by Vikki Romano
He was nearly to the bedroom himself when he heard it, strong and clear above the din of the gunfire.
Sierra’s scream was like a rusty, serrated knife in his chest, and this time, without delay, he bared his teeth as the monster came roaring into his veins like a derailed freight train.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She couldn’t see out of her left eye, and blood threatened to blind the right. Her hands and ankles had been bound and she was being lugged like so much baggage over the shoulder of a very large man dressed in black fatigues who smelled of sweat and ozone blowback.
As she slowly regained some level of clarity, her mind raced to take in her surroundings. Panic settled in her chest as she realized her mouth had been taped, and her breathing instinctively became labored. Wide-eyed, she jerked her head up and scanned the darkness, but there was still no sign of Calder.
Screaming inside her mouth and flailing as best she could, she tried to dislodge herself from her captor, but the man was a brick wall. Her small, awkward frame was like a fresh-caught fish against his shoulder. When she managed to elbow him in the head, he finally reacted.
“Fucking bitch!” he exclaimed, tightening his grip. A few moments later, she was tossed into the back of a truck, and the man, still without a face in the darkness, sent her back into the void with a single punch.
Jordan hadn’t had time to complete his recalibration, but already Calder was noting the huge differences in his abilities. He could still feel the raging monster as it clung to him like a cloak, but this time, he hadn’t checked out. He was in control of his actions, and though he could feel pain, it was muted, buffered, and tolerable.
His speed and agility was incredible, almost too fast for him to adjust his own senses to. And those senses were heightened beyond any limit he could ever imagine. He could smell everything. He could hear everything. He could see everything. So much that it was overwhelming, and he blinked against the ruckus that it caused in his head as his human brain tried to process the inhuman cacophony of his surroundings.
And then he heard her again, muffled this time, but it was her. He turned immediately, his nose picking up her distinct scent, and then something more. A hammering, like someone pounding on a door, frenetic and out of control. He covered his ears for a moment as his feet took him toward the noise, and he realized, as his eyes focused across the expanse of the wooded area, that he was listening to Sierra’s heartbeat.
It stopped him in his tracks.
It was a sound so intimate, yet one that frightened him to the core. It was beating hard, too hard. She was panicked and he needed to get to her; he needed to get her back behind him. Back to safety.
He watched as a large man threw her into a waiting vehicle near the road. There were seven other men around him, all with enough weaponry to bring down a tank. As Calder moved toward them, the men turned and began firing. He could hear shouts and commands overlapping as he raced toward them.
Searing heat tore through his arm. He looked down to see that he had been shot. A deep wound near his shoulder, and just as quickly, the blood stopped flowing and the wound began to heal. Mesmerized, he stopped for a moment, staring down at himself. This could not be happening. How on earth could he be healing so quickly?
It was neither here nor there. Right now, he needed to get to Sierra.
Three men rushed him, one shooting him in the leg, but again, after the searing heat, the wound began to heal. The other two men tried to take him down, get his hands behind him, but they were a mere nuisance and he picked them each up in turn, flinging them across the wooded expanse until they landed with a sickening thud against a tree.
He spotted a sniper high above them, his legs looped around the lithe branch of an oak, and as Calder dodged the man’s bullets, he raced forward, leaped, and climbed into the tree as if he were born to do it, his hands grasping at branches as he climbed higher. Once he had reached the sniper, he snapped his neck before the man could even turn to react.
And then he heard the rumble of a motor and his gaze snapped back toward the vehicle. He focused, saw Sierra there in a heap, and jumped the thirty feet to the ground as the military vehicle pulled out onto the road.
His legs pumped, carrying him closer, but the vehicle sped up and gained ground. Before he could reach them, they were gone. All he could see were taillights disappearing down the road.
Calder roared, his fists clenching at his sides.
They had taken her. Why her and not him?
“Take me!” he screamed into the night, and then fell to his knees, raging into the blacktop.
Distant fire still echoed behind him and, shuddering, he got to his feet, blinked, and realized that Jimmy and Jordan were still back at the cabin.
He hoped they had made it to the bunker.
They needed his help.
Looking back down the road toward where the vehicle had taken Sierra, he swallowed back the pain building in his chest then took off toward the cabin. Seeing through the darkness as though it was daylight, he snapped one man’s neck then deftly took his rifle as it flew from his hands, and shot two more men as he continued forward.
He had been hit several times, in the leg, in the back, and though the pain remained dull, the damage was beginning to drain him. Slow him down.
He dove behind a tree as a pulse arced off it, sending bark fragments through the air around him. He had to get to that bunker and he had to go through the cabin to get there. If he used the entrance in the woods, they would see him and their cover would be blown.
He looked down at the rifle in his hand. The LEDs were waning; it didn’t have many shots left and there was a huge gap between him and the cabin door. At least fifty yards.
It didn’t matter. He had to go for it.
Nodding to himself, he pushed off the tree and ran at top speed toward the door. Bullets hit him randomly, the pain becoming more intense as his adrenaline depleted. He’d have to break down the door.
His shoulder met with the heavy steel frame and it creased, but didn’t give way. Throwing the rifle down, he braced himself against the door and pushed. It bowed, creaked loudly, and just as it was about to give way, he heard commotion behind him and then a white-hot pain shot up his spine.
His vision became cloudy, then bright white, and he reached down to pull the large dart from his thigh.
“DeAngelo!” he heard himself bellow as he pounded against the door, and as he began losing consciousness, he heard Jimmy’s voice.
“Hold on, man, we’re coming for you!” Jimmy shouted.
There was more gunfire. Smoke. His eyes burned and then he was being dragged.
His body was being jostled and bounced off the hard ground and he could do nothing. Just as he was helpless against the monster, now he was helpless against everything. He could feel everything happening, every inch of damage, and it ached horribly. His hearing became muffled as if through a broken speaker. And he couldn’t see. The blinding white had gone to black. And he couldn’t move. He was like a limp doll.
But nothing was more painful than knowing they had taken Sierra and he could do nothing to stop or save her. With all his amped-up abilities, he had failed her, and she could very well be dead now. He had listened to her heart hammer in her chest, but that hammering faded.
Was her heart still beating?
Rough hands gripped him under his arms, had him by his knees. A moan escaped his dry lips as he was forcibly rolled over something hard, and he fell in a heap against something even harder.
What were they going to do to him?
He didn’t care. If Sierra was dead, he had no urge to stay alive.
They could do whatever they wanted.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Calder came awake in a clouded rage, his body tensing and immediately coming to a defensive crouch. He fought against the hands that tried to control him until he realized the voice he was hearing was familiar.
Dazed, he stumbled backward, pulling several items off a shelf as he fell backward, cans and boxes spilling around him.
“Whoa, it’s OK…” Jimmy said, holding his hands up in surrender, trying to calm him.
Calder’s heart pounded in his chest, so hard that he could actually see it hammering against the fabric of the tee that clung to his sweat- and blood-covered chest.
“What the fuck?” he said, before taking a quick inventory of his body parts, noting pain just about everywhere.
Then he looked around.
He was in the bunker. Why the fuck was he in the bunker?
Sierra…
Without delay he pushed to his feet, but pain shot through his leg, his knee buckling. Jimmy caught him by the arm and moved him to a small wooden bench, but Calder pushed back, trying to get around him.
“I need to get out of here. They have Sierra!”
Jimmy grumbled and forced him back to the bench.
“I don’t care what they have, you can’t go out there. You can barely fucking walk as it is.”
“They’re going to kill her. Let me go!” Calder cringed against the stabbing pain and got to his feet again, struggling to get to the lift to topside. He would not allow her to be another casualty in his life.
“Calder, stop! I need to calibrate you at the very least. You’re a walking time bomb the way you are. You’re out of control,” Jordan said, grabbing his sleeve, but Calder ripped it out of his hand.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he growled, leaning into the young man’s face. “I need to get her back. There is no time to fuck around with this.” He gestured to his head with a pointed glare.
Jordan blanched, but Jimmy stepped between them.
“You’re going to get us killed,” Jimmy barked, shoving Calder by the shoulder. “Sit your ass down, let him calibrate you, and then we’ll make a plan to get her back.”
“There is no plan. The plan is me getting out of here and finding her. You know what they’ll do to her,” Calder said, his own words falling like stone in his stomach. They would torture her. Damn it, they would augment her. The thought made him retch.
Why the hell had she come looking for him? And alone? My God, she had come alone to save him. Why? She knew better than that. Jesus, if something happened to her…
“You won’t be able to help her in the shape you’re in!” Jimmy shouted, breaking him away from his thoughts of self-destruction. “Sit your ass down and let Jordan fix you.”
“Fix me? There’s no fixing me! This is as good as it gets!”
“OK, OK,” Jimmy said, shoving him toward the bench. “Yeah, we know you’re fucked up, but I don’t plan on dying here today, so either you shut the fuck up and let him fix you or I shoot your ass so full of darts that you don’t wake up for a month. Your call.”
The muscle in Calder’s jaw twitched as he gritted his teeth, but grudgingly, he sat.
“I promise you, after this is done, you’ll be able to control it. Just trust me,” Jordan said, pulling up a stool next to him.
Calder let out a disgruntled chuckle.
“Oh, trust you? You mean after you cranked up my brain and alerted them all to the fact that I was here in the fucking first place?”
“McKenna…” Jimmy said with a sigh, shaking his head. “Give it a rest.”
Jordan looked over his shoulder and gave Jimmy a look that Calder didn’t appreciate, but he laid his right arm across his thigh, palm up, as instructed. The grid under his skin pulsed, the digits still reading zero.
“I’ll try to fix that, too, but one thing at a time,” Jordan said, running a hand over the grid, his fingers smooth against Calder’s wrist. Yeah, he was definitely a code writer. His fingers hadn’t seen anything but keyboards his entire life. Nothing rough about them.
“Just do it so I can get out of here,” Calder growled, shifting anxiously on the bench.
Jordan pulled a small box out of his pocket, opened the lid, and produced three discs that he attached to Calder--one at the back of his head where his augment was, one above the fading grid on his wrist, and one slightly left of the scar near his sternum…near his heart.
“OK, first, since it’s the least painful,” Jordan said with a grimace, and lowered his gaze when Calder growled back at him again, “I’ll adjust your vision. I’ll ask some questions while I do this to make sure the calibration is correct.”
“Fine,” Calder said, clenching his left knee with his other hand. The disc at the back of his head began to tingle, and then the contrast of his vision increased exponentially.
Calder flinched and blinked rapidly.
“Clarity adjustment,” Jordan said as he noted Calder’s responding eye twitches. “Look at Jimmy and tell me when he is in focus.”
Calder turned his head and looked at Jimmy. The edges around Jimmy’s face were still fuzzy, so he gestured with his fingers to turn it up and kept twitching his fingers until everything was crisp and clean, and then he gave another gesture to stop.
“OK, Jimmy, can you shut off the lights? I have to adjust his infra-vision,” Jordan said.
“This bastard can see in the dark, too?” Jimmy asked as he moved across to the light panel, then glared at Calder before flipping the switch.
Calder shook his head and, having used the infra-vision just recently, wasn’t at all surprised when his sight switched to a crisp black and gray hue, as though he was watching an old movie, although it was a bit dark.
“That’s not all,” Jordan said as he typed in another code on his screen. Calder’s vision began to change.
“Holy shit…” The words came out of him in a whisper. Jordan and Jimmy began to glow a deep orange. Parts of their body were highlighted in gold. “Spectral?”
“Yup, you’ll be able to pick up heat signatures and…” Jordan’s fingers moved again, and slowly Calder began seeing faint lines appear around the room in red. “Energy fields, some magnetics.”
Calder gasped. “Fuck me, I can see the power lines in the walls.”
“You’ll have to practice with it, train your focus for what you need,” Jordan said, and then walked across the room with his hand out, found the switch, and turned the light back on. “You’ll also see that the system adjusts instantly, so you won’t be blinded if someone does something like that.”
“Good to know,” Calder said, looking around the room, focusing his eyes on several items.
“OK, for this last bit you’ll need to prepare yourself. It isn’t painless.”
Calder scowled as he let out a breath, and cracked his neck slowly, deliberately.
Jordan blew out a breath of his own and blotted his forehead on his t-shirt as he mumbled what sounded like prayers.
“You may need to move back,” he said, glancing slowly up at Jimmy, who gave him an incredulous look, but stepped back to watch the proceedings from across the room with his arms crossed over his chest.
“You’re going to start to feel strange. Hot. Maybe a bit achy. If it becomes unbearable, give me the word and I’ll stop.”
Calder nodded sharply and blew out a breath, leaning forward to grip the bench on each side of his knees. The tingle started as it had before, but then he felt it. The heat. Gnawing like insects through his veins. Panic set in instantly. It bloomed like a poisoned flower in his chest, bursting outward in a slow, hot crawl.
Calder blew out a calculated breath, eyeing Jordan as he continued to type into the small keypad. The heat was starting to accelerate, prickling his skin, setting his scalp on fire. Closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth and tried to remain calm, but it became an effort. The heat turned to ice, sending shards of pain through every joint, every wound, making his fingertips and toes ache with pins and needles.
Opening his eyes, he swallowed hard, panting, trying to contain the fire. His vision became crisp, clear, and focused. The color and light saturation intensified, and then, just as suddenly, everything narrowed as if he
was stepping into a tunnel.
Blowing out quick breaths, he threw his head back, trying to get through the pain. He was so close to signaling for Jordan to stop, gripping the bench so tight, afraid to let go. Afraid that if he did, his body would release itself and the monster would come out. Not a good idea in a confined area like this. He seriously did not want to black out, only to come to and find Jimmy and Jordan in bloody pieces around him.
Sweat prickled his forehead and lip, and Jordan glanced up at him.
“You doing OK?” he asked, his fingers hovering at his keypad.
Calder closed his eyes momentarily, let out a few more breaths, and nodded curtly. His throat was clenched, his mouth dry. Speech was a fleeting thought.
He had lived through pain before. It was something he was trained to do, but this was beyond any pain he had ever endured. It was all-consuming, touched every inch of his body, and it was maddening, but it would be nothing compared to the pain he would endure if Sierra died. Nothing. And he was willing to endure it all if it meant finding and saving her.
“Just a little more. We’ll be done soon,” Jordan said, and Jimmy stirred behind him, starting to move forward, a look of trepidation etched on his face. And fear.
Why did Calder see fear in Jimmy’s eyes?
Before he could even react, his body began to explode with spasms and he moaned through clenched teeth, bearing down, gripping the bench until he could hear the wood start to crack beneath his fingers.
Gasping, he watched as the muscles in his forearms pulsed and expanded, grew as he looked on in horror. It traveled up his arm to his biceps. They clenched and stiffened, their definition becoming more exaggerated. More pronounced. It was excruciating, and now the pain was beyond unbearable.
Throwing his head back, he cried out and could hear Jimmy’s echoed demand for Jordan to stop, voice muffled through the pulse of blood in Calder’s ears.
And then, like a switch, it stopped.
Panting, drenched in sweat, he looked up at Jordan, Jimmy’s eyes wide behind him.
