heavy.
If I was at full power that would have been easy, but with my strength only enhanced enough for me to survive, it was hard. I didn’t have time to rest, though. I got my feet under me, grabbed the pain-stick and put it back in my mouth, then stepped off the lift as it passed the door of another floor. It looked like it was heading all the way to the bottom.
Each floor had a ladder that led to the nearest door, they also had ventilation shafts. These weren’t particularly big, but then again, I was fairly thin, even with the addition of all that muscle Joseph worked into me. I stepped onto the service ladder and made my way to the middle of the next floor where the vent entrance was.
I kicked the grate in, holding onto the ladder to keep from falling. It wasn’t very wide, and if I had two arms, I might not have made it.
The ding of the lift stopping echoed up the shaft; I was out of time. I kneeled down and stuffed myself in, head first, wiggling and stretching and pushing myself along the sides with my knees and shoulder blades until I was fully in.
I stopped to rest for a moment, letting myself breathe and think instead of blindly reacting.
“Spice?”
“Yes?” She was ahead of me, laying in the shaft facing me, with her head in hands.
“Do we have enough energy to regenerate now?”
She blinked a couple of times before answering. “Yes... but not here. You barely fit—if you had two arms, you wouldn’t.”
I sighed, “I know that. I just needed to know. Now, out of my way,” I said as I continued my inching down the shaft.
Hours passed, or maybe it was just minutes that felt like hours, but I pushed and pulled myself through that shaft like a champion worm. I was covered in sweat, grime, and dirt as I moved away from the elevator.
“You think they’ll find me in here?” I asked my ghostly companion.
“Eventually. Every place has protocols for escapees. Even if they don’t immediately think to check these tiny air shafts, someone will eventually.”
I needed to find a place to hide so she could fix my arm. Escaping with just the one arm might be possible; it just didn’t feel likely.
“How long?” I asked.
“To fix your arm? An hour or two. But like I said, you won’t be conscious... There’s no point in me re-growing it if they’re just going to find you again and kill you. If they capture you a second time, there will be no escape.”
Thanks to Spice they thought I didn’t have powers, which was a neat trick I needed to ask her about sometime. That wouldn’t work a second time; there was just no way a literally unarmed person—man or woman— could have taken out those four goons.
After what felt like forever, I found a vent facing down. The room below was pitch black, but with enhanced vision I had no problem making it out. It was a bathroom: four toilets beneath me and a line of sinks in front of those. I was about to push through the vent when I heard the door open.
“One sec, I’ll get to those forms when I’m done,” a woman said. She walked in, just barely out of my view. The lights popped on a second later and I heard water run. I had to wait, but that was okay.
She turned and opened the stall directly below me. All I could see was her shapely figure and the top of her red hair. She closed the stall, cracked her neck and looked up while she prepared to lower her panties...
I know she felt surprise to see me looking down at her from the vent, but it sure as hell didn’t match mine.
“Neve?” I asked in a whisper. Her inaction lasted only a second, she opened her mouth to scream and I moved.
I headbutted the vent, crashing through it, landing on top of her in a heap. We crashed to the hard floor in a tangle of arms and legs in the tight space. She punched at me as she tried to stand.
I grabbed her head and lightly slammed it against the toilet a couple of times and she stopped struggling.
“Dammit,” I whispered as I pulled free of the mess. Once I had my feet under me, I turned her over.
Yep. It was her. I hadn’t seen her in eight years. She was just a year older than me, but she didn’t look it. Her skin and hair still had the look of a much younger woman—not that knocking on thirty made her old, but damn… she hadn’t aged a day since I saw her last.
What the hell was I supposed to do? Kill someone I knew? I shook my head. Whatever I did, I was going to need to hurry it up.
Chapter 23
I lifted her up as best I could and placed her on the toilet. She had said something before entering the restroom and I didn’t need someone coming in looking for her and seeing her on the floor.
Nothing. I clamped my hand over her mouth and slapped her gently until her eyes fluttered. My own flared bright blue as I looked at her. I didn’t have my scarf, but I certainly didn’t need it to hide who I was.
“What is this place?” I asked in my scary voice.
She shook her head and tried to speak. I moved my hand but left one finger on her lips. “You know who I am?” She nodded. “Then you know what will happen if you cry for help. Answer honestly and I will let you live.”
“I can’t tell you, I can’t answer any of your questions. So if you’re going to kill me, just kill me. There are worse things than death.” Truth. She gulped at that realization.
That took me by surprise. I stepped back, kneeling down until we were eye level and I let my powers fade so it was just me. Older, with different hair, but me.
“Madi?” she asked in a whisper. Water welled in her eyes and I swore she was about to cry. My own vision going dim had nothing to do with that.
“Yes, Neve, it’s me. What happened to you? Why are you here?”
She closed her eyes, putting her hands on her face. “Oh Madi, I can’t tell you. Really. If I do... they’ll know.”
I double checked the bathroom for signs of surveillance—nothing. No
cameras or obvious microphones.
“Neve, there’s no one here but you and me. No one is going to know.”
She shook her head again, pulling up her hair and turning her head as far to the left as she could. On the back of her neck, just above her shoulders, was a piece of gray metal, shiny but burnished. In the center was a green gem of some kind, not an emerald, pulsing with a dim light.
“What the hell is that?” I asked in a whisper.
She turned back to me. “Guess—because if I say, they will know and then... then… Madi, I won’t be me anymore. Do you understand?”
I nodded, my mind racing through the possibilities. Mind control?
“I met some models who were destined for this place. They said other women had told them what a great deal the agency was, is this how they do it? Mind control?”
“I can’t answer that. Please stop asking me questions. Once they know I’m in violation—” she clamped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t say anything!” Truth.
“You need to kill her,” Spice said from the top of the stall. She was sitting pressed up against the space between the top of the stall and the ceiling, with her legs dangling over the side. “If you don’t, they’ll find you through her.”
I tried my best to ignore serial killer Jiminy Cricket.
“Can you tell me what level this is?” I asked her. I was thinking fast now, questions that maybe her coworkers could ask her would be okay.
“Processing. It’s where the new shipments come in and are stamped.” She pulled down the top of her shirt to show me the weird tattoo that looked like it was inked in metallic paint that was running out. I could only make out half of it.
“Neve, I’m so sorry. All these years, you’ve had to work for them?”
She shook her head. “No, this is... recent. It was worse before, Madi. I’m glad you didn’t take the job… it wasn’t what any of us thought... the things they made us do—” she stopped, putting her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook silently for a second.
I needed to get out of here and back on track. “I have an idea, hon. Tell me about this level. Is there a break room? Holding cell? That sort of thing?”
She nodded. “The shipments come in, we take all their things—clothes, jewelry, whatever—and catalog it. Then they go into the exam room. If they are found acceptable to the process they move on to the automated stations. If not... they go downstairs for special purposes. I... no one comes back from there.”
I nodded. I got the feeling I knew what ‘special purposes’ was. I thought I had enough info.
“Listen, I’m going to get out of here, and I promise you I won’t be leaving without you,” I said reaching up and holding the side of her head. “I promise, I won’t leave you behind.”
She nodded. “I hope you make it, Madi, I really do. But don’t come back for me. I’m never leaving this place. It’s my fate.”
“We make our own fate. Also, I’m really sorry about this.”
Her eyebrow raised up but before she could ask, I slammed the back of her head against the tile wall. Knocking someone out was more of an art than brute force. Too much pressure and they died, not enough and it just hurt.
Her eyes rolled up and she slumped down. She looked every inch the office professional. So normal that I would never suspect anything untoward if it wasn’t for where I was. I stripped her jacket and shoes, wrapped the suit coat around me and slipped on her heels.
I took a moment to run some water over my face and hair. I would never pass for a worker up close, but from afar it might buy me a moment.
“You really should just kill her. She’s hiding something,” Spice said from behind me.
She had no reflection in the mirror, forcing me to turn around and face her. “She’s a friend.”
The predatory grin that spread out on my little sister’s face looked completely alien on her. “Madi, you’re going to learn, and soon, you have no friends.”
“Not even you?”
“Especially not me.”
Well that didn’t freak me out at all. I did my best to ignore her and headed for the door. If this was like a doctor’s office or something like that, odds were good I could find an empty room and let Spice do her thing. Someplace they would ever expect to look.
I ducked out of the bathroom, turned left and made a beeline down the white corridor. I saw a reception desk like a nurse’s station in a hospital ahead of me; there were three people leaning over it talking. Two of them looked like the men I already killed. Past them was an exit but I would never make that far. The hall had doors every few feet; I tried one at random and it opened.
I slipped inside and closed the door gently behind me. The room looked like every hospital I’d ever seen: a single bed with medical equipment, and a patient asleep with electrodes and other gear hooked up to her. The girl in the bed looked innocent enough. Just asleep.
“No, don’t even think about it,” Spice said from the corner.
“Why not? It’s perfect!” I checked the rest of the room; there was a camera above the door. I pushed it up to face the ceiling. On the left side of the room was a small bathroom. No TV’s, no phones, nothing else.
“Because if they find you, we’re both dead. I can’t leap into one of these automatons.”
I gave her a questioning look. I had learned more about my companion in the last forty-eight hours than all the time before. However, there was more pressing business. The bathroom was empty. It held a shower, a sink, and a toilet.
“Can you modify my bio output to match hers?” I asked as I moved to the bed. She had a thing on her finger, some IVs and a few electrodes on her forehead. I gently turned her head and saw the bandage on her neck.
“Yes,” Spice said. She folded her arms over her chest and pouted. “This is a bad idea.”
“We just need a little time. We both know I can’t get us out of here with one arm.”
“Fine, but you better hurry. They’re bound to notice the camera’s moved, eventually.”
Chapter 24
Mimic rubbed the back of her head, it hurt... bad. It took all she had not to vomit as she stood up. None of this made sense to her, but Alvarez was paying her nearly a million dollars to help that crazy woman, and she would.
Cypher was already in their computer systems, tracking her and faking the output from the neck implant all these people had to wear. With his help she picked the right moment to meet Dumas, now she just had to screw up the computer systems and make sure there was enough confusion for the killer to escape.
She stood up. The woman had taken her jacket and shoes, but she straightened her clothes as best she could and walked out of the bathroom to flag down a guard.
“What happened?” he asked her.
All the guards here were large, aggressive, and scary. If it wasn’t for her own enhanced strength and agility, she’d be far more nervous than she was infiltrating this place.
“The intruder attacked me in the woman’s bathroom. She’s heading downstairs… she said she was trying to get out through the underground garage.”
He nodded and cocked his head to the side to relay the info to his dispatcher. Once he gave her the go-ahead, she walked past him to the terminal down the hall. The two other women there looked terrified and didn’t take their eyes off their screens as they worked. What kind of horror show is this place?
Alvarez had given her the dummy implant to wear and the picture of the model to mimic, along with a recording of her voice. How he had all that was beyond her. What she had told Dumas was the truth, the women sent downstairs never came back. Whatever his organization was doing here, wasn’t exactly on the side of the angels. Of course, she was an assassin and thief, so what did she care...
She had a job to do; help Madisun Dumas escape, befriend her, and find out how to apply pressure to her to help Alvarez bring down some other threat he faced. Something he couldn’t handle himself and for some reason needed the help of a one-armed wo
man. The same woman he had framed for murder. She shook her head; none of it made sense to her, except the money. Money made everything simple.
Mimic had to admit Madisun was good. She had escaped her captors to this point, and she hadn’t needed any help doing it. But now… now she would.
Mimic, or Neve as she was currently known, sat back down at her workstation. She turned the computer on—something far more advanced than anything she had ever seen before—and plugged in the USB device Cypher had made for her. He was in the system and this was the signal. The effect was instant and obvious: lights all over the hall—and presumably the rest of the base—flickered. The cameras went haywire, spinning in place as they replayed the random minutes from the previous day over and over again.
She smiled. Security would go nuts trying to figure out how they’d missed a hacker infiltrating their system.
Cypher was far more than just a hacker. They’d never dislodge him without doing a system-wide restore. That should give her target enough time to escape. Along with herself.
Mimic looked sideways to make sure she wasn’t being observed then froze. The two girls working the station were twitching—as if they were going haywire just like the lights. Little bits of froth dripped from their lips as they lost all control of their faculties.
“Oh crap,” she muttered.
Chapter 25
I was dreaming, the same dream I’d had every night since my family was slaughtered.
I used to dream of things I wanted, places to visit, goals and aspirations. Since my family was taken away, I dreamed of that night, over and over again. How helpless I felt as each piece of my life was destroyed. Each second chance lost.
Mom burned alive. Dad’s throat cut. Spice...
I missed my mother, and I regretted losing out on the opportunity to mend the hurt with my father. But Spice? That one hurt the most. And not because the sword that killed her passed through me first.
I loved my little sister, more than anyone else in my whole life. When Charles died I was lost. Lost and alone. Then along came Sara. She changed our family, healed it somewhat. Even when Dad and I were fighting, we could still ooh and ah over our little Spice.
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