Soul Finder (The Immortal Gene Book 2)

by Jacinta Maree

  My heart hammered as the leader stepped around me with his arms opened. “Krane! And here I thought you had drunk yourself to death. I’ve been waiting for you to come out. We need to reopen our negotiations.”

  “You got FRIM. That was the deal.”

  “I think we both know that’s not the end of it.”

  As I approached Diesel there was a strong alcoholic smell coming from his clothes. He wobbled, but managed to keep his balance.

  I stepped closer. “Diesel, I need to tal—”

  “Get. Out.” He spat his words through his clenched teeth. I glanced at Riki, whose battered face was still pink and swollen around his nose and eyes. He seemed equally as exhausted.

  “I’ll take her back,” Riki offered as he stepped forward.

  Laughter rose from behind me. I reached for Riki’s hand but Diesel grabbed my arm to stop me from passing. “No. Let her watch.”

  He clicked his fingers with his free hand. From the other side of him I heard the heavy clinks of a robot. Rocko emerged from behind the wall, its glistening armour charred black from the fires. Its forearms ended in long barrel rifles pointed toward the gang. The leader’s smile dropped immediately.

  “Krane, you son of—”

  His sentence was lost in the cracking assault of the guns unloading. Diesel didn’t flinch, whereas I slapped my hands to my ears. Bodies buckled and crashed. Red splattered the walls in streaks. The last body slumped to the ground and stillness filled the room.

  I lowered my hands slowly, gawking at the massacre.

  “FRIM and now the Hell Risers, Krane. Not even you can outlast an attack like this. They’ll come for you,” Riki said, his voice cutting through the ringing silence.

  Diesel walked across the room and took the pistol from the leader’s jacket. He fired three more times into his head, and another two times into the bodies. He walked back. “There will be nothing here to come back to.”

  My eyes followed him. “Diesel, what—”

  He jerked around as though my voice was a hook, yanking him back. “Enough! Nothing changes.”

  Nothing changes. Two simple words had never felt so hauntingly dangerous. They chewed through me. His eyes, once soft with desire, had darkened with my betrayal. I had abandoned him. Guilt clenched my gut, but my head blared warnings I couldn’t ignore anymore. Diesel walked off, leaving Riki to take me back to Miranda’s quarters. As we neared, I eased back.

  “Riki, we can’t stay here.”

  Riki nodded as though pained by the same thoughts. “I know.” He closed the door after me. “I knew Krane was ruthless, but even this is too much. He will come back to kill me. Especially now that I’m no longer useful to him.”

  “What did you do for him?”

  “The same I did for Miranda. I have triple master’s degrees in robotics. Those machines—Rocko—are my inventions. Krane needed me to program Rocko for him. He’s no fool either. He understood enough about the programing language to know if I was trying to betray him. Now that Rocko has done its job there’s no need for me. If I know anything about Krane, and I know him well, he never leaves loose ends. Let me show you who Krane really is.” Riki took a tablet device from his room and turned the screen on. A video segregated into three screens started playing. The angle of the footage appeared to have been shot from multiple points. One was a surveillance camera at the top right corner of the room. A few others were shots from cameras carried by individuals from his group.

  “These were recordings from the Hansel kidnapping, when the Mad Dogs were in charge. This guy, here,” he said, pointing to one of the men leading the attack, “is Krane.”

  I braced myself as the man came into view. He was large, his body sculpted with muscles and he towered over the others with his massive height. Brown dreadlocks were tied in a bun, but coarser locks fell free down his back and chest. They appeared to be in an apartment block, based on the long corridor of identical doors.

  With the handle of his shotgun, Krane smashed one of the door handles off and kicked the door in. He quickly side stepped, the spray of bullets firing from inside just missing him. He tossed a grenade in and the pop of white carried smoke into the corridor.

  There was shuffling as Krane and a team of six men walked into the room. The man inside had been thrown onto his back. Dots of red bled through his clothes. As soon as he got his bearings, the man tried to set a bomb off that was strapped to his stomach. Krane stood on his wrist and ripped the control from his hand.

  “Hansel.” A Russian accent thickened Krane’s voice, slurring his words. I tensed at how uncomfortable it was hearing Krane speak.

  “Krane! Please reconsider?” Hansel pleaded.

  “Enough running, Hansel.” Krane took a fork-shaped utensil from his inner jacket. The tongs snapped open into a claw. Hansel’s eyes shot to it and widened, terrified.

  “Please no. I’ll get you into the laboratory. You don’t need to take my eyes. Please!”

  “I could, but this means less baggage to carry.”

  I tensed and looked away as Krane drove the fork down and plucked the man’s eyes from their sockets. Once done, he dropped the eyeballs into a clear plastic bag.

  “Now, for your disobedience.” He picked the screaming man up by the scruff of his neck and threw him onto the kitchen table.

  The camera panned away as the rest of them tied Hansel down, pulling knives and other tools from a box they carried. I heard muffled screams. The camera stayed on the corner, but I could hear the struggles. The screen greyed out, and then came into focus on Hansel’s dismembered body as he was dragged from the table bench onto the floor. His chest heaved, frantic for breath. As he passed the camera, his face didn’t look human anymore. His blooded mouth was stitched closed, his eyelids, ears and scalp had been peeled back and his arms sewn to his chest.

  I couldn’t watch anymore. I tapped the screen off. “Enough. I understand.”

  “Krane will be back for me. That’s guaranteed. There’s a secret way out that only Miranda and I know, in case we needed to escape.” Riki walked to a bookshelf that disguised a secret door secured with a large padlock. “It’s a shortcut straight up to the surface. It’s best that we leave now before Krane comes looking for me.”

  I shook my head. “No. I can’t leave yet. I need to get a friend first. He is trapped with the drifters.”

  “I can’t risk my life for a drifter.”

  “I understand. You go. I’ll save my friend and follow you out later.”

  Riki nodded, patted Hound for him to follow and turned to leave.

  I grabbed him quickly. “Wait. Do you know anything about Katie?”

  Riki shook his head. “Krane never spoke much about her, but I remember he did say that Katie belonged to an old memory of his. Someone he called Charles.”

  Chapter Thirteen:

  I felt sick. Sick with myself. Sick about Diesel, or Krane, or whatever the hell that twisted man called himself. I was leaving, I was leaving for good and there was nothing he could do or say to convince me otherwise.

  The empty base was chillingly quiet. I heard the drifters’ distant moans all the way from the other side. When I arrived at the blue pens, Vance wasn’t there.

  “Shit.” I know there was little chance the Hell Risers had gotten to him, as Diesel had them killed in the dining hall, but then who… Of course. Diesel.

  I knelt down and gently touched the bars, noticing a red fingerprint smeared across the metal. Droplets marked the floor, trailing out of the room. I followed the trail toward the burnt warehouse. The smell of smoke, soot and ash tinted the air. I was prepared this time. Riki had provided me with a gun that was stashed in Miranda’s quarters for desperate times. My finger followed the curve of the trigger. Familiarizing myself with it. The chamber was loaded. The safety switch kicked back. Beside the warehouse was a lone room. I placed my hand on the door. The blood smears were of two thumbprints, crossed over to form the shape of a heart. I’m sure he did that
on purpose too. Mocking me.

  I held the gun on the other side of me as I walked in. Inside, the smell of alcohol was strong. Bottles scattered the ground. I was careful not to make a sound as I tiptoed around the empty containers.

  “I’m so sorry. I so sorry. I never wanted this to happen. You did this! You did this to her!”

  I quickly dropping into a crouch. That was Diesel’s voice. My finger settled on the trigger again, settling my nerves. It was dark inside and the room, and he was around a corner beyond my line of sight. I followed the bend until I spotted Diesel waiting inside the adjoining room. I pressed myself against the wall and carefully peered out.

  He sat by a table, gun laid out, bullets scattered across the tabletop. He flicked a lighter on and off, again and again. Orange light illuminated the dark bristles along his chin. His eyes were glazed, emotionless. A thought bugged him. He slammed the lighter down and cracked his neck left and right, his hand shooting up to scratch the back of his head. I recognised the gesture. He had revealed the twitch during our escape from the I.O.S fire. It belonged to one of his many personalities.

  Within Diesel was someone who understood love, kindness and trust. He was the one who came into my room at Sanctuary to comfort me. Rohan, he called himself. Probably the last personality before everything went wrong. He didn’t see the world in the strokes of violence. A kind man, maybe someone I will never see again.

  Amongst them was the one who had lost Katie. His name was Charles and appeared forever stuck in his memory of her, unable to see the reality built around him. I wasn’t sure if he was aware of Diesel, Rohan or Krane, of these other lives he had lived. In a nervous tick, Charles ruffled his hair and twitched. But he was nothing compared to the real poison in Diesel’s messed up head. Krane, the Mad Dog leader, the one who starts fires.

  “Don’t break.” My eyes moved back to him. His voice withered beneath his breath. He cupped his head, referring to his mind. “Don’t break. Don’t break.”

  I sidestepped and hid behind the wall. My head slumped against the plaster. Diesel was born broken. He needed me. He chose me. Despite the biting itch that flared whenever his gaze sharpened, I didn’t hate him. I couldn’t. I finally had something greater than myself. A person who already had gone through the change, the process of detachment and soul crushing hopelessness, and came out wanting to pull me into his embrace. How could I let him go? He was damaged, but I could fix him. He isn’t yours to fix. I stepped out from around the corner, gun raised. He never was.

  “Where is he?”

  Diesel stilled. He slowly looked up. “And like a clever mouse you followed the bread crumbs.”

  “Where is Vance?” I asked again.

  “Why? Do you plan on running away with him?” He smiled. “Like you wanted to run away with Tristan?”

  “Is this why you’re doing all this? Jealousy?”

  “Don’t be so naïve, Nadia. Everything I do is for survival.” He turned toward me. “You should get off your precious high horse. You would have done the same as me. We’re not so different.”

  My grip tightened. “No way. I’m not a—”

  “Murderer? Heh, isn’t that funny? Yet, you let Fitzgerald die so you could live. You killed that FRIM girl to survive. Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “There is nothing wrong with sacrificing the weak so the strong can survive. That’s just how things are in this fucked up world. This, here, is what we truly are. No matter how many buildings I destroy, how many governments I pull down, or how many times I kill myself, I will always return here. I’m always the same me, no whatever what version or what I look like or call myself. I am a virus to this planet. I want to poison it. Burn it. Kill it. That is my purpose… or it used to be.” He slowly stood. “I have been thinking a lot lately. About how delicate this situation is. I have had many experiences in hostage situations. But you are different. Difficult.” He stepped around the table. I shuffled back. His voice dropped and curled with a gentle accent that didn’t suit his pitch. A Russian accent, spoken through an English voice. Krane. He jabbed at his own temple with the gun. “You’ve done something to me. You’ve planted this desire in my head. Something I need to stamp out.” His eyes shot down and his eyebrows twitched, pinched by a thought. “This should make you see clearer.”

  From an adjoining room, Rocko stepped forward with Vance standing at the end of its gun. He didn’t look at me. Perhaps he had already accepted his fate. Diesel watched my expression closely.

  “I know you. I know your weaknesses, Nadia. I also know where to find that darling sister you are so protective of.”

  I took a sharp breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “A desperate man would do anything, and you are making me very desperate.”

  I looked at him, then at Vance and back again. He truly would do anything to keep me leashed to him. He would find Annie. He would bait me with her.

  “I need you to stay with me, Nadia. I have sacrificed so much for you. Don’t you get it? You and me, we are more than life. We are more than this. Without you I will crumple into ruins.” The earnestly behind his words shuddered his breath. Weakened his body. I blinked at the poetry of it. At first I thought I was the wax, bending and breaking within Diesel’s presence, but it turned out I was the flame. I was destroying him.

  “You forget.” I turned the gun against my own head. “I know your weakness too.”

  His eyebrows rose, amused. “What are you doing?”

  “To me, death is just an endless sleep. But to you, my death is an eternity trapped here. It is countless more voices jammed inside your head, another mixture of memories, another tip of the scale toward madness. You said it yourself that this world is intolerable without me. The price of my life is too great.”

  Diesel’s eyes hardened. “You would never leave your sister here.”

  I took a deep breath, settling my nerves. “She has already forgotten me. I have nothing keeping me here. But I’m also not done helping people. So, if you let Vance go, I will stay.”

  “I’d rather keep him here as insurance.”

  I shook my head. “Let him go or I’ll pull the trigger.”

  Diesel looked over his shoulder. “Fine.” He signalled to Rocko who lowered the gun. I urged Vance to leave. He scurried around me, looking back only a moment before he took off into the hallway. Diesel dropped his gun onto the table. The room suddenly felt smaller. Rocko’s emotionless eyes didn’t lift from my position. Its aim moved to me.

  “Power Rocko down.” I also placed my gun down on the table. “No more tricks. Let’s just talk.”

  He nodded. “Eight eighty, power down.” Rocko’s jaw clinked to its chest armour. Its arm returned to its side. Diesel walked toward me, smiling. His warm arms wrapped around my shoulders, pulling my head into his chest. He kissed me. My heart raced. It was now or never. I could taste the guilt, feel it tighten my muscles. I took another slow breath in.

  “I don’t want to fight with you, Nadia. I—”

  “Charles…” My words hung over us like forming ice, freezing Diesel. “What did you do to Katie?”

  If words were pricks, then I was spitting knives. Diesel’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

  I stepped out of his hug. I eased back slowly. “What did you do to Katie?”

  His neck twitched. “Nadia, what are you doing?” His voice was low, angry. “This won’t work—”

  “Tell me about Katie, Charles.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Nadia!” His voice roared, panicked. “Don’t! Don’t talk about her! I… Katie…” His alarmed expression suddenly slackened. His mind tore back into his memory.

  I quickly picked my gun back up. I don’t know if I had crossed a moral line by using the trigger points to distract Diesel, maybe even deepening the psychological scar that was Charles’ memory, but I didn’t have choice.

  “I’m so sor
ry,” I whispered.

  Diesel didn’t move. His bloodshot eyes glazed over, lost within his nightmares.

  I raised my arm, lining my shot in between his eyes. My hands tensed.

  Diesel’s eyes lifted, looking beyond the barrel and catching my stare. I could see the bridge in his irises where the dark brown and black colours collided.

  My sweaty grip weakened.

  He smiled. “So, that’s your dirty trick?”

  “What—”

  He snatched the gun from me, tearing the handle out of my grip.

  I stumbled back and blinked up at him.

  “Is that how you were going to try to escape me? By bringing up Katie? By conjuring up that twisted pathetic heap who is Charles?”

  “I’m not—”

  “You really think I don’t know about Miranda’s secret little rabbit hole behind the shelf in her room?”

  I took another step back, mirroring his advancement. “Diesel, don’t—”

  “Now, Nadia, you’re the one who’s hurting me. How can you be so cruel?”

  “Me?”

  “You throw me around like I’m just some toy you can play with,” Diesel shouted. “I warned you! I warned you about what would happened between us.”

  “You make it so hard to love you!”

  Far away, explosions suddenly rattled the substation. I spun around at the noise. Diesel’s eyebrow lifted. “Hmm, I see Vance found the exit.” My mind went straight to the landmines planted along the tracks. “He was a traitor anyway. Guess that’s why you like him, huh?”

  “How can you stand there and act like the victim? You caused this.”

  “But you wanted it! You wanted me! All I ever did was love you back.”

  I pressed my lips together.

  Diesel grit his teeth. “Fuck, I know I’m not perfect, Nadia, but come on. You know you can at least trust me! What are you hiding?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “I can’t trust you. I can’t trust that you won’t be you, Diesel. You are violent. Wreckless. Inconsiderate and brutal. I can’t have you losing your temper and ruining everything.”