Born to Darkness

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Dear God. “Kill her, Mac,” Anna said fiercely. “Just kill this bitch now and try to save yourself!”

  Something’s happening.

  Nika looked over at Joseph who was still sitting beside her in the shielded area he’d created in her mind. His head was tilted slightly, as if he were listening to something, hard. He stood up in one swift motion, letting loose a string of words Nika had never heard in that order before. And he didn’t apologize afterward.

  Instead, he turned to her. They’ve activated your drug pump. They’re trying to knock you out.

  She stood up, too. Oh, my God—they did that before—it works so fast. You should go. Now! Before it—

  I’m keeping it from circulating into your bloodstream, Joseph told her. But I can’t do that for very long. Your body will absorb the drug in other ways. We’ve got about … three minutes, tops.

  Oh, God. Do they know? Nika asked him. That we’re planning to … Escape. She still didn’t want to think the word, in case they were somehow reading her thoughts.

  Joseph didn’t sugarcoat his answer. They might. He looked into the distance, and she’d learned that meant he was accessing information via his own physical body. The illegal med scanners are still operational and the power grid’s still up. That’s not good.

  He turned back to her and gazed down into her eyes. Nika, if I stay, this drug in your system will impact me. It shouldn’t happen that way, I know, but it does.

  Then you should go, she told him, unable to keep her eyes from welling with tears. You have to go!

  He didn’t want to—she could see it on his face, in his eyes.

  And God, what if, after he left, he was no longer able to get back to her? What if they moved her, somewhere far away, someplace where their connection couldn’t activate?

  What if he couldn’t find her?

  She didn’t have to voice her thoughts, Joseph knew exactly what she was thinking, and he pulled her, hard, into his arms and hugged her tightly. I will find you, he told her. Whatever happens, wherever they take you—believe this, Nika: I WILL FIND YOU.

  I do believe you. Nika wrapped her arms around him, hugging him back just as tightly. And she knew they weren’t really hugging. Their physical selves were in two different places. But he felt solid and real as he rested his cheek against the top of her head.

  And she wanted this moment—this somehow dangerously dizzying feeling of closeness and belonging and deeply abiding trust—never to end.

  I’m so sorry, he said. I promised I’d stay with you and … What the hell?

  Joseph pulled away from her, enough to look down at her with an expression of total surprise, his hands still on her shoulders. “What are you doing?” She saw and heard him so clearly, it was as if he’d spoken aloud.

  “I’m not doing anything,” she answered.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Nika, you are. You have access to significantly more of your power right now. I can feel it. It’s … unreal …”

  “But it’s good, right?” she asked him, gazing up at him.

  Joseph smiled, and her heart leaped. “Sweetheart, it’s fantastic. I don’t know what you’re doing, but … Keep doing it, for as long as you can.”

  Nika nodded as she looked up at him, but his smile faded as he swayed slightly.

  “Neek,” he started and she knew that, even though she didn’t feel it yet, the drug was starting to affect him.

  “Go,” she told him, forcing herself not to cry. She lifted her chin. “I’ll be okay.”

  Joseph touched her hair, her cheek, his fingers warm against her face. “I’ll see you soon,” he promised, and with a shimmer of light, he disappeared.

  The pregnant girl just laughed at Anna’s vehement request for Mac to wreak havoc, and Mac knew, without a doubt, that any attempt she made to appeal to the girl’s humanity was going to fail.

  And as the girl turned back to Mac and said again, “Anna or Nika?” Adding, “And if you say both again, I’ll open the door, and Cristopher will come in and kill this one right here and now.” She smiled tightly. “Of course, if you say Nika he’ll do the same. And if you say Anna, someone else will go into Nika’s room and—”

  Anna was ready to die. Mac could feel the intense emotion radiating off of her, along with waves of her love for her little sister.

  Little sister …

  “How about if I don’t say both, but I also don’t pick Anna or Nika?” Mac said. “How about, instead, I let you know a little something about my so-called worthless friend here? What if I told you that Nika’s not Anna’s sister.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Nika is Anna’s daughter.”

  Anna made a sound of surprise, but she was a smart young woman, and she understood why Mac should lie like that—that it would buy them at least nine months of time—because she added, “It’s true. I was … raped when I was, um, twelve and my mother claimed Nika as her own.”

  Mac put it into plain English, in the event that the pregnant girl—ironically—couldn’t put two and two together. “If Anna’s had one child as special as Nika, it’s likely that she’ll have another, even though she herself is not a fountain.” She tried not to choke on the word, it was so repugnant.

  But the girl got it. The look on her face was one of pure horror and disgust. “You want to be a breeder? I’d rather be dead!”

  She started toward Anna with such burning hatred in her eyes, that Anna said, “Mac?”

  But the door opened, and a voice called out, sharply, “Rayonna!”

  The girl stopped, but she stood there for a moment, just staring at Anna, her chest heaving with each ragged breath she took. And now the anguish that was pouring forth from her was so intense, Mac had to cling to the bed, for fear of pulling herself free and tearing the hooks from her wrists.

  “Rayonna.”

  “You poor thing,” she whispered to Anna, before she turned and hurried out of the room.

  It was only then, as the man closed the door behind her, that Mac turned to look at him.

  “You!” Anna breathed. She turned to Mac. “It’s the man from Nika’s dream!”

  He was hideously scarred, but even worse, his emotional grid was similar to that of Devon Caine. With one exception. He knew exactly what it was that he did.

  He was evil, incarnate, and he made Mac’s skin crawl.

  “So you wish to be one of our breeders?” he asked Anna in his oddly slurred speech. “We can certainly arrange that—consider it done.”

  And he took what looked like a hand control out of the pocket of his bloodstained lab coat and pressed a button.

  “Whoa!” Anna said, as her hospital bed adjusted, releasing her legs from their restraints but then strapping her feet down into what looked like OB-GYN examination stirrups, as her knees were pushed up …

  “Wait,” Mac said. “You need to scan her. Find out when she’s ovulating.” She looked at Anna. She had been certain that the time that she’d bought them included a week—or more—of medical tests.

  “That’s not the way we do it here,” the scar-faced man said with a grimace that was meant to be a smile.

  Bach opened his eyes to find himself in the back of an OI van, parked just down the street from the Organization’s Washington Street building.

  For a moment, he was confused. He’d been having an impossibly vivid dream, in which beautiful Anna Taylor had been laughing and naked and pulling him down onto the bed in the room where he’d slept for most of his childhood. She’d kissed him and …

  Ho-kay. That had been extremely realistic, but it was still just a dream, induced by the powerful drug that had been shot through Nika’s system.

  And it wasn’t even his dream—it was a memory of the dream Anna had had—the one that he’d stood there watching, as if his feet had been glued to the floor.

  Still he had to exhale hard as he sat up, which scared the hell out of Charlie, who’d been assigned to feed information to his seemingly unconscious form.

  �
��Holy shit,” Charlie said, quickly adding, “sir! Is everything all right?”

  Bach had no idea how much time had passed, so he checked the clock on the computer screen. He hadn’t been trapped in that dream for too long, thank God. “Nika’s been drugged—I think they’re planning on moving her. I had to get out—it was affecting me and … I need a current sit-rep,” he ordered.

  “The med scanners and power grid are both still operational,” Charlie reported. “There’s been no change.”

  “Any luck locating Mac and Anna?”

  Charlie shook his head, no. “We only know they were brought to the Washington Street building—we tracked the helicopter to their roof port—it’s still there.”

  “Tell Analysis to keep searching,” Bach ordered. “Give me something good here, Charlie. Any word from Shane Laughlin?”

  “None, sir,” Charlie said. “But he is inside. Last report has him in the elevator, which is very good and—holy shit! Sir, apologies, you were looking a little green, so I just checked your jot scan? And you’re integrating at eighty-one percent.”

  What?

  Bach scrambled to look at the computer over Charlie’s shoulder and holy shit was right. He’d spiked—and was continuing to hang there at that higher level.

  “With all due respect, sir,” Charlie said, “that’s nine percent higher than your usual seventy-two. That’s a massive increase. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone—ever—clocking in above seventy-eight.” He turned and looked at Bach, his eyes wide. “What exactly did you do?”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Bach said, even though he suspected he knew. What he’d done was Anna Taylor—if only in his drug-induced dreams. Imagine that. Mac and Diaz were right about sex raising one’s integration levels. “Right now, I’m going to see if I can use it—to make telepathic contact with either Anna or Mac.” He had no idea if he was close enough to either of them, but he was going to try. “Do me a favor, Charlie, and put in a call to Elliot. I want him to know what’s going on.”

  “I can’t reach him, sir,” Charlie said. “I’ve been trying for a while. I keep getting sent to his voice mail.” He lowered his voice slightly as he turned to face Bach. “His message says that he’s currently in with Stephen Diaz. I suspect, sir, that that’s not good news.”

  Stephen was on fire.

  He’d been floating, drifting, farther and farther from anything solid or recognizable, but now the pain was back and he couldn’t control it.

  Still, it was better than the slow fade into nothing, than the waves of ennui and the ripples of oblivion that hadn’t quite filled him because nothing could or would fill him anymore.

  But now the pain could and did, and he didn’t fight it, but he did fight. To stay. To be.

  To live.

  And when he opened his eyes, he saw flashes of lightning instead of gray. And with each beat of his beleaguered heart, he remembered all that he was and all he stood to lose.

  And as Stephen fought harder and harder to stay, he realized that he was no longer alone. He turned and saw Elliot. And he knew—instantaneously—what Elliot had done.

  And Stephen’s grief and regret and burning sense of loss dwarfed the spears of pain that wracked him. But when Elliot reached out, his touch was powerful enough not just to soothe but also to heal.

  Still, Stephen had to ask him, Why?

  Elliot’s smile was beautiful, his voice as gentle as a kiss. You’re needed.

  Stephen’s heart broke. And you’re not?

  I’m still here, Elliot said, even though they both knew that what he’d done would surely kill him.

  And Stephen realized that he hadn’t changed the future after all. He’d merely delayed the inevitable.

  The elevator opened with a ding, and Goatee took his key from the control panel, leading Shane onto the fortieth floor of the Organization’s Washington Street building, where they believed that Nika, Anna, and Mac were all being held prisoner.

  There was another security checkpoint right in the elevator lobby on that floor, manned, literally, by seven guards—all male, and all wearing the pseudo-cop blue uniform, all with weapons at their hips. As they wanded and then patted Shane down, he had quite a few opportunities to relieve several of them of their firearms, but he opted not to. He wanted to see just how much closer he could get to their security control room before he got this party started.

  Goatee led him—conveniently—toward his target destination, through halls that were mostly empty. There were offices and what looked like lounges with their doors hanging open, and Shane spotted a man sitting behind a desk, on the phone, wearing the same lousy body armor that the corporate rulers had decided—over twenty years ago—was good enough for U.S. troops in combat zones.

  There wasn’t a Navy SEAL alive who hadn’t opted to buy his own higher-quality gear—or who didn’t know every chink in the common armor that was used worldwide. There was quite a long list of ways to kill a soldier wearing cheap protection—particularly if he or she felt invincible.

  But right now, Goatee and Shane had reached a part of the hallway where most of the doors they passed were closed, and spaced farther apart. “Looks kind of like a hotel,” he commented.

  “It kind of is,” Goatee helpfully told him. “The Brite Group is an international corporation—lotta visitors from overseas who need super-secure living quarters while they’re in the U.S. We’re also occasionally asked to take back-to-back shifts—when a shipment is being prepped. So we’re sometimes housed here as well. It’s pretty jam.”

  The hall they were in ended in a T—and Shane knew the control room was to the right. When Goatee started to lead him left, Shane stopped him.

  “Before I go in to talk to Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones, I’d love to hit the nearest head.” Which was also down to the right, according to the floor plans Shane had memorized.

  But okay, that was confusion on Goatee’s none-too-intelligent face—confusion and alarm—and Shane quickly translated his Navy-speak into plain English. “Bathroom,” he said. “The head is a bathroom aboard a ship. I’d like to use the bathroom?”

  Goatee laughed his relief. “Well, fuck it, brohms, glad you said so! I’m thinking hit the nearest head—which has gotta be mine, what what?” He laughed as he opened his jacket to completely reveal the weapon holstered beneath his left arm. It was strapped in with a single slender strip of Velcro. “I came this close”—he held up his right hand to measure out a half an inch between his thumb and forefinger—“to drawing on you.”

  The hall was empty, in all three directions, and Shane couldn’t see any cameras—but there had to be cameras, unless there purposely weren’t cameras for the sake of the anonymity of their overseas guests. He suspected that they were simply concealed.

  Still, he’d lived long enough to recognize a truly beautiful gift when he was handed one.

  So he reached out and helped himself to Goatee’s SIG Sauer, and jammed the barrel into the space between the ill-fitting top and bottom of the guard’s cheap body armor before his shit-eating grin had even faded from his pasty-ass face.

  “Stay silent and do exactly what I say,” Shane told the man, as he hustled him down the hallway that led to the right, “and I won’t pull the trigger. You do know, don’t you? That if I angle this right, the bullet’ll get trapped by the body armor and bounce around—turn your pelvic area into total hamburger. It’s something of a design defect.”

  Goatee squeaked his assent, and Shane moved their pace into triple time, even as, from down at the far end of the hallway, behind them, there came a shout, “Hey!” And then a classic, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

  Shane didn’t freeze. In fact, he booked it even faster.

  Anna tried to tell herself that this wasn’t about her. This had nothing to do with her—it was all about Mac and the way adrenaline would release more hormones into her blood, which the Organization would use to make Destiny.

  It was about money, about greed, and yea
h, okay, as the man with the scars opened his filthy lab coat and unfastened his pants, Anna knew that it was at least a little bit about her, because she could see from the glint in his eyes that he was going to enjoy hurting her.

  “Don’t do this,” Mac was saying. “Don’t you do this! Anna, shit, I am so sorry! Hey, you! Hey! Hey! Look at me.”

  And it was beyond bizarre, because something happened. Something strange took place when the man did turn and look over at Mac. There was a shift in his body language. He stood a little taller, breathed a little differently, and seemed completely unable to look away.

  Anna didn’t know what Mac had done to him—but it was clear she’d done something.

  “That’s right,” Mac said. “You don’t want her. You don’t need her. You only want me.”

  Shane almost made it to the control room. Almost.

  And it was a damn good thing that he wasn’t moving faster, because a security team of a half a dozen blue-uniformed men came pouring out of the very door he was heading for.

  So instead he barreled his way into not the men’s head, but the ladies’, dragging Goatee with him and locking the door behind them—throwing both bolts.

  It was a single-seater with a pristine sink and a toilet that no doubt got very little use. Not a lot of women working here—that was for sure.

  Shane did a quick double-check of the map in his head as he gave Goatee a little stop-sniveling tap with the butt of the man’s own handgun. He then dragged the unconscious guard by the feet to the opposite wall, because this one—to the immediate left of the toilet—was shared by the control room.

  And when going in through the door was not a possibility—due to the fact that the team of guards were now banging on this door, demanding he come out with his hands up—that didn’t mean the game was over. It just meant it was time to get creative.