11
The World Takes Away
Annabelle pressed a cup of synthcaf into Kyle’s left hand and an adreno pill in the other. Her damp red hair was neatly tied back, hazel eyes dark with worry as she said, “Any news?”
The MDF’s command operations center was a quiet in the early morning hours before shift-change. The supervising officers had stopped trying to tactfully tell him to go away and get some shuteye after the fifth time. He wasn’t leaving, and the director hadn’t ordered him gone.
So Kyle stayed.
“Not yet,” he replied. He chased the adreno pill with a gulp of synthcaf. Lack of sleep wasn’t an issue for him at the moment.
Kyle didn’t take his eyes off the holoscreens hovering above the central work table with its embedded computer. Analysts and hackers were working nonstop to identify the location of Declan, Cillian, and any of their affiliates within the last twenty-four hours, and kept coming up short. What they had so far were a few dozen screenshots of some of Declan’s known affiliates culled from CCTV and security feeds, an abandoned SUV located around midnight in a poverty-ridden neighborhood of D.C., and a single image of a man they couldn’t identify through facial recognition because of the nanotech strips in use that blurred out his face.
But his body type was a match for Cillian Halloran, and Kyle was desperate for any update on that bastard.
Annabelle crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her hip against the terminal Kyle had claimed as his own. “You think they’ve left the country?”
“I don’t know.”
Kyle hoped that wasn’t the case. It would make things harder if Cillian had. There were ways to move people across international borders undetected, and both Declan and Cillian were pros at that.
MDF headquarters was sparing nothing to try to track down Alexei and Sean. Anyone not tied up in critical jobs was focused on trying to find their two missing operatives. Kyle knew that much manpower being freed up to search was a rarity. If they weren’t entrenched in the Pavluhkin mission, things would be different. A small task force would have been assigned to track them down if possible, but too much was at stake to abide by the usual protocols.
“You get any rack time, at least?” Annabelle asked.
“No.”
She didn’t push him to leave, for which he was grateful. With Jamie in Boston, his family here, and his brother missing, Kyle was feeling more than a little unmoored. Standing watch was the one thing he could do since the director didn’t want Alpha Team to leave the base.
A flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye had Kyle turning his head to watch as an analyst flagged down the supervisor. He took a sip of synthcaf, eyes narrowed as he watched them confer for a couple of minutes before the supervisor straightened up, head slightly tilted in a way that meant he was talking over comms.
Annabelle perked up as well, peering around Kyle at what was going on across the room. “Hopefully it’s good news.”
“Yeah.”
Kyle stepped away from his borrowed terminal and strode over to the tense circle of agents, Annabelle right on his heels.
“Did you find them?” Kyle demanded once he was within earshot.
The supervising officer shook his head. “No, but we found a lead.”
The analyst seated at the terminal blinked up at Kyle. She was young-looking, but he had faith she was good at her job. The MDF had high standards in its support staff.
“We’ve been having Ceres run facial recognition on anyone who’s entered and left the parking structure twelve hours before and after the abduction time, sir. It’s linked to an office building, so that’s quite a bit of identities to run through, but these two are coming up as possible suspects,” she said.
“Not a sir,” Kyle said absently as he watched her rotate around a holoscreen showing the holopics of two young women. “Not an officer.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, staff sergeant.” The analyst bit her lip as she stared hard at the holoscreens while typing out commands on the opaque control board on her terminal. “Anyway, these two are students at Georgetown University and are members of Kappa Kappa Gamma. Wouldn’t be noteworthy except our data mining program uncovered ties to the Sons of Adam through their social media posts. Nothing overt, but specific symbolic jewelry and tattoos that have always been associated with that group. A further review of their family shows even more discreet ties to the group, and their finances are rife with donations to companies owned by Sons of Adam members.”
Kyle dragged the holoscreens closer, studying the two college students. Young, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, the ideal kind of women the Sons of Adam would recruit into their cause. The pair didn’t look dangerous at all, and he could see why Alexei and Sean may have discounted the women as a threat.
“Any chance the two might be metahumans?” Annabelle wanted to know. “We know the Sons of Adam recruit them.”
“No way to tell for sure without DNA, but nothing in our search indicates they are at the moment. That could change.”
Kyle’s fingers twitched, itching for his rifle. “Wake up the director. He needs to know about this.”
Government was known for its glacial pace and layers of bureaucracy, but when the need required it, the MDF excelled at cutting right through any red tape. In this instance, the proverbial ball got rolling as soon as Nazari was informed of what the analysts on duty had found. By 1000, one of the MDF’s many attorneys had convinced a federal judge to authorize an arrest warrant and Nazari issued a team of agents their retrieval orders.
Kyle was not part of that team.
“I should be the one to bring them in,” Kyle said, scowling at the live feed from the cameras embedded in the agents’ sunglasses.
“Honey, we all know you’d shoot them on sight first chance you got,” Annabelle drawled, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder.
“I’d shoot them after we got what we needed from them.”
“That doesn’t help your argument,” Donovan said.
“Ask me if I care.”
No one did. Kyle shifted his weight on his feet and kept scowling at the feed. Every remaining member of Alpha Team, except for Jamie, was gathered in the war room, hovering over the analysts’ shoulders, and generally making everyone nervous. Nazari hadn’t ordered them out of the room though, so they stayed. Kyle honestly would’ve fought a dismissal at this point. He needed to know what was happening in the search for his brother and Sean or he’d go crazy.
“Looks like they’ve arrived at campus,” Madison said. She leaned forward in the chair she’d purloined from a nearby terminal and rested her elbows against the table. “Do we know if the targets are in class?”
“They share a morning poli-sci class, two lecture classes, and a dorm room,” Katie absently said.
“That sounds creepily codependent.”
“Good news,” Nazari said as he returned to the central work table they were all crowded around. “Ovechkina, I’ve been informed we’ve been approved for a Telepathy Warrant. When the two targets are escorted back here, you have permission to scan their minds.”
Kyle smiled grimly at that news and the hard look that came into Katie’s clear blue eyes.
“Gladly, sir,” Katie said with a deferential nod.
Kyle turned his attention back to the camera feed, watching the double takes that passing students gave the four agents walking purposefully through the campus. It looked like a beautiful place, with its collegiate Gothic architecture designated as a historical landmark, but Kyle didn’t pay much attention to the passing surroundings. He crossed his arms over his chest, fingers digging into his biceps as the agents followed the instructions tendered from headquarters that led them to their goal.
“Who are we impersonating this time around?” Trevor asked as the agents entered a classroom without knocking. “Are we impersonating anyone?”
“FBI. We don’t want it getting out the MDF is arresting college students,” Nazari replied.
>
Madison raised her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Their arrest will be on social media in less than thirty seconds, sir. That’s gonna tip off someone.”
“We’ll work fast.”
“Maybe I should have gone with them,” Katie said, frowning at the feed.
Nazari shook his head. “There’s no telling what Stanislav might be predicting right now. We can’t risk losing anyone else.”
The risk was real that Stanislav had seen this, predicted their movements, and the agents were walking into a trap. But that was a risk the director had deemed acceptable when he gave the order for the agents to move out.
On the holoscreen, the agents were in the process of arresting the two women, ignoring their loud protestations and the high-definition, camera-enabled tablets aimed their way to record the arrests. The women struggled in the agents’ grips and dug in their heels, but MDF agents were nothing if not determined. It only took ten minutes for them to haul the struggling women back across campus to their vehicles and shove the pair into the back seats of the cars.
Kyle didn’t breathe easily until the agents made it back to base forty minutes later, their targets alive and intact, and at the mercy of Katie’s power.
“Limits, sir?” Katie asked as she stared through the polarized plas-glass window that allowed people to see into the interrogation room on Level 33, but not out. “They’ve already asked for their lawyers.”
Telepathy Warrants always had clear, defined limits for the use of that psionic power against American citizens. Katie would follow her orders precisely, but Kyle wished, just this once, she wouldn’t hold back. After what had happened, he didn’t believe any members of the Sons of Adam deserved careful handling.
To Kyle’s surprise, the director seemed to think so as well.
“Pull anything you think is vital to the mission, no matter how deep you need to go. An ongoing domestic terror threat gives us some leeway here in regard to their demand for counsel,” Nazari said after a long pause, holding Katie’s gaze. “I won’t let this be a black mark on your record in any way, Ovechkina.”
Katie slowly nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Permission to be linked during the scan, sir?” Kyle asked.
Nazari eyed him, the expression on his face unreadable. “I need you clearheaded, Brannigan. There’s a reason why I haven’t cleared you most of all to leave the base.”
“Dvorkin is my family, sir.”
“I understand, but you’re compromised. All of you are.” Nazari’s gaze raked over the gathered team before he turned his head to stare into the interrogation room. “I also understand you’d find a way to circumvent my orders to get Dvorkin and Delaney back if I removed any of you from the rescue mission.”
The awkward silence and furtive shared glances by the remaining members of Alpha Team was an acknowledgment the director definitely knew their tendencies.
Katie cleared her throat. “It wouldn’t be a detriment in any way to link Brannigan during the scan, sir.”
Nazari was silent for a good minute before he relented. “Link him.”
Katie nodded and gestured for Kyle to follow her into the interrogation room. The JAG Corps-appointed attorney keeping the women company looked up at their arrival. “Ready?”
“You aren’t our lawyer,” one of the girls said snidely. She scowled at them, but Kyle was keenly aware of the way she nervously drummed the fingers of one cuffed hand against the tabletop while her friend anxiously tapped her heel against the floor over and over.
“No, we aren’t,” Katie calmly replied.
The attorney cleared his throat, pointing his tablet stylus at the women. “Under Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 113B, you are both being charged with assisting a terrorist group in the planned kidnapping of two United States service members. Under the 2195 Psionic Amendment, you waive the right to your own thoughts in the face of conspiracy against the United States.”
The blood drained out of the women’s faces so quickly Kyle thought both of them would faint.
“What?” the one on the left weakly exclaimed.
“You can’t do that,” the other one protested. “That’s illegal!”
Before panic could take hold of them, both went rigid in their seats, eyes wide and glazing over as they stared blankly ahead. Kyle glanced at Katie, watching as her brow furrowed slightly in concentration.
Ready? she asked him.
Always, Kyle said.
Her presence in his mind expanded, tangling through his thoughts and pulling him into a strangely out-of-body experience for a brief moment. Kyle closed his eyes as images cascaded through his mind, foreign memories and trace thoughts that didn’t fit right in his head. They sucked him under, the world shifting as he looked through someone else’s eyes in the past. He felt the shift in his stomach as his head throbbed from Katie’s telepathy. The ache lasted only a second before Kyle’s own healing power wiped it away.
The foreign memories were blurry at the edges, fast-forwarding through moments of time that had no relevance to the situation at hand until the car was driven into the parking garage tower. Kyle frowned, straining against the hold Katie had on his mind as he tried to force his brain to work in a way it couldn’t. He didn’t care about the lead-up; he wanted to see his brother.
We need to see it from the beginning, Katie said.
Kyle reluctantly relented, drifting along at the mental pace Katie set. Watching the event unfold in his mind was surreal and left him feeling helpless as he watched the women park and check that their neuro-jammer gun and the high-powered tranquilizer gun were fully powered and loaded.
In his mind’s eye, they got out, chatting and laughing about a party that night which didn’t exist, keeping a discreet eye on Alexei and Sean as they walked past. Kyle had the absurd desire to yell a warning at them even though he knew what he was seeing had happened yesterday. Trying to save them in someone else’s memory was useless.
His hand in the memory lifted the tranquilizer gun, aimed with a sureness Kyle could feel in his fingers, and pulled the trigger. She hit true, and Sean went down, stumbling into Alexei, who caught him. Fire exploded in the air between the women and Alexei, but even before it reached where they stood, her partner in crime fired the neuro-jammer gun. The airborne fire dissipated into nothing with no power or control to keep it alive.
Kyle had a moment—frantic and furious—where he wanted to kill. Watching Alexei go down hard hadn’t been easy to watch, and Kyle had no outlet for his fury and pain. The reaction was more hindbrain instinct than anything else, and after a few seconds, he was able to shove it to the background of his thoughts.
The two women hurried toward the sprawled bodies on the garage floor as an SUV came skidding out of the nearest exit. It braked to a hard halt nearby and four men who weren’t Cillian or Declan got out. They were definitely associates, either Sons of Adam or ex-employees of North Star International.
“Good job,” the driver grunted as he hooked his hands underneath Alexei’s armpits to lift him up. “Now get out of here. The loop will only hold for another five minutes or so.”
“What about payment?” her partner demanded.
“Payment will be wired tonight.”
The women didn’t stick around. Kyle only got a bare glimpse of the men carrying Alexei and Sean’s unconscious forms to the SUV before the memory dissolved once she turned her back on them. Kyle opened his eyes, blinking away the spots that floated across his vision.
Kyle felt Katie release the women from her power. Both of them seemed dazed and ill, but Kyle didn’t care. Katie rapped her knuckles on the table, catching the JAG Corp representative’s attention.
“They’re all yours,” she said.
Kyle clenched his hands into tight fists as they left the interrogation room, wishing they’d come away with more. A name, an address, something or anything that could help them track where Alexei and Sean had been taken. He had no doubt the SUV in question was probab
ly abandoned and swapped out for a different vehicle out of sight of CCTV security within fifteen minutes or less after the kidnapping had happened. Kyle felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for not being there to watch his brother’s six, despite knowing it was misplaced. In all the years he’d carried it, guilt had never been a rational thing.
“Well?” Nazari wanted to know as the door slid shut behind them.
Katie shook her head. “No leads on where they were taken, but those two in there were part of the initial kidnap. I’ll write up an affidavit regarding their memories. They got the drop on Delaney with a strong sedative tranq and used a neuro-jammer gun on Dvorkin. Some of Declan’s men put them in an SUV and drove out of there.”
No one spoke for a long moment, the silence draped over everyone like a weight. The desire to call Jamie cut straight through Kyle, settling in his chest with an ache his power couldn’t touch. But Jamie was in Boston, tied to his family and trying to keep his father safe. It didn’t matter that the director had finally updated Jamie on the situation this morning. Jamie couldn’t return and lead the team when the entire country expected him to stand by his father’s side at the campaign rally.
That didn’t stop Kyle from wanting to feel Jamie’s arms around him, to lean into that strength.
“Sir.”
The clear soprano voice drew everyone’s attention. Kyle turned around and blinked in surprise at the newcomers. Mercedes, the MDF’s second-strongest telepath, headed toward them with Phaedra at her side, one slim arm draped protectively over the young girl’s shoulders.
Mercedes’ riot of honey-colored curls framed her head like a halo, green-hazel eyes standing out in her medium-brown face. She was in uniform, and when she came to a stop, she saluted the director crisply.
“Sir, you need to know what Phaedra has seen,” Mercedes said.
“She’s a minor, Gaouette. Please tell me you haven’t broken the law where Ms. Armstrong is concerned?” Nazari asked in a deceptively mild voice.
Despite not even coming up to Kyle’s chin, Mercedes wasn’t fazed at all by Nazari’s piercing stare. “No, sir. She acted on her own accord.”
In the Blood (Metahuman Files Book 4) Page 19
