In the Shadows (Metahuman Files Book 3)

by Hailey Turner

  The ground rushed up to meet him sooner than expected, pitted with half-melted debris from the earlier explosion above. Sean risked going solid in the air about twenty feet above the ground to help control his descent for the last part of the fall. The weight of his body crashed back through his awareness before he phased again almost immediately, floating slowly to the ground, and not a moment too soon.

  Bullets tore through his body, passing harmlessly through him, though it didn’t stop him from reflexively flinching. Sean squinted through the darkness as he came to a stop amidst the debris, trying to find the enemy. His comms and bioware were dead, and his tactical goggles’ HUD no longer worked, but Katie’s telepathic voice rang through his mind.

  Head for the compound and try to find the command room. We need to disrupt their communications, Katie told him.

  What about everyone else?

  You got the shield destroyed. We’re touching down.

  Warning sirens rent the air, a shrill sound that made him want to cover his ears. In the distance to his left, Sean could make out the brightly lit cluster of buildings making up the headquarters of North Star International. Far to his right was Vitae Neurotherapeutics biotech lab. Between himself and either building were at least a hundred ex-Special Forces operatives and just as many Sons of Adam fighters looking to stand their ground against a government they didn’t believe in.

  Sean took off running, heading for North Star International, impeded by nothing and no one. Surrounded by the enemy, Sean was thankful, not for the first time, that he was functionally invulnerable while in his phased state. It’s why the MDF had given him the task of getting beyond the enemy’s front line to disrupt their communications. That would take away Declan’s overwatch, giving the edge to Strike Force and the MDF.

  So he ran, cutting a straight line through the enemy in favor of reaching his destination. He relayed back to Katie the positions he passed, bullets cutting through his body and face in a bombardment that made him flinch but hold steady. More than once someone attempted to bodily stop him, but Sean ran straight through them.

  The heavy rat-tat-tat of a machine gun set his teeth on edge. The ground beneath him exploded from the impact of heavy caliber bullets, dust rising into the air behind him as Sean pushed forward.

  “Metahuman!” someone yelled. “Get the neuro-jammer gun!”

  Viper, they have neuro-jammer guns in the field, Sean dutifully reported.

  Copy that. Will relay.

  Sean was nearing the building when the flickering bright beam of a neuro-jammer gun slammed harmlessly through his chest. As in Las Vegas, the energy bolt didn’t affect him.

  “What the fuck?” a woman yelled. “Shoot him again!”

  A second and third time was definitely not the charm, especially when friendly fire hit one of their own people trying to rout Sean from behind. By the time the man hit the ground unconscious, Sean was already past their line of defense, racing for the building. He couldn’t count the number of bullets that cut through him and didn’t bother to try. Less than a minute later Sean ran through the closed and biolocked doors of the closest wing of the compound.

  Manufactured coolness replaced the outside warmth. Bright lights overhead made Sean blink rapidly to clear his vision. A long hallway came into view, lights flashing along the entire length of it in warning. A pair of soldiers raced toward him, raising their weapons to fire.

  I’m in.

  Bullets tore through him before slamming into the door behind him. Sean took a breath and started running again, letting Katie fill his mind with a mental map of the training facility since his HUD no longer worked.

  We’re coming to you, Katie told him.

  Sean nodded, even though she couldn’t see it, racing for the heart of North Star International.

  “Get ready!” Jamie called out over the roar of the engines priming for a hard descent.

  Alexei calmly breathed through the drop, feeling his ears pop as the combat jet they were in hurtled to earth in a way he actually missed. It reminded him of the insertions he, Kyle, and their old Strike Force team would go through behind enemy lines. Quick, deadly, and capable, they’d entered active warzones like this numerous times. Doing it on home soil was new.

  The jet’s ramp started to open, the crackling glow of the personal energy shield shining through the opening. Stealth got them this far, but once the facility’s main shield was destroyed, there was no hiding their arrival.

  The heavy whine of the engines abruptly faded as the jet jerked to a sudden halt, hovering over the ground. Alexei got to his feet, standing right behind Trevor as their telekinetic pushed a shield outward like a concussive blast, clearing the way and securing their position.

  Jamie, Trevor, and Alexei were the only members of Alpha Team on the jet. All snipers had been dropped off at the designated perimeter the MDF and Strike Force had decided on. While Kyle and others with the skills necessary to take out targets from a distance acted as overwatch, their job was to breach Vitae Neurotherapeutics and secure the biotech lab. Anyone who got between them and their mission would be taken out with force if they didn’t surrender.

  The people here were American citizens, despite the loyalty given to the Sons of Adam and Declan’s company. Giving the enemy a chance to surrender was only fair, but Alexei doubted they would take it. He knew how heretics thought, how they could believe wholeheartedly in something so anathema to the country they hailed from and consider it truth. He’d seen it in the Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Africa, in too many countries over the years while wearing a Strike Force uniform.

  And now he was seeing it at home.

  Alexei wished he could say he was surprised, but it would be a lie.

  “Inferno, on my six!” Jamie shouted.

  “Copy!” Alexei bellowed back.

  He followed Jamie out of the jet, Trevor right beside him as members of Strike Force fanned out around them, weapons up, ready to shoot.

  The jet shot back into the sky with a roar of engines, sending dust flying into the air from the backdraft. Alexei peered beyond the shifting schematics on his helmet’s tactical goggles HUD at their target. His night vision was clean and crisp, making it easy to spot the snipers on the roof. Only Trevor’s telekinetic shield stopped them from taking bullets to the chest.

  “Nova, Blaze, targets on the roof. Take them out,” Jamie ordered as they double-timed it over open ground.

  Around them, other jets landed and dropped their fighters off, high-caliber machine guns mounted on their roofs laying down suppressive fire to ensure a clean drop. Their group advanced quickly and silently, Trevor keeping them safe with his power. Moments later small explosions on the roof of the seven-story main building showed Nova and Blaze were taking Jamie’s order to heart.

  The heavy sound of machine guns echoed through the air, reminding Alexei of his time in the desert. He ignored it as much as he could in order to stay safe, eyes on the target—Vitae Neurotherapeutics’ main entrance. The biotech company’s logo glowed neon bright above the sealed doors beyond the large courtyard and its low wall, perfect for enemy cover.

  Stealth would only get them so far when the enemy knew they were coming. With the possibility of Stanislav Pavluhkin knowing their true identities now because of the Wolcotts, SOCOM and the MDF had agreed a quick infiltration was most likely not going to happen. North Star International employed too many ex-Special Forces to make the fight easy. It was one thing to fight against the Sons of Adam—a homegrown militia-inspired terrorist group culled from civilians—but quite another to go up against men and women who had their same training.

  No one liked the idea of gunning down American citizens, but with the possibility of a Splice lab operating on the premises, there was no other choice. And if these fighters had known what was going on, and still agreed to contract with Valerie Hayes’ company, then they deserved what they got. Alexei believed that wholeheartedly.

  Those who trafficked in Splice did
n’t deserve to leave this fight alive.

  The crackling whine of the biotech lab’s public comms system suddenly coming online sent a zing through his teeth. Katie’s voice boomed through the air, barely broken up by static and the constant sound of automatic rifle fire. Someone back at headquarters must have finally hacked it and brought her into the loop. As their communications specialist, Jamie had tapped her to help coordinate movement on the ground. The brass back in D.C. would be following the action via their helmet cams, but someone needed to be their go-between. Between Jamie and Katie, they had that covered.

  “This is the MDF under orders of the United States government. Drop your weapons and surrender, or else we will be forced to take drastic action,” she warned.

  “I think this is pretty drastic,” Madison said over Alpha Team’s encrypted comms.

  “It’s gonna get worse,” Annabelle promised.

  She and some of their other flyers might not be as quick as the jets that flew them in, but they were more agile and capable of dodging ground-to-air fire, which there was a lot of. Declan had built out a military-style base beneath the civilian veneer of his company and the ranchland it owned. Training facility aside, no one outside the military should have had some of these weapons on hand. But for all the weapons the other side had, they weren’t a match for the metahumans the MDF could field.

  That’s where the Sons of Adam came in.

  While the terrorist group espoused a nativist agenda relegated to the fringe of American society, they remained a very real threat through the deployment of like-minded metahumans they brought into the fold. Allied to the Hayes family, Alexei and his group had to deal with them more than ex-Special Forces due to their mission of breaching the biotech lab.

  The ground shaking apart beneath their feet caused Trevor to telekinetically grab everyone and hurl them to safety. Alexei rolled into his landing, hitting with his shoulder and back first to spare his head, somersaulting over until he got back on his feet, weapon still in hand. He stayed low to the ground to remain less of a target, scanning his immediate area for any bit of cover. They’d landed near the parking structure, but retreating in that direction would take him away from the main building.

  Grimacing, Alexei took a circuitous route forward, the night vision option on his tactical goggles green-tinged but easy to process. It wasn’t much help when the earth heaved again, throwing him to his knees. He swore in Russian, fingers digging into the dirt as he tried to hold on. Someone on the other side had a seismic power, and it was really fucking annoying.

  “Metahuman!” Alexei snapped into his comms on the wide general line.

  “You don’t fucking say,” Madison growled.

  “Viper, can you pinpoint who it is and relay the information to Reaper?” Jamie asked.

  “On it,” Katie replied over their encrypted comms.

  The earth threatened to shake itself into pieces underneath Alexei until it abruptly stopped. Breathing a sigh of relief, he scrambled to his feet and started running again.

  “Target eliminated,” Kyle informed them.

  “Best,” Alexei said.

  “Of fucking course I am.”

  People were yelling, both over comms and in the general vicinity, mixed with the heavy report of guns going off. All of it echoed in the warm summer night, a continuous sound Alexei tuned out after the first few minutes. He stayed on course, managing to sneak up on a pair of Sons of Adam fighters taking cover behind a solar-powered recycling bin. Both were focused more on their front than their six, a rookie mistake which cost them.

  Alexei pulled the trigger on his AKR-75, cutting a line over the back of their necks instead of aiming for their torsos. Their tactical armor didn’t cover that sliver of flesh between bulletproof vests and their hard helmets. As close as he was, with his superior targeting skills, Alexei nearly blew their heads off.

  They went down; Alexei kept moving.

  He could see Jamie in the distance leading the charge for the entrance with Trevor and several Strike Force soldiers at his side. Bullets ricocheted off Trevor’s telekinetic shield, causing bright sparks to flare up briefly in their wake. Alexei changed course, aiming to rejoin his captain as quickly as he could.

  The sound of a motor revving hard and fast broke through the overbearing noise of suppressive fire. A Humvee decked out with a mounted machine gun roared around the corner of the building, heading straight for where Jamie and the others were clearing the way forward with Trevor’s help. Even as Alexei hurried to rejoin his team, the Humvee sped up.

  “Bones! Incoming!” Alexei barked over comms.

  “We see it,” Trevor replied.

  Alexei kept one eye on a safe route to them on his HUD and the other on what was happening up ahead. Even as he watched, the mounted machine gun was telekinetically crunched to half its size, ripping the gunner apart in the process. The rest of the Humvee crashed into an invisible wall, back wheels lifting into the air as the front was reduced to half its size from the head-on collision. But one down didn’t mean the fight was over.

  Alexei was almost to Jamie’s position when the thrumming sound of a helo flying in close made him immediately scan the sky, sighting down his gun as he searched for the target. It arrived suddenly, coming in low over the main building, missiles firing on his group’s position with deadly intent. The immediate explosion of fire and smoke rolled against Trevor’s telekinetic shield, the invisible barrier holding steady, despite the effort Alexei knew it took for his teammate to keep it up.

  The pilot and gunner weren’t deterred, coming back around for another strike. The strafing fire of heavy artillery rained down on them, slamming into Trevor’s telekinetic shield. Alexei saw Trevor go to one knee, arm extended over his head, a physical reaction to holding up his telekinetic shield. Alexei double-timed it to their position to help ease the strain on his teammate. Trevor wasn’t the strongest telekinetic on the MDF roster, but he was damned good at keeping them shielded against heavy fire. However, concentrating on shielding limited what other actions he could take.

  “Bones,” Jamie said as he clipped his assault rifle to his tactical vest to keep it out of the way. “I need the Humvee.”

  Trevor raised his other arm and pushed it outward, shifting his telekinetic shield to cover the broken Humvee. The driver hadn’t survived the collision, and Jamie didn’t bother removing the body from behind the wheel. He grabbed the crumpled front bumper, working to get a good grip.

  “Get ready to make a hole,” Jamie yelled over his shoulder.

  “Hear you loud and clear, Apollo,” Trevor grunted.

  “Inferno, get ready.”

  “Ready!” Alexei shouted back.

  Alexei moved to stand next to Trevor, keeping an eye on the helo spinning around their position and still targeting them. The sound of creaking metal drew his attention a few seconds later. Alexei watched as Jamie lifted the front end of the Humvee into the air before wrenching the heavy vehicle around in a half-circle. With a snarled yell, Jamie pitched it back around, using his enhanced strength to throw the Humvee into the air like a missile, right at the low-flying helo.

  Trevor’s telekinesis shifted just enough to allow the Humvee to pass through, reforming instantly behind its passage. The helo couldn’t maneuver out of the way fast enough and took the large, atypical missile in the side. The explosion ripped through the sky like a miniature supernova, fire curling through thick black smoke.

  Alexei couldn’t stop the concussive force from the blast, but the fire was all his. He raised a hand, pushing his awareness of that element outward. The massive fireball contracted into a swirling mass of heat and flame that quickly dissipated under Alexei’s control. He clenched his hand into a fist, reducing the fiery explosion to nothing but embers that smoldered amongst the charred debris from the destroyed helo and Humvee.

  “Fuck,” one of the Strike Force members said, sounding impressed. “That was awesome.”

  “Keep moving,” Jamie
ordered, weapon once again in hand.

  The Strike Force operatives fell into position behind Jamie, letting him take point with Trevor. Alexei took the rearguard position, watching their six as they approached the next battle.

  “You’ve got a bunch of Sons of Adam fighters holding the front,” Kyle said over the comms. “We’re taking out as many as we can, but they’re embedded like cockroaches.”

  “I can walk some of them out,” Katie offered.

  She was a kilometer away at North Star International’s facility, trying to break through the resistance there with Donovan and Annabelle. Alexei wanted to ask her for an update on Sean, but held his tongue. Sean was safe so long as he remained phased. It’s why he’d been given the task to infiltrate the facility without backup. He could handle it. If things got bad, Katie would let them know. Until then, silence was a good thing.

  “It would be better if you could knock some of them out, Viper,” Jamie said. “The fewer people we kill, the better. They’re still American citizens.”

  “Who betrayed their country, just want to point that out in case anyone forgot,” Donovan said.

  “We’ll accept their surrender if they want to give it. Tell them that, Viper.”

  No one spoke for a minute or two; they occupied their time with returning fire on the enemy. Eventually, Katie came back on the line. “Negative on surrender, Apollo.”

  “Take out as many as you can in the next thirty seconds and leave the rest to us.”

  One kilometer wasn’t a terrible reach for Katie. Alexei knew distance was less of a problem than the number of minds surrounding her. Out on the edge of a city that held a smaller population than they were used to living around, getting into the minds of her targets was easier than it could have been.