by James Moore
That suited Sam just fine. As long as he didn’t start looking too close to home. Being a traitor was the sort of work that made Sam feel a little nervous, and Joe was exactly the sort that could damned near smell fear.
Joe wanted answers. Gene wanted answers. Sam didn’t care about answers. He wanted solutions and his freedom. And everyone else? Well, as his namesake liked to say, Damn your eyes.
One phone call, just a quick one to let Evelyn know that they were coming, that there would be an advance party and that weapons would be involved. That would be enough to keep his end of the deal with the woman.
Instant freedom.
He split off from Joe when they reached the hotel. Bronx stared at him, an unspoken question on his lips, and Sam answered, “Coffee and a burger. Want anything?”
Joe smiled. “Gonna lose that girlish figure if you’re not careful. No, I’m good. Just make sure you get some rest, okay?”
“Will do. See you in a while.” He skipped the bank of pay phones outside this time and went into the diner. He’d spotted a phone there the night before, and this time he preferred not having anyone from inside the hotel looking at him while he made his call.
Evelyn Hope answered on the third ring.
“A couple of teenage girls will come by tomorrow. Not long after they check everything out, the whole group is supposed to show.”
“How many of you are there?”
For a second he thought about lying and then decided against it. Her people had already met them once. “Five. Three boys, two girls.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. We’ll be armed.” He almost said Joe’s name and decided against it, though he wasn’t really sure why. “Subject Seven wants to meet you. If he can’t, he’ll take your people hostage and torture them for the information.”
“Thank you, Sam. See you tomorrow.” She killed the connection after that without giving him a chance to respond.
And just like that it was done. Gene was Jewish and had never read the Bible. Sam didn’t care either way, but he’d heard a name before that rang in his mind as if it were being whispered in his ear.
“Judas.”
He did his best to ignore that voice as he sat at the table and waited for his meal. He wasn’t very hungry, but Joe might still be watching. Best to make it look good.
When the food came, his stomach grumbled and Sam ate the food with the appetite he thought was missing. Apparently treachery was hungry work.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cody Laurel
WITH THE MORNING CAME a very large breakfast, courtesy of Joe Bronx. It seemed that in his travels, he had found almost every place on the planet that had good food, and the Chicago area was no exception.
Cody was feeling better, enough so that he ate and ate well. When they were done consuming enough food for a football team, Joe laid out the situation for everyone.
“What I need from you ladies is simple. Just go down the street and look at the houses. See if anyone’s home. They shouldn’t be. If the coast is clear, we hit the house and wait for them.”
Cody frowned. He couldn’t say with any sincerity that he thought of himself as a human lie detector, but he wasn’t so sure about Joe’s words here. They smacked of half-truths. Still, the large, hairy man who killed bears with his empty hands wasn’t going to get called on it. Not by him at least. He was feeling better, but not cocky enough to commit suicide.
“And if anyone’s there?” Tina looked at her empty plate with regret.
“Then all the better. That means we’ll have less time to wait around for them to get to us.”
“How do you plan on winning this?” Cody looked at Joe and then quickly looked away. Though he’d been doing well while they were eating, now he was feeling a little green.
“Simple. They’re going to be looking for me and the rest of the soldiers. That’s what we’re going to give them. Only this time, we’ll have weapons.”
Cody looked back toward him. “You think that’ll make a difference?”
“Absolutely.” Joe smiled. “Last time they wanted to take us alive. If they hadn’t, I think they’d have been using all that artillery they had with them. I bet the same is true this time. So we go in hard and fast. I want them alive too, but I’m okay with them being dead.” He looked from one person to the next, not letting his eyes linger too long on Kyrie. “I’d like to ask one of them some questions, but I can survive without the extra information.”
Tina shook her head. “No disrespect and all of that, but this is just stupid. Why not just go in with our hands over our heads and surrender if all you want is to meet Evelyn Hope?”
Before Joe even answered, Tina’d gone back to looking at her hands. She had chops. Cody would have wet himself even asking that question, though it had been in the back of his mind.
Joe stared at the top of Tina’s head like he was willing her to look at him, but she didn’t bother and eventually he was forced to answer or look like an ass in front of everyone.
“We need to see Evelyn Hope. If this is her house, and it might be, then awesome and we’ll wait. If it’s a trap, and it probably is, then we get a few of them and we get the information we need from them about where she is and how we can find her.”
“How long you been on your own, Tarzan?”
“Excuse me?” Joe seemed almost to swell with anger.
Tina looked up from her hand—which seemed to have become an object of endless fascination for her—and stared hard at Joe. “If all you want is Evelyn Hope and we run into those guys, and if those guys are the ones who can lead us to Evelyn Hope, why not surrender and avoid the possible bloodshed?” Tina’s eyes trailed up and down him with cold contempt, her expression saying very clearly that she thought he was being stupid. “Let me put it another way: what if they feel the same way about us?”
“That we’re expendable?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I guess we just better be meaner than they are.” He smiled at her and stared until she looked away, her face just starting to blush.
Cody watched her become unsettled by the way Joe looked. To hide how much the scrutiny flustered her, Tina stood up and dusted her jeans with her hands in case anything was sticking to the denim. “Fine. We’ll play it your way. This time. So come on, Kyrie. Let’s get this done.”
Kyrie nodded. “But I’ve got an idea.”
Tina didn’t even look at her. “Tell me on the way.”
They left the room and Kyrie did her best to keep up with Tina’s pace.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kyrie Merriwether/Not-Kyrie
KYRIE FELT THE WIND blowing across her face and savored the sensation for a moment. The pavement was smooth under the wheels of the freshly stolen—by Tina, who had no problem with theft, not by Kyrie, who was terrified of getting caught—bicycle, and she coasted smoothly down the slight hill leading to the edge of Sullivan Street.
Her clothes were slightly baggy and smelled of stale cigarettes and staler perfume. Somewhere along the way, around the same time their Others had stolen the motorcycles, they’d stolen some clothes too. Leather and denim. How ludicrous they must have looked, two little girls wearing the regalia of a motorcycle club while pedaling away on their Schwinns.
The houses were all nice enough, but the area felt wrong. Maybe that was because she knew it was supposed to be a trap for her Other and the rest of the monsters. No one knew who she was, so she was supposedly safe doing this.
There were people around. That was one thing. Not just grown-ups, but kids and teenagers around her age. There were a lot of people. She shook her head. It was almost like a block party, there were so many people.
And that was the thing that bothered her. There were too many people, even for a weekend day. She’d never been anywhere in her life with so many people lounging around outside the houses rather than inside their homes. People had chores or homework or jobs, and that meant you didn’t see them just
hanging around. But here, on Sullivan Street, there were teens sitting at the porch of the place two houses down from the address she and Tina were supposed to look at. And across the street were three men working on trimming bushes and mowing the lawn. There wasn’t enough of a lawn for one man, let alone three.
It looked casual, but in a forced way. Like it was supposed to look as much like a normal neighborhood as it could, but the extras they’d hired for the shot were all trying too hard.
She slid her eyes over to Tina and saw the other girl looking back at her. She had the same feeling; Kyrie could see it in her expression. Tina stood up from the seat of her bike and pedaled faster. Sooner or later the bikes were going to be missed, and Kyrie wanted to return them before that happened.
She pedaled harder as well. They’d seen enough.
A mile later, they dropped the bikes on the lawn of a house that was close to the one where they’d snagged them. Some fingers would maybe be pointed at neighbors who were innocent, but if the owners of the bikes were awake and had noticed them missing, they couldn’t bring them back to the right spot without a confrontation. No way she wanted that. She couldn’t trust that her Other would behave if she was confronted.
Tina pulled another disposable cell phone from her pocket and dialed quickly. Kyrie watched and felt a little amusement. The girl had purchased half a dozen phones before they ever met, and every time she made phone calls, she got rid of the last phone and activated a new one. She was down to two phones left. She’d have to buy more soon or learn to get over her paranoia. Tina tilted her head a bit and looked down the street with an impatient expression until the call was answered. “Yeah. There’s people all over the place. It’s a setup.” She nodded. “We’re waiting on you. We got our motorcycles and we’ll get ’em started.”
Kyrie frowned. They had been okay on the bicycles, but driving the motorcycles over had been a bit challenging. The things weighed more than she’d ever expected and they were designed for big biker types, not teenage girls. After the group realized who the motorcycles belonged to, they’d talked about getting rid of them. But in the end Gene suggested saving them and hiding them in a copse of woods not far from the hotel. They might need transportation in a hurry. Turned out he was right.
Tina’d just cut off the phone when the mental call came. Wake up!
And as soon as they heard it, their bodies responded. Kyrie felt the Other waking, moving inside her mind, swimming up from whatever depths she hid in, and felt her lips peel back in a smile of anticipation. Her body, but not hers. Her mind, but not hers anymore. The Other was coming fast and furious, and the pain of her muscles twisting and changing hit her as the darkness came to sweep her away.
Three feet away, Tina hissed in frustration and then laughed as her voice changed.
And then they were gone, replaced by two different girls, who moved away from the discarded bikes and headed for the motorcycles that they’d stowed when they arrived. Joe Bronx spoke in their heads, telling them where the bikes were. Even as he led them to their rides, they could hear the other motorcycles coming, heading in their direction.
They came around the corner hard and fast, three heavily muscled animals in leather. Though they were all young, they looked as vicious as the people they’d stolen the bikes from in the first place. They wore helmets to hide their features, and so the girls put on their helmets as well. This was as close as they were getting to being disguised.
Confusion was an enemy when they first woke up, but Joe was there to make it better. He was strong and smart, and they couldn’t help but admire him. He’d saved them from eternal slumber, and that alone would have earned their loyalty, but even now he kept them aware of everything that was happening.
It was only a matter of moments before they were riding together, heading for Sullivan Street and ready to finish the madness, ready to be freed from the prisons that their counterparts made of their lives.
How much better everything would have been for all involved if they hadn’t already been betrayed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Evelyn Hope
“THEY’RE COMING.” EVELYN HEARD the Rafael’s voice softly through her headset. She watched the monitors and felt herself tense. There was a preposterous number of cameras set in the area, because there had to be. The entire neighborhood was a setup, a dummy placed for the purpose of seeing how well the Doppelgangers adjusted to life in a suburban environment. If she’d learned anything from the past, it was that privacy could not be allowed. Subject Seven had taught them that lesson, and it had been costly. Now she was grateful for the extra security and the technology that allowed them to have so many cameras and microphones hidden in plain sight.
All of the people who’d been on the street, waiting, looking around and acting as normal as possible, immediately moved for cover. They were trained—and well trained at that—but they were not here to fight. They were here to observe and to offer backup only if absolutely necessary. This was a test. Who was better at being a Doppelganger? Seven or the Strike Team? Evelyn had to know. She had to see for herself if everything they’d been working for was a successful endeavor when compared to the monster that had come before the Strike Teams.
She watched the Strikers ready themselves. The last time they’d been taken off guard. No one to blame but themselves, and they understood that. They had been told that their enemies were faster than humans, that they were actually on par with the Strikers, but it hadn’t registered. Hearing it hadn’t meant believing it. Now they had seen and felt it for themselves.
Rafael let them know it was time—reminded them that this time, failure would mean dire consequences. Perhaps a few of them might have wanted to argue, but they’d been better trained than that. It had to be done. They had to win this. There could be no excuses.
“Mary, Declan, Tori . . . Hit them from the left. Sean and Heather, wait for my mark.” He was talking into the radio headsets instead of using his mental commands for two reasons. First, because that way Evelyn could hear everything going on, and second, because they weren’t one hundred percent sure that Seven couldn’t eavesdrop on whatever mental commands he issued. There were still too many things they didn’t know about Seven and how he’d evolved over the last five years. Most Alphas couldn’t read the thoughts of anyone who wasn’t a part of their birth clutch, but that was because they’d been designed that way. Subject Seven and his friends were prototypes: they were unpredictable.
Evelyn watched them coming, heard the Strikers murmur their assent and waited. And they came, five forms moving at high speed, riding motorcycles that had been built with speed in mind.
The street was empty, of course, which was why they’d chosen this location.
She’d have killed to see their faces, but the five wore helmets with visors. They didn’t so much stop and park as they climbed from bikes that were still rolling. The vehicles staggered and crashed to the ground, and as they did, the five figures who’d been riding them moved toward the address they’d been given.
“Now. Take them now.” Rafael’s voice was calm, in control.
Mary fired from the left, the long cables from her Taser spinning madly as darts shot straight at the one who’d shot her before. He moved quickly, but not quite as fast as he might have wished. One of the barbs bounced off his jacket, but the other sank deep enough to catch his attention and merit a yelp of pain. He didn’t even bother turning his head. Instead his hand wrapped around the wire feed and he yanked hard. Mary had two choices: she could let go of the Taser or she could get hauled from her hiding spot. She took option number three and ran at him, screaming like a demon the entire way.
Disorientation was a tactic they used regularly. Every last one of the strangers turned to look at Mary as she came toward them at high speed, shrieking as she moved.
And while they were looking, Declan nailed the biggest one of them with a riot stick across the back of his head. The hard wood broke on impact and the helmet
cracked, but the blow was solid and the giant fell forward and landed on his face. He might have been thinking about getting up, but if so, his body wasn’t listening. The big boy stayed down.
They had two females with them, and both of them moved at the same time, one sliding into a defensive stance, the other charging at Declan like she had a chance in hell of taking him down. Tori fired her Taser at the one moving for Declan, but the girl was fast enough to lower her head, and both of the darts skimmed across the top of her helmet as she changed her trajectory and headed for Tori.
“Tori! Look out!” Rafael called his warning and Tori’s head shook with irritation. Evelyn knew right then, of course. Tori and Rafael had been fooling around, just as she’d suspected. Rafael was in the wrong, too. Just because they’d made out a few times didn’t suddenly mean he had to protect her. Tori was ridiculously skilled at hand-to-hand combat.
“I’ve got this!” Tori’s voice lashed out even as she dropped and drove her foot into the other girl’s face. The helmet on her target’s head shattered on impact and sent the girl staggering back into the bushes.
Evelyn felt a swell of pride. Damn right, she had it.
Mary let out a scream, and Evelyn switched to a different screen, catching the action as best she could. So much was happening at once! The one Mary had attacked was fighting back and he was very, very angry. Evelyn could see the red marks where Mary had hit him, but he wasn’t going down. It had to be unsettling for the Strike Team, running across enemies who were so damned tough.
Declan hurdled the body of the one he’d taken down and prepared to attack the last of the males, the one who was looking at him with a small, playful smile. He shouldn’t have been smiling. Declan was a wrecking machine.
The girl next to him interceded, dropping close to the ground and sweeping her leg out to knock his feet out from under him. Declan hopped, easily moving out of the way of her leg.
