Red Awakening (Red Zone)

by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

  “But you’re part bat. How is that even possible? Genetic experimentation on that level is illegal. Why would you take part in an illegal and dangerous experiment? To get a bat? I mean, a bat? I could understand if you’d done it to get something cool—like a lion. But a bat?”

  “Stop saying that, and it wasn’t an experiment. I’m not part bat. I’m a man, and the bat’s a bat. We just kind of…share the same space.” Yeah, that explanation had never made sense to him, either. He waited to see if she bought it.

  “It wasn’t an experiment? Then how did it happen? Why did it happen? Why would you want to share your DNA with a bat? Oh my word, I feel dizzy. Your DNA is merged with a bat’s. The bat is part human, and that makes you part bat.” She threw back her head and wailed. “I had sex with a bat.” Her head shot forward. “Does my birth control work with bat sperm? If I’m pregnant, will I give birth to a bat? This is a nightmare.”

  He couldn’t take the noise any longer. His genetically mutated hearing meant that her shouting was damaging his eardrums. His ears actually ached. So he did the only thing he could think of to shut her up. He kissed her. His lips slammed against hers. And then a brutal, sharp pain shot out from his balls. He dropped Keiko, clutched his dick, and crumpled to the floor.

  “What the hell?” The words squeaked out through his clenched teeth.

  She glared down at him, hands on hips, eyes blazing, looking untouchable. “You don’t get to force your will on me.”

  “I wasn’t forcing my will on you. I just wanted to shut you up.”

  “You can’t kiss a person to shut them up.”

  “Why not? It always works in the movies. Kiss the angry woman, turn her to mush.”

  “Movies? There hasn’t been a movie in fifty years. And if they were full of crap like that, then it’s good riddance to them.”

  “I need a break.” Mace slumped into one of the chairs, grateful it was big enough to hold him. “Is there any ice in that fridge?”

  She stomped over to it, yanked it open, retrieved an ice pack, and threw it at his balls. He managed to catch it before it hit. Then he pressed it gently against the swelling.

  “You have a problem with violence,” he told her.

  “Only since I met you.” She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t touch me like that again.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m really attached to my dick and want to keep it in one piece. It does most of my thinking for me.”

  For a second, it looked like she might smile, and then she started pacing again. “Start at the beginning,” she ordered. “Tell me everything. And I mean all of it.”

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, as long as you sit down while we talk. You’re making me dizzy. Wait. Is there anything in this room that records? Is this conversation secure?” Damn it, he was completely out of his depth in this tech-ridden world. He should have asked that question before he started sharing secrets they couldn’t afford to get out.

  She let out an irritated huff and stomped over to the nearest panel, where she did that connection thing with her magic nails. “There’s nothing online. If there were something that worked on wifi, it would be jammed anyway, but there’s nothing built in. My guess is that this room is used by staff who’re too low level to monitor. It’s safe to talk.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. But if you’re so worried I’m lying, why don’t you check for yourself? Just press your hand to the panel and access the controls.”

  And just when he thought the night couldn’t get any worse for him, it did. He ran a hand through his hair and considered his options. There weren’t any. If he was going to come clean, it might as well be about everything. “I can’t access it. I don’t have any implants.”

  The alarm blared in the background as she gaped at him. “But your accent is Texan, which means you grew up in the Northern Territory, and everyone is given an implant at birth. Even if you were born elsewhere, you would have received an implant when you returned to the territory. It’s compulsory.”

  He squirmed, making his sore balls ache. “That’s the thing. I didn’t grow up in the Northern Territory. I grew up in the United States of America.”

  Her eyes widened, and she seemed frozen to the spot. Which was fine, because the spot was on the other side of the room from his bruised balls. “There hasn’t been a United States since the Technology War.”

  “I know. I fought in it.”

  Her hands began to shake, and then she burst out laughing. It verged on hysterical. When she was finished, she wiped her eyes. “Are you telling me you fought in a war that ended over a hundred years ago?”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? I look good for my age.”

  “I need a drink.” She crossed to the drinks counter, and Mace kept an eye on her just in case she reached for the few remaining mugs.

  “I don’t think you’re going to find any alcohol in there.”

  She grabbed a bottle of water and lobbed one at him. He snatched it out of the air, unscrewed the top, and drank deeply.

  Keiko took her water and sat down in the chair opposite him. “Okay. Talk.”

  “Long story short, I was a U.S. Army Ranger fighting on the southern front, at the border with Mexico, when the anti-implant side of the conflict was pushing into America. We were losing the battle, and it looked like they were going to take over the country and make implants illegal. America panicked and dropped an experimental weapon to end the war, much like they did to end the Second World War.”

  “I know this part.” She sipped her water. “They dropped the bomb that caused the Red Zone. They thought the poisonous gas would dissipate in a year or two, but it didn’t, and now nobody knows what to do with that area because the scientists who designed the bomb are dead. What’s this got to do with you?”

  He kept his face blank. “I was in the Red Zone when the bomb dropped.”

  She shook her head. “That isn’t possible. Not only did the government clear out all of their personnel before they dropped the bomb, but everything even vaguely biological died in the blast.”

  “Not everything.” He tossed the soggy ice pack onto the floor. “My team was in a cave system in Mexico at the time. We got a five-minute warning before the bomb dropped. Not anywhere near enough time to clear the area. All we could do was wait to die.” There was no explaining what those last five minutes had felt like. He’d held his sister and prayed for her safety. Then he’d told his best friend he’d see him on the other side. He just hadn’t thought the other side would be a hundred years later in a world he didn’t understand.

  “What happened?” Keiko’s soft voice brought him back to the present.

  “The bomb fell. We were knocked out. But we didn’t die—obviously. Best we can guess, the chemicals in the bomb and the unique combination of minerals in the cave combined to force something else to happen. Instead of killing us, it put us to sleep for a century, and when we woke, we found we were alone in the caves. All the animals who’d taken refuge there during the fighting were gone.

  “At first, we thought they’d died, but then we realized we’d absorbed them. Our DNA had sucked in the DNA of whatever animal was closest to us at the time. And we’d become something else.”

  Her eyes flickered as though she was chasing her thoughts around the air in front of her. “That’s why your hearing is enhanced. It isn’t an implant—you hear like a bat, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the broken glass?”

  “I sent out sound waves to muffle the noise.”

  There was a long silence as Mace watched Keiko think. “Do you sleep hanging upside down?”

  “No!” Just when he thought they were on the same track, she was off again. And then he saw the sparkle in her eye. “You’re messing with me.”

  “It’s either that or have a meltdown. This is a lot to take in. You have a bat living in your body. You’re over a hundred years old. And I had sex with you. I don’
t know whether to laugh or cry.”

  “Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so good.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What other way can you put it?”

  “I’m still in my thirties. I was in stasis for a century before I was lifted out of my time and dropped in this one. And the bat doesn’t live in my body. It rests on my skin.” Yeah, no matter what way you put it, it still sounded bad.

  “If you put aside all the freaky aspects of this conversation—”

  “Which would be all of it.”

  “—then what you’re left with is kind of funny. I mean, look at you. You’re huge. And you’re sharing your body with a teeny, tiny, furry bat.” She fought back a giggle.

  This was why he’d never told Friday what his animal was, even though it irritated the hell out of her not knowing Well, irritating the hell out of her might have been a reason, too.

  She pointed at him. “You’re Batman!” And then she howled with laughter.

  Mace just sighed and waited her out. Three years he’d been living with this crap from his team. It had gotten old. And how the hell could she not know about movies but still get comic-book references? He didn’t understand one damn thing about this world.

  Keiko wiped away tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. Really. It’s just…a lot.”

  “No kidding.”

  “So, you have a bat. A real live bat. And you told it to set off the fire alarm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it speaks English?”

  “It’s only just started talking, but it understands what you say just fine. We’ve spent the last three years communicating in images. Now the little rat is using words. I preferred it when it was silent.”

  “Where’s the bat now?” She looked around the room as though she might find it hanging from the ceiling.

  “Hunting.”

  “Of course.” She nodded. “It’s nighttime. Bats are nocturnal.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes while Keiko absorbed everything he’d told her, and he watched her closely to make sure she was okay. The fire alarm suddenly stopped, telling him that Freedom had sorted the problem and retreated back to base. It was time to get moving again.

  At last, with a worried little frown, she looked over at him. “Mace, this relationship with the bat—it’s symbiotic, right?”

  “Not quite. We thought that’s what it was, but turns out our science was off. Friday’s got some big, fancy words to describe our situation, but basically it boils down to us being hybrids. Two different entities in one body, making up something new.”

  “But you both depend on each other for life, right?”

  “There’s no separating us, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She paled. “Which makes me wonder: What happens to you if the bat dies?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Freedom

  CommTECH Research Facility terrace

  Houston, Northern Territory

  The blaring alarm, which had been grating on Susan Neal’s nerves, went blessedly silent.

  “The security-hub team reports it was a false alarm,” Graham, her communications expert, informed her. “They think it had something to do with our jamming the building’s signals.”

  “Or it could have been our rogue press secretary and her reporter friend.”

  “The team couldn’t find any evidence of their interference. The alarm appears to have been triggered in a remote part of the building. The pair couldn’t have gotten near it without security picking them up on their screens.”

  Then it was just a fault. “Where are we on hunting down the press secretary?”

  Graham indicated to Michael as he crossed the terrace toward them. His face was grim as he approached. “I’d say your second-in-command knows the answer to that,” he said.

  “The men we sent out after Keiko and the reporter are dead,” Michael said as he came up to them. “He broke one of their necks and threw the other out the window.”

  “Broken neck? Are you sure?” Contrary to common belief, it wasn’t easy to snap someone’s neck.

  “I’m sure. We searched the penthouse, but there was no sign of them. They somehow managed to get past us.”

  Susan let out a long, slow breath. “Who is this reporter with Keiko? What do we know about him?”

  Graham pulled her datapad out of the side pocket of her pants. “Mace Armstrong. Freelance. New to reporting on CommTECH. His past work was small-time, local news. Looks like he was angling to move up in the world.”

  “Training? Ex-Enforcement?” There were alarm bells going off in Susan’s head. A local news reporter shouldn’t have been able to take out two of her men as easily as Mace Armstrong had.

  Graham shook his head. “Not that I can find.”

  “Get tech onto it. See what they can dig up.”

  “Already done.”

  Susan nodded as she felt her wrist unit issue an alert. “It’s time to talk to Miriam again.” She looked up at Michael. “Find that press secretary. We need her.”

  “I’ll take Rock.” Michael eyed the man on the other side of the terrace who was easily a head taller than everyone around him. “Rock’s ex-Enforcement, and I don’t know what skill set we’re up against with that reporter.”

  She nodded. Her attention was already on what she would say to CommTECH’s CEO. “Are you set up?” she asked Graham.

  “We’re good to go whenever you’re ready.”

  Susan had no doubt that the CEO hadn’t gotten any further in fulfilling their demands. It was as though Miriam didn’t care about her scientists. And that was fine with Susan because she knew that the viewers glued to their newsfeeds did care, and each execution would push CommTECH’s stock further into decline until it plummeted so far that Miriam couldn’t ignore Freedom any longer. She glanced at the stage and wondered which scientist would have the pleasure of furthering Freedom’s cause this time.

  She sighed. Anyone but Rueben Granger would do. He was too valuable to lose him now. She got a lot more mileage out of the world watching him suffer. With a flick of her hand, she signaled to her cameraman that it was time to start the show.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mace ground his teeth. “We need to get out of here. The Freedom team will have gone back to the security hub by now. We need to take them and the cameras out.”

  “Mace,” Keiko persisted, undeterred by his attempt to deflect her questions. “What happens if the bat dies?”

  There was no getting around her. Unless he wanted to pick her up and carry her out of the room, he’d just have to answer the question. “We don’t know.”

  Her bottom lip trembled slightly. “If the bat dies, you die, don’t you?”

  It was too humiliating to answer, because his biggest weakness was two inches tall.

  “Where’s the bat now?”

  “Eating. Now can we go to the hub?”

  “Eating what?”

  Mace swallowed a groan. “Bugs.”

  “You eat bugs?” She sounded horrified.

  “No. I don’t eat bugs. The bat eats bugs.”

  “After this is all over, I’m going to need some serious therapy.”

  “Can we leave now?” He opened the door again and signaled for her to follow. They’d made it two steps before he felt a familiar tingling under his skin—his bat was returning.

  He turned back to Keiko. “Don’t scream. The bat’s coming back.”

  Wide-eyed, she looked around the corridor. “Now?”

  “Yeah, now. Are you going to freak out? Do I need to cover your mouth?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t look sure.

  Mace backed her into the communications room, leaving the door open for the bat. He took a step toward her and prepared himself to cover her mouth at the first sign of panic. That earned him a glare. He felt the hairs on his skin stand on end and knew the bat had arrived even before Ke
iko’s mouth fell open. He watched her as she stared in wonder and fear at the flying rodent.

  “It’s so small,” she whispered. “And you’re huge.”

  The bat fluttered between them, and Mace’s head filled with its joy at seeing Keiko again. He kept his eyes on her, saw the tremble in her hands and her breathing pick up. Saw her shoulders tense and a cold sweat break out on her brow, but she didn’t scream.

  “What kind of bat is it?” Her voice shook as her eyes stayed glued to his other half, who was showing off for her by doing spirals in the air.

  “Canyon. They’re one of the smallest bats in North America. They’re loners. And like living in caves and eating flies.” And it was embarrassing. Other members of his team had merged with proper animals—wolves, snakes, mountain lions—he’d gotten a flying rat that wasn’t even as big as his thumb.

  “It looks furry. Is it soft?”

  “I don’t cuddle with it.” Mace frowned at her. “How the hell do I know if it’s soft?”

  “You touch it. It’s part of you.”

  “It’s a bat. There are millions like it in Texas alone. It’s nothing special.”

  Dumbass, the bat whispered in his mind, making Mace glare at it. Obviously now that he could talk, the bat wasn’t above using Mace’s insults right back at him. Taking a step back, Mace secured the door. Were they ever going to get out of the damn comms room?

  “We need to go. Our window for getting out of this building is closing fast. Enforcement won’t stay away for long. Once they realize the other attacks on CommTECH are just diversions, they’ll be right back here.”

  “There’s just one thing I need to do. From what you’ve told me, if the bat dies, you die, and that makes him your greatest weakness.”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, wondering if the shock had messed with her ability to understand what he’d been saying. They didn’t have time to go over this until she got it. They needed to get to the hub and destroy the building’s surveillance—and they needed to do it now.

  “Okay, then. In that case, you can’t let the bat off your body. It’s too dangerous.” She took a deep, tremulous breath and pointed at the bat. “Get back on Mace this instant. We don’t have time to worry about you getting squished. We have enough to deal with.”