Dark mission 04 - Sacrifice the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  “In,” came the raspy reply.

  She stepped inside the spacious office, her shoes sinking into plush carpet. The lights blazed, circles of gold and lighter yellow. It painted the office in homey tones, touched on the dark wood furniture and gave it a warm sheen.

  Given the amount of time Laurence Lauderdale spent in this office, it might as well feel like home.

  “Dad,” she began reproachfully, only to cover her mouth with her digital reader as the tall, frail man behind the desk raised a gnarled hand.

  “No, we’ll need more than that if it’s going to make a dent,” he said, beckoning her in further. But he wasn’t talking to her. His desk-mounted comm lights glowed blue, and he tilted his head to the side as he always did when a comm mic was clipped to his large ear.

  Kayleigh muffled a sigh. The man never rested. How he’d managed to live well into his eighties was a secret she hoped was genetic. Well, in that normal cause kind of way.

  As a geneticist for Sector Three, Kayleigh spent a lot of time considering the many mutations that comprised a human being. Hair colors, skin colors, eye colors. Shape, texture.

  She’d never been that interested in life span.

  At least until now.

  Her stomach burned as she held the reader to her chest. The stress of her current project sat there like a ball of acid, and it wouldn’t get better while she waited for her dad to finish his call.

  She didn’t sit in one of the red leather chairs arrayed in front of his desk. Giving him what privacy the large office could afford, she strolled to the wall-to-wall bookshelf, pretended to peruse titles she’d long since devoured.

  “Double- and triple-check your numbers,” Laurence said into his earpiece. His voice, once so strong and kind, now quaked with age. “Keep a close eye on everything, but I don’t want to sacrifice too much manpower. I’ll need your team prepped.”

  Pulling a worn, creased text from the shelf, she idly flipped through its dog-eared pages. But her glance flicked sideways.

  In her memory, Laurence was still a tall, lean man with strong arms and a wide smile. Never young, he’d always been a man of distinguished demeanor. Kind. Gentlemanly.

  But her eyes told her a different story.

  Now he stooped with age, his joints gnarled and often stiff. Physically, he appeared frail. A thin skeleton with mottled spots showing through his short, cobweb-thin white hair. His ears were large, loose skin hanging, and his teeth had been reduced to dentures, but she loved him anyway.

  The smart ones didn’t let his appearance fool them, either. Her dad ran a tight ship. One look into his faded blue eyes, similar to Kayleigh’s own, and it became clear why he remained director of Sector Three.

  The man was brilliant. Truly a pioneer.

  Her role model. A lot of the scientists’ role model, really. She hated to disappoint him.

  She slid the book back into the bookshelf.

  “Good,” Laurence said, flicking through something—probably data of some kind—on his reader. “Stay close and keep your comm on. Take care, now.” He plucked the mic from his ear with shaking fingers, but his lined, weary features brightened. “Kayleigh.”

  “Hi, Dad.” She crossed the office, bent to kiss his gaunt cheek. His cologne—the same light blend of subtle aftershave and soapy-scented cream he’d used for years—filled her nose.

  Every year, every month, seemed to hit her harder. He just kept getting older. Thinner. Less, somehow.

  He didn’t argue as she plucked the mic from his awkward grip. “Dad, how many times have I told you to get the new earpiece?”

  “I don’t need a new earpiece,” he argued good-naturedly. “The old one works just as good as it ever did.”

  She slotted the bit into his desk comm. “Except it’s too small for you to handle well. I’ll order you one tomorrow, okay?”

  He sat back, eyes twinkling. “What brings you to my office, Kayleigh? Shouldn’t you be home and sound asleep?”

  “That’s my question.” She rounded his desk, fingers trailing on the satiny finish, and folded into a chair. Out of habit, her legs crossed at the knee. “It’s after midnight, and you know the doctor said you needed to get away from the office more.”

  “Heh.” He waved her censure away. “Barry spends his days on a golf mat in his office. What does he know?”

  “He knows your blood pressure,” she pointed out serenely.

  Laurence’s thin mouth twitched. He leaned forward, resting his bony elbows on his desk, and raised a bristling white eyebrow at her. “Did you come to lecture me, Dr. Lauderdale, or is this an official visit?”

  “Official visits ended hours ago,” she replied with a long-suffering sigh. Her chest squeezed, as it always did when he looked at her with that mix of devilish humor and stern expectation. And her insides rolled over.

  She looked down at her digital pad. “But you’re right, as usual.”

  “As I suspected.”

  Swiping her thumb across the print-lock, Kayleigh pulled up her report. A quick scan refreshed everything she needed to share. She’d start with the good news. Good-ish. “I have the Salem data from generations fifty-two through fifty-five.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “Go ahead, at your own pace.”

  A smile tugged at her lips. He’d been telling her to move at her own pace for years. “Okay. First, we’ve lost one hundred percent of fifty-two and -three.” Not a flicker on his creased expression greeted her unsurprising revelation.

  This was an ongoing problem. And one she’d have to address before she left. Her stomach burned at the thought.

  “We lost seventy percent before you authorized euthanasia for the rest,” she continued, “but as was mentioned, degeneration was guaranteed. Patterns from fifty-four are following precedent.” Kayleigh scrolled through a lengthy list. “We’ve lost sixty percent of that generation. Same as before. Their abilities are overclocking too fast for their bodies to handle.”

  “What about the field agents?” the director asked, eyebrows beetling.

  “We managed to get to three when they didn’t report in,” she said, frowning. “They were euthanized before the damage could manifest itself beyond explanation. But we’ve missed the catastrophic phase for four of them. They degenerated too fast, and the Mission is reacting according to expectations. They’re keeping the docket open.” It didn’t help that some of the euthanization orders weren’t being handled as cleanly as they could.

  Kayleigh didn’t think it right that the bodies were left out where anyone could find them. They deserved cremation, at least. After study.

  They held answers, but her father’s team was adamant that missionaries not simply disappear. They needed to be found dead. Needed to give the Mission director’s people closure, keep them away from the truth.

  Kayleigh suspected it was far too late for that. She needed those bodies.

  “Damn,” her father sighed.

  She didn’t begrudge him the word. It wasn’t exactly the best news of the night. Putting Salem Project operatives in with the Mission, even as a field test, had been too extreme for her taste. One of Nadia Parrish’s many mistakes, a mistake Kayleigh was desperately trying to rectify.

  Only her father constantly overruled her concerns.

  Kayleigh recognized the validity of the project. The Salem genome was too understudied, especially for the level of power locked into such a tiny allele. Witches could heal, they could bestow gifts, blessings. Somehow, they had powers science could only reach for.

  Unlocking a healing witch’s genetic makeup could mean synthesizing the sequence to curing disease. But she wasn’t so sure that was her father’s plan. And she didn’t know how to ask.

  She’d grown up saturated in the concept of gene therapy, in genetics and biology on a macro level. She’d gone to school, top in her class, had taken every step she could to make her father proud. To honor her mother’s memory.

  But the extent of the Salem Project awed her
. And worried her. Field-stressing the subjects had a certain logic to it, but in the Mission?

  She didn’t like it.

  “What about the rest of fifty-four?” her father asked.

  “There are still some operatives in the field,” she added as a handful of photos scrolled across her reader. “Including Simon Wells.”

  “Wells.” Laurence’s face pulled into a dark frown. “Has he reported in?”

  Kayleigh straightened. “Recently. He’s still functioning, despite his wounds. He claims one hundred percent, but I’d put him at about eighty. The trauma he suffered during Mrs. Parrish’s antics might have been enough to trigger degeneration.”

  “Any signs?”

  “Not that are physically apparent. He’s less than inclined to work with us,” she added pointedly.

  Her father’s frown stitched deep lines into his mouth. “How was he? Did you examine him?”

  “No,” she admitted, bracing herself for the dismay, the disappointment, she saw in her father’s scowl. “He seems to be holding up remarkably well for his generation. He was mostly trying to make sure I didn’t ruin his Mission credentials, given the consequences of Operation Wayward Rose.”

  “That woman.” One gnarled hand slammed on the desk. “She will be the death of me.”

  “I hope not.”

  His thick eyebrows knitted into a solid furrow. “What is she doing? Is she still blocking us?”

  “Every chance she gets.” Kayleigh sighed. “Dad, Director Adams hasn’t done anything to impede our progress. Not really. Mrs. Parrish stuck her in the middle of a Sector Three problem because she got lazy. It’s not Director Adams’s fault. She’s just protecting her people, like you do for us.”

  He sat back, eyes flashing. “We’ll just see about that.”

  Kayleigh grimaced. Her dad’s temper flares weren’t good for his heart. “Settle down, Dad. I don’t want the doctor yelling at me at your next physical.”

  “Hmph. What about generation fifty-five?”

  She switched gears easily. “On a more positive note, we’ve only lost seven percent of fifty-five as of today’s reports. That’s better than the sixteen percent we’ve usually tracked by now.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows, craggy lines settling into his forehead. “The difference?”

  “A particular pattern of sequencers in the—”

  Laurence suddenly grinned, raising his twisted hand again to cut her off. “Just make sure it’s all in your report, or we’ll be here all night.”

  “Right.” They could spend hours on the subject, and every minute crept on past midnight. “It’s already in, and I’ll forward it to you right away.”

  “Good girl.”

  And now was as good a time as any for the real reason she’d come. As a knot in her stomach bubbled and frothed, her humor faded. “Now for the rest.”

  “Hm?” His eyes sharpened on her face, studied the arms she wrapped around the reader. “What’s wrong, Kayleigh?”

  Bracing her chin on the upper edge, she stared glumly at his folded hands, riddled with age spots. “The truth is . . . Dad, I don’t think I can crack the Eve sequence.”

  “Nonsense.”

  She sighed. “I’m serious. I’m dancing as fast as I can, but all I’m seeing is more and more subjects dropping off my lists. My simulators are all projecting catastrophic losses.” Her mouth twisted. “I’ve worked through seven generations in the system. First I lose them all by the time they hit fourteen, then I manage to isolate a sequence that keeps them going until thirty-five, but I can’t push it past that. Whatever Mom saw in the DNA, it’s beyond me.”

  “You’re doing the best you can.”

  No. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable. Her simulations were proof enough—her father’s project was a failure.

  But how could she say so? “I know they’re all lab subjects, but . . .” They’re human, too. Sympathy for the subjects wouldn’t earn her any points.

  She had to be logical. Reasonable. Objective.

  Laurence rose, not as gracefully as he once could and with a great deal more creaking in the joints. He circled the desk, his smile kind. Sympathetic. He knew the stakes as well as she did. “I understand,” he told her, and cupped her shoulders in his thin hands. Bending, he met her gaze, held it. “That’s why you have to keep working, sweetheart. Without you, without your brilliant mind, these subjects will keep dying.”

  “But if you stop the project—”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “We can’t do that,” he cut in sharply. His grip tightened on her shoulders. “Kayleigh, your mother and I, we spent our lives on this. My Mattie died before she could finish the single most important thing of her career. Sweetheart, you need to complete her formula. You’re the only one who can.”

  Her stomach hurt. It always did when she started considering the casualties. When she started considering the ethics.

  Not a word her dad took lightly.

  She looked down at her reader, arms tensing around its hard frame. “I’ll keep working on it,” she said quietly. “I just . . .” She just what? Didn’t want to be in charge?

  Didn’t want to know the numbers?

  Wasn’t her mother?

  She couldn’t do that. He’d put her in charge, his right-hand woman. She couldn’t let him down.

  He took her hands. His skin was cool, paper dry, but his grip was firm as he enfolded her fingers between his. “You’re every bit as brilliant as your mother,” he assured her gently. “Maybe even more so. You’ll crack the Eve sequence. And when you do, all our work will be worth it. A new dawn. I promise you.”

  Maybe. Kayleigh rose, shifting her reader to the crook of her arm, and squeezed his hands in return. “Okay, I’ll keep working. Now, please, Dad, go home. You’re already out past curfew, you know how the gate guard gets.”

  He let her go. “So are you, young lady.”

  True. She smiled at him as he turned, bracing one hand on the desk to walk around it and regain his seat. “Since you’re probably not going to leave anytime soon, is there anything I can get you?”

  He tapped the desk with his index finger. “Compile all of Simon Wells’s data and send it separately. I want all of his charts. Go back to his genetic compilation.”

  She raised an eyebrow, unconscious mimicry of his. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

  “Good girl. Now go home. Make sure I get that report. And, young lady?”

  She paused.

  “You get lots of rest.”

  Kayleigh nodded, tucking back a lock of her shoulder-length blond hair. Pictures of her parents assured her she took after her dad more than her mom. She sported his eyes, his hair color when he was younger.

  But Matilda Lauderdale’s determination lived on in Kayleigh, or so her dad often said. She had a habit of staying too long, working too late, on any project that captured her mind. Picking it apart, looking for the patterns.

  “I will,” she assured him and bent over the desk to drop a kiss on top of his head. “I feel fine.” Which was true. Tired, a little frazzled sometimes, which led to the occasional headache and eye strain. A little heartsick on the bad days.

  She was pretty sure she had an ulcer.

  But otherwise fine.

  “Sweet dreams, little girl.”

  “Night, Dad.” Because lecturing him about the same thing wouldn’t get her anywhere, Kayleigh departed his office. The door clicked shut behind her, and before she’d even made it out of the anteroom, she heard his voice again.

  “Change of plans.”

  Another call. Another late night. Who was he meeting with now?

  That was her dad, the director.

  She made a mental note to find him that specially designed mic before too long.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Parker clung to the back of the passenger seat because the handle over the window had long since broken off. Given Simon’s driving now, she could imagine how. “Where are you going?” she dema
nded.

  The streets whipped by in a rhythmic pattern of streetlamps and traffic lights. They’d made it out of the residential zone, but he wasn’t slowing. Deftly, Simon spun the steering wheel, taking a corner so hard the car shuddered. The tires shrieked wildly, rubber peeling against the smooth topside streets. “Somewhere to wait the night out,” he told her over the din.

  She twisted, stared through the back windshield. With the curfew zone cleared, more cars filled the streets, more lights in blue- and white-tinged pairs. “Who’s following us?”

  “Could be any number of people,” he replied, as nonchalant as ever. “Could be nothing.”

  She shot him a look he didn’t bother turning his head to see. “More of those witches?”

  “Possibly.” The lights they sped under pooled through the car, painting his body in mouth-watering edges of muscle and shadow. The man needed to put a shirt on.

  Preferably one not covered in blood.

  Parker turned, slamming her back into the seat, and glared out the side window. But she clung to the seat belt strapped over her chest. “If Sector Three sent them after me, this needs to be brought up to the Church,” she pointed out. “It’s illegal for them to pull an operation on another sector—”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” He still didn’t look at her, and though she knew he had to focus on the road, the lapse grated.

  She bit off her curt reply and angled for something cooler. “Explain it to me.”

  Simon’s smile flashed. “Yes, ma’am,” he drawled, in that patronizing way he had that also grated.

  Everything about this conspired to shred her patience.

  “Let me put it in plain terms.” He spun the wheel, taking another corner so fast that it slammed her against the restraining belt. She gasped.

  His hand flattened against her chest. Strong. Supportive.

  Right between her breasts.

  Parker’s teeth clicked together. She grabbed his wrist, threw his hand away from her as if it reeked of something foul.

  Another grin. Indolent as hell. “Anything happening now is so covert the bishop won’t know it’s going on. There’s going to be an internal shift in the Holy Order’s upper echelon. Bet on it.”