A Plain Jane Book One (11 page)

‘
Can we not talk about this?’
Lucas tried.

‘
No, we have to talk about this.
Because everything else going on in your life is of the epic,
Galaxy-wide-destruction variety. Face it, Lucas, you haven't done
anything normal for years.’ Alex actually waggled a finger at
him.

‘
That's because I haven't had
time to do anything normal,’ Lucas sighed.

‘
Yet you have somehow managed to
find the time to get a real, card-carrying fan club,’ Alex cracked
a grin, ‘you need to get your priorities straight.’

There was that word again.
Priorities. Lucas seemed to be getting it from every single angle
every single hour of every single day. It appeared that the entire
Galaxy thought it knew exactly what Lucas' priorities should and
shouldn't be, and felt the need to admonish him endlessly about
that point.

Though Lucas knew Alex was
just teasing, he still stiffened up, straightened his back, and set
his lips into a thin line.

‘
Oh dear, you look a little bit
angry, do you need a sedative?’

Lucas twisted his glass of
wine around in his hand. What he needed was for Alex to shut up.
What he needed was for the party to end. What he needed was to
spend the rest of the night going through the information on the
strange artifact that had been brought in from Paran space. And
maybe, just maybe what he also needed was to head around to the
dormitories to check that Jane was okay.

Before he could throw his
hands up and just race out of the entertainment hall, he got a live
feed through his suit. Though his armor was not currently engaged,
it still enabled him to have a direct mental link with the
planet-wide communications network. Yep, that was just as horrible
as it sounded, because it meant that Lucas would never be able to
go anywhere on planet Earth without being in range of a signal and
being contactable by anybody. It didn't matter if he was sleeping,
it didn't matter if he was in the shower, it didn't matter if he
was in a bloody cave or traipsing up a mountain somewhere; he was
contactable 24/7. If something arose, and it was deemed to be
serious enough, he would in fact be quantum transported from
wherever he was right to the problem. While quantum transportation
was expensive and incredibly draining on energy stores, they always
seemed to think Lucas was worth it. Alex joked that Lucas had been
transported so many times, that it was no wonder he was mad,
because every single one of his molecules would be scrambled like
eggs with pepper, cheese, and parsley (the pepper, cheese, and
parsley being Lucas' internal organs, apparently).

Lucas always tried to turn
away when he got a message so he could let people know that he
wasn't mad and he wasn't talking to himself. Sometimes he even put
a hand up to his ear, even though it had absolutely no use
whatsoever; it wasn't as if the audio was being picked up by his
ears. It was being transmitted directly to his brain. Yet it was at
least a bodily signal he could use to let people know that he was
talking on the phone here, even if the phone was technically
implanted inside his brain.

‘
Excuse me? What kind of reading?
Right, I'll be right there,’ Lucas said quickly. Then he turned,
found a convenient table and quickly abandoned his untouched
drink.

‘
What is it?’ Alex asked
automatically, every hint of sarcasm gone from his tone.

‘
We’ve got an anomalous reading
on Specimen 14,’ Lucas said at once, heading straight for the door
without so much as a good bye.

As soon as the Dean of the
Galactic Force got in his way, Lucas just pointed to his ear and
frowned. ‘Sorry, something has come up.’

‘
I just got a feed myself,’ she
replied with a curt nod. ‘Sort it out. And I will sort this out for
you.’

Lucas nodded. He always
liked the Dean; she seemed to have a sound head on her shoulders,
or two, rather. Of all the people who worked at the Galactic Force,
even though she was never shy of bragging about Lucas' exploits,
she did have a pragmatic edge to her. She knew when to pull in the
show and to let him just get on with his job.

As he walked out, trying
to dodge past people, Alex immediately ran up to his
side.

‘
What are we talking here?’ Alex
asked quickly.

‘
No idea, there's some kind of
drain on the containment field. I got a call from the Chief
Engineer, she said it is sending feedback through the energy grid.
Said she wasn't sure how long it could hold out.’ Lucas was
practically running now as he headed across the street to one of
the nearest transport hubs. One of the great things about his job,
and perhaps his only perk, was that he had a certain level of
clearance, and if he needed to use it, he could shut down whatever
transport was scheduled and redirect it to wherever he felt he
needed to go. Of course, he was only permitted to use it in times
of need, but it still meant, technically, that he could just hop on
a transport and send everybody off to Italy to get him a pizza.
Well, he could if he were a lot more ballsy and less of a
do-gooder.

‘
I don't see how that's possible.
That thing is dead. Whatever it was to begin with, there is
absolutely no way it is alive now. I did those readings myself. It
must be some kind of external influence, perhaps someone is trying
to hack the grid,’ Alex tried, easily keeping up with Lucas' speed
at the moment, but Lucas knew that if he activated his armor and
pushed himself, he would leave Alex behind in a second.

Lucas didn't reply. In
fact, his jaw was so stiff that he could hardly open his mouth.
This felt completely wrong, he thought to himself. And he’d been
doing his job long enough to know that you had to trust your gut
instinct. If your gut told you to run the hell away from the engine
core, then you ran the hell away from the engine core, and more
often than not, it would blow up barely moments later, and you
would save yourself a one-way trip to the morgue. Lucas could not
deny that he was having that exact same sharp foreboding right now.
Yet once again, he couldn't stop his thoughts from bending back
towards Jane.

The assassin robot, was
this somehow connected to it? If Alex was right and somebody was
hacking the power grid in order to make the containment field fail,
had they also sent the assassin robot here in the first place?
Perhaps that had been the point? Maybe the assassin robot had been
after Lucas or Alex, or maybe the Chief Engineer herself. Or it
could have been sent here as a distraction in order to pull the
security forces thin, and make the hacking far easier and far less
detectable.

Lucas broke into a
run.

‘
Wait for me,’ Alex called from
behind him.

Lucas couldn't wait. His gut
told him that he simply did not have the time. ‘Something is wrong,
I will meet you there,’ he shouted, and then, with a simple
thought, he activated his armor. Half a second later it completely
covered his body. As soon as it did, it gave him what you could
easily call superpowers. Then he ran like crazy towards the
Galactic Force. He completely bypassed the transport hub, reasoning
that by the time he got in and redirected the traffic, he could
already be at the Galactic Force if he just set his armor to full
power and pelted there.

Chapter 7

Jane

Something very strange was
happening to Jane. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in the
dormitory Lucas Stone had managed to obtain for her, and she was
trying very hard to look up at the night sky outside, but she
simply couldn't concentrate. The buzzing was back in her mind. Boy
oh boy was the buzzing back. For some reason her hands were
fidgety, and her legs were bouncing up and down too. Yet no matter
what she did, she couldn’t keep still.

She was afraid. Yet there was
nothing to be afraid of. The feeling had come upon her slowly, and
didn't seem to be related to any event or thought. One moment she’d
simply been staring up at the night sky, trying to let her body
rest as her mind raced, and the next thing this strange foreboding
had crept up on her.

Jane never had much in her
life to be frightened of. She honestly led a normal and very
peaceful existence. Well, up until last night that was. While she
knew what fear felt like – and had occasionally been scared by a
rustling in the bushes or something equally as innocuous – she’d
never felt anything like this. It was as if somebody had reached
right into her brain to flick some kind of switch, sending alarm
twisting and writhing down her back and burning deep into her gut.
The more she sat there and tried to rationalize it away, the more
it grew, until she finally snapped her legs up and hugged them
close to her chest.

‘
Calm down, calm down,’ she told
herself forcefully. ‘Nothing is wrong. There is nobody after you,
you haven't done anything, and you aren't injured or sick. There
isn't anything to be afraid of,’ she kept on talking to herself out
loud, as if somehow hearing her own voice would make her believe
her own words.

Though it was an
absolutely mutinous thought, she suddenly got the urge to call
Lucas. Firstly, and most importantly, she didn't know his number,
and did not have access or authority to call him. Secondly, he was
Lucas Stone, and Jane did not like Lucas Stone. He was the kind of
man that she had no time for: arrogant, self-important, and far too
adventurous for her. Yet that still didn't stop Jane from
desperately wanting to find him, to see if he could fix her. It was
such a strange thought, and it did give Jane pause to laugh at how
silly she was, but it was only a sweet, short pause, and in just
another second she was feeling just as trapped and frightened
again.

As the tension rose in her
body, her thoughts became more forceful. She also felt a strange
kind of detachment creep up on her.

She stood suddenly. Her
limbs twitching so fast, the move jolted through her.

For a fraction of second
it felt like she was no longer in control of her body.

Then she headed to the
door, her hands now slick with sweat, her shoulders
shaking.

‘
This is crazy,’ she told
herself, ‘completely crazy. Go and sit back on your bed,’ she
pleaded as she opened the door and closed it behind her. She
started to half-jog down the corridor. ‘Try and get some rest,’ she
told herself as she now ran towards one of the linear lifts that
would take her anywhere in the Galactic Force in seconds. ‘This is
just crazy,’ she said one last time as she entered the closest
transport hub into the panel of the lift. Or, at least she intended
to enter the location of the closest transport hub, but her fingers
seemed to have a mind of their own, and before she could stop
herself, she had entered the location of one of the research
levels. In the blink of an eye, the lift took off.

‘
What?’ Jane blinked wildly as
the lift reached the research facility in a little over two
seconds, the door opening with a snap. When Jane doggedly tried to
stay in the lift and make her hand type in the correct location of
the closest transport hub, or simply the location that would take
her back to her dormitory, she found her legs walking her out of
the lift. It was the strangest thing that she’d ever felt and that
had ever happened to her. In a brief moment, she realized she
barely had any control over her limbs any more. They appeared to be
doing whatever they wanted to, taking her wherever they
directed.

Her legs walked her right
down the corridor and right towards Research Lab Two.

There were two guards standing
outside of it, and as she approached, they looked at her askance.
‘Can we help you?’ one of them asked, her expression careful but
stern. ‘This is a restricted area. Unless you have the correct
access, you have to turn around and leave at once.’

Jane just found herself
nodding. ‘I need to go back to bed because this is crazy,’ she
said.

Both of the guards looked
at each other, sharing that particular look that all species do
when they realize that someone very off-putting has just said
something entirely crazy.

‘
Okay, ma'am, you can't come any
closer,’ one of the guards held out his hand in a stopping
motion.

Jane understood, she absolutely
understood, but her legs did not pay any attention whatsoever. She
kept on walking right up to them. ‘My god, oh my god, oh my god,
what is happening?’ Jane choked out her words. Her face and voice
appeared to be the only things she could control.

Now one of the guards reached
for his plasma stun gun and pulled it out, first pointing it to the
ground, and then pointing it at Jane as she clearly kept on walking
towards them. ‘Ma'am, you have to stop now,’ now the other guard
leveled his gun as well, ‘just turn around.’

Jane paid absolutely no
attention. Well, her body paid no attention, Jane herself was
screaming at her limbs to stop, to turn her the hell around and to
walk back to bed. But they were, apparently, beyond
suggestion.

A
s she watched the lead guard tighten his
grip on his plasma stun gun, obviously readying to shoot Jane, Jane
did something very odd, very odd indeed.

She suddenly put on a
burst of speed, and tucked into a very quick and tight roll. Before
she knew it, she’d come up right next to the guard, one of her
hands slamming up and latching onto the gun and pulling it sideways
as another hand pushed hard into the guard's opposite shoulder.
Then, hardly stopping, Jane twisted to the side, rolled again,
jumped up, brought the gun around, and setting it to light stun
with her thumb, she shot the other guard. Twisting, she shot the
remaining guard. In a quiet instant both were absolutely still on
the ground.