by Regan Black
“Stay close.”
“If you fight, I fight.”
She made the echo of his earlier advice sound like a promise to stand by him. It roused that itch between his shoulder blades. He was a loner. Handing her the laptop, he pulled out his gun and headed for the garage.
“If you don’t make it can I have your -”
The nonsense Chameleon was spouting was cut off by the crash of another window and the hiss of a canister. If there was a patron saint of assassins, it would only be tear gas. He didn’t plan on sticking around to find out.
He cleared the garage and opened the driver’s side door, ushering her into the vehicle. “Stay low,” he advised, on the off chance she didn’t simply escape through the opposite door.
She tucked herself under the dash, computer clutched to her chest.
He heard more gunfire from the back side of the house. Choosing not to telegraph his move, he didn’t put the garage door up, he just threw the car into reverse and gunned the engine. The aluminum door scraped off the tracks, crumpling around the rented sedan as he barreled out of her driveway.
The car bounced over the curb as he did a three-point turn and floored it, the engine laboring as he raced up the block, away from her house. They hadn’t quite turned the corner when an explosion sounded behind them.
“What was that?” She popped up from the shelter of the dash and looked back. “Is that my house?”
“Yes.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and shook his head. It was a Cleaner-class technique: blast everything beyond any possible use as evidence.
A low keening sound floated out of her. He didn’t have time for her breakdown, though he understood the abyss of loss she stared into. “Get in the seat,” he ordered. “Buckle up,” he added when she’d arranged herself.
“What about Ben?”
He bit back the first callous reply. He needed her to stick with him while he sorted out this twisted mess. “I’m sure he’s clear. The man’s a survivor.”
“True. You all are.”
He heard her regulated breathing, recognized the calming pattern from his days in training.
“Survivors,” she repeated after a few minutes of silence. “He’s almost insane too.”
“You’re the expert,” he said. It was as close as he could get to a compliment under the circumstances. Why weren’t they being followed?
“Have you changed your mind about me?”
“No.” He flexed his hands on the steering wheel, irritated that he’d given her hope. Those kinds of gaffes were why he preferred keeping his mouth shut.
“So, umm, you’re still going to kill me?”
He saw the trap just in time. A garbage truck came charging out of a dark side street, heedless of the four-way stop, aiming for the passenger door. Last Strike accelerated into the turn, putting the car in front of the truck with no more than a coat of paint to spare as the axle squealed at the strain. The driver of the truck improvised, inching up on the rear bumper.
Did the bastard think he could just roll right over them? Probably.
“Come on. I dare ya,” he snarled at his rearview mirror. If the doctor was going to die, he’d be the one watching her take her last breath. Only him.
He took another hard turn around the next corner to the symphony of blaring horns and screeching tires. The garbage truck didn’t fare as well, slipping wide and skidding into the corner of a brick building, creating a cloud of dust and destruction.
Beside him, the doctor grinned. “Well done.”
“We’re not clear yet.” He needed to get to a more populated area where they could ditch the car and hide. He figured a few hours of brutal honesty and he’d have enough information out of her to create a plan to return to Messenger’s side. Where he belonged.
He’d already determined the bullet that clipped Chameleon had been meant for him. He could picture how a sniper might’ve seen them through the doorway. Even with infrared assistance, his body would’ve been highlighted by that stupid spotlight Chameleon had rigged to hamper him.
But the only person capable of issuing a death order on operatives was Messenger himself. What if his last communication had been compromised by someone who wanted him out of the way? His boss wouldn’t have tapped Gerardi to bring in Johannson. It was too late to go back and change things. He had to move forward, find the way through this strange, unexpected maze.
His gut twisted at the idea of losing Messenger’s faith. The man had been Last Strike’s only anchor during the chaos of his alterations and enhancements. An old familiar anger wormed its way into his blood, making his muscles tense. After so many successful missions, so many years of blind faith, hadn’t he earned an hour or two of leeway?
He slid a glance at Dr. Johannson. What made Messenger so afraid of this one researcher that he’d send in a sniper before Last Strike had confirmation of her contact?
A ringing phone interrupted his thoughts even as his mind worked out the next stage of their escape. “Where’d you get a phone?” Hers had been left behind at the house. “Chameleon,” he answered his own question. “Pick it up.” They didn’t have anything to lose at this point. “Put it on speaker.” He wasn’t going to give her any chance to gain an advantage.
Chapter Four
Daria pulled the phone she’d never seen before out of her coat pocket, not willing to tempt fate with a ‘what now?’ kind of question. She was alive and maybe the man sent to kill her had changed his mind. The idea he was capable of changing his mind, of refusing a direct order, was remarkable enough.
“You’re clear to the airport,” a male voice said. “I’ll send the address shortly.”
Beside her, Last Strike made a crude suggestion.
“Not a chance,” the caller replied with a bitter laugh.
Did Noah recognize the caller? That mystery would have to wait. “Not the airport,” Daria argued. She reached for Noah, stopping just shy of contact. Touching him for those brief seconds in her house had fractured her concentration and she needed to think. “It’s too close to the lab,” she explained.
“Yes, the airport,” the caller insisted. “The radio signals will scramble his tracer.” The call ended and she dropped the phone into the console between the seats.
Right. She should’ve thought of that instead of letting fear rule her judgment. Although, caught between the sterile violence of UI and their top assassin, fear was a smart response. “I assumed they’d tagged me at some point,” she admitted. “It’s been so long I forgot about you.”
Noah’s nostrils flared, his mouth flat-lining. He circled the block, adjusting his route for the fastest path to the airport, without the aid of any navigation app.
She shifted in her seat as guilt flooded her along with the memories of the scientists bidding for the rights to dissect his brain when he washed out of the program. Had she ever been that disconnected from her humanity?
Not intentionally and maybe not in the beginning, but the hollow gap where her soul had once lived was quickly approaching black-hole status. She’d known for over a year her only hope of salvation was escape. On the heels of that acceptance, it had seemed as though suicide would be the most effective, most reasonable exit from the program.
The test subjects managed it on occasion, surely she could too. Wrong. She’d been too weak, coming up with excuses every night for a month, though the syringe was ready to go in her nightstand drawer. Being a coward had forced her to look for another way. A way that helped someone besides herself out of the hellish labyrinth of the UI program.
The phone chimed and she picked it up once more. “The address,” she said, reading it off.
“That’s an import/export business,” he said.
“How do you know the area so well?”
He spared her an arrogant look, one eyebrow raised as if she should know the answer. “Why? Am I not from here?”
“No.” It was a simple thing to give him a peek at his history.
�
�When I was assigned to you I studied every detail about the area around your facility and your home.”
She cleared her throat, a little uneasy at the thought of an assassin watching her long enough to know ‘every detail’. “When were you assigned to me?”
“I arrived three days ago.”
It wasn’t exactly what she’d asked. If that hard jawline was any indicator, it was all he planned to give. Astounding that he could memorize so much in such a short time frame and translate that into expertise on the ground. Her scientific curiosity reared its ugly head and she had to bite back the automatic questions, tempering her excitement. She needed to keep the focus on him, on what she could give him, so he’d let her live.
“How did you know the caller?” he asked.
“I don’t know the caller.”
“Lying to me is a mistake.”
She didn’t need the reminder. “I’m not lying,” she said. “I barely know Ben. It must’ve been a friend of his.”
“Chameleon is a two-faced snake,” Noah grumbled. “Of all the agents who need a tracker.”
“His enhancements had terrible consequences,” she said, defending what amounted to her only friend. “The isolation has twisted his mind.”
“I’m aware. We put up with his bullshit because he was useful. And loyal. Or so we thought. Why doesn’t the tracking thing work on him?”
“Since I wasn’t on that team, my best guess is a metabolism issue. The way he generates that field to hide must be a biological equivalent of a signal jammer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s possible he simply outwitted the dev team and the program in general.” It was just as likely as any other scenario where Ben was concerned.
“Don’t confuse crazy with smart, Doc.”
“Daria,” she corrected. He’d called her Doc or Doctor in the early days of his recovery and enhancement treatment. She needed him to see her as a person rather than a nameless target.
“Daria,” he echoed. “The attempt to humanize yourself is a good play. Do you really think a name is all it will take for me to forget the issues that brought me here?”
“No.” Sitting here with him, she realized how terribly she’d failed. She’d failed him, the science, and her own morals. “If I could change things or go back,” she swallowed, “I’d do it differently.”
“You’ve changed enough of me already, thanks.”
She deserved his scorn. Less than an hour ago, she’d almost welcomed the idea of him ending her life. “I know apologies are useless, but it’s all I can offer, Noah.”
“Last Strike,” he said, pulling to a stop in front of the understated industrial building on the outskirts of the airport. “What now?”
“I guess we go in,” she said, peering through the windshield.
“Of course we do. May as well take a few orders from a dead man.”
“What do you mean?”
“The caller.”
“You recognized his voice?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. You?”
“No.” Had someone managed to outwit UI? Hope bloomed before she could squash it. “It’s not as though anyone within the program is legitimate. No one in the program exists the way normal people do.”
“Not even the medical staff?”
“We’re a peripheral unit. We have more typical records by necessity, but they own us. If the top scientific minds started falling out of sight, it would be problematic and the speculation would put the program in jeopardy.”
“How is your blatant use of an operative to distribute program secrets any better, Doc?”
“Daria.” She handed him the phone and hugged the laptop close, as if it would shield her from the terrible, apt accusations stamped on his rugged face. “I’m not your doctor anymore.”
She pushed out of the car and walked to the door, waiting for him to join her. Or kill her.
He moved up beside her, his predatory stride graceful and silent as a panther. If she mentioned it, he’d probably accuse her of mixing his genetic code with some wild animal.
She’d done nothing of the sort, though the idea had been proposed by others and rejected.
The cell phone chimed with another text message and he punched the code provided into the security panel. The front door hummed and the locks clicked open. He pulled on the handle and held the door for her. It seemed remarkably chivalrous considering he’d been sent to kill her.
Behind her, she heard him reset the locks, then listened to his even breathing as they moved deeper into the poorly-lit office. “What is this place?” she wondered aloud.
“Safe house, I assume,” he answered. He moved toward a bigger door, hit the controls and an overhead door slid up. “I’ll bring in the car.”
She stood out of the way, not quite sure what to do. Running was useless, cooperation was the best option, if she could get him to trust her just a little.
When the overhead door was lowered once more, he joined her where she waited at the foot of a metal stairway. “May as well explore.” He gestured for her to lead the way. “Let’s just hope whoever put it here is really on our side.”
“They got us here.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Neither Ben nor the caller had to help.”
He didn’t humor her with another reply.
At the top of the stairs, the space was broken up with a small kitchenette, a table and chairs and a flimsy screen that blocked off an area with a small bed and bathroom.
“What are you going to do with me now?” she asked as they stared at each other across the table.
“That depends on how quickly you tell me about your deal with Chameleon.”
“Why are you, in particular, so loyal to a program that’s used you in such terrible ways?”
He shrugged one beefy shoulder. “Isn’t loyalty part of the character trait upgrade?”
“Stop it,” she chided. “Contrary to the rumors, I can see you’re completely aware of how they use you.”
“Messenger uses me,” he said without an ounce of remorse. “No one else.”
She wasn’t as convinced. Messenger got funding from somewhere, executed orders delivered from another source. How curious that Noah felt his loyalty was to the man, not the program. “However you phrase it, you’re loyal. Why?”
“Messenger saved me from you and your ruthless testing.”
She felt the heat of shame and embarrassment rising in her cheeks. There weren’t any excuses or explanations she could give. “I tried to get you out of the program once.”
“I’m aware. There were plenty of days I wished you’d succeeded.”
He couldn’t mean he preferred the idea of a life sentence in an institution. Maybe his mind remained as broken as it had been at the beginning. “Well my attempt to get you out was before I knew exactly what happened to the patients we scrubbed.”
“Scrubbed. A clean word for what amounts to euthanizing a sick animal.”
“What?” He couldn’t be serious. Institutionalizing the washouts was bad enough. No one could approve simply killing subjects that didn’t measure up.
“Drop the innocent act, Doc- Daria. I might not have known my name or history, but I’ve always known people weren’t meant to be lab rats.” He stood tall, that silent stride carrying him to the dirty windows at the far end of the upper level.
She followed him, even her bare feet making a noticeable noise. “You were never a lab rat to me, Noah. You were a person I wanted to heal.”
“Heal?” He turned and the temper and pain knocked her back as effectively as a physical blow. “You promised me honesty. I know damn well you voted to terminate me,” he shouted without raising his voice.
“That’s not true!” She didn’t have the same vocal control. Between the volume and the emotion, she couldn’t get the words out quickly enough. “Never. I fought to keep you in the program.” To keep him with her, when she realized what they intended for him.
He grabb
ed her elbows, gave her a little shake. “Messenger showed me the file once...”
She waited for him to finish. He didn’t. He was too busy searching her face for a sign of dishonesty. He wouldn’t find one. She hadn’t been this honest with anyone in years. “I voted to terminate your field trials,” she said. “Your eyes were too sensitive in the daytime exercises.”
“So scrubbing me, having me put down like a rabid dog was supposed to be my salvation?”
“No!” She closed her eyes as the memories battered her. “I tried to get you away from that bastard before he turned you into a blind and voiceless killer. It was the last time I saw you.” They’d transferred her to a lab where she couldn’t interact with the subjects. Where she tested her various formulas on nameless cell samples and couldn’t get attached to the people they represented.
He released her. “Until today?”
She nodded. “I heard about your program successes.”
He turned his back on her again, as if he couldn’t tolerate the sight of her. “Then you know I’ve met and killed a few of yours.”
Her heart broke for all the ways the right research had twisted into something so wrong. For Noah and the others UI managed to recruit into the merciless system.
Recruitment was something that persistently troubled her. For years, as she tailored serums to samples, she’d been trying to understand what made so many men and women willingly sign over their lives.
“Noah.”
“Stop aiming that name at me.”
She would do no such thing. He deserved his name and the past before UI had brought him to her lab. “When you came into the program, you were too injured to consent to the enhancement trials.”
“I suppose you’d know.”
She swallowed, knowing the answer she wanted to hear. “Did they fake your consent form when you opted to stay in the program?”
“No. I signed it.”
“How? You didn’t know your name back then. You had a -”
He cut her off with a flick of his hand. “They showed me my military ID card.”
