Ripped Open (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 2)

by P. S. Power

  While the idea didn’t thrill her anymore, she could see it as valid still. Everyone else needed to learn that there were some things you didn’t do. Like betray her. The IPB was her group now, so that meant the young ladies were going against her. That was a poor plan.

  Still, given what she’d picked up, chances were that Marcia would let them go with no more than a slap on the wrist. Not because she wanted to, getting the right idea herself. No, it was simply that she had to cater to everyone else and killing the kids might not go over well with the rest of them. Soft and pathetic as so many of them were in that way.

  Even Brian was probably like that. Karen… That wasn’t even a question. The woman couldn’t help it, which made her even worse than most that way. Hobbs wouldn’t put up with that kind of betrayal though. Neither would Olga.

  Denis and Kerry were kind of soft that way, but they might not be needed for anything. Not just to get at two girls. Especially if they kept Sinclair drugged so she couldn’t run. Then, after saving her from being raped several times a day, she might just fall back into line pretty easily. Cindy didn’t speak any of this out loud. She just walked, and let herself be led into the dining room, where a full, and rather nice, Christmas dinner was being served.

  The evening after that went fairly smoothly. Not everyone was thrilled with the day itself, but Sara was happy enough. People were paying attention to her, and had given her enough things that Bridget’s nifty plan hadn’t actually been needed.

  Really, the kid had made kind of a haul, since about a third of the operatives really had gotten her things. Her little room, which was in the same building that Cindy lived in, was going to be pretty full from it all. That she didn’t live with Rachel Chambers seemed like a mistake at first, given how young she was, until she read up on the idea from Sara herself.

  That changed her mind pretty quickly.

  Her entire life had been about being hated and abused. Even being molested and raped by Brent Mophrey, the kid hadn’t really thought of it as being bad or anything. To her it was simply attention. A thing that had been in short supply in her world. It didn’t even come with a beating, just being cuddled. Too much so, but she really didn’t have a lot of context for that kind of thing. No one had ever loved her enough to actually ask if she were being touched in her bathing suit area. Especially after she’d taken to looking like a giant green ogre most of the time. An orc, if a female one.

  Then she’d only gotten negative attention. So much of that she refused, for a long time to trust anyone enough to turn back into a real kid anymore. Except for the man that had been raping her. To her that had been loving and gentle. Accepting. She’d trusted no one more than him for a long time. Then Mophrey had vanished one day.

  Sara hadn’t really figured that part out yet, and no one had told her what had happened, or even mentioned her being abused. That was so Christmas wouldn’t be ruined. Still, Cindy was glad that it wasn’t her responsibility to explain things to her. It wouldn’t be her problem at all, until the girl worked out whose name was on the Death Warrant.

  Then there might well be a beating at the hands of a giant green woman.

  Because, young as she was, Sara was also a being with power, and that meant that people had to take her seriously. Cindy did already. Even pretending the little girl couldn’t kill her was insane. The kind that people wouldn’t survive if they weren’t careful.

  It wasn’t happening that night however, though it was a thing to look out for. That meant checking various people each day, to see what they had in the works as far as things with Sara went. Not that there would be real fallout for that, but there might be. Bridget hated everyone that had tried to kill her father for raping her, after all. Sure, that one was false, and she’d been right the whole time, telling them what the facts were, but it was illustrative.

  The big difference there was that Cindy probably wouldn’t be able to survive having an arm pulled off like Bridget had done to Lauren. That was a thing to avoid, in her book. Possibly in a literal fashion. Probably not, since seven was still a child, but underestimating people could get you killed. It was basically how she’d done it to all those men.

  That night she was back in her room early, and unlike the night before, there didn’t seem to be any emergencies to keep her awake. Thankfully. That meant she was up by six, got a run and some meditation in with Hobbs, as well as fighting practice, and was in the office by ten. That probably seemed a bit late to Marcia, but the woman didn’t call her on it. Normally she tried to be there at nine.

  The next few hours were all about calling for a limo driver. That part took some effort, but on the fourth call, talking to a woman that really didn’t want to be in the office the day after a holiday, who was more than a bit hung over, she managed to find the right man. Speaking with the secretary was enough to get her links to all the drivers. One of them, Janos, looked right and even remembered the girls.

  He wasn’t in the office, or on call that day, but she didn’t need to talk to him really. Just find the right man. Then, carefully, she copied the directions and printed out a map to the underground bunker that held the girls. After that… Well, then she didn’t have a plan, to be honest. Instead of waiting to work out how to get things done, she took the notes and the map she had directly to the boss.

  The woman looked up at her, and actually smiled when she did it.

  “I didn’t expect anyone to be working today other than me and June.” The words over her head told the story about how she didn’t really count, since the woman wasn’t real. Just a projection of their teddy bear friend. It didn’t seem like it was the case, but it honestly was.

  If Cin tried to read June, she’d get Rigs brain, and have to dig for the data in his story. Basically it meant that Rigs was working all the time, on some level or another. That might not be fair, but the man honestly didn’t have to put a lot of conscious effort into having his friends do things.

  She shrugged.

  “I had a project? Finding Phoebe and Sinclair? They’re being held in an underground bunker. Which, yes, sounds familiar. Don’t worry, they were betraying us when they were betrayed back, so they kind of deserve that part. I have the location? Not a lot of data on things. There are at least six people there, since they’ve been raping Sinclair, so she managed to get a count. Not violently, since she’s drugged enough she can’t really resist. There could be women there, or men that refuse to do that. If she managed to count correctly. Unfortunately, they’ve been more careful with Phoebe, so I can’t just jump from one of them to the other for that.”

  Marcia looked at her for a while, and then took a deep breath.

  “Let me see the paperwork on it?”

  After a while, first checking the map, then the rather careful notes, she nodded.

  “Learning to shoot is a good plan. I’ll set that up. You don’t have any more data about the people inside? You got it last time?” She was suspicious about that, since Cindy might be trying to mess with her. That, or get other people killed.

  “I haven’t been able to find anything so far. What I was thinking… Well, I know that she’ll hate it, but if Christian could get the location for them out of my mind, since I can get her to them, then it might be possible for her to read the others in the place? Like I said, that probably won’t go over all that well with her. Not that we’ve been hanging out for me to learn that.” It seemed right, from what everyone was saying.

  “Ah. Try and email her on that?” The woman was going to explain that Chris wasn’t evil or anything, she just didn’t like being around other people for very long. About two minutes.

  Fortunately, she didn’t instantly read minds over email, so things could be set up that way, and she could get the info from Cindy without them having to meet. Physical proximity was the real key to her first mode, it seemed. At least Marcia seemed to think it was. Given that it probably wouldn’t harm anything to try that first, she just nodded.

  “Sure? I’l
l do that now and see what we can find. Fingers crossed and all that.” Before she could leave, Turner nodded at her.

  “Nice work, yesterday. Now this. Which is dark as fuck, having to go after our own people like this. Still, it could be the break we’ve needed. Can you work with Lancaster, do you think? Medical says yes, but just because you don’t have the psycho gene turned up to eleven, that doesn’t mean you’re up to playing nicely with the man. Hate can linger.” She said that part as if she’d had a lot of experience with it.

  “Um… It didn’t really work that way for me. In a lot of ways the biggest danger would be in me sleeping with him now, I think. Given that he’s been warned off by you, I’m pretty certain that would lead to me being shot well before I got lucky, if I tried. So… Sure? Why?”

  There was a shrug, the tan fatigue top moving enough that it was plain to see that she was a woman under it. That left Cin feeling a tiny bit jealous, though not enough to worry over. A lot of women were bigger than she was, in a lot of ways. It was why she needed to pal around with Impulse more. The incredibly small woman left her feeling very adult in some ways.

  “He’s in charge of the investigation. We should have had you on it as well, but the situation was what it was. Now, if we can handle that, we should. Get with Poures and see if anything can be worked out. If not, we still have to go in, but I’ll take any bit of data we can first.”

  Cin nodded and got her butt out of the office while there was still praise in the air. The more of that she could come up with, the better off things would be in the future. Even if she eventually left, for a different job, or to retire, things would be happier if she was well liked. Not that they were going to let her go too easily now. That didn’t mean she had to live there forever. She got paid and could drive a car. Eventually hers was supposed to be brought to her there. Actually, when she checked, it was clear that it already had been, and was simply put away in the motor pool building. Toward the back, where it would be harder for her to find.

  Because that was what would keep her from leaving when the time came. The lack of her automobile. Cindy didn’t know how to hotwire or steal a car yet, but she had to imagine that reading up on it wouldn’t be that hard for her to do. Why, there were probably people at the base that knew how to do that very thing. In fact, the data coming up easily, without her actually looking for it, Cin found what she needed right there in Marcia Turner’s story. That got her to blink. Not because the woman had mad skills in things that she might not have expected, but that it all came to her so easily now. It was probably due to practice, but it hadn’t been like that even three months before.

  It meant she was going to have to be careful with some people, if she didn’t want to bug them too much. For instance, the woman she was trying to get in touch with at the moment. Just thinking about Christian meant that her story kept trying to pull into focus. She fought against that, but had to doubt that she was being successful enough for the woman not to notice.

  It only took a few minutes for her to explain in writing what was needed, and then she hit send, cleared her mind, and brought up Phoebe’s story, in the hopes that just being linked that way would get Chris in the right mental place to look around.

  If it was working there was no indication of things happening. Worse, Phoebe was kind of boring, as far as people went. That made it hard to read all about her for any length of time. Her life was frightening in the moment, but she mainly just sat in a darkened cell all the time, on a single mattress. The only time things changed were when meals came, or someone needed to be healed. That didn’t happen often.

  She had water to drink, from a single tap in the wall, but it was designed like a water fountain, so that it couldn’t be left on. There was also a toilet, but it seemed to be the composting type, making it less useful to the kid. If it had been connected to plumbing, she might have been able to cause it to spring a leak, and then get the captors to come inside.

  Not that she was fighting her way out. Even using her powers wasn’t that effective for such things. She’d have to kiss, or have sex with, whoever she was trying to attack for that to work. Oddly enough, even the rather foolish seeming captors there probably wouldn’t have been willing to make out with the foul mouthed girl like that. Not while she was escaping. Possibly in the shower, if they ever let her have one. At the moment she smelled bad enough that no one would probably want to be that close to her.

  On top of it all, the girl was depressed and felt helpless. Mainly due to the fact that she didn’t have any way out. Even killing herself would be hard at the moment.

  Suddenly, without warning, the page in front of her shifted to another book. A new one, written in the style of a pirate novel. After a few seconds she got the basic idea. Chris had both come through, and gotten Cindy on the right page to do the research. She had the first link to the captors, which was really all that would be required for the time being.

  After that it wasn’t hard to link from one section to the next, and get the whole floorplan of the place. It was large, but all underground, and while big enough to hold about two hundred cozy people, there were only thirty there. Two of them were the girls, but they weren’t the only captives at all. No, there were ten others. Some of them Infected. Most of them were normal. The problem there was that the one with powers kind of sucked, over all.

  One boy for instance, just fixed problems.

  Now his story was a lot more interesting than the others. For instance, he was constantly getting himself in trouble, his power driving him toward things that needed repair like it did. He was laid back about it all, including being a prisoner at the moment. He’d hitchhiked and rode buses across half the country to get there, and had allowed himself to be caught, so that he could work his way inside.

  Which meant that he, Jeremy, had a lot more data than the rest of them did. Including the people that worked there, since he’d gotten into place on his own. The young man had been scouting the perimeter when he was picked up and taken inside. Really, the people there would have been better off killing him, but they’d decided to keep him, so they could experiment on copying powers. Once they had that part down, they were, no doubt, going to be golden.

  It was a mistake, since Jeremy had a plan. It involved getting into place, and then, when they removed him from the tiny cell, he was going to fight, and take the facility from them. His skill level wasn’t really up to taking out eighteen armed men on his own, however. One or two could be done, which was his idea. To break the whole thing up, and handle it a little bit at a time. Except that it wasn’t actually within his control, of course.

  Cindy didn’t even startle that much when she worked out that Jeremy was named Jeremy Cooper, and that his sister worked with the IPB. Penny Cooper. Cellophane. Both a secretary in the front office, and one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Why her little brother hadn’t just called her in on the project… Well, Cin got that one. They were on great terms, but the fact was, Jer’s powers didn’t allow him to work with other people all the time. Even if it made sense. It was about the fact that he could only balance situations that were within a certain level of complexity. Getting Penny involved would mean having thousands of new possibilities open up.

  Which meant his brain couldn’t cope, so he avoided that kind of thing.

  Ending up in trouble about twice a month, since he would go and find it, no matter how hard he resisted. This time it worked out though, because he’d gotten into place at the right time for her to find him. Also, he’d gotten some good long looks at the people there, early on. She copied the info from the teen, and then double checked it well, meaning she had the basic floor plan for the whole place, as well as names, and roughly what they knew about things.

  Which wasn’t much. The people behind the whole thing were incredibly careful, as far as not being seen or known. They’d done it all over the phone, for instance. Setting up their entire project at that location. The trick would be in finding enough from what
the men and women working there had heard and seen to put together a link to the individual behind the whole mess.

  If not that, then at least the other bases that were being used to support the takeover attempt. The people that were being copied had to be kept alive. That was her thought on the matter at any rate. No one had proof of that, but there was no reason to keep people alive otherwise. It was only an expense and a risk, since people might be rescued or escape. Like Burkes, or Mary Lawrence.

  Then, they’d kept that woman alive even after the person replacing her had died. They hadn’t been draining data from her either. Unless they were using a second copy to do that kind of thing. Cindy nodded to herself, writing fast the whole time. It was possible, but she had no proof of anything.

  The thing there was that her job wasn’t to guess. It was to find hard data, and report it. At least that made sense to her, so she ran with that idea.

  After a bit, she moved back to Director Turner’s office, waving the crude maps she’d made. They were inside and out on the secret underground base.

  “We have a man on the inside there? Jeremy Cooper? I mean, he was working on his own, but he did most of the rest of things right. His powers don’t play well with others all the time, but we should really put a tracker in his butt. Maybe get him training? It could be useful in the future. Anyway, he’s fine, other than a few beatings, so far. They told him that they wanted to use him as an experimental subject. To learn to copy powers, not just thoughts, feelings and looks.”

  “Fuck. Well, that’s…” She shook her head, and then smiled a bit, looking at the documents that had been slipped in front of her. “This will help. I’ve set up a team to go in. I want you to come along, but don’t torture the girls yet.” She winced a bit, since it was clear that the woman knew that they weren’t really going to be doing that. Not after finding they were prisoners, held against their will.