Embracing Midnight

by Devyn Quinn

“Do it,” Norton said, eyes flashing.

  She nodded. “Scoot over then and let me go to work.”

  They traded places.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  Her lips worked as she raked them with her teeth. “You know the military trained me to hack enemy computers. Well, I never forgot how, my friend.” Thinking fast, she set her fingers in motion. She immediately disabled the keystroking program that recorded a user’s every action. “Never thought I’d be doing this to one of ours. The network’s tight, but you had the right idea. We just have to make it look like we belong there.”

  Callie logged into an underground hacker’s resource via the Internet. “There are ways around everything, as long as you know where to find the information.”

  Norton gave a lopsided grin. “And you know how to do that?”

  Callie quickly found what she was looking for. She grinned at the ease.

  After a number of clicks, she was connected to the network, logged on as JForrester, a name she made up. With administrator rights, she could do anything and go anywhere she wanted.

  Norton whistled under his breath. “How the hell did you do that?”

  Callie shrugged. “It’s what happens when you know how to use your power for evil.”

  “Remind me not to piss you off.”

  Her fingers hovered over the keys. No big thing, she assured herself. Yeah, right. Breaking into the database that housed highly classified material wasn’t exactly something she attempted every day of the week. Not only would her career be toast if she was caught, she’d be serving a long stretch behind iron bars.

  Conscience niggled. As an agent who’d sworn an oath to protect her country she had no right to do this. But as a human being, she had the moral obligation to find out the truth. Standing by while another race was destroyed for being different wasn’t ethical or right.

  And if she got caught? Without justice, there is just us, she reminded herself. And the unjust.

  “Shall we?” she asked. If at all possible, she had to find out what the ASD had planned for the Niviane Idesha.

  Her partner nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Snorting a chuckle, Callie opened the file and began to read.

  A second later, she stopped and pointed. “Look at this.”

  Norton bent close to the screen, his eyes tracing Callie’s finger. He read, “Project Shadow-Wing.”

  The tips of her fingers tingled. “Who thinks up these funky names for missions anyway?”

  A look passed between them, a shared signal only partners knew and understood from each other. This look said they were both about to be hip deep in a lot of secret shit.

  And neither wanted to back down.

  Norton shook his head. “Don’t know. But it sounds ominous.”

  Callie scanned the screen, her pulse thrumming. “Guess we’ll find out.” She continued to scan the information. They’d hit gold, but didn’t know it yet. The data she’d pulled up was massive and complicated. She didn’t understand a lot of it. What she did understand chilled her to the bone.

  Silence thickened as they came across the same thing.

  Norton stared at Callie as if he was unable to believe his eyes. “Am I reading this right?” He shook his head in awe. “Are they planning to structure a breed of alien-human hybrids?” He ran his hands through his hair, clearly upset.

  Scrolling down, Callie caught Iollan Drake’s name. “Breed purity.” “Implementation of desired traits.”

  She gave herself a second to process what she’d read, then cleared her throat. “Not hybrids, Norton. Full-blooded. They’re planning to harvest stem cells from fertilized embryos and use them to reconfigure human traits with those of the Niviane Idesha. They’ve got their sire now. The rest weren’t useful; that’s why they were so focused on Iollan.” She pressed a hand against her stomach, which slowly did a somersault. Her voice wavered. “If they have their way, they’re going to try and create a new race of superhumans.”

  “Selective breeding to create a new race,” Norton muttered. That’s—” He stumbled, at a loss for words.

  A frisson of tension mingling with excitement raced up Callie’s spine. It didn’t seem possible. “Playing God.”

  Wanting to dig deeper, she came to an entry made by Doctor Yuan. Her observations were almost giddy. Yuan had tied her whole life up in studying the Niviane Idesha. Clearly she respected them as a species, but held little regard for them as individuals, as beings with needs or feelings.

  Because he was such a prize, a first, Iollan would be safe. Guarded like Fort Knox, but he wouldn’t be grievously mishandled. He’d soon be moved from solitary confinement to a quarantine cell, more hospitable and, she hoped, more comfortable. No more drugs were to be administered, either. Plans for testing of his full abilities as a shifter would soon commence.

  One thing became glaringly clear as she read through the Shadow-Wing file. Through the use of stem cells, Doctor Yuan was confident once they found and destroyed the blood-hunger gene in the vampires, an alien-human hybrid would be the improved species, one that should prevail through future generations. Given time, lines between the two would begin to blur until only a single master race existed.

  The implications hit her square in the stomach. Though still only a projection of science in the planning stages, Project Shadow-Wing provided a chilling glimpse of what the project’s team believed themselves capable of.

  A frown marred Paul Norton’s imperfect features. His silence told her he was disturbed. Deeply disturbed. His breath huffed out. “Do they really think they can pull this off?”

  Norton’s words registered somewhere inside Callie’s brain. She tried to shake off her fear and failed.

  The research behind the program was an active and ongoing thing. The bits and pieces she understood seemed to chart remarkable progress. The two species, human and alien, appeared to merge seamlessly. Too much so for comfort. “They’re not thinking about it. They’re doing it. Stem cell study and exploration is already making leaps and bounds.”

  Norton shuddered. “God help us all, then.”

  Callie’s body felt rigid, every tendon locked into place in front of the computer she worked at. “That might not be enough,” she grated tightly. “It’s said history is doomed to repeat itself.” A short laugh escaped her, the precursor to hysteria. She quickly nipped panic in the bud. No time to make mistakes. “This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to create a master race.”

  A huge weight rolled onto her conscience. Without knowing it at the time, she’d given them the key to opening the forbidden box when she’d helped capture Iollan Drake.

  Fingers shaking, she closed that file and opened another, not really knowing where she was heading. A subdirectory of the ASD agents’ files came up, her own among them.

  Norton pointed. “Personnel files? Mine’s got my badge number beside it.”

  Callie noted her own. “So does mine.” Beside it was another set of numbers, looking oddly like a date. Two weeks into the future. Curiosity told her to press on.

  Seconds later, her complete profile lit up the screen. Childhood, education, military service and training, college transcripts, and bureau service record. There was an eerie pause as she found out what the date meant.

  Listed across from the birth date was the same date, only it was listed under date of death. Under that, for cause of death, a single word has been typed in: TERMINATED.

  Callie stopped reading. A cold shock of fear washed through her body. She hesitated, momentarily paralyzed by what she’d read. A rush of panic caused her heart to miss a beat. She blinked, hoping her mind wasn’t playing tricks. It wasn’t.

  Her palms were suddenly wet enough to leave prints on the desktop. Her psyche immediately veered into panic. Roger Reinke’s prophetic warning rose in the forefront of her brain, echoing soundlessly in her ears. “Everyone is expendable,” she murmured.

  Norton pressed a hand to her shoulder. �
�This isn’t good.”

  No time to freeze.

  Callie quickly yanked her thoughts back in line and checked Norton’s file. Thankfully blank. She breathed a sigh of relief for her partner. “No shit.”

  Lips compressing into a line, Norton gave her a look burning with disgust. “They’ve marked you for assassination.”

  Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Her mind whirled. Tendrils of fear crawled in her stomach, coiling into spirals that seemed to rope around her lungs and heart. “Why? What the fuck did I—” Clarity hit her before the words finished leaving her mouth.

  She’d gotten too close to Iollan Drake. Making love to Iollan had reverted from being strictly for the job to a personal thing. She’d lost contact with her objectivity, with the purpose of the mission. She’d become intimately involved—something the bureau clearly wasn’t going to allow.

  Face losing all color, Norton smiled a grimace full of acid. “Copy it,” he hissed. “All of it. Now. We need every bit of this.”

  Barely able to think straight, Callie slid a blank CD into the burner. She squinted as the drive went into motion, mentally willing it to burn the disk faster.

  Her thoughts turned dark. She didn’t want to believe science fiction had turned into science fact. Mankind always seemed to be determined to meddle with things best left unexplored. Humans were dominance crazed to the point of insanity. No amount of suffering and destruction would stop the march toward the future.

  She snapped out of her reverie. “At least you’re safe.”

  A harsh laugh escaped him. “Not for fucking long, I bet.”

  She forced her attention back to the screen, memorizing as much as humanly possible. A few minutes later, the copied disk popped out.

  Callie handed it to Norton. She quickly logged off. “Can you get it out of here?”

  Norton tossed her a look that wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence. Making things disappear was his specialty, but in this case he’d be lucky if he made it outside to the parking lot. “I think so.” He tucked the disk into an inner pocket of his jacket.

  Muscles tensing, Callie shuddered. “Don’t think it, know it, Paul. Having that disk puts you right on my level. Both of us have grass for asses now.”

  As though carrying a heavy burden, Norton pulled his shoulders back slightly. “I’ll make today the day I vanish. I suggest you do the same.” He reached for her hand, giving it a squeeze. “When you walk out of here today, don’t look back.”

  “I won’t.”

  Right then the phone on her desk rang. Their gazes locked. “This ain’t no coincidence,” Norton said.

  Callie got up and walked to her desk. The phone bleated, a second and third time. “Should I?”

  Norton advised. “Act normal.”

  She answered. “Whitten.”

  Forque’s voice filled her ear. “We need to meet,” he said by way of a greeting.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

  “We have a problem,” Forque started to explain.

  Callie didn’t need to hear any more. She knew what the problem was.

  Iollan.

  “I’m on my way.”

  24

  Callie walked beside Professor Forque. As they passed the guard’s station, the sliding glass door in front of them made a whooshing sound when it slid open to admit them to the cell block. They quickly stepped through. A sucking sound commenced when the door slid shut again.

  Hearing the door slide back into place went across her senses like fingernails across a chalkboard. Panic clawed at her throat. She swallowed, feeling nauseated. Her stomach churned. It dimly occurred to her that she might be walking into a trap—that there would be no going back to a free civilization. The jail cell she might be looking at could be her own if her computer-hacking intrusion had been detected.

  That seemed not to be the case. For now.

  “Very secure,” she commented of the facilities. The floor felt like glue under her feet. The farther she progressed, the more she felt oppressed and hopeless.

  Forque nodded, pleased. “We’ve had it specially designed for holding the Niviane Idesha. Every inch of this area is hermetically sealed. We want to encourage them to use their shifting abilities—all within a controlled environment, of course.”

  Callie gave a tight smile. “Of course,” she said, trying to inject some conviction into her voice. She failed. Right now she wasn’t very interested in the ASD facilities. She already knew getting out was damn near impossible.

  The bureau had become like the tip of a sword in her back. According to the file she’d read, her death would take place in two weeks. There were so many ways for murder to be delivered. One thing was certain, though. However the fatal blow was dealt, she’d probably have never seen it coming.

  Forewarned was forearmed.

  She drew a deep breath, fighting to keep calm. Showing her fear would be the worst thing to do. Weapon holstered at her side, she’d already made the decision to defend herself if necessary. Make a move on her and she’d pull her gun and take as many men with her as possible. She might crash and burn, but she wasn’t going alone.

  Forque ignored her lackluster tone, lumbering along in high gear. He led her down a hallway punctuated with more ominous-looking doors. If he’d noticed her obviously bruised face, it didn’t register on his face. Other concerns harried him.

  “We’ve moved Drake into more comfortable surroundings this morning,” the professor began to explain. “Unfortunately, he’s responding poorly to his surroundings.”

  Hardly a surprise. The previous night’s memory leapt into her mind. Remembering the evil way they’d cuffed Iollan, she shivered. “Oh?”

  Readjusting his glasses, Forque frowned. The lines in his face looked taut. “Although they appear to be a perfectly intelligent species, in captivity they seem to revert to a level of low primitive intelligence. Their actions are animalistic, not something you’d expect in such an evolved species.”

  She frowned. Despite her general disgust for the scientific research of the center, she felt that Forque at least took a human interest in the Niviane Idesha. He seemed to want to understand and communicate with them. Yuan, on the other hand, only seemed to want them on her table for dissection.

  Callie barely stomached the sight of Akemi Yuan. Every time she thought about Yuan, she pictured the proverbial mad scientist locked away in some lightning-lit stone tower, waiting for the right strike to raise the beast.

  She snapped out of her thoughts and focused on the discussion at hand. “I doubt I’d be feeling very friendly if someone had slapped the cuffs on and thrown me into an empty cell,” she said. “Of course they feel threatened. Anyone who wants to survive would. That only makes sense.”

  Serious-faced, the older man sailed ahead, his massive steps threatening to leave Callie in the dust. “Perfectly understandable,” he said. “I doubt I’d feel very friendly if the situation was reversed. Putting them in these glorified cages is ridiculous. I’ve argued for a more diplomatic approach, but it’s fallen on deaf ears.”

  She quickened her steps. A light shiver shimmied down her spine. “Then why don’t you try that?” she suggested.

  Forque gave her a grim smile. “In military minds, anything that doesn’t look or act human is considered a threat,” he returned with evident sarcasm, unintentionally revealing the thorn in his side. “We’re going to stomp until the Niviane Idesha are as extinct as saber-toothed tigers.”

  A chill trickled down Callie’s spine. She tucked that bit of information away in her mental file, and alarm tightened her chest.

  God proposes, man disposes. A vivid memory of Iollan holding her, kissing her, caused her throat to tighten. She swallowed, unable to imagine losing him.

  Callie knew then she was in too deep, and over her head.

  Her palms started to sweat. What to say after such a remark? Nothing useful.

  Their walk down the hall ended abruptly, relieving her of the necessity of a rejo
inder.

  Wringing his hands in obvious frustration, Forque stopped. “Here we are.”

  Like other cell doors Callie had seen on this level, it had a face of glass with wire mesh pressed between its layers. A keypad on the wall beside it controlled the locking mechanisms.

  The fact that she still had full security clearance proved that her little intrusion into the system hadn’t been detected. Norton had the disk. Norton’s terminal had been used. If push came to shove, she’d plead innocent.

  Callie slammed the door in her skull on that idea. No way she’d let Norton take the fall alone. They’d gone into the plan to expose the project together. No backing out now. Somehow, she’d have to make Iollan understand she wasn’t planning to abandon him.

  Forque stepped aside to allow her access to the narrow window. “Take a look.”

  She stepped up to the window. Inside she saw a sort of apartment, a combination living and kitchen area. Narrow cabinets over an even narrower counter allowed for the storage of personal items. A neatly made bed occupied one section. A table with bench seats was attached to an opposite wall, and a tiny fold-down desk and chair served as the only other furniture. Walls and ceilings were stark white. In the open arrangement there was nowhere to hide except in the bathroom. At least some basic privacy was granted.

  The cell—and it was just that—appeared empty.

  Forque tapped her on the shoulder and directed her attention toward the farthest corner. “There.” His voice was an unnecessary whisper. “He won’t move.”

  Callie’s gaze settled on Iollan Drake. Professor Forque didn’t have to say anything else. She saw the problem for herself. Her thumping heart leapt into her throat, threatening to cut off her air.

  Crouched in a corner, Iollan Drake sat, his back to the wall. Wrists and neck still cruelly cuffed, he stared straight ahead, unblinking and ominously immobile. Open but unfocused, his eyes were dull, pale, and flat. The brilliant copper sheen of them had faded to a dull amber shade. Through the torn material of his shirt, his forearms and neck were a mass of deep, vicious scratches. He’d clearly tried to tear off his restraints, to the point of self-mutilation.