Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  She concealed a faint wince as the dull throbbing that signaled one of the headaches she’d recently been experiencing set up a low tattoo behind her temples. As if he sensed her momentary vulnerability, Peters slid the papers aside.

  “You passed Section Eight’s tests with flying colors.” His austere features seemed carved in stone. “The lie detector, the bio- and neuro-feedbacks, the psychological workups by Drs. Wang and Sobie. Apparently you were telling the truth when you contacted me yesterday and said you wanted to take up your duties again.”

  A rush of triumph raced through her. Of course she’d passed their tests. She’d grown up here, dammit, and there wasn’t a test invented that hadn’t been run on her. By the age of eleven she’d known how to bend them to her advantage without even try—

  “I would have been shocked if you’d failed,” Peters added brusquely. “After all, if anyone could manipulate the results it would be you.”

  Dawn fought to keep her regard steady. She’d underestimated him, she thought tensely. Whatever his tests and his experts told him, Dr. Aldrich Peters preferred to rely on his own instincts…and those instincts were telling him she was lying. With seconds to revoke her own death warrant, she needed to go on the offensive—now.

  “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I get the feeling you don’t fully accept my explanation for my disappearance from Lab 33 last winter,” she said, allowing anger to creep into her voice. “At the risk of sounding more paranoid, I also get the feeling you’re making up your mind as to whether I should even walk out of here alive. Am I right?”

  The thin smile that appeared on Aldrich Peters’s lips did little to soften the remoteness of his expression. “I don’t call that paranoid, Dawn, I call that astute. You’re right, I’ve got serious doubts about your story of going into an emotional tailspin after your Uncle Lee was killed. Lab 33’s ultimate killing machine, the protégé Lee Craig was grooming to take his place, falling to pieces like any ordinary woman? I don’t buy it.”

  “You don’t buy it because you’re forgetting one important fact.” She stood abruptly, placing her palms flat on his desktop. “I am an ordinary woman in many respects—ordinary enough to feel pain when the only family member I’ve ever known is torn from me and ordinary enough to know that I haven’t lived an ordinary life. I told you, losing my uncle was a shattering experience and I needed to come to terms with it.”

  She exhaled. “I needed time to come to terms with who and what I am, too. As you just said, I’m not your usual twenty-two-year-old, am I? I’m a superwoman who’s almost indestructible, trained to use my special talents to clandestinely further the best interests of my country as Uncle Lee did. After he died I felt it was time to ask myself if I really wanted to take his place.”

  “What conclusion did you come to?”

  She answered him promptly. “That Lab 33’s the only game in town for someone like me. And as Uncle Lee always told me, at least I’m working on the side of the good guys.”

  “Which leads me to my second question. Do you still believe we’re the good guys, Dawn, or have you taken your allegiance elsewhere during these past nine months? After all, despite your orders, Kayla Ryan is still alive. Carl Bradford, whom I can assure you was on our side, is dead. Why is that?” Peters’s tone held an implied threat. Slowly she let her palms slide from the desk and straightened to her full height.

  “I told you. Bradford interfered with my assassination attempt. He kidnapped Ryan’s daughter, made it a federal case. Then he tried to kill me. I had to take him out. And killing Ryan would have brought on too much heat. I’m certain she and the others are no longer a threat to us. I’ve dedicated my life to Lab 33. I’ve demonstrated my loyalty time and again, and you still feel you have the right to ask me that?”

  This was it, she told herself as Aldrich Peters held her gaze. Either she’d allayed his suspicions or she hadn’t—and if it was the latter, both of them would be dead minutes from now. Her plan of gathering as much information as she could over the next few weeks for the Cassandras before she made her move against him would have to be forgotten. But she wouldn’t be able to stop him from hitting the emergency button on his desk that would bring the guards pouring in, and she had no doubt that they knew her Achilles’ heel.

  A woven-steel garrote had been part of the standard weapons issue for Lab 33 internal security for as long as she could remember…and for as long as she could remember, she’d instinctively known that particular weapon had been issued with only one opponent in mind. She could survive a bullet or a knife but, as she’d told Peters, she was an ordinary human being in some respects…one of which was that she couldn’t survive without oxygen.

  So be it, Dawn thought with deadly calm. If I die, I die knowing I’ve taken him with—

  Without warning the throbbing shot through her head again. As fast as it had come it faded, and as her vision cleared she realized something had disconcerted Peters. His next words revealed what that something had been.

  “The last thing I expected to see in your eyes when I questioned your loyalty was pain, but apparently the psych profile Drs. Wang and Sobie prepared on you was accurate,” he said slowly. “This changes everything.” He leaned back in his chair. “It seems I misjudged you, Dawn. Welcome home.”

  “It’s good to be back.” Her clipped reply betrayed nothing of the relief sweeping through her. You did it, O’Shaughnessy! she thought in fierce exultation. You lied through your teeth to Aldrich Peters and the bastard bought it. Now nothing can stop you from—

  “Unfortunately, your little vacation couldn’t have been more regrettably timed.” Peters’s composure was firmly back in place. “You’re dying.”

  The man was a consummate manipulator, Dawn thought in disbelief, but whether he knew it or not his days of manipulating her were over. “Either I’m cleared for duty or I’m not,” she said tightly. “But if you think I’m going to jump through any more of your psychological hoops, forget it. I’ve had enough of—”

  “I broke it to you clumsily, but believe me, it’s the truth.” He shook his head with every appearance of regret. “To put it as simply as I can, your genes are breaking down. I’ve had my best people working on the problem for almost a year, but although we’ve isolated the triggering factor, we haven’t been able to perfect the reversal process.”

  “Almost a year.” Her mind still processing his stunning news, Dawn seized on the one detail she felt able to deal with. “You mean you knew about this before I went AWOL and you didn’t inform me?”

  “If I’d suspected you were thinking of taking some unauthorized R and R, I would have,” Peters countered. “Be thankful that the medicals and psychological evaluations the doctors here have subjected you to all your life drew our attention to this as soon as it started to show up. Lab 33’s always had your best interests at heart.”

  “Lab 33 has always had Lab 33’s best interests at heart. And Lab 33’s best interests include knowing the inner workings of their human lab rat,” she answered flatly. “Spare me the hearts and flowers, Doctor, and cut to the chase. How much time do I have?”

  “Worst-case scenario, twenty-one days. The degeneration of your genes is following a mathematically predictable time line that can be precisely charted.” The well-tailored shoulders of his suit jacket lifted in a shrug. “We don’t know exactly when the symptoms will start, but they should begin exhibiting soon. Unfortunately, we don’t know what they’ll be, either.” He hesitated. “About the only thing besides the time line that we know for certain from our experiments is that your death will be painful. In effect, your body will turn on itself.”

  She’d taken on every conceivable enemy during her dangerous career. She’d gone up against those enemies, confident that she would be their final and ultimately unbeatable opponent. Was it irony or simple justice that her own final battle would be desperately waged and lost against herself?

  Simple justice, O’Shaughnessy, Dawn thought bleakly. Justice
was the only word that fit when the genes that had helped her become Lab 33’s killing machine were the very ones that would bring about her—

  Her thoughts came to a halt as a terrible realization filled her. Her mind went blank with fear before it grasped a possible glimmer of hope.

  “You said worst-case scenario is that I have twenty-one days,” she said through stiff lips. “What’s the best case?”

  Aldrich Peters steepled his fingers on the desk. “Your survival, of course. And there’s a good chance we can achieve that, now you’re on board with Lab 33 again.”

  It took the space of a heartbeat for her to comprehend what lay behind his smile. When she did, it took all her self-control not to jerk Peters’s silk tie into a noose and end everything there and then.

  “You know how to reverse the process and you deliberately let me think it was hopeless?” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Enough with the games, Doctor. Let’s get started with my treatment.”

  Because the sooner I receive it, the sooner I can get word to the Cassandras that Faith and Lynn are probably facing the same genetic breakdown, she thought. Maybe I deserve to pay for my past that way, but they don’t. And even if it means I have to push my own personal agenda back a little, I’m going to make sure they won’t.

  She wasn’t giving up the payback that was coming to her, but Kayla had been right—despite the fact that she barely knew them, despite the very different lives they’d led, her sisters were her first priority.

  “Get one thing straight.” Peters’s voice was a whiplash. “If I choose to make you sweat a little to bring you back into line after your irresponsible disappearance, you’ll take it and like it. Yes, we can create a reversal serum, and yes, as a slap on the wrist I didn’t immediately reveal its existence to you. But I agree, the tit for tat stops here…because you’re leaving Lab 33 tonight on an assignment for me.”

  She shook her head decisively. “No deal. I get the serum before I take on the job.”

  “Getting the serum is the job.” A wintry smile crossed his features as he dropped his bombshell. “Our scientists are missing the final piece of the puzzle that will allow them to formulate the reversal serum. In fact, there’s only one man in the world who’s possibly cracked the puzzle.”

  “Possibly?” she repeated blankly. “Dammit, you’re not sure?”

  “That’s part of your assignment—to ascertain he’s made the breakthrough we believe he has.”

  “Why not simply ask him?” she retorted. “Don’t scientists practically fall all over themselves to publicize their findings?”

  “Most do.” Peters’s lips thinned. “Sir William London’s the exception, a paranoid megalomaniac who won’t reveal anything until he’s ready. He’s also the greatest genius the world has ever known in the field of genetics.”

  “So I’m to break into the research facility where London works, steal his notes and bring them back for our people to use. Getting past a few security guards should be easy enough,” Dawn said in defeat.

  A simple B & E she could live with, she told herself edgily. At worst she’d have to temporarily disable a guard or two, but she’d make sure no one got seriously hurt.

  And if it hadn’t been a simple break and enter? If you’d been ordered to kill for the serum, would you have stepped over the line once more to save yourself and your sisters? The uncomfortable question came to her before she could thrust it away. She didn’t know, Dawn admitted. She’d made a vow never to carry out Aldrich Peters’s murderous orders again, but if the serum was all that stood between her sisters and a terrible death….

  Pain spiked with sudden intensity behind her eyes. She fought against it as Peters pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with a frown.

  “I should have made myself clear. Sir William is funded by the Defense Department in a joint venture with the British, and his laboratory’s inside a compound in the middle of the Arizona desert. It’s guarded by a crack team of military personnel headed by a certain Captain Des Asher—who’s not only London’s nephew, but a highly trained British Special Air Services officer. You’ll pose as a research assistant and get close to London that way.”

  He held the papers out to her. “Study Asher’s military bio. He’s going to be your biggest obstacle, so assassinate him first.”

  Chapter 2

  Status: nineteen days and counting

  Time: 2300 hours

  She was going up against Des Asher naked. She couldn’t deny that there was a tiny ripple of excitement deep inside her at the thought.

  With deliberate clumsiness, Dawn shifted the gears of the junker hatchback she was driving and was rewarded by the labored whine of an engine being pushed beyond its limits. She shifted again, this time correctly.

  Of course, naked just meant without weapons. The most lethal piece of hardware anyone would find on her if she were searched was a nail file…and although she could remember an instance when, armed with little more, she’d taken out a couple of sadistic goons without even messing up the polish she’d been applying when they’d burst in on her, she didn’t think a nail file would raise any red flags as far as Des Asher’s people were concerned.

  Especially not when it was being carried by Dawn Swanson.

  “Swanson’s never done the horizontal mambo, way I see it. I mean, repressed? Chick’s a total man-hater, plus she’s a dweeb,” Carter Johnson had said with a grin two nights ago when she’d left Peters’s office and reported to Lab 33’s Identities Department. He’d extracted a glossy eight-by-ten photo from a file and passed it to her. “Check out your new hair, babe. Not that the big boss man told me any more than he had to, but with the rock-solid credentials I’ve created for you, I’m guessing this isn’t a simple in-and-out assignment where a wig would be enough. After we’re through here, you’ll be scooting that fine butt of yours over to Helga for the works—a bad cut, an even worse perm and a mud-brown dye job.” His grin widened. “I almost forgot the bottle-lens glasses we got for you to wear. Behind them your eyes look way magnified, but Carlos in Research and Development made them so they won’t affect your vision at all. Man, I love this job!”

  Carter was one of Lab 33’s youngest employees, probably close to her own age. Much to the irritation of the older staff, he cultivated an indie-rebel air, wearing his hair in a spiky, bed-head style and using a skateboard to cruise up and down Lab 33’s endless corridors. But Dawn wasn’t taken in by his “Dude, where’s my wheels?” manner. He worked here. That meant two things: one, he had to be the best at what he did, which was creating false identities and the documentation to back them up; and two, he’d willingly sold his soul to Aldrich Peters—either for money or because of some crime he’d committed in the past that Peters had made go away.

  Whatever the reason, Carter Johnson wasn’t the boy next door. He was part of an organization that made the Mafia look like pussycats. To complicate matters, he’d borne a grudge against her ever since she’d told him, in no uncertain terms, that she didn’t intend to date him until she had definite confirmation hell had frozen over.

  She’d returned the photo to him. “Go back to the computer and reconfigure this. No perm. My hair stays the length it is. I’ll go with a temporary rinse and wear it scraped into a bun while I’m undercover as Little Miss Repressed. When I walk out of here, I’ll be Dawn Swanson, right down to the baggy science-geek sweatshirt, but that persona’s not going to come from clothes or a hairstyle, it’s going to come from me. If you’ve got a problem with that, we’ll go talk to the big boss, as you refer to Dr. Peters, together.”

  She’d won that round, Dawn reflected now as she deliberately clashed the hatchback’s gears again. It hadn’t been until she’d reached the motel where she’d stayed last night and read the extensive bio prepared for her—a bio she’d later burned before flushing the charred scraps down the motel room’s toilet—that she’d realized Carter, with his own waspish sense of revenge, had gotten the last laugh.

  S
wanson lives, breathes and sleeps fruit flies and genetics, the typed pages had informed her. Since seventy-two-year-old Sir William London is the world authority on her chosen passion, Swanson hero-worships him to the point of having a kind of crush on him. Several of the contacts we’ve blackmailed to supply references on our fictitious lab technician will mention the poster that supposedly hung above her bed at her college dorm—the famous shot of Sir William taken just before he won his first Nobel Prize in ’58, when he was one of Oxford’s “crazy young men.”

  In the margin, Carter had added a penciled note: Who knows, O’Shaughnessy, you might get lucky with the old geezer. Here’s hoping, girlfriend!

  “And here’s hoping that when the Cassandras and I take down Lab 33, you spend the rest of your sorry life behind bars,” Dawn muttered. She narrowed her gaze as the hatchback’s headlights cut through the desert blackness to illuminate an unmarked secondary road up ahead. Although the slight rises and dips in the terrain made it impossible to see what lay ahead, the road had to be the turnoff to London’s small but highly secure laboratory complex. She felt a surge of anticipation run through her. Since sound carried in arid terrain such as this, more so at night, her little maneuvers with the gears hadn’t been premature. They’d insured that any sentry with ears sharp enough to catch the first faint sounds of a vehicle approaching wouldn’t have heard Dawn O’Shaughnessy driving with her usual speed and skill, but Dawn Swanson, a woman who preferred to be surrounded by test tubes and petri dishes instead of behind the wheel of a car.

  Live the lie, Dawnie. Unbidden, the tobacco-roughened voice of Lee Craig broke through her concentration, so clearly that he might have been sitting beside her in the dark. That’s the first rule of deep cover. Forget who you are and become the identity you’ve taken on. It’s not always easy…but once in a while you might even find yourself wishing you didn’t have to go back to being the real you.