Disruptor

by Sonya Clark

  On the edge of losing her nerve, she blurted out, “Into every generation…”

  Kevin rolled his eyes and turned to leave. She grabbed his arm to stop him. “I was sold to a lab.”

  Mouth open, brow furrowed, he stared as if he hadn’t understood.

  Dani swallowed the last of her hesitation. “I was used as a lab rat. Experimented on. Some stuff didn’t work, and some things…did. They changed me. A lot of gene therapy, to make me stronger, faster. They put things in me. Implants. My hearing, my vision. A neural interface.”

  He continued to stare, and she wondered if anything she’d said had made sense to him. “I was there for five years before I escaped.”

  “You’re not a slayer,” he said. “You’re the thirty million dollar woman.”

  “Huh?”

  “Six million in the mid-seventies, adjusted for inflation.” He rubbed his jaw. “What’s a neural interface?”

  Dani paused. She’d done it. She’d told him. Told someone. It felt…for the first time since she’d escaped, she felt truly free, standing in front of someone as herself. She smiled. “Tell me your Wi-Fi password, and I’ll show you.”

  “What’ll you show me if I give you my ATM pin number?”

  “How about I show you how hard I can punch?” Were they flirting? She’d done so little of that, she wasn’t sure. She just knew she liked the sunlit, weightless feeling it gave her.

  He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, you can’t be mad at me for trying. Not only are you hot, but you’re a superhero? I had to hit on you at least once.”

  A jumble of emotions cascaded through Dani. Pleasure that he found her attractive. Unexpected disappointment that he might only flirt with her this one time. And finally shock at the word he’d used – superhero. There was nothing heroic about her at all. The voice that haunted her nightmares would be there to remind her of that every time she slept.

  Chapter 18

  It made sense. It was crazy, but somehow it made sense. Kevin had no trouble believing Dani. Maybe that meant he was just as nuts as her claims of being a genetically enhanced superhero, but the way scientific advancements were rushing headlong into the future at a speed most people couldn’t comprehend, it just didn’t surprise him. Sean wasn’t the only one in the family who read Moynihan Consolidated investment reports. Just because Kevin didn’t want a corner office and a long-winded title didn’t mean he wasn’t curious about what the company his family had built was involved with. Some of the work being done in the Applied Sciences division was truly remarkable.

  But none of it could hold a candle to this. He watched in silence as Dani sat motionless, her eyes half closed, face drawn tight in concentration. Every few seconds he flicked his gaze to his laptop to check the progress on the download. The circular icon advanced slowly, as if downloading a large zip file. With her neural interface, which he wanted to know absolutely everything about, and the five megapixel camera in one eye, she’d taken a photo of the Russian mobster who liked to use a stun gun. Now she was downloading the photo to his laptop. With her brain.

  Holy shit.

  The circle flashed green then settled, indicating the download was complete. Dani remained still for a moment, then slumped back against the sofa cushions. She pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes, the color drained from her face.

  Kevin said, “What do you need?”

  “Rest for a few minutes,” she said. “Maybe some orange juice and a snack.”

  “Does it mess with your blood sugar?”

  “It just takes a lot of energy, and I was tired already.” She dropped her hands and sat up a little straighter. “They were working on improving the download technique to make it easier, but I left.”

  A thin line of red leaked from her nose. “You’re bleeding,” he called out as he rushed to the bathroom. When he returned with a handful of tissues, Dani was sitting with her head back again, right hand at her nose and smeared with blood.

  She held a tissue to her nose with her left hand while he cleaned the right. “Sorry about the mess.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Don’t be absurd. Are you okay? Do I need to get you a doctor?”

  “No! No, I’m fine. This happens sometimes with downloading. Like I said, they were still working on perfecting the process. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” She folded the tissue again, swiped it at her nose and held it up. “See, it’s already stopped. No big deal. I could go for that snack, though.”

  Kevin nodded, unsure of what to say. So instead of speaking he rose and went to the kitchen. She needed a snack, so he’d get her one. Several minutes later he returned with a tray piled high with a sandwich, sliced apples, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of Greek yogurt.

  Dani smiled weakly. “Dude, I asked for a snack, not a meal.”

  He arranged the food on the coffee table then brought his laptop over and sat next to her. “I just wanted to make sure you got enough to eat.” He opened the photo of the Russian. It was taken at night but still a good shot of his face. “I can try an image search but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of learning anything that way. The press is pretty circumspect about what they print on organized crime. They have to be, unless someone is arrested. Then it’s a matter of public record.”

  “So if he’s been arrested, you should be able to get me a name?” Dani scooted forward on the couch, picked up the sandwich and took a bite. “This is good, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Kevin copied the photo then cropped it to focus on the Russian’s face. Next he uploaded it to the internet and ran an image search. It came back with some hits with similar faces, but no match. “Either he’s never been arrested, or it was kept out of the news.”

  “If I can’t find the girls, I need to find him before he finds them.” She downed half the glass then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I need to get back out there tonight.”

  Tension spread rapidly through Kevin’s neck and shoulders. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

  “I need some sleep. Then I’ll be fine.” She picked up an apple slice and crunched it. “I need you to find out everything you can about the Russian mobsters here. Who they are, where they hang out, what they’re into.” She used another apple slice to point at the laptop screen. “Anything you can find out about this son of a bitch.”

  “What are you going to do if you find him?”

  Dani kept her eyes on the screen. “Make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

  Kevin closed the laptop then set it aside. “What does that mean?”

  “What do you think it means?” She still wouldn’t look at him.

  “I know you want to save those girls.”

  “It’s not just them,” Dani said. “I can guarantee, that’s not the first time he’s killed. He’ll keep doing it, until somebody stops him.” She launched from the sofa, a coil of unreleased energy, and paced in front of the glass wall overlooking the city.

  Kevin followed her, leaning against the cool glass with his arms crossed over his chest. “I understand self-defense. Defending others. But what you’re talking about.” He stopped short, not sure how far he wanted to push this conversation. How far he wanted to push her.

  Dani paused in her restless back and forth. “What I’m talking about is protecting women. Those traffickers, they don’t even think we’re human. The women they buy and sell, they’re nothing but property. Like you buying a new car. Shit, they treat their fucking cars better than they treat the women they sell.”

  “I know they’re bad guys, Dani. I just don’t think you want to be a bad guy, too.”

  “You think I’m a bad guy because I want to stop a killer and a sex slaver? How the hell do you figure that?” Unspent violence radiated through every line of her body.

  If she was as strong as she claimed, she could easily hurt him. He really wanted to back down but more was at stake tha
n his physical safety. “There’s a right way to do things and a wrong way. Murder is wrong.”

  “So because I killed some of those bastards, you think I’m as bad as they are?” Hurt simmered beneath the anger in her voice.

  “No, that’s not what I think at all. You did what you had to do, to give those girls a chance to escape, and to save yourself. But maybe you could find another way now.”

  She exhaled slowly, nostrils flaring, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “Okay. Okay, let’s hear some ideas. How do I convince the cops these girls are worth looking for? If I get lucky and find a cop who isn’t on somebody’s payroll. How do I do it without admitting what I did?” She shook her head. “Because no way in hell am I going to jail. For one thing, the people at the lab, they’ll find me in a matter of hours if I’m fingerprinted. Then they’ll come get me, and I won’t go back there.”

  “I want you to be free.” Kevin considered reaching out to her, just a light touch of comfort, but he was afraid she would snap if he so much as breathed the wrong way. “I want you to help those girls. But I don’t want you to do it in a way that costs you your soul.”

  She replied with a bark of acidic laughter. “What are you, a priest?”

  “I’m someone who cares about you.” The words slipped out before he could stop himself. But hell, it was the truth. No sense in denying it. “You feel like you can’t walk away from this, okay. I just want you to still be whole when it’s over.”

  Dani stared at him in disbelief. “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you want to help people.”

  “That doesn’t mean you know me.” Anger burned in her voice, and something he couldn’t identify. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means everything, Dani.” He raised his hands, wishing he could capture the swirl of thoughts running riot in his head and force them into something that made sense. “I don’t believe you’re a murderer.” Not in her heart. That might not matter to the law, but it mattered to him.

  She turned away from him. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I just want us to try to find another way to stop him from killing anyone else. I don’t have an answer right now but I know we can come up with one.”

  For nearly a full minute she was silent. When she finally spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper, and cold. So cold.

  “Intelligence gathering,” she said. “Infiltration. Exfiltration. Hand to hand combat. Guns, knives, anything I can get my hands on. I know how to kill a person with a ballpoint pen.” With her back still to him, she turned her head so he could see her profile. “I’m a weapon, Kevin. It’s what they made me, in that lab.”

  His heart hammered, but the fear he felt wasn’t for himself. It was for her. “A person’s never just one thing. Believe me, I know.”

  “I don’t know how to be anything else.” She turned to look out the window. “It wasn’t the only thing people were enhanced for at the lab. There were tests to see what we’d be best at. Guess I made an A plus on Killing Machine.”

  “Is that why you escaped?”

  “I was going to be sent on a mission.” She shook her head. “I never volunteered for any of it.”

  He moved close enough to feel the heat from her body. “Use what they taught you, the enhancements they gave you, to help those girls.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “On your own terms.”

  Dani leaned her head against the glass, her hair tumbling around her face. She gave him a halfhearted grin. “What the hell are my terms?”

  He returned the smile, relief pouring through him. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m always right. I’m too good looking to ever be wrong.” That turned her halfhearted grin into a smile that almost reached her eyes. A flush of accomplishment further buoyed him. She would be okay. She had to be.

  “I need some sleep,” she said. “My head is pounding after that download.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna catch a few hours then I’ll see what I can turn up about the local Russian mob.”

  But he was still awake when the sun rose, alone in his art studio watching the dawn light filter through the wide slats of the blinds. Charcoal stained his fingers and discarded papers littered the floor. On the easel hung a portrait of Dani that he was finally satisfied with after hours of trying to get her eyes right. Every other feature had fallen into place easily enough, but the difficulty with her eyes had left his hand aching and black streaks all over his clothes and his face. Now, he stood back and regarded his work, and the reason for his difficulty came to him.

  He’d wanted to draw her as he wished to see her – free, open, her own person. But that wasn’t the truth, and the truth that stared back at him from lines and whorls of charcoal made his heart ache for her. Her eyes carried the weight of it. She looked like she’d already given up.

  Chapter 19

  Kevin kept his bloodshot eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses and an insouciant smile pasted on his face as he made his way through the top executive floor of Moynihan Consolidated. People he barely recognized either got out of his way or offered an obsequious greeting. He ignored both. He had an informal agreement with Sean to attend board meetings and make an appearance on the executive floor once a month. It was that time of the month and if it wouldn’t get him a punch to the arm, he would have texted Olivia and joked about desperately needing chocolate. She was the lucky sibling. She only had to attend board meetings if her schedule permitted it, and she didn’t have to make the monthly visit at all.

  But then, she had an actual career, as both siblings would remind Kevin if he dared complain.

  He reached the office suite with his name and no title on the door. Priyanka Murphy sat at her desk in the outer office, furiously typing away. Her heavy black hair was tamed into a tidy updo. She wore a conservative skirt suit in dark blue that contrasted perfectly with her tawny skin. The picture of professionalism, and she was probably writing porn.

  “Good morning, Ms. Murphy.” Kevin swooped in and sat on the corner of her desk. “Whatcha writing?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Moynihan.” She kept her gaze trained on the screen, fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’m branching out into a new genre.”

  He picked through the odds and ends on her desk. She always kept gum around and he wanted the taste of that food truck chili dog he’d had for lunch out of his mouth. “Got any gum?”

  Priyanka moved the mouse, clicked once, and sat back, eyeing the document with satisfaction. “Space opera.” She opened a drawer and withdrew a pack of gum then tossed it to him. “Earth is still struggling to get along with the first alien species they’ve met. The main character is a diplomat sent to learn their ways.”

  “Do their ways include a lot of sex?” He unwrapped a stick of gum and chewed it.

  “Duh. The aliens only have sex in threesomes. The alien diplomat is a dude. And his head of security that he sometimes bones with is a woman.”

  “What’s the human?”

  “A guy. Previously very straight, but once he gets some of that alien anal, he’s gonna be as bi as you.”

  Kevin laughed so hard he almost spit out his gum. “Damn, girl, don’t say that too loud. That’s not a talk I ever want to have with my brother.” It felt good to laugh so hard and so freely, even if it did cause his sore ribs to twinge.

  “He’s busy yelling at a VP. So did you have any plans for this month or would you like to beta read some smut for me?”

  A year ago Sean had ordered his assistant, Mrs. Li, to find someone in the secretarial pool to work for Kevin. Even if the youngest Moynihan never took on a real position in the company, he needed information pertaining to board meetings. And if his new assistant being young and beautiful got Kevin into the office more often, Sean would be happy about that, too. Kevin and Priyanka enjoyed a casual friendship and had never once considered dating.

  “You know I want to beta read any
smut you want to write,” Kevin said. “But first, I did have something in mind for today.”

  She closed the alien smut on her computer and stood. “Want some coffee?”

  “God, yes.”

  Ten minutes later they sat at his empty desk, both with cups of steaming coffee and a notepad open in Priyanka’s lap. She said, “You hired a what?”

  “A trainer. So I can learn self-defense.” Kevin grinned. “Apparently an Irish temper isn’t enough to win a fight when you’re up against half a dozen or more guys.”

  Priyanka rolled her eyes. “Please. Everyone knows your brother got the Irish temper.”

  “And I got the Irish charm.”

  “Why not just hire a bodyguard?”

  “I don’t want someone all up in my business every time I leave the house.”

  “You could hire a hot, sexy bodyguard and have a torrid affair with him.”

  “Nah.”

  “You could hire a hot, sexy bodyguard and I could have a torrid affair with him.”

  “I promise if I ever feel the need to hire a bodyguard that he’ll be both hot and sexy, and you’ll get first dibs.”

  “You’re the best boss.”

  “What I need right now is equipment.”

  “This is the part where I stop with the jokes and start taking notes, right?”

  Kevin sipped his coffee. “I’m going to need some new stuff in my home gym.”

  Priyanka picked up her pen and notepad. “Has the trainer given you a list?”

  An image came to mind, of Dani in a tank top. The luscious curves of a woman’s breasts and hips deserved to be celebrated, and she had plenty to celebrate in that department. But it was the rise and fall of muscle, the leashed power that made her skin seem to glow and her body move with a graceful lightness, that constantly drew his attention. She radiated dynamic energy, and a fluid strength that had nothing to do with her enhanced physical abilities and everything to do with her heart. He knew if pressed she would deny those things. The eyes he’d had so much trouble capturing in charcoal last night were the only part of her that held darkness. Dani didn’t believe in herself, and she didn’t know what to do with herself, either. She’d had so much taken away from her, it was like she couldn’t conceive of being the author of her own story.