Federal Paranormal Unit Bundle: Shape Shifter Paranormal Romance (37 page)

The men entered the break room and the door closed.

SEVENTEEN

The gunshot rang loud in the warm room, but hell was loosed before Trent’s tipped chair hit the floor. Brock whipped his hand around, eyes flashing red, and Liand flew from his seat with Jane and stuck to the wall like he was glued to human-sized flypaper. The gun in his hand landed softly on the coffee table.

A
green
flame in his eyes, Ruveen picked up the gun and smiled at Brock. “We seem to be of the same kindred, my friend.” Brock’s demon was quiet, almost…content?

Cyn and Erica surrounded Trent, checking him over. Erica ripped open his camo jacket, popping buttons to get to his chest. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw his bulletproof vest. The bullet impression was directly over his heart. He wouldn’t have survived the hit, even with his wolf.

He moaned and raised a hand to his chest. “Fuck. That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.”

Erica smiled. “Don’t worry, baby. I got you.”

Brock floated Liand to the sofa, keeping him as stiff as a board. Ruveen glanced at his sister. “Would you like the honors?”

“Gladly.” She laid hands on his head.

Brock released the man when his eyes glazed over. “What’s she doing to him?”

“Just incapacitating him until we’re ready to deal with him. Let’s get the other two from the holding cell and get out of here.”

Ruveen escorted everyone into the elevator, Erica dragging in a bedraggled Trent last. Ruveen lifted a worried brow. “We can come back and get you, man.”

“Naw, I love this pain stuff. Now that I’m mated, I’m a glutton for the attention I get.” Trent winked at Erica as she blushed. Ruveen shook his head with a smile then stepped in and pushed the three button.

Brock opened his mouth to speak, but closed it when his demon took over. Immediately, something didn’t feel right. Something was forgotten. What? The elevator descended. When the doors started to open, Brock followed Ruveen’s eyes. They registered men with guns. Fuck!

That’s when Brock realized what Ruveen’s power was. The other man used his quick reflexes to throw a shield, invisible to all others but Brock, and saved their lives. The “crew” Liand ordered twenty minutes ago opened fire when realizing who was, and wasn’t, in the lift. 

A steady stream of automatic munitions ricocheted off the invisible barrier, slamming into the elevator’s ceiling. Glass shards and debris rained down. Loud popping sounds issued from the tunnel above and the cab lurched. Another pop and they went into free fall.

Brock’s feet lifted from the floor as the car screamed to the bottom. Only the fourth floor was below, so surely they wouldn’t fall that far. The car picked up speed.

Brock could hear his mate’s thoughts.
It was entirely possible they could die now. With all the wonderful things that had happened in her life, her time to go was in an elevator shaft. At least she was with Brock
. No fucking way he’d let her die now that he had her again.

No, sweetheart. We’re not going out like this. This is just a minor setback. Trust me.

Everything happened so quickly, it felt like it took forever to reach the bottom. With no warning, the air around them trembled, the cab’s walls bowed out and the remaining ceiling crashed to the floor. But each person remained standing, feet still inches above the floor.

After a breath, Ruveen turned. “Is everyone all right? I’m putting you on your feet again.” All settled with a nod and shaky legs.

Erica looked at Jane’s brother, shock on her face. “You can do that? Levitate things?”

Brock raised his brows. It seemed Ruveen had a lot more power than just throwing up a shield.

Ruveen shrugged. “Comes with the family genes. Anyone know what’s on the bottom floor?”

Everyone looked to Jane. She shook her head. “I heard it was restricted from everyone. That’s it.”

Brock stepped up to the bent and skewed doors and pried them apart. Metal groaned and scraped against metal as the opening slowly widened. The outer doors to the floor were in better shape and slid to the sides quickly.

Brock felt like he was stepping onto another world. The walls and ceiling were solid rock, like they were in a cave. The air was cold and damp, and smelled a bit musty. The tunnel continued straight ahead with a single bulb glowing every several yards.

Not too far in, the wall turned from rock into smooth, cool metal. The tunnel widened into a constructed frame with a grated metal floor that clanked under their foot falls. Wherever they were, it was definitely not nature made.

Brock stepped behind Ruveen. “What do you think?”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I think a myth has come to life.” Brock didn’t question him. He didn’t want to know yet.

Ruveen stopped when they came to a door marked in a word he translated: Laboratory. He stepped back and examined the door. “Sis, tell me what you’ve noticed so far.”

“I see similarities between this part of the cave and our long range ship design. It seems like portions of a man-made structure has merged with rock to create a tunnel.” Jane saw the door. “Tunnel with rooms, obviously. But this whole thing feels clunky and…old.” Her brother placed a hand aside the door and it partially opened. He turned sideways and slid into the room. A few overhead lights came on, one fizzed and went out.

The room was in decent shape with complete ceiling and walls, minus spider webs and spots of water on the floor. Tables and counters were covered in untouched dust, thick enough to conceal writing on papers and gadgets that looked like old electronic tablets. Test tubes and vials lay scattered on the floor and tables.

The room had an eerie feel. Like lab techs suddenly stopped what they were doing and never came back. Small incubator-like beds lined a wall. A couple beds had dried vines and leaves wrapped around the edges and lying on the floor.  

Toward the back, several sets of large glass jars sat in rows. The light was too dim to make out much detail, but the more Brock looked from one jar to the next, his skin and stomach crawled. “Ruveen, tell me I’m not seeing what I think I am.”

The two men studied the jars in sequential order. The first was filled with infantile bones with a misshapen skull lying on the bottom. Some kind of brown gooey stuff crawled up the sides. The next contained the same size bones, but the head had a definite canine shape. The next four jars were filled with blue goo and held complete tiny bodies in suspension. Each container seemed to be a progression of the previous. Traits of a dog, or perhaps wolf, grew more pronounced in each jar.

Another set was the same, except the bodily change resembled a bear. Trent and Brock followed the change for each group. Cyn spoke quietly. “I watched a series on Discovery Channel about the Egyptians and their possible contact with creatures not from Earth.

“One show talked about how Egyptian art reflected the world they lived in. They drew what they saw. No fairies or genies, but things they could put their hands on. That brought up questions about their god Horus, among others.
He’s depicted as a falcon-headed man. Logically then, such a creature really existed.

“Which would mean someone was mixing brownie and cookie dough and making brookies. Ruveen, did your ancestors have the technological capabilities to splice cells or replicate DNA?”

“They had knowledge along those lines, but I don’t know if they applied it as such. It is certainly interesting to wonder if there was a desire to combine animal and human DNA. But for what purpose? The wolf is definitely a local animal found in abundance they could experiment with. A bear is also common. Tony is a tiger. Where do they originate?”

“Tigers are from Asia originally. His were-species must have been created after the process was perfected through trial and error. Or by a different group, maybe.”

Jane cleared her throat. “Tony said there was an unusually high amount of shifters in this area. If shifters were created in this lab, then sent into the area to populate naturally, that would answer the question of why.”

Brock wondered. Could the logical conclusion be that shifters were created by stranded aliens, bored with nothing to do? How could “true mates” exist if nature didn’t create them? Love at first sight. Accidentally bumping into your destined spouse. That didn’t sound right.

And what were the chances that three true mate sets were drawn and working together unknowingly for years? That couldn’t be coincidence. There was more at play here.

Jane’s voice brought everyone back to reality. “Let’s move on. I want to get out of here before something happens we don’t care for. Tony’s waiting for us, probably bored out of his skull.”

EIGHTEEN

Tony’s heart simply stopped. He and Sari were doing so well in this mad house, avoiding others and narrowing down escape options. Now they would be at square one, probably with a guard this time. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t be separated from her.

A few more steps along the platform, and he ripped the door open. Both men in the room froze and stared at him. His eyes skimmed the space. One guy stood by a vending machine and the other at the open refrigerator door. No Sari.

Mind whirling, Tony stepped into the room. He went where his feet took him, not looking at the men, his breathing heavy. He approached the guy by the fridge and saw a single orange soda in the door rack. He reached in and took it. “Sorry, guys. Just wanted to make sure I got the last drink.” He looked at both, stuck the clipboard under his arm and popped the top. His butt parked on a stool at the kitchen counter, and after taking a deep breath, he stared down at the attached papers.

After a moment of silence, the men walked into the warehouse without a glance back. As soon as the door clicked closed, Tony was out of his seat. “Sari.” He rounded the counter bar into the food preparing space and opened a bottom cabinet door. He swept her out, set her on the granite, and wrapped himself around her until his heart slowed.

Sari patted him on the back as if to say,
it’s okay, I got this.

Tony had enough of this place to last a lifetime. Time to get the hell out. He’d take Sari someplace safe then come back in search of the others. He knew there had to be an exit on the other end of the building. How else were all the spaceship fighters to get out? How was he to get the girl past without suspicion?

A few minutes later, Tony walked with purpose behind a two-wheel dolly toting a crate. Moving at a good clip down the middle of the aisle, no one gave him a glance, until the doors of a second elevator slid aside and a group of armed men jogged out toward him.

* * *

Jane led the others out of the lab and farther down the aisle in search of another elevator or some means to get out of this huge coffin. She wanted to see Tony, yet she didn’t. Nyl ’s words kept replaying in her mind. She had a means to have everything she wanted, but at the price of her soul. She was talking about a life she would be creating and giving away like an unwanted gift. Once again, the very idea made her nauseous.

Over the years with FPU, she’d seen too many lives taken for no reason other than some demented mind’s whim. Fortunately, she’d been a part of a group who had brought closure to the families of those missing loved ones. But then there were people on her planet who would take in a baby as their own and raise it. Again, solving all her problems, except what to do about Tony.

He wanted children, a family—something he’d never truly had. She couldn’t imagine all the times he’d witnessed happy parents and children in parks or at the malls, even restaurants, enjoying each other’s company and love. All that was stolen from him at a young age and he’d yearned for it all these years. It broke her heart. If she was with him, she’d give him a family…out of guilt. But maybe not.

Maybe they could work up to having that family he needed so badly. She wanted to want children as he did. After so many years of staying away from that, to suddenly try and figure out how to change that way of thinking was near impossible.

Snapping out of her thoughts, she stopped at a solid concrete wall cutting off the aisle. A heavy metal door was inset and a card reader was perched on the wall. Brock stepped past her and swiped the badge Cyn had handed him at the cabin in front of the reader.
Access denied.
The group grumbled.

Jane reached into her pocket. “Here. I took Liand’s badge before we left. Thought it might come in handy since I had the same problems with that other badge before. Seems some secrets are held more tightly than others.” Jane pressed the white holder to the reader.

The ground vibrated and heavy clunking noises came from the other side of the concrete wall. Slowly the massive door dragged to the side. Jane stepped inside and stopped, those behind her pushing past.

“Ruveen, this is what we think it is. Oh my god.” The vast cavern held a treasure trove of antiquated spaceship technology from her planet. Things she recognized only because she had studied them in tech history during her school years. They stood in what looked to be the tail end of an old spaceship, buried under Earth’s surface.

“Ruveen, what is all this?” Brock called from a distance.

Her brother stood in the center of the chasm and circled to take in everything. “This, my friend, is the answer to so much.” He pointed to wires coming through the concrete dome’s top, down to coils pulsing with a dim light on the floor. “This is the heart of the compound. These coils generate energy using what you call cold fusion.”

He placed his hands on the device, about the size of a five-gallon bucket. “Your planet hasn’t perfected the energy source yet, but you will soon. This source has no radiation waste and can be a virtually limitless supply. No more of your fossil fuels will pollute your air or water.”

“Oh, wow,” Erica murmured. “What about the PVC pipes?”

Ruveen’s sight followed tubes traversing the ceiling, disappearing into a box the size of a small car. “That looks like the water source. The equipment we use today is much smaller, about the size of a brick. The idea is to filter humidity from the air and turn it into drinkable water. It doesn’t need a power source, so it can go anywhere. In the past few years, you’ve developed this technology on a small scale, but nothing for the masses, as such.”

Trent looked amazed. “I thought you were kidding when you talked about the conspiracy of Earth getting technology from your planet.”

“You’re getting the good and some of the bad. If your planet can avoid what we went through, that would be a good thing.” He went quiet for a moment. “Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t a plan of some kind.”

Brock frowned. This entire conversation felt surreal and would have been impossible to believe had he not been there. Still, he wondered what Ruveen meant. He’d have to ask later.

Ruveen picked up what looked like machine parts. “Seems someone has been replicating spaceship parts.”

Trent and Brock headed for him. Trent grinned like a kid in a candy story. “Like a Star Trek replicator?” Brock looked to slap him up the back of the head. “What? To make something out of nothing would be over the top.”

Ruveen sorted through piles of items in bins. “That’s not exactly what I meant. What I’m talking about, like everything else, is something that has come about in the last several years for you.”

Trent raised a hand and waved. “Wait a minute. We don’t have anything close to replicators. Everything is made in assembly lines, or by hand.”

Ruveen grinned, clearly enjoying Trent’s disbelief. “Are you familiar with your 3D printing technology?”

Trent frowned. “Not really. I didn’t get the concept of making paper 3D.”

“It has nothing to do with paper,” Ruveen said. “You’re in the infancy of where this technology will lead.”

“I don’t get it. What’s printing without paper?” Erica asked, appearing more confused than Trent.

“It’s not printing at all. It’s building objects based on layering.”

Trent gave a wide-eyed surprised look. “Seriously? That works?”

“Yeah, it does,” Brock replied. “An actual working gun has been created using this process. I’ve heard this has the potential to revolutionize the manufacturing process. For the good and the bad.” Ruveen caught Brock’s eye. Brock felt he wanted to say more, but Ruveen smiled and looked away.

“All these parts are needed in creating thrusters for space travel. There are so many, though. Unless Liand was building a fleet of ships—”

“A fleet with three hundred ships?” Jane cut in. “The same amount of men in a battalion? There’s no way I’ll let Liand use me to brainwash these men into working for him.” Everyone looked at her, except Trent. He was playing with a gadget. He noticed heads turning and followed suit, confusion on his face.

“Why are we staring at Jane?”

Erica slapped his chest as she passed him. “If you were paying attention, you would know Liand’s ultimate plan is to take over a planet by taking the guys from the battalion to man his ships.”

Trent grabbed her hand and held her close. “Whose planet?”

Good question. Brock had a feeling that Earth was in bigger trouble than anyone realized.

“Hey, over here,” Cyn called from the far side. “There’s an elevator here. We’ll need a badge.”