Son of Cerberus (The Unusual Operations Division Book 2)

by Jacob Hammes

  David looked at Amy. She smiled a knowing smile up into his face and placed her hand on his. He returned the smile, only to realize that a woman behind was not too happy with the new arrangement. Gelda, the skinny woman with too much makeup on, slammed a two by four across his face. He felt his nose move into a position it was never supposed to be in as most of his face suddenly felt numb with shock.

  She wasn’t done, either. As David fell to his knees, he received another blow across the back of his head. The pounding blow was enough to send stars across his vision and disorient him even further. He fell to his back, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to stop the next blow.

  “You have ruined everything,” she yelled, fury etching the lines of time into her face. “We were nearly complete and you had to come along and ruin everything.”

  “Stop,” was all David could say.

  “I will stop when you are dead,” Gelda said as she raised the heavy piece of wood up over her head. His fear of death was suddenly diminished as he watched Amy grab the board. She didn’t seem upset, or even worried. With strength David had never seen before, she used her knee to break the board in half. It didn’t seem to cause her any discomfort, let alone make her exert herself.

  “Enough,” Amy said calmly. “This is not the way.”

  Gelda looked as if she had been betrayed. The love that had existed between them was dead as this new creature manifested itself. The man Gelda had known existed within another body and that body had been the servant of the master within. This thing, this new configuration, was not what she remembered. It was not a powerful being bent on controlling others, it was an ambivalent being that truly meant to help.

  That was not what Gelda wanted.

  “Shut up you bitch,” Gelda said, sending her fist across Amy’s face. The shock was enough to send Amy back, but David had already recovered enough of his senses to act in defense. He kicked Gelda’s spindly knee as hard as he could, sending it out of socket and into a gross angle. She cried as she fell to her back, but David wasn’t done yet. In one great movement, he rose his leg high up into the air and let it come down across her face. She stopped moving as her head rebounded from the hard concrete below.

  David hardly saw the rest of the men as they converged on him. There were more than three, or at least he could only guess as his vision swam against the disorientation of being slammed upside the head. He figured they would most likely kill him, but he felt good at least to know he had saved his friends.

  A single loud gunshot rang through the domed room and one of the men fell flat on his face. The rest dove for cover or scurried off toward the nearest exit. Even Stewart, fighting as he had been with Stephen, jumped over a table and took off.

  Phillip was on top of the walkway, centering his weapon on the next target. One more shot rang out and another of the fleeing men fell, dead before he hit the ground. Stewart bounded over him and though a doorway, bowling other men over as he went.

  “Go get him, tiger,” Phillip yelled to Stephen, thankful that he was back in the action. “The rest of you would do well to stay put.”

  Two of the men remaining stood with their hands up in the air. David laughed as best he could from the floor, holding his broken nose behind both hands. Blood dribbled down his cheeks and pooled on the ground below him.

  Stephen took the hint and bolted for the door after the smaller man. He wouldn’t be getting away as long as Stephen was alive, and that was a promise.

  The door led them down even more steps into something Stephen hadn’t anticipated seeing. Another room meant more machines, only these were more familiar to him. There were presses, saws, soldering and welding stations, and even an area in which metal glowed in small pools of liquid. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was where the majority of the machines were being made.

  It only made sense that they would be hiding beneath an island, off the coast of one of the most populous cities in the world.

  Stewart was nowhere to be seen. The dark room had too many places to hide. Stephen knew that the man wouldn’t go far. His promise to kill the UOD agents would have strengthened in fervor since they had foiled the plans. Instead of worrying as to whether or not Stewart was in the room, Stephen ensured he had something to fight with.

  Since his pistol was up on the balcony, he pulled out his backup knife. The six-inch blade flicked open with a simple twist of Stephen’s hand.

  Stephen had been right to assume Stewart would not leave the building. Once he stepped foot in the expansive room, things leapt to life. The press, a machine that actively stamped out pieces of metal, started clanging away. The oven suddenly roared as new air billowed through the hot coals below. Everything started at once. It was as if chaos suddenly reigned.

  Fortunately, he knew exactly what Stewart was up to. The intelligent man wanted Stephen to feel confused and lose his bearing. He wanted him to be without his hearing. Stewart was planning on sneaking up on him.

  Stephen took cautious steps into the center of the room where there was enough space for him to avoid being ambushed. Stewart, however, was not playing by the same rules. He jumped from his hiding spot sporting a long steel pole, swinging it wildly at the huge black man. Stephen tumbled backward and grabbed the closest thing he could in order to defend himself—a foldup wooden chair.

  Stewart laughed as he smashed the chair, knocking it away from Stephen in large chunks. He managed to throw the last little bit into Stewart’s face before he had to retreat a few more steps.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” Stewart said, his voice dripping with anger. “You cannot see how many years of preparation you’ve destroyed.”

  “Singing the same old song, aren’t you,” Stephen said, dodging another blow of the steel pole.

  “What’s a couple million minds matter in order to propel an entire species thousands of years forward?”

  “All people matter, Stewart.” Stephen was appalled. He hadn’t realized that millions of lives were in jeopardy. “We aren’t in control of who lives and who dies. We cannot pick and choose who gets to forget their entire existence just so you can have your little experiments. Who is to say that what you believe is actually true?”

  “It is,” Stephen yelled, smashing the pipe down hard where Stephen had been standing only a fraction of a second before. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Then go public and take donations,” Stephen tried reasoning with him. “There are plenty of people out there who would rejoice at the existence of alien life and jump on the opportunity to do what you’re trying to get them to do.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Stewart said, gripping the bar as he circled with Stephen. “No one would willingly go through the pain and torment the machine creates. That’s why we made so many. That’s why we stationed them throughout so many cities. You see, Stephen, you’ll shut us down but this operation will keep going. Each time one fires off, you’ll see people change. You’ll see our species propagate itself after all.”

  “And you’ll kill anyone who gets in the way?”

  “Just like your little girlfriend,” Stewart smiled a smile that Stephen had never seen. Perhaps it was simply the rage of all his failures lately or the fact that Stewart had pressed the right button, but Stephen snapped. He absorbed a blow from the smaller man that probably broke his arm, but Stephen didn’t feel a thing. He had his eyes set on something else.

  Though the smaller man may have been augmented, he still weighed the same. With a great heave, Stephen was able to pick him up and throw him hard. He landed on the edge of something metallic, his head shooting backwards behind him.

  Stephen had managed to get his foe’s head between the top and bottom of the machine-driven press, though Stewart and his augmentations were too quick. He pulled his head out at the very last moment. The press came down as the last bit of hair escaped its grasp.

  He was slow to get up, though, and Stephen used his giant fist to pound Stewart’s head bac
k against the huge block of metal. Over and over, he plowed his hefty fist into Stewart’s face, content when he heard bones break beneath his powerful blows. He wanted to kill the man, to drive his face into the back of his head one punch at a time.

  He didn’t notice Stewart moving beneath him. The rage that had taken him over gave him tunnel vision. His only want, his only desire, was to kill the man who had harmed his girl. He wanted to take his soul and drive it into some personal hell.

  Stewart didn’t mind getting his face bashed in. He used it as a means to an end. With one hand he managed to grab the steel bar that had clattered down next to him. The other rose up and pushed Stephen back just far enough to crack him across the skull. Stephen, despite his massive weight and impressive size, fell back. His posture indicated that he had been knocked out cleanly.

  The man who had knocked him over the head wasn’t done yet. He was going to kill Stephen, then the rest of the group. Once he finished them off, he would have to restart where the bastards had chosen to ruin his plans.

  “Well,” he said, wiping blood away from his eyes. His front teeth were jagged and broken, his eyes had been nearly swollen shut and his nose was flat, but he didn’t seem to care. “It was good while it lasted, Stephen, but now I’m going to kill you.”

  He felt no remorse as he lifted the pipe up above his head. In fact, he felt nostalgic that the man who could have bested him would no longer be around to cause him any trouble. It was, however, a necessary action.

  Stewart felt the pipe jerk violently as a bullet tore through the air and smashed into it. Someone had stumbled in on them while he had been expressing the small amount of sentiment he could muster.

  It was without preamble that he used his considerable strength to hurl the pipe at David before bolting for the door. David ducked as it clattered through the hallway, but recovered quick enough to put him back in the sights of a .45 pistol. Three and then four more shots followed after him, but all smashed harmlessly into a wall. He ran recklessly through the hallway, up a huge flight of stairs and then into the night air. With feet that moved like lightning, he chose to live and fight another day.

  The back of the island was much the same as any other part. Heavy foliage blocked the night sky and the waters of the river lapped just out of sight. Stewart could see clearly enough in the darkness of the night and bolted quickly toward the boats. His counterparts, the two other men whom had also escaped, followed pitifully in his wake.

  No one pursued the three as they made their way to the boats, then out into the cold river water.

  David was too concerned with the large amount of blood spilling from Stephen’s head. Though both men had been knocked around fairly well, Stephen was losing much more blood than David. He checked his pulse and his breathing before he turned him over into a recovery position. The wound across his skull had peeled back a thick layer of scalp, but it stopped there. No bones or brains were showing.

  He sat down in the small room, pistol trained on the door. Though he knew Phillip needed help, he had to rest for a moment. The case they had been working on so hard hadn’t ended the way they wanted it to. In fact, it hadn’t ended at all.

  After a brief moment of frustration, David hauled himself to his feet. Stephen and all of his two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle wasn’t as easy to get off the ground, but David finally managed it. In the other room, the small group of people that had been captured remained in a small huddle in the center of some desks. Phillip hadn’t moved. His weapon was still trained on anything that moved in the pit below him.

  “Is he okay?” he called down upon seeing his unconscious friend Stephen.

  “He’ll live, I think,” David replied. “Stewart got away though.”

  “More for us to catch later, I guess,” Phillip said. “Too bad we couldn’t have just killed him.”

  “I tried,” David said. “Unfortunately, I missed.”

  Chapter 26

  The morning came and Marcus was not a happy man. He heard the news about Stewart, his now arch-nemesis, getting away. He also had to inform the Coast Guard of the ship that had stealthily made off into the night while the team had been aboard the smaller and slower boat. He had been shot at, nearly blown up, was cold and wet, and now he had to figure out how to get his team home.

  Gregory had abandoned them to get home on their own, so Marcus took his time. His first stop was to get a new cellular device. Once activated, he suffered through messages from both his boss and his girlfriend, or fiancé. He didn’t know exactly what was going on with her, but from what he could see Julie had just won a big case and was now in the mood to celebrate.

  Marcus doubted he could celebrate with all the failure he had just endured. There were dangerous organisms out there, shipping off to god-knew-where in the world and getting ready for distribution. He knew they could easily put out all sorts of warnings to every pharmacy in the world, but it wouldn’t stop the immediate distribution of something that could easily change a person for good.

  The cool Seattle air felt good as Marcus used his phone to hash out the details of their flights back to D.C. They had nearly the entire day before the only available flight took off, so Marcus figured he would do some shopping.

  Cynthia had her entire hand and forearm wrapped in bandages as the wounds that seemed as if they would never heal had split open once more. She figured it was from the stress of using her non-firing hand, though she couldn’t discredit her superpower-like abilities when it came to putting the men in the warehouse down.

  Henry did not join them. He slept in the hotel room, content without a phone. The hot tub and some champagne made him feel better, even though it wasn’t even noon yet.

  While they waited patiently on the opposite side of the United States from everyone else, Stephen paced nervously. His arm had been broken and his scalp had been slashed open badly enough to need two dozen stitches, but other than that he was fine. In fact, he hadn’t even touched the pain killers.

  He wanted to see his girl when she woke up. The doctors had promised him that today was the day they would bring her out of the medically induced coma so they could gauge her vitals and brain function.

  Stephen, the biggest, toughest man that most people knew, felt queasy at the thought.

  It was just after lunch when he was allowed in to see her. Besides the small scratches on her face, she seemed serene. Her hair fell lightly around her pale porcelain skin, her usually red lips were a light pink, and her azure eyes were closed tight.

  “You’ll need to be ready for anything,” the doctor explained kindly. “She might not wake up. We don’t know what to expect yet. She went through some pretty severe injuries and you have to know that she’ll never be the same.”

  “Physically,” Stephen said to himself.

  The doctor administered a drug into the IV that ran into Brenda’s arm. For the first few minutes, everyone held their breath. Nothing looked different. There was no deep inhalation, no sudden opening of the eyes. There was only disappointment.

  Finally after what seemed like an hour, she stirred. The doctor was quick to listen to her heart, watch her vitals as they climbed ever so slowly, and ensure she didn’t do anything that would make her situation any worse. Her eyes slowly opened, focused on nothing in particular. They were a little darker blue than they had been, perhaps because of the lighting.

  Stephen held her hand as tightly as he could without breaking it. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t look at him. She simply stared up at the ceiling, her unblinking eyes focused on nothing.

  It was another few minutes before she said anything at all.

  “I’m alive,” she managed. “I’m not dead.”

  “No,” Stephen said, tears dripping from his dark eyes. “You made it.”

  The team managed to reassemble later that day. The good news from Stephen regarding Brenda and her temporary consciousness and lucidity made everyone happy. Even Stephen managed to smile a bit, though a grim d
etermination made his eyes look as if they were ready to cut someone in half. His tightly fitting suit and tie made him seem as if he were just too large for the room and his chair creaked beneath him as it always did.

  Henry wore his usual pastel, not much worse for the wear. The bright pink tie brought a special lightness to his aura that Marcus hadn’t felt lately. Marcus himself managed to wear a dark blue shirt, dark tie, and black pants. His hair, cut out of necessity up past his eyebrows, was messy and unkempt.

  Cynthia had been checked out by a doctor as well, though this one belonged to the UOD. The physician said that her wounds had somehow changed, but they couldn’t tell if it was for the better. Her usually glove-covered hand and arm was now wrapped in something like plastic in order to keep her wounds from leaking. Other than that, she seemed to be all business.

  Phillip and David looked like they could hardly keep themselves together. They were in the back of the room, struggling to keep themselves awake for one reason or another.

  Gregory, crew cut and sporting a finely pressed suit, glared angrily around the room. Even the two NSA agents were present for this meeting.

  “The Coast Guard managed to seize quite the stash,” he said, looking crossways at the two NSA agents. “This bacteria is going to be analyzed by the UOD and just about every other biologist on the planet. We can’t know where they came from or for what purpose they have been created, but we’re going to try our hardest.”

  “Amy knows,” Phillip said. The police had arrived to the island nearly twenty minutes after Stewart and his goons took off. They also took Gelda into custody, but had thankfully been warned about Phillip and Stephen and David. Though they required an ample amount of paperwork, some coaxing from the NSA, and a few hours of their time, they managed to escape incarceration.