Leopard's Fury

by Christine Feehan

  She could see the woman seated, facing away from her, looking at the man behind the desk. Bernard Lee Cheng. She was very tempted to kill him, take the opportunity of being so close and just get the job done. It would rid the world of a very evil man, but it wasn't her mission, no matter how much she wished it were. The woman, Senator Violet Smythe-Freeman--now just Smythe--was her mission, specifically to see if the senator was selling out her country and her fellow GhostWalkers, the teams of soldiers few even knew existed.

  There was no way into the office, but that didn't matter. She moved slowly across the ceiling, hiding in plain sight. Even if one of the men or women on the floor happened to look up, they would have a difficult time spotting her as long as she was careful to move like a sloth, inching her way to her destination. She positioned herself outside the office over the door. Muting out the sounds around her, she concentrated on the voices coming from inside the office.

  Cheng faced her. Even if she couldn't hear his every word because he'd soundproofed his office, she could read lips. He wanted the GhostWalker program. Files. Everything. Including soldiers to take apart. Her stomach clenched. Violet's voice was pitched low. She had the ability to persuade people to do what she wanted with her voice, but Cheng seemed immune.

  She wanted money for her campaign. Maurice Stuart had named her his running mate for the presidential election. If elected, she planned to have Stuart assassinated and she would become president. Cheng would have an ally in the White House. It was a simple enough business deal. The origins of dark money never had to be exposed. No one would know.

  Violet was beautiful and intelligent. She was poisonous. A sociopath. She was also enhanced, one of the original girls Dr. Whitney had found in an orphanage and experimented on so that he could enhance his soldiers without harming them. She used her looks and her voice to get the things she wanted. More than anything, she wanted power.

  Cheng nodded his head and leaned forward, his eyes sharp, his face a mask. He repeated the price. Files. GhostWalkers.

  Bellisia remained still as Violet sold out her country and fellow soldiers. She told him where to find a team and how to get to them. She also told him there were copies of the files he wanted in several places, but most were too difficult to get to. The place where he had the best chance was in Louisiana, at the Stennis Center.

  Cheng responded adamantly, insisting she get the files for him. She was just as adamant she couldn't do that. He asked her why she was so against the GhostWalker program.

  Bellisia tried to get closer, as if that would help her hear better. She wanted to know as well. Violet was one of them. One of the original orphans Peter Whitney had used for his own purposes--a "sister," not by blood but certainly in every other way. She'd undergone the same experimenting with enhancing psychic abilities. With genetics, changing DNA. There was no doubt that Whitney was a genius, but he was also certifiably insane.

  Violet's murmured response horrified Bellisia. The woman was a GhostWalker snob. Superior soldiers were fine. DNA of animals was fine. Enhancement met with her approval. But not when it came to the latest experiments coming to light--the use of vipers and spiders. That was going too far and cheapened the rest of them. She wanted anyone with that kind of DNA wiped out.

  There was a moment of silence, as if Cheng was turning her sudden burst of venomous hatred over and over in his mind, just as Bellisia was. Bellisia could have warned Violet that she was skating close to danger. Violet was a GhostWalker. Few had that information, but in that one outburst, she'd made a shrewd, extremely intelligent man wonder about her. He had a GhostWalker right there in his laboratory.

  Violet, seemingly unaware of the danger--or because of it--swiftly moved on, laying out her demands once again. The two went back to haggling. In the end, Violet began to rise and Cheng lifted a hand to stop her. She sank down gracefully and the deal was made. Bellisia listened to another twenty minutes of conversation while the two hashed out what each would do for the other.

  Bellisia calculated the odds of escaping if she killed the senator as the traitor emerged from Cheng's office. They weren't good. Even so, she still entertained the idea. The level of treachery was beyond imagination for Bellisia. She despised Violet.

  A stir in the office drew her attention. Guards marched in and directed those in the smaller offices out. She glanced into the hallway and saw that the entire floor was being cleared. Her heart accelerated before she could stop it. She took a slow breath and steadied her pulse just as the siren went off, calling everyone, from the labs to the offices, into the large dorm areas.

  Lockdown. She couldn't get to the water closet to retrieve her uniform, lab jacket and wig before the soldiers searched, nor did she have enough time remaining before the virus injected into her began to kill her. She couldn't remain in one of Cheng's endless lockdowns. He was paranoid enough that he had kept workers on the premises for over a week more than once. She'd be dead without the antidote by that time. Cheng would be even worse with his security once the jacket and wig were discovered.

  She began the slow process necessary to make her way across the ceiling to the hall. She couldn't go down to the main floor. Soldiers were pouring in and every floor would be flooded by now. She had to go up to the only sanctuary she might be able to get to. There were tanks of water housed on the roof that fed the sprinkler systems. That was her only way to stay safe from the searches Cheng would conduct once her clothes were found. The items would only feed his paranoia. That meant she had to take the elevator.

  Cursing in every language she was fluent in--and that was quite a few--she hovered just above the elevator doors. The soldiers would go into the space, but it was confined, a relatively small space, and that meant she would have to be very close to them. The men were already on alert. The slightest mistake would cost her. More, she could blend into her environment, but it took a few seconds for her skin and hair to change. Her clothing would mirror her surroundings, so she would have the look of the elevator over her body, but her head and hands and feet would be exposed for that couple of seconds.

  Heart pounding, she edged over to the very top of the elevator. Should she try to start blending into that color now, or wait until she was inside with a dozen guards and guns? She had choices, but the wrong one would end her life. Changing colors to mirror her background was more like the octopus than the chameleon, but it still took a few precious moments. She began, concentrating on her hands and feet first. She was already clinging to the elevator doors now, high up, so as she mirrored the colors around her, she appeared to be part of the doors.

  The ping signaled that she only had seconds to get inside and up the wall to the ceiling of the elevator. She waited until soldiers stepped into the elevator and she slipped inside with them, clinging to the wall above their heads. The door nearly closed on her foot before she could pull it in. The men crowded in, and there was little space. She felt as if she couldn't breathe. The car didn't have high ceilings, so they were mashed together and the taller ones nearly brushed against her body. Twice, the hair of the man closest to her--and it was just her bad luck that he was tall--actually did brush against her face, tickling her skin.

  She rode floor to floor as men got off to sweep each one, making certain that all personnel did as the siren demanded and went immediately to the dormitory, where they would be searched.

  The last of the soldiers went to the roof. She knew this would be her biggest danger point. She had to exit the elevator right behind the last soldier. It was imperative that all of them were looking outward and not back toward the closing doors. She was a mimic, a chameleon, and no one would be able to see her, but once again it would take a minute to get there in a new environment.

  She crawled down to the floor and eased out behind the last man, her gaze sweeping the roof to find the water tanks. There were six banks of them, each feeding the sprinklers on several floors. She stayed very still, right up against the elevator until her skin and hair adjusted fully
to the new background. Only then did she begin her slow crawl across the roof, making for the nearest tank while the soldiers spread out and swept the large space.

  Up so high the wind was a menace, blowing hard and continuously at the men. They stumbled as it hit them in gusts. She stayed low to the ground, almost on her belly. She stopped once, when one of the soldiers cursed in a mixture of Mandarin and Shanghainese. He cursed the weather, not Cheng. No one would dare curse Cheng, afraid it would get back to him.

  Cheng considered himself a businessman. He'd inherited his empire and his intellect from his Chinese father and his good looks and charm from his American movie star mother. Both parents had opened doors for him, in China as well as in the United States. He had expanded those doors to nearly every country in the world. He'd doubled his father's empire, making him one of the wealthiest men on the planet, but he'd done so by providing terrorists, rebels and governments information, weapons and anything else they needed. He sold secrets to the highest bidder and no one ever touched him.

  Bellisia didn't understand what it was that drove people to do the terrible things they did. Greed. Power. She knew she didn't live the way others did, but she didn't see that the outside world was any better than her world. Maybe worse. Hers was one of discipline and service. It wasn't always comfortable and she couldn't trust very many people, but then outside her world, where the majority lived, she didn't see that they had it much better.

  The cursing soldier stopped just before he tripped over her. She actually felt the brush of the leather of his boot. Bellisia eased her body away from him. Holding her breath. Keeping her movements infinitely slow. She inched her way across the roof, the movements so controlled her muscles cramped in protest. It hurt to move that slow. All the while her heart pounded and she had to work to keep her breathing steady and calm.

  She was right under their noses. All they had to do was look down and see her, if they could penetrate her disguise. She watched them carefully, looking out of the corners of her eyes, listening as well for them, but all the while measuring the distance to the water tower. It seemed to take forever until she reached the base of the nearest tank. Forever.

  She reached a hand up and slid her fingers forward using the setae on the tips of her fingers to stick. Setae--single microscopic hairs split into hundreds of tiny bristles--were so tiny they were impossible to see, so tiny, Dr. Whitney hadn't realized she actually had them, in spite of his enhancements. Pushing the setae to the surface and dragging them forward allowed her to stick to the surface easily. Each seta could hold enormous amounts of weight, so having them on the pads of her fingers and toes allowed her to easily climb or hang upside down on a ceiling. The larger the creature, the smaller the setae, and no seta had ever been recorded that was small enough to hold a human being--until Dr. Whitney had managed to make one.

  Her plan was to climb into the water tank and wait until things settled down and then climb down the side of the building and get far away from Cheng. She was very aware of time ticking away, and of the virus beginning to take hold in her body. Already she knew her temperature was rising. The cold water in the tank would help. She cursed Whitney and his schemes for keeping the women in line.

  The girls had been taken from orphanages. No one knew or cared about them. That allowed Whitney to conduct his experiments on the female children without fearing repercussions. He named them after flowers or seasons, and trained them as soldiers, assassins and spies. To keep them returning to him, he would inject a drug he called Zenith, a lethal drug that needed an antidote, or a virus that spread and eventually killed. Sometimes he used their friendships with one another, so they'd learned to be extremely careful not to show feelings for one another.

  She started up the tank, allowing her body to change once again to blend in with the dirty background. The wind tore at her, trying to rip her from the tank. She was cold, although she could feel her internal temperature rising from the virus, her body beginning to go numb in the vicious wind. Still, she forced herself to go slow, all the while watching the guards moving around the roof, thoroughly inspecting every single place that someone could hide. That told her they would be looking in the water tanks as well.

  A siren went off abruptly, a loud jarring blare that set one's nerves on edge. It wasn't the same sound as the first siren indicating to the workers to go immediately to the dorms. This was one of jangling outrage. A scream of fury. They had found her wig, mask and lab jacket. They would be combing the building for her. Every duct, every vent. Anywhere a human being could possibly hide.

  She had researched Cheng meticulously before she'd ever entered his world. It was a narrow, almost military world, with constant inspections and living under the surveillance of cameras and guards. Cheng didn't trust anyone, not even his closest allies. Not his workers. Not even his guards. He had watchers observing the watchers.

  Bellisia was used to such an environment. She'd grown up in one and she was familiar with it. She also knew all the ways to get around surveillance and cameras. She was a perfect mimic, blending into her environment, picking up nuances of her surroundings, the language, the idioms, the culture, and Whitney thought that was her gift. He had no idea of her other abilities, the ones far more important to the missions he sent her off on. All the girls learned to hide abilities from him. It was so much safer.

  The guards reacted to the blaring siren with a rush of bodies and the sound of boots hitting the rooftop as they went into a frenzy of searching. She kept climbing, using that same slow, inch-by-inch movement. It took discipline to continue slowly instead of moving quickly, as every self-preservation cell in her body urged her to do.

  She relied heavily on her ability to change color and skin texture to blend into her surroundings, but that didn't guarantee that a sharp-eyed soldier wouldn't spot her. The pigment cells in her skin allowed her to change color in seconds. She'd hated that at first, until she realized it gave her an advantage. Whitney needed her to be a spy. He sent her out on missions when so many of the other women had been locked up again.

  She gained the top of the tank just as one of the soldiers put his boot on the ladder. Slipping into the water soundlessly, she swam to the very bottom of the tank and anchored herself to the wall, making herself as flat as possible against the side. Once again she changed color so that she blended with tank and water.

  She loved water. She could live in the cool liquid. The water felt cool against her burning skin. In the open air, she felt as if her skin dried out and she was cracking into a million pieces. She often looked down at her hands and arms to make certain it wasn't true, but in spite of the smoothness of her skin, she still felt that way. The one environment she found extremely hostile to her was the desert. Whitney had sent her there several times to record the effects on her and she hadn't done well. A flaw, he called it.

  The soldier was at the top of the tank now, peering down into the water. She knew each tank had soldiers looking into it. If they sent someone down into the water, she might really be in trouble, but it appeared as if the soldier was just going to sit at the edge to ensure no one had gone in and was underwater. She was fine with that. He could sit there all night, for all she cared. Once it was dark she would be able to slip up to the surface and get air.

  Right now she was basking in the fact that the cool water was helping to control the temperature rising in her from the virus. Whitney injected her every time she left the compound where she was held, to ensure she would return. She'd always managed to complete her mission in the time frame given to her, so she had no idea how fast-acting the virus was. The water definitely made her feel better, but she didn't feel good at all. Her muscles ached. Cramped. Never a good thing when trying to be still at the bottom of a water tank with soldiers on the lookout above her.

  Night fell rapidly. She knew the guards were still there on the roof and that worried her. She had to be able to climb down the side of the building and she couldn't get out of the tank as long as
the guard was above her. She also needed air. She'd risked blowing a few bubbles, but that wasn't going to sustain her much longer. She needed to get to the surface and leave before weakness began to hit. She had been certain the soldier would leave the tank after the first hour, but he seemed determined to hold his position. She was nearly at her max for staying submerged.

  Bellisia refused to panic. That way lay disaster. She had to get air and then find a way to slip past the guard so she could climb down the building, get to the van waiting for her and get the antidote. She detached from the wall and began to drift up toward the surface, careful not to disturb the water. Again, she used patience in spite of the urgent demands her lungs were making on her.

  After what seemed an eternity, she reached the surface. Tilting her head so only her lips broke the surface, she drew in air. Relief coursed through her. Air had never tasted so good. She hung there, still and part of the water, so that even though the guard was looking right at her, he saw nothing but water shimmering.

  A flurry of activity drew the guard's attention and she attached herself to the side of the tank and began to climb up toward the very top. She was only half out of the water when the shouted orders penetrated. They wanted hooks dragged through the tanks just to make certain no one was hiding in them with air tanks. So many soldiers tromped up onto the roof that she felt the vibrations right through the tank. Spotlights went on, illuminating the entire roof and all six tanks. Worse, soldiers surrounded the tanks and more climbed up to the top to stand on the platforms, ringing the large holding containers.

  Bellisia sank slowly back into the water, clinging to the wall as she did so, her heart pounding unnaturally. She'd never experienced her heart beating so hard. It felt as if it would come right out of her chest and she wasn't really that fearful--yet. Her temperature was climbing at an alarming rate. She was hot and even the cool water couldn't alleviate the terrible heat rising inside of her. Her skin hurt. Every muscle in her body ached; not just ached, but felt twisted into tight knots. She began to shiver, so much so she couldn't control it. That wasn't conducive to hiding in a spotlight surrounded by the enemy.