Generation 18: The Spook Squad 2 (17 page)

The general considered her for a moment. “Have you ever heard of the Penumbra project?”

She didn’t bat an eyelid. “No.”

He continued to stare at her, his expression neither believing nor disbelieving, just blank. As if, in that moment in time, there was absolutely no one at home in the general’s mind. King had a similar blankness. Were the two conferring mind to mind?

“Those men,” the general said eventually, “worked on both projects.”

“But they weren’t the only scientists involved, surely?”

“No, there were others.” He gave her a cool smile. “They’re long dead, though, so of no concern to either you or your investigation.”

A waitress came in, carrying two coffees. Sam waited until she left before continuing. “From what we can gather, Emma Pierce was a part of the Generation 18 project. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Then what, exactly, was Generation 18?”

The general picked up his coffee and sipped it slowly. Then he reached for the tray of savories, sampling several. Obviously trying to decide just how much to tell her.

“King, here, is a product of Generation 18.”

So he
was
Maxwell’s brother—or, at the very least, his test-tube brother. She raised an eyebrow. “So Hopeworth is breeding children?”

“Special children, with special gifts. Not all weapons are mechanical, you know.”

The hint of pride in his voice rolled revulsion through her. Tiny children growing in a bloodless, emotionless vacuum, pawns to the military’s whims? What madness was that? No wonder King acted like a robot. He’d probably had any sense of humanity hammered out of him. “And the seventeen children placed into Greenwood twenty-two years ago?”

“Failures. Nowadays, we place them into care.”

Meaning that in the past they’d been discarded with the other rubbish? God, what sort of monsters were these men? “Why were they considered failures?”

“Because they were born human.”

And that was a failure? That they’d even managed to survive made them successful. “But why farm them out for adoption? Why not keep them in the military environment? Surely even mere humans could find a place in Hopeworth?”

His smile was cold. “If we wanted human soldiers, we could recruit them. Besides, we don’t have the facilities to raise children.”

Yet they had the facilities to raise their “gifted” children. What was the difference? “Then why were the failures being prescribed Jadrone? The drug has no effect on humans.”

The general raised an eyebrow. “The SIU has better information than we thought.”

Meaning such information would be buried deeper in the future. “The autopsies revealed severe bone degeneration in both Jakes and Maxwell. Why would that be?”

The general exchanged a glance with King. The younger man’s eyes went curiously blank again, and then life returned as he glanced back to the general. It was almost as if the general was asking permission to explain.

Maybe that explained King’s presence here—he was the link back to base. Which might also mean every word they said was being monitored.

But how, if Han had the scramblers up?

The general met her gaze again. “Though our failures could not shift or change, they still carried the genes. By manipulating them in the manner we did, we accelerated some of the problems that shifters face.”

“But only two of our four victims had the degeneration.”

He nodded. “It depends on which genes were matched. Some got lucky.”

Or unlucky, depending on your view. “Then why were the two without the degeneration being prescribed Jadrone? The drug is dangerous when used long term, and it kills changers outright.”

“We discovered a mix that hybrids can take with no ill effects.”

She wondered how they’d discovered it. Wondered how many had died in agony before they did. “Do you know if there’s a drug in development that can take Jadrone’s place?”

The general exchanged another glance with King. “No. Why do you ask?”

“Harry Maxwell was addicted to Jadrone. Yet a week before he was murdered, he gave up cold turkey. His supplier said he’d found something to replace it.”

“I know of no such drug.”

Was he lying? She wasn’t sure. Either way, it was obviously time to change the direction of her questions.

“Why do at least two of our victims have Emma Pierce listed as their birth mother when Hopeworth took her ovaries, and therefore all chance to have a child herself once she’d left the military?”

The general smiled. “You’ve certainly done your research, young lady.”

“I’m trying to save lives, General. We think someone is going after your failures.”

“It could just be coincidence.”

The look in his eyes told her he didn’t believe it was. “Answer the question, General.”

He smiled.
A crocodile toying with his prey,
she thought.

“We never did anything without the permission of the people involved. In Generation 18, the sacrifice was one they made willingly.”

Not if what Allars said was true. “Then why was Emma Pierce listed as birth mother to at least two of your failures when in truth the children were conceived and raised in a test tube?”

“Because, in a sense, she
was
their mother. If the eggs from her ovaries resulted in successful births—and by this I mean children evolved from the initial procedure that reached full term—then she was listed as birth mother on the certificate.”

Given a woman’s ovaries carried all the eggs she needed to see her through her years of menstruation, it left open the possibility of there being hundreds of children out there who owed their existence to the unknowing Emma. It also meant that there could have been literally thousands of children who began their journey to life only to have it snuffed out by natural causes or the military’s whim.

Her heart ached at the thought. But maybe it hurt more simply because she could never have children of her own. “And the seventeen children placed into Greenwood? Were they the only failures from the project?”

“The only ones that survived, yes.”

“How many of them can Emma call her own?”

The general hesitated. “Nine, I believe. But surely that is something you can discover yourself.”

She smiled. Of course she could, but it was easier to ask directly. “What about successes? How many of those belong to Emma Pierce?”

“Five.”

“Are they still with Hopeworth?”

“Yes.”

And would be forever, if the general’s tone was anything to go by. “How were people like Emma selected for these projects?”

“They volunteered. We had criteria, of course.”

“Was one of those criteria to have no family outside of Hopeworth?”

The general began to tap the table lightly. It was the first sign of annoyance she’d seen in him. His stern features were as impassive as ever.

“People join Hopeworth with the knowledge that, once accepted, it becomes your life. Only with retirement can you walk away. The ‘no family’ policy is more a general policy for Hopeworth itself than one related to the projects.”

From what they’d learned, even retirement was no guarantee of escape. “Did Emma Pierce have a sister?”

“No. Her family was killed in an auto accident when she was a child.” He hesitated, staring at her bluntly. “As you surely know.”

“We do. Only Allars swears Emma had a sister. He claimed to have met her once.”

“Impossible.” But his quick frown told of his uncertainty.

“Why was Emma chosen for the project?”

“As I said, she volunteered.”

“Yeah, but surely all volunteers are not automatically selected.”

His quick grin conjured more images of crocodiles. “No. Emma Pierce had the right qualities.”

“Those being?”

The tempo of his finger tapping increased. “Her father was a shifter, her mother a changer. Emma herself could do multiple forms of both.”

She stared at him, uncertain at first whether she’d heard right. “What do you mean, she could do both? I thought hybrids were extremely rare.”

“Hybrids
are
very rare; I think the figure is something like one in a billion births. But Emma’s abilities were rarer still.”

“And that’s what Generation 18 was creating? Hybrids capable of multiple identities and abilities? Did the project defy the odds?”

“We were more successful than the quoted figure, yes.”

So the military had hybrids at their disposal. Her gaze went to King. Hybrids with psychic abilities. “Why wasn’t Emma listed as a hybrid?”

The general’s smile was disdainful. “Because those who do the testing don’t know what to look for. Generally, the hybrid is stronger in one area. Emma was listed as a changer simply because that was her strongest ability.”

Which meant, more than likely, that Emma’s sister had also escaped the net. They had a definite suspect. Now all they had to do was find her—and stop her.

“Is it possible for one of your hybrids to have escaped and be killing her less successful brothers and sisters?”

“No. As I’m sure you’re aware, everyone at Hopeworth is tagged. All movements are monitored. Even mine.”

She nodded. “The question had to be asked.”

“I’m sure it did.” He leaned back in his chair, regarding her through slightly narrowed eyes. “You have very unusual eyes, young lady.”

The tension level jumped several degrees, though why she wasn’t entirely sure. She took a long drink of water and nodded. “A few people have commented on that.”

“Inherited from your mother or father?”

“I was placed into State care as a teenager. I have no memory of my parents.” Her smile was grim. “As I’m sure you already know, General.”

He flashed his reptilian smile again. “I admit to doing a little checking myself.”

“Why?”

“I thought you might be one of our rejects. I wondered if, perhaps, the programming had slipped and you were using this case to learn more about Hopeworth. Something similar happened recently with another project’s reject.”

So Hopeworth knew how to reprogram babies. The place was definitely the stuff of nightmares. “I was not a Greenwood kid.”

“No. And we never did use the Ashwood center.”

He’d definitely done more than a little checking if he knew she’d been in Ashwood’s care. She took another sip of water to ease the sudden dryness in her throat. Was it just nerves, or had the temperature jumped by several degrees?

“There
are
natural redheads in this world, General,” she remarked, voice dry.

“Oh, I agree. But your hair is not just red. It is more a red-gold, and in certain lights—this candlelight, for example—appears molten. It is something of a signature for our creations.”

She glanced at King. “Molten” was an apt description for his hair. “Coincidence, General.”

“Maybe.”

His tone suggested he didn’t think it was so. “General, I’m nearly thirty. Too old for the Generation 18 project by about five years.”

“I’m well aware of that. There were other projects, of course.”

“Like Penumbra?”

“Penumbra was our only true failure.” The finger tapping hesitated slightly. “Though sometimes I wonder…”

He glanced briefly at King. Again, she had the sudden impression of information being exchanged, though neither man moved or spoke.

The general pushed back his chair and rose. “I don’t believe there is much more we can help you with.”

Meaning there wasn’t much more he
intended
to help her with. She nodded. “Thank you for meeting me, General. You’ve cleared up a few problems.”

“Yes, it’s been most…interesting. Please call if you need anything else.”

If she needed anything else, Gabriel could do the calling. “I will.”

He nodded, and walked from the room. Tension flowed like water from her limbs, and she took a deep breath. She hadn’t realized just how uneasy the general had made her feel.

She took another deep breath, then she doubled over in the chair as cramps knotted her stomach. Cursing softly, she grabbed her bag and stumbled to the restroom.

And discovered, at the grand old age of nearly thirty, she was getting her first period.

G
ABRIEL DUCKED UNDER THE POLICE
tapes and walked toward the house. The red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles washed across the white walls of the two-story building, providing color to an otherwise lifeless-looking landscape.

At this house, unlike the houses surrounding it, the owner had gone for the minimalist look—no trees, no grass, just white concrete to every corner. It was a landscaping trend he hoped didn’t catch on.

He showed his badge to the gnarled-looking police officer manning the front door, then walked inside. The smell of blood hit him immediately. Its odor was rich and sweet and almost fresh. Obviously, the murderer had been violent again.

The scent led him into the kitchen, where Warren Michaels and his autopsy team were already present. Warren himself was near the body, and annoyance flickered through Gabriel. His brother must have called them in, even though he knew Gabriel preferred to be first at the scene; it was easier to imagine what had happened without the interference of others.

The CSM hovering in the middle of the room spun round. “Identification, please.”

“Gabriel Stern, SIU,” he intoned, absently flashing his badge.

The first victim lay halfway between the cooking units and the counter. Her body was all angles, like a doll some child had broken and abandoned, and her red hair was darkened with blood. Blood also gleamed darkly on the white tiles, and it had splashed against the glass-fronted cooking units. The victim had put up quite a fight before she’d succumbed.

He knelt next to Michaels. “Anything new?”

Michaels snorted softly. “Yeah, the whole method of killing. She’s getting more violent each time.” He pointed to the purple bruising around the woman’s neck. “She strangled her until she was unconscious, and then stabbed her several times before gutting her. We’re dealing with a very sick person here.”

Or an extremely angry person. “How did the killer get in?”

“Glass door in the dining room.”

“Forced?”

“No. Can you believe they’d left it open? In this day and age?”

He smiled. Michaels had obviously never made a similar mistake. “No tray of cigarette butts this time?”

“She barely had time to escape. She must have been going out the back door as the State coppers were breaking in the front door.”

“Where’s the second victim?”

“In the upstairs bathroom.” The com-unit Michaels held beeped. “ID confirmed on this one. Margaret Jones.”

Which
wasn’t
one of the names on their list. “Have her parents been notified?”

“A unit is being sent there now.”

Gabriel nodded and rose. Red droplets led away from the body of Margaret Jones, back into the entrance hall. There was a small cluster near the base of the stairs, as if the murderer had stopped and looked up. Perhaps the second victim had come out to investigate the noise, only to see the bloodied killer and her knife.

But if that were the case, why retreat to the bathroom rather than heading for the nearest window? Even if she’d broken a limb in the jump to the ground, she might well have lived. The killer wasn’t likely to come after her in the middle of the street.

Gabriel continued up to the second floor. There was another gathering of droplets at the top of the stairs, indicating the killer had stopped once again, perhaps to listen. Which, in a sense, contradicted the idea that the killer was angry. Someone in the middle of a blood rage wasn’t this cautious.

So why
was
she becoming more brutal with each murder?

He headed toward the first doorway, which turned out to be the main bedroom. The pillows bore the indentations of two heads, and the rumpled state of the queen-sized bed gave evidence to the fact that not a lot of sleeping had been going on recently.

He moved on. The next room was another bedroom, which was in the process of being turned into an office. The bed was still present, but it was squashed in one corner while desks, chairs and filing cabinets—all new and still wrapped in plastic—filled the middle of the room.

The killer hadn’t bothered to stop in either room, because the droplets moved on, evenly spaced. Gabriel frowned. The killer must have injured herself in the fight downstairs, as the blood was too consistent to be dripping from a knife.

He finally came to the bathroom, and realized the second woman must have fled here because the door had a lock. The wood bore heel marks, and the catch had been torn from the frame. A second CSM hovered in the doorway. Gabriel showed his ID and stepped past it.

Only to stop cold.

The second victim was his sister, Miranda.

Sam dialed Gabriel’s number, but all she got was a busy signal—something she’d been getting for the last half-hour. She frowned at her wristcom and wondered what else she could do to contact him, because something was wrong. He wasn’t in danger, but something was definitely wrong. There was an ache close to her heart—an ache that was his, somehow echoing through her.

She studied the car’s onboard computer for several seconds, wondering what she should do—go home, as he’d ordered earlier, or try to find out what was happening? Really, it was a no-brainer. How could she sleep knowing something was wrong? She punched Gabriel’s address into the computer.

As the vehicle spun around and headed back to the city, she leaned back and watched the traffic roll by. That was the nice thing about these auto-drives. You could be as tired as all hell and it didn’t matter. The auto-drive would get you to your destination regardless of the condition you were in. Though if the satellites ever malfunctioned, there was likely to be the biggest damn accident in recorded history. Sam yawned hugely and closed her eyes. It seemed she’d barely gone to sleep when the car pulled to a halt and beeped softly.

She climbed out and looked up. There were no lights on in Gabriel’s apartment. She climbed the steps and leaned on the buzzer for several seconds. No response. Frowning, she stepped back, staring up. If he was still at the murder scene, why wasn’t he answering his phone?

She got back into the car, tapped the wristcom, and tried his number again. Same result—busy. Maybe his phone was charging. She dialed SIU. Christine answered on the second ring.

“Christine, Agent Ryan here. Can you check and see if AD Stern’s wristcom is working?”

“One moment, please.” She turned away from the screen. The overhead lighting caught her hair, turning the black strands a rich dark blue. They’d certainly worked on making her realistic, Sam thought. Wisps of hair swayed with every move, and if you looked hard enough, you could see her breathe.

“AD Stern’s wristcom is currently off-line.”

“Turned off?”

“Yes.”

In the time she’d known him, that phone had never been turned off. “Who’s on the cleanup team at Greenvale?”

“Agents Michaels and James.”

“Could you patch me through to Michaels?”

“One moment, please.”

Christine disappeared, to be replaced a few seconds later by Warren Michaels’s drawn features.

“Agent Ryan. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for AD Stern. He still there?”

“He left about forty minutes ago. Why?”

She hesitated. “He asked me to report in. I’m just trying to find him.”

“Tried his wristcom?”

“No, I thought I’d call you first, just to piss you off.”

Michaels raised an eyebrow, a slight grin twitching his mouth. “Yeah, dumb question, I suppose. I guess you’ve tried his home number too, in which case, I can’t help you.”

She bit her lip. Gabriel was fine when he’d left her at Han’s, which meant something must have happened on the way to the murder scene or at the scene itself.

“Did anything strange occur while he was there?”

Michaels snorted and rubbed his eyes. “If you can call discovering your sister was one of the victims strange, then, yeah, I guess it did.”

“What?”

“Yeah. He was shaken, as you would expect. Left pretty much immediately after.”

She rubbed her eyes. “You got an official ID?”

“Yeah. Miranda Stern, current address fourteen Hillsyde Street, Strathmore.”

Miranda, the sister he’d been desperate to find. Her name must have been on the list of Hopeworth adoptees. Christ, what a mess. “Who’s listed as next of kin?”

“A Jessie McMahon.”

“Got an address or number?”

“Yeah, hang on a sec.”

An almost fierce look of concentration came over his face. After a second, Jessie McMahon’s address and phone number appeared on the screen. While she had no right to call Jessie, she would if Gabriel remained unreachable.

“That go through okay?” he said. “I hate these things.”

She grinned. “It came through perfectly. What about the murders? Anything different from the first four?”

“Yeah, she’s getting more violent. She tried drugging her first victim, only it didn’t work. Both women put up a good struggle before they died.”

“What was the entry/exit point?”

“She came through an open back door and left through the bathroom window as the cops were breaking in the front door.”

“What was the first victim’s name?”

Michaels glanced down for a second. “Margaret Jones.”

Who
wasn’t
on their list of possible victims. Meaning, more than likely, she’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either that, or their killer was going off on another tangent.

“Other than the violence, was there anything different in the murderer’s actions?”

Michaels scratched his chin. “Well, she had no time for a ciggy, that’s for sure. But she didn’t with the doc, either.” He hesitated, then frowned. “And she injured herself this time. Right hand. And pretty badly, if the constant flow of blood is any indication.”

“When you do an analysis on the blood, could you send me the results?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks, Michaels.” She hung up, then redialed SIU and got put through to Izzy.

“This is becoming a habit, sweetie. Don’t you ever sleep?”

She rubbed gritty-feeling eyes. “Not lately, I don’t. Iz, did you finish the search on Dr. Francis?”

“I surely did. She was born in New South Wales in 1987, the third child of a Meg and John Francis.”

Which made her sixty years old. Only slightly older than she’d guessed. “No relation to Emma Pierce, then?”

“No, honey child. Afraid not.”

Damn
. Every clue they’d had pointed to Emma’s elusive sister. If Dr. Francis wasn’t the sister, how was she connected to the case? She
was
connected; of that Sam was sure. “Were you able to acquire the surveillance tapes from her building?”

“Yes.”

“Any visits from anyone connected to this case?”

Iz twirled the boa for several seconds. “Max Carter and Harry Maxwell were regulars until the time of Harry Maxwell’s death.”

She raised her eyebrows. Max had moved from his lair? How, given his sheer size? “What hospital is Max holed up in?”

“St. Vincent’s.”

“His condition?”

The boa twirled again. “Critical but stable.”

“Great. Iz, can you do a search of the case files and grab the list of children placed into Greenwood’s care?”

“Got it, sweetie.”

“Patch it through to my wristcom, will you?”

“Consider it patched.”

The wristcom beeped, indicating it was receiving information. “Thanks, Izzy.”

“Have a nice night, sweetness.”

She hung up, then glanced at her watch. It was nearly two in the morning. The hospital wasn’t going to let her interview Max at this hour, no matter how vital it might be. She’d have to wait several hours. All she could really do now was head home and get a few hours’ sleep.

Sam woke with a start. Her heart thundered with a rhythm that spoke of fear. Heat crawled over her skin, warning of danger. She glanced at the time. Four fifteen. She’d been home for nearly two hours, and asleep about half that.

She stared into the darkness that filled the living room. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa, as she did most nights. The TV had turned itself off, and the only sound to be heard was the wind sighing through the window she’d left slightly open.