“Better than your leg,” Thomas said.
Dom lifted his sheet. White gauze covered his calf. He tried to move his toes, but pain scorched through his muscles. Dom cursed. He couldn’t be out of the game. Not now.
“Where’s Lauren?”
“Here!” the doctor said, jogging between the other beds toward him. Dark bags hung under her eyes, but she wore a bright smile. “You feeling okay?”
“I’m shot,” Dom said. “And my ribs feel like shit. But knowing you’re safe makes it all okay.” His eyes widened as his memories flooded back to him. “Did we get Spitkovsky and the old man?”
Lauren chewed her bottom lip. “Spitkovsky got away. Miguel and Meredith told me they saw his chopper fly northeast, but Frank didn’t have the fuel to pursue him. Plus, they had some important cargo to get back here.” She offered him a sympathetic smile.
“Tell me there’s some good news,” Dom said with a cough.
“That’s to be determined,” Lauren said. “The old man’s alive, but—”
“Can I walk?” Dom asked.
Lauren raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter if I say no?”
“Not really. Got a crutch?”
Thomas helped Dom slip his legs over the side of the bed, and Lauren gave him a crutch to lean on.
“As your doctor, I do need to say you should be off your feet. You risk reopening that wound, and that muscle needs to heal.”
“Appreciate the advice,” Dom said as he slipped the crutch into his armpit and shakily stood. He put his weight on his right leg and took his first tentative step. “But I need to see the old fart I almost died trying to capture.”
Lauren nodded, walking slowly across the med bay with him. Miguel and Jenna stood near a bed, guarding the patient there, but as Dom drew near, they beamed.
“Chief!” Miguel said. “Glad to see you on your feet.”
“Come to see our new friend?” Jenna asked.
“That’s right,” Dom said.
He took another painful step forward. He grunted each time he used the crutch. His ribs felt like they were about to shatter every time he took a breath.
The old man lying in the bed appeared harmless. Liver spots covered his bald head, and deep wrinkles grooved his features. His skin practically hung off his bones, and his arm looked like it would break if Dom shook the man’s hand too hard. He found it difficult to believe this senior citizen might be a key piece of the puzzle.
But judging by Spitkovsky’s interest in the old guy and the nursing-home-turned-high-security fortress, this man was far more important than he seemed.
“Who the hell is he?” Dom asked.
“Guy hasn’t spoken to us,” Miguel said. “Been sleeping the whole time.”
“Yeah,” Jenna said. “We’ve been watching him since we brought him down here. Maybe he’s just pretending?”
Lauren shrugged. “As far as I can tell, he’s not in a coma. Neurological function seems normal.”
“Any idea who he is?” Dom asked.
Thomas put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe I better take you to Chao for this one. They’ve uncovered some, uh, interesting stuff. Want me to grab a wheelchair?”
Dom glared at him. “Is that a joke?”
“Yeah, kind of,” Thomas said with a smirk.
Side-by-side, they limped out of the med bay and into the corridor. Several Hunters and crew members gave Dom a proud salute as they passed. Progress was slow and painful. The fire in his calf grew hotter, and he guiltily thought about Thomas’s offer to get a wheelchair. His pride pushed him to keep walking on his own two feet, but he wondered if it wasn’t time to start accepting some help. His crew—his family—wouldn’t think he was weak, not after what they’d all been through together.
Before they reached the workshop’s hatch, Dom heard the clatter of claws scampering on the deck. He spun as best he could to see Maggie charging toward him.
“Whoa, girl!” Sadie said, tugging on Maggie’s leash. Rachel and Rory trailed her. Kara followed behind them with Navid at her side—and he seemed to be dangerously close to holding Dom’s daughter’s hand. Dom glanced at the young man suspiciously, and Navid shoved his hands in his pockets.
Kara squeezed him gently, careful to avoid his injuries. Sadie had no such inhibitions, and Dom gritted his teeth against the pain as he hugged her back. It was worth it. He had never felt so relieved in his life. The girls were safe, and he was with them again.
“Nice to see you again, Captain,” Rachel said.
“We were all rooting for you, sir,” Rory added.
“Thanks for your support, midshipmen,” Dom said, regaining his composure. “Getting a tour of the ship?”
“The royal treatment,” Rachel said. “Sadie’s been our personal tour guide.”
“You still thinking about joining the crew?” Dom asked.
“There’s a part of me that does,” Rachel said. “But my duty is waiting in Kent with the other midshipmen. I owe it to them to do what I can to keep that place running and safe.”
“Yeah,” Rory said. “This ship is great, but we belong there. If we can find a way back.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Dom said. He turned to Navid next and nodded.
“Good to see you up and about, sir,” Navid said.
“Likewise,” Dom said. “You did good work with the Phoenix Compound.”
“I was pleased to do my part,” Navid said.
Dom gave his daughters another hug. There were too many moments in his journey through the Congo when he thought he would never be this close to them again.
“You have no idea how glad I am to see you all,” he said. He could no longer hold back the happy tears budding in his eyes. He was done fighting a never-ending battle against his own heart. “I want to stay with you, but first I’ve got to take care of a couple things, okay?”
“Okay,” Sadie said. “We’ll be in the mess. I can make you a hot chocolate if you want.”
“I’d love that. I promise I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Come on, everyone! Let’s go!” Sadie said cheerfully.
The group disappeared, with Maggie leading the way down the corridor.
“They’re good kids,” Thomas said. “You know, when you were in the OR, I told Kara not to worry because her old man is tough. He won’t give up. You know what she said?”
Dom looked at him expectantly.
“She said, and I quote, ‘No shit.’”
Dom couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s my girl.”
He and Thomas made their way to the electronics workshop. He wasn’t ready to jump back into planning their next mission. He wanted to spend time with his girls and Meredith. His crew deserved rest—and so did he. Thomas helped Dom over the lip of the hatch into the workshop. Glowing monitors displayed an array of text documents, chemical formulas, and images of Titans in various states of growth. Chao sat at his desk; Shepherd was in a chair next to him. Samantha leaned over them, pointing at one of the screens. Meredith and Alizia stood behind her. They all turned when the sound of Dom’s crutch announced his entrance.
“Dom!” Meredith said. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips found his, and he welcomed the unexpected kiss. Warmth filled him from her touch, and the world melted away. It made him feel young and naïve and happy. But when Meredith pulled back, the moment passed, and he found himself in an all too familiar reality.
He straightened his back and braced himself for their report.
“Your people have been busy,” Alizia said. “I’m impressed by the resources you have on this ship. I never would’ve guessed you had all this at your disposal based on the dirty mongrels I found on the river and took into my home.”
“You plan on staying aboard long? We could always use another Hunter as talented as you.” Dom made the request half in jest. He truly believed she’d be a valuable member of the team, but he knew what she would say.
“Of course I cannot,” Al
izia said. “I wanted only to gain closure from our mission. Frank has promised to fly me back to the CDF.”
“I understand. Chao and Samantha will outfit you with a satellite radio. If you ever need us, call.”
“And I hope you will do likewise,” Alizia said. “We’re a humble group, but once we have ensured those men will never use our home as their shitting ground again, we’ll do what we can to clean up the rest of the world. You have my promise.”
Dom gave her a solemn nod. “Glad to hear it. Chao, what’s our situation?”
“As we suspected,” Chao began, “the Titans were the next stage in Oni Agent research. We haven’t translated all the documents, so there’s probably more to find. But the research on the Titans wasn’t new. Apparently, the Russians have been pursuing this kind of human genetic engineering work since the 1960s. Most of their early experiments focused on blending the genes from various lower primates to create chimeras. It wasn’t until recently that they combined that research with the Oni Agent.”
“I’m sure this information will be invaluable to Lauren’s team when you finish the translations,” Meredith said.
“That’s the hope,” Chao said. “The software we have only goes so far. Glenn has been helping.”
“Excellent,” Dom said. Glenn might not look it, but he was a polyglot who learned languages in his spare time for fun. “Did you find anything to help us treat the Oni Agent?”
“Maybe,” Samantha said. She pointed to one of the monitors. The blue glimmer of the screen cast an ethereal glow over the tattooed vines and roses on her arm. “They were doing some kind of research that removed the prion portion of the Oni Agent, leaving only the nanobacteria.”
“Why would they do that?” Dom asked.
“Beats me,” Samantha said. “But here’s where things get interesting. The Russian guy, Colonel Pyotr Spitkovsky, is a really bad dude. We finally found some shit on him. Took Meredith’s access to old CIA files and Shepherd’s credentials to infiltrate the military intelligence databases, but we put together a narrative of sorts.”
Chao pulled up a file on one of the monitors. It showed the ugly, square face of Spitkovsky. “It’s no secret that the Soviets kept pursing forbidden research after the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.”
“We have documented evidence provided by Soviet defectors though the 1970s and 80s to back that up,” Samantha added.
“Spitkovsky apparently led a clandestine division called Biological Health Research that continued past the Soviet era and was absorbed into the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” Chao said. “Some of this was lost in translation, but it sounds like his research was focused on something called the ‘Human Machine’ project.”
“I’d guess most of his history with the military was redacted or modified,” Meredith chimed in. “Everything we found in his records looks pretty similar to the files of the spooks I worked with at the CIA.”
Dom scanned the document. Meredith was right; it was full of varied career trajectories and strange military involvement that didn’t make sense unless it was fabricated or full of holes. “How the hell has he been operating in secret for so long?”
“Honestly, we don’t know,” Meredith said. “He was a political prisoner for the past decade. As far as we knew, Putin threw him in some dark cellar in Siberia for seditious conspiracy against the state.”
“It’s hard to believe a man could orchestrate something like the Oni Agent’s spread from a prison cell in Siberia,” Dom said. “Is it possible that this guy’s imprisonment was just a cover to get other intelligence agencies off his trail?”
“Maybe,” Meredith said. “That’s certainly not unusual. But we usually caught those kinds of things in the agency. I think there really was some bad blood between this guy and Putin.”
“We’ll keep it in consideration,” Dom said. “So who the hell is the guy in my med bay?”
Samantha took a sip from an open energy drink can. “Shigeru Matsumoto,” she said.
The name sparked a dim memory. Dom had heard it before, but he had trouble remembering where.
The IBSL.
Unit 731.
Holy shit.
“He created the Oni Agent. He was the original scientist on the Amanojaku Project,” Dom said. The words sounded distant, as if someone else were saying them. His whole body went numb with the powerful realization of who he now had on the Huntress.
Shepherd nodded. “After they cancelled the bioweapons programs at Detrick in the seventies, his records vanished. Guess now we know where he ended up.”
“Goddamn,” Dom said, cracking his knuckles. The man who had truly started this mess was still alive, and he was on Dom’s ship. “Goddamn.”
“We already created a data package of the vid feeds we got in the Congo and the Bikoro facility,” Samantha said. “Everything we know about Matsumoto and Spitkovsky is in it, along with all the data we managed to stream from the facility before the whole place went dark. I’ll include the protocol for synthesizing the Phoenix Compound, and then we can send it to Kinsey.”
Dom shook his head. “I don’t want to share this with him yet.”
“Why not?” Meredith asked.
“We might only get one shot to show the world we’re not the villains,” he said. “I’m not convinced Kinsey can be trusted to help us do that.”
“Dom’s right,” Shepherd said. He rubbed a pair of white scars on his wrist. “When I was waterboarded, the man who was carrying it out told me he was Kinsey’s boss. I’m still not sure if it was a bluff meant to intimidate me or not. Either way, we don’t know who to trust. If someone intercepts our message, who knows how much of it will actually get through to him.”
“Before we do anything, I want to have a little talk with Dr. Matsumoto. He owes us an explanation.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” Meredith said.
Dom still couldn’t quite believe it. They had unlocked a treasure trove of data from the Bikoro facility, and they had captured the architect of the original Oni Agent experiments. To top it off, the Phoenix Compound actually worked. Lauren thought they might even be able to adapt it as a vaccine, so no one would have to use the risky chelation treatment again.
But they still had to find Spitkovsky. For all he knew, the man might be mobilizing his allies to launch a massive offensive to whatever was left of the world. Humanity wouldn’t survive it.
His throat tightened as if the bony hands of a Skull were squeezing him. The immensity of the tasks ahead threatened to overshadow the slim chances he saw of them actually succeeding.
But as Alizia studied the reports on Matsumoto, Dom knew it wasn’t just the Hunters who had skin in the game. Even if they couldn’t get through to Kinsey, they had a militia ready to fight beside them in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They had Frank’s new allies in Portugal, waiting for some communication from the outside world to tell them where to strike. They had the midshipmen and civilians banding together on Kent Island, doing everything in their power to protect the defenseless.
Meredith brushed her hand against his, and her fingers curled against his palm. He had her. He had the Hunters. And as long as he could hobble around, as long as the med bay could still treat patients, as long as this ship could still float, they wouldn’t stop fighting back.
Dom looked back at an image of the stone-faced Russian man who had managed to escape him. Injured or not, Dom wouldn’t rest until they found him and ended his crusade against mankind.
Wherever you are, Spitkovsky, Dom thought, you’ll never be safe. We’re coming for you.
The End of Book 5 in The Tide series.
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Need something to read while you wait for the next Tide book? What follows is an excerpt from Eternal Frontier, the first book in The Eternal Frontier series.
Purple and green waves of plasma coursed around the hull of the SRES Argo as it exited hyperspace. A long, metallic groan resonated through the ship. Planets loomed into existence out of the darkness of space, and a fiery star greeted the crew, welcoming them to a new solar system. Lieutenant Commander Tag Brewer had joined this exploratory mission with the Solar Republic of Earth’s Navy precisely to witness such a sight. He had spent long nights dreaming of traveling among the stars. The allure of discovering the undiscovered, exploring the wild abandon of the universe, stepping foot on a land that had never borne witness to the human race, and the potential of contacting new life on distant planets evoked a heart-thumping excitement in Tag that could be rivaled by no other experience.
And he was missing it.
As the chief medical officer, he bore the responsibility of carrying the ship’s biomedical science mission forward. The urge to fulfill his duty called to him at every waking hour. Now was no exception.
Tag sat at a lab bench in the medical bay and used two fingers to gesture on a holoscreen. His movements manipulated a remote-controlled microscope behind the protective barrier cordoning off the laboratory. The remote-controlled scope allowed him to monitor his ongoing experiments in real time while reducing the risk of contaminating the cells and tissues growing inside the refrigerator-sized incubators in the next room. So instead of studying the gleaming stars outside the Argo, he was stuck looking at the microscale world contained in tiny plastic dishes.
He wondered if he would have a chance to study any living cells from the planet they were set to visit. Studying new life...that would make these long hours in the lab worth it. That would make his entire career worth it.
Tag pushed aside those distracting thoughts and willed himself to focus on the scope’s view. Various numbers marched across the holoscreen to report the current temperature and humidity within the incubators. Another scrolling set of numbers reported the minute voltage fluctuations taking place in a dish full of neural tissue. Tag couldn’t help but grin at the sight. Months of work had gone into achieving those small changes, indicating the tissues might actually be forming a functional neural network—a brain of sorts.
The Tide (Book 5): Iron Wind Page 34
