Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1)

by Adams, Nicholas

  “B.B.?” she pleaded, “please, tell me what’s going on. Why I am here? What do you want from me?”

  Kevin took a deep breath and smiled. He loved Evangeline like a sister. He put his hands on her arms and guided her to sit back down in her seat, again taking the seat next to her for himself. He looked at her with piercing eyes, willing her to understand the gravity of what he was about to say.

  “We don’t want anything from you, Evangeline, but we are trying to protect you. From exactly what, I can’t get into right now. There’s just too much to explain. As far as what’s going on…” he paused, taking a moment to look around the transport at each person there with him. “You’ve stumbled right into the middle of a secret war. And that fact alone has put you and your husband in grave danger, along with the rest of us.”

  Evangeline wanted to laugh. A secret war? How could there be any kind of war going on and she not know about it? She thought Kevin sounded like a conspiracy-theory nut job, but the lack of humor in his eyes and all the somber faces that surrounded her in the transport stopped her from laughing in his face. The speed of the vehicle dropped as the transport slowed around a curve and came to a stop. Someone banged against the side of the vehicle and the rear doors flew open. The men inside all stood up and collected their packs and other equipment. She knew that look on their faces. The ease written in their expressions told her they had arrived at a place of safety.

  Garrett followed behind the four other men as they shuffled past their seats and exited the transport. Each one had slung a small backpack onto his shoulders hefted several crates labeled as medical supplies that had been stored in a compartment at the back of the vehicle.

  Garrett shot Kevin a contemptuous glare, but Kevin ignored him until he had stepped out of the vehicle. Kevin and Evangeline were alone in the transport. He stood up and retrieved a backpack similar to the others from under a seat across the aisle. Evangeline sat still like a statue in her seat. He knew that she was inside herself, weighing her options. He walked up to her to invite her to follow him out when she suddenly jumped up, blocking his path. His footing faltered at her unexpected swiftness. Her eyes were wild with panic as she grabbed fistfuls of his coat.

  “Please,” she begged, “I have to contact Jack immediately. Will you help me?”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Jack had not been close to a refuse transport since he had been a little boy. People in the LTZ would see those transports shuttling discarded materials and products from Olympus out to the recycling complexes on a regular basis. He remembered how some drivers would stop along their routes, feign a mechanical problem, and open up the container doors for impromptu bartering sessions near the markets.

  People would search through the discarded items for things they could fix or reuse. As far as he had known, that was just a part of life in the LTZ, and until his acceptance to the academy in Olympus, he never considered life could be any other way.

  His parents were skilled at taking old and broken things and transforming them into something of use. Restoring furniture was their specialty. Jack, himself, developed his talents as a programmer by restoring old and unwanted toys and games.

  Jack’s mind jerked back to the present when the transport hit a large dip in the road. He knew that the man driving was not a professional refuse transport operator. Jack recognized the occipital implant on the back of the man’s head, which, according to Evangeline, was the implant they offered those who were cut from the TRTV program.

  Jack wondered if the driver had served as one of thousands of remote sentry operators. According to Evangeline, the device at the back of his head would have been installed during a simplified version of the procedure. It allowed an operator direct access to the visual systems of a robotic sentry, but it required them to control its other functions through hand controls.

  Jack always imagined those operators sitting in a control room deep within the center of a base or carrier, as they remote-operated defensive weaponry on the perimeter. There were more sentry operators than there were TRTV pilots, but the bulk of the military was still comprised of non-enhanced soldiers.

  As if compelled by marionette strings, Jack brushed his fingers through his hair and felt the small ports at the back of his skull. The procedure that the driver had undergone was similar to the one that Jack himself had experienced to become more efficient when working on his AI programs.

  He glanced over at the woman on the other side of the back seat. She had slouched down with her knees braced against the back of the driver’s seat, creating a makeshift table with her legs. Her fingers flew across a tablet propped against her lap, her brow furrowed with intense concentration. She wore an unfamiliar type of uniform, but it was the only thing about her Jack did not find intimidating.

  She had introduced herself as Felicia Romano, and she claimed she was part of a resistance movement that had been growing for the past twenty years. She would not give him any more details until they reached what she referred to as a safe place. Jack was not sure what that meant. Felicia’s pledges that Evangeline was safe were the only words that had fully registered in his mind since the Angel had attacked him in his living room.

  After Felicia had stopped the agent from killing him, it still took Jack a while to believe she was not also a threat to him or Evangeline. Before Jack would agree to leave with her, he had insisted that he needed to go into his virtual workshop to close down a project he had been working on before the Angel attacked him. She consented, giving him five minutes while she stood guard and arranged for transportation.

  Jack had gone into his study and put the interface back on his head to reenter his workshop. Gideon was there; the whole time he had been scanning through security feeds in his search for Evangeline.

  “Are you alright, Jack?” he asked. “I calculated a 98% chance that you were going to die tonight.” Jack smiled at his creation. Gideon was amazing, even by Jack’s own lofty standards.

  “Yes, Gideon, I’m fine,” Jack lied. He knew Gideon must have monitored the altercation he had just survived, but he did not want to get into the details. “Thanks for your concern. Any luck in tracking down Evangeline?” he asked as he looked from one display to another.

  Gideon gestured and one of the displays enlarged. “I was able to eliminate all but one vehicle exiting the area around the time of her abduction as a possible mode of transport. This vehicle,” he said, highlighting a large transport, “left the LTZ. It has not reappeared anywhere that I am able to observe. I can only surmise that it has gone outside the LTZ where there are no security devices or power sources that can be monitored.”

  Jack let out a deep sigh of despair. His wife was out there somewhere, and he felt helpless. He began to shut down consoles and displays, and then he walked over to the far workbench. He activated a virtual duplicate of his communicator and set it down. He opened a drawer, pulled out another glowing cube, and placed it on the bench next to his communicator.

  “Gideon,” he said, placing the cube on the communicator and watching it become absorbed. “I want you to monitor my location. I’m installing a tracking beacon in my communicator that should enable you to find me wherever I am.” He paused. “Even outside the LTZ. If something happens to me, your instructions are to do everything within your abilities to protect Evangeline. Do you understand?”

  He stared into Gideon’s eyes, hoping that his creation understood the gravity of his wishes beyond programming and clever software. Gideon gave Jack a reassuring, but lopsided, smile. “I will do my best, Jack.”

  Jack stood there for what seemed like forever when he heard a disembodied voice echoing down the hall. “Mr. Evans!” It was Felicia. “We need to leave. Now!”

  Jack took a deep breath, deactivated his interface once again, and returned to the real world. Felicia stood at the door of his study with an anxious expression on her face. He stood from his chair, folded his interface, and stuffed it again into his pocket. Felicia spun on her heel
and marched out the front door. Jack had to jog to keep up.

  Felicia was looking back at Jack out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to face Jack and fixed her eyes on his. Jack had not realized he had been staring at her while he became lost in his memory.

  “What do you want?” she barked.

  Jack shook the images of his near-death experience from his mind’s eye. “Sorry,” he stumbled. “I just wanted to thank you again for saving my life. I don’t understand why you did, but I just want you to know I appreciate it. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

  Felicia’s eyes softened a little at his gratitude. “You’re welcome, again,” she responded with a slight nod of her head. “I can’t explain why right now. All I can tell you is that it’s not intended for people to become aware of certain things yet. Your wife was exposed to something not meant for the public and it became vital to find out what she knows.” She stared at Jack for a moment then continued. “And we also had to find out what you know.” Her gaze probed his face. He felt unnerved by how she seemed to be able to see down to his soul. It was as if he would be unable to keep anything secret from her even if he tried.

  Felicia’s riddle of an answer did not satisfy Jack’s curiosity. “What I may know about what?” he asked, frustrated.

  Felicia set aside her tablet, sat up straight, and turned her body to face Jack. “I can’t discuss it until we reach our destination.” She held up her hands in defense as Jack began to protest. “That’s all I can say, Mr. Evans. If that isn’t enough for now, then I can just sedate you for the remainder of our trip.”

  Jack sighed in deep frustration. “I don’t understand why that Angel attacked me. It makes no sense. It was like one moment she was just another Angel, then suddenly she turned into a homicidal maniac? What’s going on?”

  Felicia tilted her head, as if looking at Jack sideways would help her decide what she could and could not tell him at that time. She did not think he was ready for the truth yet, but it seemed inevitable that he would hear it soon enough. He had seen too much to to be left in the dark for much longer. She knew her superiors would give him an opportunity to join the cause after they told him the secret. If he joined, then the resistance will have gained a valuable and skilled asset. If he did not join - well, Felicia thought that unlikely, but she chose not to think about what would happen to Jack if he refused the resistance after all he had seen.

  “You’ll know the truth soon enough, Mr. Evans,” she said with an unintended air of doom. She returned to her slouched position and picked up the tablet. She resumed her furious typing for a moment before she paused, her hands hovering over the screen. She turned toward him with a look of pity on her face.

  “Suffice it to say, the world you thought you knew no longer exists.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The neat stack of papers flew off Campbell’s desk, swiped from the surface under his angry hand. The contents of his top-secret office were scattered throughout the room, flittering about like debris after a tornado cut a swath of destruction through the fields of the LTZ. The veins in his neck and face throbbed as he concluded his private meltdown. He slumped down into his chair, closed his eyes, pressed his fingertips together, and took a long, deep breath. He had spun in his chair in a slow, rhythmic circle for a few moments when Sienna’s voice came over the speaker.

  “Mr. Campbell,” she announced, unaware of the tempest he had created in a distant location from her desk. “You’ve received an encrypted message on your private line from the undisclosed sender you asked me to watch for. Shall I place it in your inbox?”

  Campbell slammed his fist down on the intercom panel of the desk. “No, Sienna,” he growled, “Place it in the ghost drive. I’ll deal with it later.” Campbell knew who the undisclosed sender was, but he had no time to deal with the interruption. As urgent as he knew the sender believed the message to be, it would have to wait.

  Campbell was still huffing, catching his breath. The room bore evidence of him tossing books and papers, kicking shelves, and punching holes in the walls. The occupants on the other side of the glass wall froze like deer catching the scent of danger on the air. Like statues, not daring to attract his attention, they waited to see what would happen next.

  One individual in that room had a great deal of experience remaining motionless for extended periods of time. She stood over the drain next to her sensory deprivation chamber, dripping fluid all over the floor. The young woman was the youngest operative ever recruited into Campbell’s covert organization. Sergeant Heather Davis was short and frail, with dark hair and even darker eyes. A white form-fitting body suit covered her skin from her neck down to her ankles and wrists. The ports along her spine had disconnected from the harness within the chamber the moment the agent became incapacitated. She had been standing there, soaking wet, since a livid Director Campbell had ordered her out of the chamber. Rivulets of water flowed across her thin suit and pulled what little body heat she had left down the drain. She did her best to stand at attention, fighting against the involuntary shivers racking her arms and legs and resisting the urge to wrap her arms around her chest to stave off the spasms in her torso.

  This was the second agent damaged in as many days. The first incident had been her partner’s responsibility. He received a reprimand for sustaining damage to his collar that had rendered him inactive. Although, there had no way of knowing about the remote-controlled sniper rifle hidden in the structure of the arena.

  The loss of Heather’s female agent, on the other hand, had been completely avoidable. Such a strategic flaw was inexcusable, and the termination of her agent had been the cause of Campbell’s tirade in his office. Heather should have detected the woman entering the apartment long before she had gotten close enough to strike. She should have heard her padded footsteps, smelled her distinct body odor, or heard her assassin chamber a round into her weapon. But, Heather had grown over-confident and consumed with blood-lust, focusing on Jack Evans to the point of distraction. That distraction allowed her agent to be blasted through the side of the head and dumped over a railing into a pile of refuse.

  The gravity of Heather’s neglect pulled heavy on her shoulders. Every single team member in the room was staring at her, their laser glances burning heatless into her soul. She was so accustomed to the strength and stealth of her Angel’s agent body, that standing in her own physical body, still and shivering, she felt small and vulnerable. Weak.

  Heather was wary of Campbell. She had witnessed his reaction to her blunder on the other side of the glass wall, and she was trembling from fear as well as cold. She had been reprimanded in the past for small mistakes and slip-ups, but letting her agent die in this manner was the worst error to ever happen to an operative in the history of the program. She knew the consequences would not be light. A failure such as this could warrant elimination, a fate worse than mere dismissal and returning to civilian life.

  Campbell continued to take in deep, slow breathes of air behind the glass of his office. He straightened his shirt and attempted to smooth down his frazzled hair.

  He stopped spinning in his chair and locked eyes with his protégé. This was the second agent that had been lost under her control. If Heather suffered another loss, she knew what the protocols dictated. In the past, her affinity for taking risks had born enough fruit to warrant his tolerance, but when it came to the matter with the Dissidents, the costs had begun to outweigh the benefits.

  Campbell stood from his chair and finished making himself presentable, now the perfect image of calm composure. He placed his arms behind his back and stepped away from the disaster that had been a symphony of organization just minutes before. The door between the office and the lab opened with a hiss. As he crossed the threshold, his focus never broke from Heather’s eyes.

  Heather was too afraid of Campbell to sever eye contact with him. Her eyes, for the first time since she had become an operative, showed not the fearlessness she had grow
n accustomed to, but the fear she has lived with her whole life until the fateful day she had been rejected from the TRTV program.

  Only she and a handful of other TRTV rejects received the rare opportunity to become operators in Campbell’s elect squad. She had a gift for telemetric operations, at a level that only one in ten thousand applicants possessed. That singular gift had qualified her for the clandestine duties that required total anonymity.

  Campbell walked right up to her, ignoring every other person in the room, and stood toe to toe. She could feel his rage emanating from his chest like a bucket of hot coals. The relief of warmth was dispelled by her sudden fear that she was about to become consumed in fire.

  His mouth was pinched into a tight line, his nostrils flaring with each methodical and controlled breath. His gusts of fury disturbed the loose strands of hair that framed her face like curtains in the breeze. Campbell stared down at her, his face a mixture of contempt and frustration.

  Beads of water clung to her trembling cheeks. She smelled the anger on his breath when his opened his mouth to speak.

  “Get another one and find them,” he growled into her ear. “One more failure and there will be nothing I can do to prevent your elimination.” He turned and walked away. He stopped midstride and looked over his shoulder. His mouth opened to speak, but he pursed his lips again instead. Whatever warning he was about to give, he had decided against it. Heather wondered how close she had gotten to not meriting a third chance.

  Campbell resumed his sprint to his office with a glance around the room of silent on-lookers. “All of you!” he barked. “Get back to work!” With those words, he crossed the threshold of his office and sat back down in his chair. With the touch of a panel, the transparent panes of glass transitioned through a hazy translucence until they became as opaque as the adjacent walls.