Heir to the Nightmare

by J. J. Carlson

  Eugene nodded. “Do you think it’ll work?”

  San chewed his lower lip. “It’s hard to say. Synthetic eyes are extremely complex. But I believe the nanomachinery in her occipital lobe will work to her advantage. She should be able to make neural connections that you or I could not.”

  The former Recon Marine shrugged. “If you say so.” He held up a computer tablet and typed in an unlock code. “I hate to bug you with this right now, but another Op came down the pipe, and I need your approval.”

  San accepted the tablet and scrolled through a series of satellite photos then read the mission profile. A squad of Katharos operatives had been located in downtown Philadelphia, and they were well-armed. “This looks…challenging. Are you sure we shouldn’t pass it off to the FBI?”

  Eugene shook his head. “We already did, and it didn’t end well. They’ve sent in three separate teams and had their butts handed to them each time. These Katharos pricks are well-trained, and it looks like they’re using experimental weapons.”

  “Do you think our team can get the job done without suffering casualties?”

  “We can get the job done. Without casualties…” He winced. “That’s never a guarantee. Eli suggested we use the exo-suits.”

  San nodded, scrolled to the end of the mission briefing, and held his thumb against the screen. An embedded scanner accepted his thumbprint, authorizing the mission.

  “Thanks.” Eugene took the tablet, tucked it under his arm, and turned his attention to the operatory. The surgeons were making notes, and one of the nurses was holding Janson’s right hand. “This Op would be a piece of cake if we could bring her with.”

  “Physically, she should be operational within the week.” San let out a sigh. “But emotionally…I’m not so sure.”

  Eugene’s face turned grim. “I agree. But without a heavy-hitter, the teams and I will have to absorb a lot of risk.”

  San crossed his arms. “I don’t feel comfortable putting Agent Janson into the field until—”

  “I’m not talking about Janson.”

  San blinked. “You mean…”

  “Yes. Him.”

  “Absolutely not.” San shook his head. “No. No, I can’t condone sending him into combat.”

  “Hear me out.” Eugene set the tablet on a chair and faced San. “I’m not suggesting we use him in direct combat. We could put him in an overwatch position, and he could warn us about incoming threats.”

  “Isn’t that what we have drones for?”

  “Katharos has counter-drone technology. And nothing can match our friend’s battlefield intuition.”

  San stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then shook his head again. “No, there’s too much risk. No one can know he is alive, and he’s simply not ready. Yesterday was proof of that.”

  Eugene held up a finger, then lowered it. “What happened yesterday was unfortunate. And gross. But doesn’t it prove that he should be here, where we can watch him, instead of five hundred miles away? Al Conroy has never even stepped foot in this place, and there’s a whole wing of Sub-Level Five that isn’t being used. We could hide him there and continue his treatment until he’s ready to reintegrate with the team.”

  San thought for a moment. Alistar “Al” Conroy was the new Director of National Intelligence. He had replaced the previous DNI, who resigned in shame after Jarrod Hawkins assassinated a U.S. Senator. In order to maintain plausible deniability, Conroy had distanced himself from Hillcrest and the black-ops team living within its concrete walls. San appreciated the autonomy to a certain extent, but Conroy’s detachment bordered the line of negligence. San hadn’t heard a peep from the DNI since he took office.

  Eugene was right—Jarrod could move into Hillcrest and join the team, and Conroy would never know that San was working with an assassin who had been presumed dead. But San still didn’t believe that Jarrod was ready for combat. Not yet. Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not budging on this, Gene.” He exhaled and rested his right hand on Eugene’s shoulder. “We’ll discuss this later. Get out there and save lives.”

  The operative flourished the tablet, turned on his heel, and jogged up the stairs. Before he reached the door, San called out to him.

  “And Eugene…”

  He stopped short and turned around, looking into San’s brown, sorrowful eyes.

  “Be careful.”

  Eugene’s demeanor softened, and a grin spread across his face. “Careful? Not a chance.” Snapping off a crisp salute and walking backward, he disappeared through the door.

  Janson remained perfectly still as the gurney glided through the halls. The pain in her skull was nearly unbearable, but she made no complaint. When the gurney came to a stop, she counted to ten, then said, “Are we alone?”

  “Yes.” Dean Wagner’s voice was soft, timid.

  She sat up and began unwrapping the bandages covering her eyes.

  “I’m not sure you should be doing that. Your body needs time to heal.”

  Janson ignored him. She pulled the last bandage free and, keeping her eyelids shut, touched her fingertips to the edges of her face. Beneath the swelling, she could feel where the bones had been carved away to make room for the optical sensors.

  She opened her eyes…and smiled. It was better than she’d hoped. The colors and details were exquisite—far beyond normal human sight. She blinked twice, and the room went dark, except for a glowing figure in the center. “The infrared is working perfectly. Turn the lights off.”

  Wagner stepped back and flipped a switch, flooding the room with darkness. Janson blinked again, and her private quarters reappeared in full color.

  “Incredible,” she breathed.

  Wagner turned the lights back on and hugged himself tightly.

  Janson studied his face. If she wanted to, she could count the number of pores on his pale nose. “What’s wrong, Doctor? The sensors work better than we expected.”

  Wagner pointed at a mirror on the wall. “It’s just that…you remind me of him.”

  She glanced at the mirror. Her face was bloated and distended, but she knew he wasn’t referring to the swelling. It was the eye sockets, which looked like windows to the vacuum of space.

  “Do you have the lenses?” she asked, turning the ebony orbs toward him once more.

  He nodded and stepped forward then handed her a small plastic case. She opened it and retrieved a pair of full-width contact lenses. They were purely aesthetic—meant to hide her eyes, not alter her vision.

  Wagner fidgeted and wiped his hands on his lab coat. “If Doctor Torres finds out I installed tactical implants, he’ll—”

  “If he finds out,” Janson interrupted, “I will tell him the truth: I forced you to do it. But as long as you keep your mouth shut, he’ll never know, and we can continue with the augmentations as planned. Got it?”

  Wagner gave a shaky nod. “I—I understand.”

  Janson winced as she pushed away from the gurney and stood. “Bring the next chem treatment tonight, after everyone is asleep.” She retrieved a sports bra, sweatpants, and a t-shirt from her dresser then untied her hospital gown and tossed it aside.

  Wagner shook his head. “You need to rest. Your body needs time to adapt to the physiological and neurological changes. If we continue the biochemical treatments at this rate, you’ll suffer extreme pain.”

  Janson clenched her teeth as she pulled the bra over her head. The fabric brushed against her swollen forehead, making it blaze with fresh agony. Finally, the bra fell into place around her heavily muscled ribs, and she gave a sigh of relief. “I promise, I couldn’t care less about the pain. Bring the treatment tonight.”

  5

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The Delaware River formed a wide, muddy stripe between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Eugene watched through the window of the Airbus H155 helicopter as the Philadelphia airport slid past and the Philadelphia shipyard came into view. His headset crackled, and the pilot’s voice came through.
<
br />   “Thirty seconds to primary LZ.”

  Eugene opened his mouth to respond but hesitated. Something about the operation didn’t feel right. Katharos agents, though fanatical in their own ways, were not suicidal. And they were pragmatic, never stepping out of the shadows without a logical reason. These particular terrorists had barricaded themselves inside a luxury apartment building in downtown Philadelphia. Even with hostages and the most advanced weapons known to man, they had little chance of escape. So far, they had injured a few FBI agents and SWAT officers, but that was it. The risk didn’t seem worth the reward. There had to be a secondary objective.

  A chill ran down Eugene’s spine. A few weeks ago, he and his team had been baited into chasing jihadists in New York while Katharos agents set off biological weapons in Albany. The Hillcrest operatives had saved hundreds of lives but failed to catch the real threat—terrorists with the capability to kill millions, perhaps billions of people. Audrey Stokes, the puppet master behind Katharos, had been two steps ahead of them the entire time.

  Eugene’s eyes narrowed. Today, five Katharos agents had taken hostages and barricaded themselves in an apartment building. Using advanced sensors and armor-piercing weapons, the terrorists had been able to repel any attempt at a rescue. They were untouchable—at least to traditional law enforcement—so the mission consequentially fell on Eugene’s shoulders. It was a trap, and Eugene knew it. But he didn’t have a choice; there were innocent lives at stake, and he couldn’t pass on the opportunity to take a Katharos agent prisoner. Still, he had no intention of being an easy target.

  He glanced at a patch of green among the sea of urban gray then spoke into his throat mic. “Put us down here, on the baseball diamond. We’ll take a truck the rest of the way in.”

  “Roger. Prepare to descend.”

  Eugene felt a fluttering in his chest as the helicopter sank toward the neatly manicured grass. The high-school baseball diamond wasn’t an ideal landing zone, due to the added hazards of fences and light posts which were virtually invisible from above. But the pilot set the H155 down gently and, once the team had stepped out, guided the helicopter up and away without incident.

  The rotor wash subsided, and Eugene tucked his BN-36 rifle into his shoulder. It was a custom design with a reinforced chamber and high-density ammunition—not as flashy as the next-gen rifles carried by the rest of his team, but equally effective in his practiced hands. “Eli, we need a ride. Think you can hack a truck with one of your fancy toys?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.” Eli Graham tapped a touch-screen computer strapped to his forearm, sending a signal to a transmitter mounted to his exoskeleton armor. “I’ll need two minutes to hack the fob frequencies. Less, for anything more than five years old.”

  “Old is fine. We aren’t going far.”

  After a brief moment of silence, a car alarm began blaring on the adjacent street.

  “Looks like we found our ride,” Eugene said. “Toaster ovens, move out.”

  Eli rolled his eyes and burst into a run, easily surpassing the speed of an Olympic sprinter. Two other exoskeleton-clad operatives fell into a loose formation behind him. Weighed down with nearly two hundred pounds of armor and hydraulics, their feet sank three inches into the soft soil with every step.

  Eugene followed at a distance that widened by the second. Battlefield augmentation had its perks, but he had chosen to forgo the extra speed, strength, and protection of the exoskeleton armor in favor of mobility. At least, that was what he had told his team. In truth, he had only trained in an exo-suit for a few hours, and he feared his lack of familiarity with the equipment would make him a liability in combat. But he wasn’t completely vulnerable—beneath his clothes and load-bearing vest, he wore skin-tight metamaterial armor that would stop nearly any conventional projectile.

  Reaching the street, he let out a chuckle. His team was crammed together in the bed of a Ford F-250, and the front seat was vacant. “I guess I’ll drive. Kacen, call out the turns for me. Eli and Nicole…stay low and try not to draw attention to yourselves.”

  Nicole Hersh, a former Mossad explosives expert, clucked her tongue. “How are we supposed to do that?”

  Eugene shrugged. “I don’t know. Pretend you’re a pile of scrap metal.” He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat then slammed the shifter into gear. As the truck barreled forward, Kacen’s voice came through his radio.

  “Left turn at the end of the block.”

  “Roger, hanging a Louie.” Eugene spun the steering wheel, cutting through the turn at an angle to avoid jostling his passengers. If he’d worn a helmet with a built-in heads-up display, he wouldn’t need the former Navy SEAL to give him directions. But Eugene had left it behind, reasoning that combat was confusing enough without a bunch of numbers and diagrams obscuring his vision. Instead, he wore only a lightweight Pro-Tec helmet. It wouldn’t stop bullets—he had a metamaterial hood for that—but it would protect his head from bumps and bruises without weighing him down.

  As the team drew closer to the objective, traffic ground to a halt. Eugene honked his horn and mounted the curb, driving onto the sidewalk. Nearby motorists cursed, made obscene gestures, and honked their own horns until they saw the armor-clad operatives in the back. Then they fell silent and scrambled for their phones, hoping to capture a picture or video of the high-tech equipment. None of it bothered Eugene—the decision to send experimental weapons and armor into the field was above his pay grade, and any fallout from the exposure would be someone else’s problem.

  His only focus was the looming battle—and making sure his team came out alive.

  The streets beneath the grim-faced man echoed with the sounds of panic. Friends and family members of the hostages clustered at the barricades, competing with media crews as they begged law enforcement officers for answers. Closer to the luxury apartment building, the area was eerily silent—snipers watched every window, hoping for a clear shot at the terrorists but finding none.

  There was no gunfire, no explosions, no screams of pain, which meant the real fight had yet to begin. And, though he was far from the hostage situation, the man hoped to be at the center of the action. The Hillcrest black-ops team had not landed their helicopter at either of the nearby hospitals, where Katharos agents with man-portable rocket launchers were waiting for them. Instead, they had set down in a residential neighborhood and were approaching at ground level, giving the man a one-in-four chance of being the one to pull the trigger.

  He licked his lips. The excitement was almost unbearable.

  Suddenly, a rumbling sound rose above the clamor of voices. The man glanced to his right, and his eyes widened. A truck was weaving through the traffic jam, approaching the police barrier. He aimed his scanner at the vehicle, and a gasp escaped his lips. He pinned down a button on his radio and said, “Chimera, this is Kilo-Seven.” His pulse quickened. “I’m tracking three exoskeleton signatures. Should I activate the pod?”

  He paused as he waited for an answer. Ten seconds later, a computerized voice came through his earpiece, and he couldn’t help but smile.

  A message appeared—white letters on the black screen. Chimera, this is Kilo-Seven.

  Audrey Stokes rolled her eyes. The encrypted communication system automatically identified both the sender and receiver of every message crossing the network. There was no need to use callsigns. The men and women she had recruited for this mission were the worst kinds of idiots.

  Another transmission, translated from voice to text, appeared on the screen. I’m tracking three exoskeleton signatures. Should I activate the pod?

  A pang, so warm and delicious that it was almost sexual, blossomed in Audrey’s stomach. She imagined the battlefield reports that would follow—the descriptions and then the photos of Hillcrest’s finest soldiers bleeding out on a patch of charred asphalt. The impotent pricks in the Department of Defense would think twice before crossing Katharos again.

  Poising her hands above the keyboard, she
typed in the words, Fire at will.

  She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head. In a few seconds, there would be three less obstacles in her way.

  “You can’t be here. Only authorized personnel beyond this point.”

  Eugene hung his arm out the window, thumping his palm against the truck’s door. He let out an exaggerated sigh and looked into the rearview mirror. “Eli, could you show this gentleman our authorization?”

  The truck bounced on its shock absorbers as Eli got to his feet. He glanced down at the young man in the reflective vest and rolled his shoulders; the exo-suit hummed and clicked. “We’re with the DoD task force. Our assistance has been requested by the Secretary of Homeland Security and authorized by the Secretary of Defense. I suggest you let us through.”

  The young man’s mouth gaped as he studied the armor. He tried to speak but couldn’t find the words.

  “You heard the man,” Eugene said, revving the engine. “Get out of the way.”

  He nodded and stepped aside. “G-Good luck, sirs.”

  Eugene guided the truck between two parked police cruisers and sped forward. The plan was to get as close to the apartment building as possible and breach the south entrance, using speed and overwhelming force to catch the terrorists off-guard. But as the team moved across the adjacent street, Eugene heard Eli’s strained voice.

  “Contact rear! Rockets inbound!”

  Without hesitation, Eugene stomped on the accelerator. There were several loud thumps behind him—flares being launched automatically by the exo-suits.

  “Shit!” Kacen shouted. “They’re still coming! Brace for impact.”

  There was no time to think. Eugene cranked the wheel to the left, pitching the nose of the truck through the glass doors of a restaurant. He kept the gas pedal pinned to the floor, mangling tables and crunching over chairs. The truck crashed into the far wall, and he jolted forward, slamming into the airbags as they deployed. The air rushed from his lungs, and he was vaguely aware of a jarring explosion before the world went black.