But that did not mean he got the privilege of receiving the first dose every time. As a matter of fact, it was like they’d saved him for last, studying the effects on the rest of his team before injecting him.
Forcing Reaper to hear his men’s screams and live in terror and hate as he waited helplessly for his turn.
With his mind on the past, his feet took him to his former cell. Reaper attempted to step through the open doorway and sweat broke out across his forehead and armpits. He’d been caged in there like an animal for nearly a year.
“Subject T. K. Reaper.” The soft, feminine voice from his right sent shivers across his shoulders.
Reaper spun, raising his pistol at the same time, and stared into the fearless face of Dr. Winters.
3
“You’re still here,” Reaper said in a deadly calm voice even though his insides rocked with an earthquake of memories. He still dreamed about Dr. Winters. Dreamed about her plunging a needle into his arm. About her expressionless face as she stared at him through the glass and recorded every seizure, every twitch, every scream of agony. She had also been the one to pronounce Dawson dead after his body had been unable to handle the rigorous dosing. Cause of death—brain hemorrhage.
Even now the pain of losing his teammate was a fresh bleeding wound, and it took all his control not to contract his finger and put a bullet in Dr. Winters’s forehead.
She arched one blonde brow, as if to ask where else she would be. “And so are you.”
Reaper advanced, stopping only when the tip of his weapon hovered inches from her nose. “So I am. You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I’m not,” she said.
The tiniest bit of frustration began to wind its way around him. She had always been so self-assured and completely unafraid of him or his team, even after witnessing the results of their changes. “I don’t have time for more of your mind games. What did you do with the rest of the serum?”
Her arched brow fell and her expression flatlined. “I didn’t do anything with it.”
“Then where is it?”
“It’s gone. Almost every single ounce was used up.”
He watched every minute expression on her face, listened to the slow steady heart rate pounding in her chest without the slightest acceleration. There wasn’t the least bit of worry in her tone, indicating with almost a hundred percent accuracy that she was telling the truth. “You’re lying.”
“We’ve come under new management in your absence,” she said coolly, completely unruffled by his threatening tone. “He’s quite a bit more demanding than the previous owner of this project.”
“The general,” Reaper said.
“He’s cut the incubation period in half and doubled the amount of test subjects, like doing more of the same thing will produce different results.” Dr. Winters narrowed her empty gray eyes in the first show of frustration—or any real emotion—Reaper had ever seen her express.
“You know my men need their doses, Doctor.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve been expecting one of you to show up. In fact, I saved a little unreported extra dosage for you.” Dr. Winters reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a flat blue pouch, an unmistakable row of needles strapped inside. “There’s enough here to tide over your entire team for one more month, so they don’t have to come in. They’ll have to come back to me if they want to live beyond that.”
Reaper stared at the flat pouch with shock and fury. She was producing their lifeblood, but only in a severely limited amount. There was no way in hell he was leading his team back here. He didn’t want them anywhere near the insidious grasp of Gen. Rainier.
Reaper grabbed for the dosages, but Dr. Winters kept them just out of his reach, brows arched, mouth pursed in a straight line. It was the look a reproving parent would give to a child, and one that Reaper had seen often enough in his imprisonment in this hellhole.
“You need to know that I never intended to harm any person on your team. I accepted this experiment under false pretenses. Like you, I thought it was a simple manipulation of steroids, not altering the human gene sequence. I am just as much of a victim as you were.”
Reaper let out a snarl and ripped the packet from her hand, pressing the end of his pistol into her head. “You were a victim? I didn’t see you falling down with seizures or nosebleeds. I didn’t hear you screaming in agony.”
Dr. Winters’s cool façade didn’t break. “I never wanted to cause you pain.”
Fury barely in check now, Reaper growled out, “You never wanted to, but you did. Every fucking day for an entire year. Excuse me, but I don’t feel sympathetic to your plight.”
“I didn’t expect that you would, but it needed to be said all the same. Regardless, that doesn’t change the fact that your men will have to return to me if they want to live. You can’t kill me. No matter how much you want to.”
Fuck. Her cool, reasonable tone set his teeth on edge. If this truly was the last of the serum, then she was right. He could not take her out. As far as he knew, she was the only one who knew how to produce it.
“How very scientific of you to use our lives as leverage for yours.”
“Not scientific, Reaper, just the will to survive.”
He twitched; his brain short-circuited. He couldn’t let her live, not after what she’d done to them. To so many others. She could’ve set them free in the very beginning, but he’d seen the sick fascination inside her every time she’d stood on the other side of that Plexiglas, staring at him like he was an insect.
There had to be another way. The long rows of fluorescent lighting flashed overhead, bright and dark and bright. He could feel his neurons triggering, sharp knives of pain slicing along his brain. Not now. He couldn’t lose it now.
Fingers trembling, he shoved the serum samples into his pants pocket and forced Dr. Winters back a step. And then another, steering her with his gun into the test room behind her.
“What are you doing?”
Reaper didn’t answer. He didn’t know if he could talk right now and make sense. He was using all his strength not to scream in pain and grab his head. The raw edge he skated on was killing him. He had to find that cool center of calm within him. He wouldn’t let his men down again because of his weakness.
“Subject T. K. Reaper, stop. Now.” Fear flashed in Dr. Winters’s flat gray eyes.
Reaper crossed the threshold into the test subject room, skin crawling from being back inside his former cage. It was exactly like he remembered.
Exactly.
Except this room was already occupied.
His short-circuiting brain focused on its surroundings and the room came into crystal-clear focus. “Caroline.”
“Subject Reaper, I command you to leave this room.”
“He’d already moved her to the new lab,” Reaper breathed out. Caroline lay unconscious and unmoving on the cot against the wall. An IV of clear fluid was going into one arm and another one of dark red blood was flowing out of the other. “You’re siphoning her blood for the serum.”
He’d heard Jack Mankel talk about her blood being the key. Known that Caroline had been kidnapped to be his Guinea pig, but he’d never imagined this sick set up.
“She’s been very well cared for,” Dr. Winters bit out with aggravation.
Reaper kept his gun leveled at the doctor, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the girl on the bed. Dr. Winters said he and his team would have to come back here to her to get their dosage if they wanted to live, but with Caroline he’d have an unending supply of the serum. He wouldn’t need Dr. Winters. He could save his team.
“Don’t judge me,” Dr. Winters backed up another step, her voice trembling. “I told you I had no choice. We all have to play a part. It’s supply and demand.”
For the first time since Reaper could remember he felt a smile stretching his lips. “You think I’m judging you? Believe me, that’s the furthest thing from my mind.”
If he cou
ld take Caroline and put her up somewhere, he’d have his own personal supply. Maybe one day he’d be able to figure out how to break the need for the monthly injections, but for now his goal was survival.
Dr. Winters’s eyes widened with realization. “You can’t.”
“Wake her up,” Reaper said without a hint of hesitation in his voice.
“But—but she’s in a medically induced coma.”
Reaper had his gun pressed into the doctor’s temple in a split second. “That means shit to me. Do it.”
His men were being held by Col. Gray in the states because the military knew his team had been altered. But they would escape soon. He’d already given the order and the location for the meet.
Dr. Winters still hadn’t moved.
“Wake her up.” Reaper drove the end of his pistol into her head again, forcing her to bend sideways.
The doctor snapped to attention and fumbled in a nearby drawer, yanking out a giant ass needle filled with clear liquid. “Adrenaline. I need to disconnect her IVs first.”
“Hurry up,” Reaper snapped. He wouldn’t have much more time before more guards became aware that their buddies were all dead. God only knew how many guards were on duty since the regime change. Plus, the general was somewhere within the lab, which made the situation even more tenuous.
Dr. Winters stumbled over to Caroline and started flipping levers and buttons on the machines connected to her. Then she withdrew the first needle, the one that was sucking out blood, and quickly wound a bandage around Caroline’s elbow. “She needs pressure on this. Don’t take it off.”
Reaper didn’t respond as Dr. Winters removed the IV from her other arm. “Now, she’s going to need food, plenty of rest and fluids. She won’t be strong at first, but I’ve been exercising her legs and arms daily, so it shouldn’t take her long to get back to strength.”
“Don’t tell me you care about her.”
“You have no idea the level of research I’ve done. I deserve a Nobel Prize. This girl is the key.”
“Of course, none of us are human beings to you.” A fact he had only realized after it was too late. At first, he had simply thought her intelligent. He’d felt lucky and honored to have been chosen for this task.
Then again, back then he’d been stupid, naïve enough to believe every line of bullshit they’d fed him. He hadn’t just taken down the ship either, he’d sunk the whole fleet with his decision to take part in Project Mayhem.
“You can look down on me all you want, but you were just as eager for this to work as I was.” Dr. Winters lifted the long needle of adrenaline, gripping it with one hand while feeling along Caroline’s rib cage with the other. “You’re not the only one who failed.”
Without warning, she shoved the needle through Caroline’s chest and injected the drug. Caroline jerked, her back bowing off the bed. Her eyes and her mouth flew open and she gasped.
*
A sharp pain stabbed her chest, her lungs burning like they were filling with air for the first time in years. Blinding, painful light pierced her eyes, and her blood rang in her ears.
Her heart felt like it contracted and then exploded, leaving her gasping in agony. Only there wasn’t enough air, and she fought to draw more oxygen into her starved body.
Her fingers and her toes twitched uncontrollably; her arms and legs jerked. She had about as much control of her body as a newborn colt in his first moments out of his mother’s womb.
Something suddenly heavy fell across her chest, locking her in place. Flashes of memory ripped into her. She was being held prisoner. She had to escape.
The distant sound of a female voice barely pierced her consciousness, but it was hauntingly familiar and she never wanted never to hear it again.
“Caroline.”
She tried to get her lips to work, call out for help or anything at all. What escaped her throat was a moan, her vocal chords revolting as much as her body.
Caroline gave another heave, but this one exhausted her energy and she fell limp to the table. The weight on her chest lifted and her eyelids slid shut. She had to concentrate on staying awake.
The voices grew louder, but she still couldn’t make them out over the loud roar in her head. Her entire body felt alive, itching and crawling with energy that she couldn’t use. She couldn’t do anything. Dear God—was she dying?
No, she couldn’t. She didn’t want to. She wanted to live; she wanted to experience life and love and laughter.
Her eyelid was ripped open and someone shined a piercing light in one eye and then the other. Her eyes watered instantly, her vision on overload.
“Is her heart supposed to race that fast?” Someone said in a rough and unfamiliar voice.
“Of course it is, I just gave her enough adrenaline to wake up a man twice her size,” said the familiar female voice.
Caroline tried to lick her dry lips, but her tongue had no moisture and it lay thick and unwieldy in her mouth.
“Why the fuck would you do that? Are you trying to kill her?” A man’s gravelly voice spoke with the same harsh reply
“I’ve had her in a medically induced coma for over a month. She’s only been woken up briefly when necessary. So yes, if you want her to walk out of this lab, she needed that much adrenaline.”
Her heart surged even faster in her chest as recognition flooded her entire being. She’d been kidnapped from her wedding after refusing to go through with it. She’d been held hostage in that palace. And then—and then—they had brought her here.
Who was this man? What did he want with her? And why was the lady giving her to him?
The questions whirled around her mind in a terrifying jumble that left her quaking.
Mustering all her strength, Caroline cracked her eyes open and wished she hadn’t. A man with blood splattered over his face and arms towered over her, a huge pistol with a long nozzle on the end gripped in one hand. Muscles capable of crushing steel rippled across his chest. Suited from head to toe in black, he looked like a deadly assassin come from hell to take her out.
She let her gaze wander up to his face, and what she saw there made her gasp. The soulless black eyes that stared back at her held no sympathy. They held no emotion whatsoever.
“She is the key. She holds the answer. If you leave her with me, I swear I can crack the code. I can figure out what’s missing. I can make the change permanent, and you’ll never need the serum again.” It was the female voice again.
The man spoke, “You mean she is your Guinea pig. But not anymore, doctor.”
The female scoffed and Caroline cringed inwardly. Even though her head was pounding with all the precursors of a terrible migraine, she could sense the tension rippling between the two. It was obvious the man hated Dr. Winters.
It suddenly dawned on her: Her father, a United States senator, had the kind of connections to pull this kind of muscle. This man was a soldier to his bones and a killer in his blood. He must have been sent here to rescue her. And that realization put him instantly on Caroline’s side.
Desperate hope had her reaching for him. The cot fell out from beneath her body—her only support, she realized as she plummeted to the ground. But his strong arm was beneath her in an instant, saving her from the pain of hitting the hard floor.
And then her body was suspended over his arm, her naked ass hanging out of a split hospital gown. The realization of her absolute vulnerability sent another surge of adrenaline through her, shocking her system in the movement.
She flailed again, but he effortlessly lifted her up and slung her over his shoulder. The steel band of his arm anchored her legs to his chest, and he must have realized exactly what she had been worried about because he hooked the material of her gown and crossed it over the other side, protecting her bare skin.
Relief swamped her, his simple gesture won her over completely. He had been sent by her father; she was certain of it.
“She needs—”
“I know what she needs, Doctor W
inters,” the man said the word “doctor” like it was a curse, like Winters was the vilest creature crawling across this planet.
A wave of dizziness crashed over Caroline. Her head swam with thousands of blurring lights and sound roared in her ears. Her heart raced as she balled her hands into fists. She clutched the smooth cotton material of the man’s shirt in an attempt to anchor herself to the present moment
The man cursed. “Her heart’s beating too fast. She needs something to slow down.”
Caroline moaned, her entire body shaking like a leaf. How could he know how fast her heart was beating?
“If I give her a sedative, it will just knock her out again.”
Fear jolted her vocal cords into action, “no.” She put all of her energy into forcing that one word out, and even then it sounded weak and willowy.
“Did you intentionally harm her?” The man’s anger wrapped around her, coursed through her. Stiff muscles rippled beneath her.
“No—” there was hesitation this time in Dr. Winters’s usually steady voice, “—she’ll need to rest when the adrenaline surge wears off, but her body can handle the drugs. I promise. She can—”
“That’s all I need to know. Now, I need some protection on the way out, and you are going to be that protection.”
The world dipped and rocked as the man walked across the laboratory floor. Hanging upside down over his back, she could only make out a blurry image of their legs, but she saw enough to know that Dr. Winters was a shield in front of them.
Who was he? How had he found her? Oh, her father must be so worried about her. And Celine—where were her friends? They had all been kidnapped together, but she hadn’t seen her and … And … Caroline fought to recall just how long she’d been gone, but she had no idea.
They’d kept her drugged. Done things to her that she didn’t remember or understand. Celine, the music, oh God, the music. It played over and over in her mind. Sweet Caroline, do, do, do. She jammed her palms into her temples, trying to block out the nauseating sound.
Mayhem's Warrior: Operation Mayhem Page 4
