Porter was careful with her and took his time turning her around to face him.
“Where are your glasses?” Brooklyn asked.
He smiled, tired and worn. “Don’t need ’em anymore.”
The people moving on the dancefloor were full of energy. They twisted and turned, circled their hips, and let the music guide them. Right then, in that moment with Porter holding her up and the music vibrating their bodies, it became easy for Brooklyn to give up. She allowed herself to take a breath and rested her hand on Porter’s face before she pulled him into a fierce kiss.
Their lips collided, and Brooklyn felt alive. His lips were chapped, but they molded against hers well enough. His hands dug into the bones of her hips, and she winced when he pulled her in closer. Her chest was stinging, and her head was spinning, but kissing Porter was something she’d put off for too long.
It felt just as right as she always thought it would, like sleeping in on a Sunday morning and diving off a cliff, plunging into clear water. It was easy to picture them together, barefoot on hardwood floors in an apartment by the sea. She thought of what it might be like to wake up in another life with him. She thought of what it would be like to kiss him for the hell of it and not because it might be her only chance.
Brooklyn opened her eyes when he pulled away, but the swell of her bottom lip was still snug between his teeth.
They’d both heard it, the inevitable. The screams from the people around them. The music coming to an abrupt stop. They knew what was next.
Porter drew his gun first. Brooklyn spun around and leaned against his chest with her gun aimed at the group of soldiers standing in a row by the bar.
Juneau stood in front of them, his smile smug and eyes slanted mischievously.
Dawson, Julian, and Amber were with them. Large black cuffs covered their hands like oval gloves, and each one of them had a soldier standing behind them with an electric prod poised an inch from their necks.
“I see why now!” Juneau laughed and clapped his hands. “You thought you could actually tame one enough to date? Ambitious like always, Porter.”
Porter didn’t lower his gun.
“I’m sure Miss Harper would rather not see her friends here get hurt, though, I presume? Isn’t that right?”
Brooklyn’s hand was trembling from the pain in her chest. She wanted to shoot him. It was all she could think about. But she knew that even if she did take his life, there was someone else trained and capable waiting to take his place.
“Shoot this little bitch ass!” Amber cursed when the soldier behind her jabbed the tip of the prodder against her neck and shocked her.
Porter gripped Brooklyn’s waist.
“Come with me. We’ll get you cleaned up and fed. You can rest, get back into training, and we can talk. I’d like to get to know all of you,” Juneau said pleasantly. He had his arms open wide in some kind of mock invitation. His smile was devious, and the suit he was wearing, stitched with expensive thread, made Brooklyn want to vomit.
“We’re not your belongings,” Brooklyn bit.
Her arm sank, but she flinched and forced it back up, gun still aimed right at Juneau’s head.
“Of course not,” Juneau said. He pouted and frowned. “We’re all friends here.”
Brooklyn coughed. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Her head spun, thoughts swimming in murky water. She resisted the feeling of Porter taking on more and more of her weight. But it was inevitable. Her eyes started to close—her lungs squeezed tight, reaching for air.
They didn’t have a choice. It was really over this time.
The last thing Brooklyn heard was her gun clattering to the floor, fingertips numb when she dropped it, and Porter’s voice yelling her name as the soldiers dragged him away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Everything was blurry, distorted by white light.
The voices around her came in and out like someone was playing with the volume on a pair of speakers.
Cold hands covered in latex grabbed her arms and pulled her body this way and that, but Brooklyn couldn’t will her arms or legs to move. She was stuck. She was paralyzed, completely immobile. She’d been taken.
She couldn’t keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. She blinked once. Twice. Three times and then finally was able to squint. The only thing she could see besides the bright honeycomb light directly above her was the ceiling. A hand wrapped in a blue glove obscured her vision.
Her neck felt heavy as she pushed her chin and looked to the side. There was a bed, white sheets, metal cuffs, long poles…IVs filled with bags of swirling grey liquid. Someone was there, lying in it. Brooklyn opened her eyes a little more.
Dark skin. Shaved head. Rayce.
She wanted to lurch forward off of the cold slab she was lying on, but the two sets of blue gloves forced her back down. She struggled, squirmed, tried to yell for help, but there was nothing, absolute nothing. No sound left her lips—she didn’t even know if her mouth had opened. Brooklyn couldn’t find them. Her eyes bounced around the unfamiliar space, the empty room, the tiny windows shielded by black window covers. The seating. A plane. She was on a plane.
Her mind went to Porter first, the memory of his lips parting from hers, and then she thought of Dawson, Julian, Amber, and Charlie. She couldn’t find them.
The pain in her side sparked, prompting the memory of Porter’s thumb shoving her rib back underneath her skin, and she whimpered.
“Miss Harper, stay still. You broke a couple ribs, and we’re draining your lung right now,” a feminine voice came from behind a medical mask.
Two nurses looked down at her.
She wanted to talk, but her tongue flopped numbly and wouldn’t cooperate. All she could do was whine.
“This one’s strong,” one of the nurses said softly. “One of the strongest we’ve collected.”
“What about that girl that came in a few days ago? Chest wound, scar on her lip?”
Brooklyn’s heart sped up, her stomach twisted, and she opened her eyes wide. She thrashed against the metal table, but the straps kept her trapped. She struggled to make her body work against whatever drugs they’d been pumping her full of, willed her mind to clear.
One of the nurses lowered a clear mask over her face.
“The other one from Eleven? Yeah, she’s our most promising.”
Brooklyn gasped. Oxygen, clean and cold, filled her lungs. Sleeping gas followed, its taste stale and bitter.
Gabriel was alive.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A long hallway stretched toward a set of steel double doors. The linoleum floor that led to them was crisp and chilled. The walls were too clean, a blanket of pearl that made the space never-ending and ominous. There was nothing to listen to, no music, and no people, just absolute stillness. Tall white doors lined each wall, and small oval windows allowed the outside to peer in.
Muffled voices spoke freely behind the set of steels doors. Two weathered hands pushed them open.
“Ladies!”
Juneau Malloy’s shoes clicked against the smooth floor. His smile was filled with emptiness, but an aura of excitement beamed around him. His glasses were folded up and hung from the collar of his onyx dress shirt. He tapped his fingers against the table in the center of the room and chuckled to himself, looking at the women sitting on the other side of it.
“I haven’t seen potential like you two in quite some time. We’ve had help developing a program that will give your minds a good push. You’ll get the chance to build up a proper tolerance to any extraction you might face in the field. I’m sure I can count on you both to comply? I would hope more than anything that you would be excited! Opportunities like these don’t come around often, do they?”
Stephanie’s back straightened. Her hair was groomed into long red ringlets. Her tiny pointed chin bobbed in a nod, pale hands folded neatly in her lap. “I don’t see a problem. I’m available for training immediately.”
Juneau grinned and sat down in a metal chair. He looked across, just to the right of Stephanie and raised his brows. “And you, Miss Serisky?”
Gabriel’s mouth twitched. She pulled at the cuffs of the navy blue blazer she wore. Her lips were lined and coated in deep red lipstick; black eyeliner, thick and sharp, swept across her eyelids.
“You know my terms,” Gabriel said through a bored sigh, running her hand through her hair.
Juneau slid a tall stack of papers toward her. “Of course, and as I told you, ISO will do its best to accommodate those terms.”
He held his hand out to her, but she ignored him and focused on the bland, distorted reflection of herself in the chrome table.
“This is what you were born for,” Juneau added. “This is your destiny.”
Gabriel smirked.
“I don’t have a destiny,” she said. Her nails clicked against the table, long and perfectly manicured.
She lifted them up and eyed them carefully, fingers stretched out in the light.
“Pretty color,” Stephanie mused, gesturing to Gabriel’s fingernail polish.
Gabriel shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
Juneau clasped his hands together. “They’ll be ready for simulation training soon, by the way. Miss Harper’s time in the medical bay is almost up.”
Gabriel continued to ignore him. Instead, she focused on the light dancing across the shine of her nails, painted a bright canary yellow.
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Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank a multitude of people who helped me produce Omen Operation. This book would not have been possible without the team at Limitless Publishing, thank you for taking on The Isolation Series and giving my dreams a voice. I’d also like to mention my editors Matthew Devine and Darryl Cook, who took a lumpy piece of coal and helped me transform it into a diamond. I’d like to give a special shout out to Deranged Doctor Designs for the beautiful cover art work. Last but not least, to my family, friends, and readers, the overwhelming support I have received from all of you is what kept me writing when I was convinced giving up would be easier, and your continuous support is what will keep me writing from this day forward.
About the Author
Taylor Brooke is the author of the upcoming sci-fi adventure trilogy The Isolation Series. She started out as a freelance makeup artist, and quickly discovered her love of elves, zombies, mermaids, kaiju, and monsters of all kinds. After receiving eight professional certifications in special effects makeup, working on countless projects, and fleshing out a multitude of fantastical creatures, she turned her imagination back to her one true love- books. Taylor has had a knack for writing since she was a little girl, and received recognition for her skills throughout grade school and junior college. When she’s not nestled in a blanket typing away on her laptop, she can be found haunting the local bookstore with a cup of steaming hot tea in her hands, scanning the shelves for new reads, or hiking one of the many mountains that surround her home of Bend Oregon.
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/taysalion
Website:
http://lion--ness.tumblr.com/
Omen Operation Page 22
