Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) (7 page)

“No?” Zade gestured at the monitor. “What do you call this?”

“I call it a mystery to be unraveled,” Noah said. “Carefully. Discreetly.”

He and Zade glared at each other. Like always, it fell to him to be the hardass.

Zade looked away, shaking his head. “The girl could be useful, if you play her right.” Zade tossed a glossy brochure on his desk. “That’s from Bounce, in case you give a shit. I’m outta here.”

“Zade,” Noah said. “Stay away from her.”

Zade stopped at the door. “Is that an order?”

“We need to be on the same page for this to work,” Noah said.

“Not possible, man, if you’re going to be the only one who gets to write on it.” Zade reached out as he went through the door and slapped on the lights, all at once.

“
Fuck
you! Jesus, that hurts!”

“Blinded by the light? Deal with it.”

Noah turned the lights back off as he heard Zade walk away, whistling.

It drove him nuts, that Zade assumed that he needed to force Noah to save his brother Luke. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Noah was fucking tired of him and the others. Their brains buzzed at uncontrollable frequencies. Outside the box didn’t even describe it. More like outside the fucking building.

But they were his best buds, all of them. Until they turned into raging, paranoid maniacs. Who still wanted to be tucked into bed after hearing a reassuring story from Noah.

Fuck them ten times over.

He realized that his sight was returning. No thanks to Zade, who was long gone.

A tentative knock sounded on the door. “Mr. Gallagher?”

“Go away,” he said harshly. “Everyone. Stay the hell away. All of you.”

It was only Harriet Aronsen, his office manager. He shouldn’t use that tone with her, but currently had no fucks to give. Everyone should stay away.

He’d keep his own distance if he could. Just abandon his own rage, lock it up in a reinforced steel box, bury it and forget where he’d left it.

But he couldn’t.

The brochure Zade left caught his eye. He picked it up.

Bounce. Your one-stop shopping for party entertainers.
Exclamation point. Noah squinted. Make that three exclamation points. He unfolded it. The window signs he’d seen on the monitor didn’t remotely cover everything on offer. DJ’s, karaoke, clowns, children’s parties, fire breathers, sword swallowers, strip-o-grams, Dickens carolers, celebrity lookalikes, giant inflatable rats and snakes, and last but not least, nearly naked representatives of every gender bursting out of cardboard cakes. Plus, hmm, costume design and rental for parties, school, community and professional theater productions. Noah studied a glossy photo of a guy in spangles, exhaling fire
and
jumping through hoops. He could identify.

There were no photos of Caroline Bishop.

Freeze-framed, she gazed seductively over her shoulder from the video monitor, looking at him through long lashes. So maybe she was Mark’s spy sent to infiltrate them. Or else Mark’s victim, framed for a vicious murder he committed.

The second option was almost as bad as the first, come to think of it. The Midlanders had a crap-ton of issues. They did not need police scrutiny of any kind.

Convincing though their fake identities might be, they were best left unquestioned. And unobserved.

His losses on rebellion day had taught him the price of boldness. All that was left now was a relentless will to keep his freaky tribe alive and thriving. They wouldn’t beat Obsidian by acting like victims.

Nope. No grand gestures for him. Slow, steady and secretive would win the race.

But Zade was right, much as he hated to admit it. They needed to know what Bishop knew. How how she fit in to this. Why she was hiding.

He’d never run an AVP scan on a woman who affected him this strongly. It might not even be safe for her.

He
might not be.

He wanted a long, private, leisurely, unfiltered look in dim light. AVP running free. No spectators. No distractions. Naked eyes. Raw, unfiltered data. Yeah.

He reached for the smartphone, glancing at the video monitor. The seductive flash of her green eyes.

Hah. He could rationalize his ass off, but he knew why he was making that call.

There was no arguing with a stiff dick. It always had the last word.

Chapter 5

“Open the vault, General,” Mark Olund said. “You don’t want to make me angry.”

General Colin Kitteridge’s lungs hitched, constricted by the hot air of the high, remote desert and the microscopic dust that drifted endlessly through Obsidian’s vast research complex. He struggled against the duct tape that bound him, his eyes bugging out, straining to see his tormenter.

Mark was unable to help with that. He could have turned on lights, but less light gave him more control with AVP. Control meant
the difference between victory and disaster.

Kitteridge’s rigid ass was taped to a folding stool that Mark had set right in front of the GodsEye Biometric vault door. The man’s own brain was the key to open it. Without the general’s cooperation, any attempt to open the vault would turn its precious contents into ash and cinders.

The GodsEye brainwave sensor helmet looked ridiculous on Kitteridge’s sweaty bald head. But the general couldn’t see himself and Mark didn’t care. So long as it worked.

“I can’t open it,” Kitteridge said.

Mark gave the man’s sig a quick surface reading and concluded that the general was lying. A strongly fortified lie that almost looked like a truth. But not quite.

The old man was tough. He’d die with honor. Screaming and writhing, of course. But never surrendering. He didn’t know that Mark was a genius at finding soft spots and brutally exploiting them.

“Your colleague Lydia Bachmann explained the principles of GodsEye Biometrics to me eight months ago,” Mark said. “Right before she died.”

The general’s sig flashed in startled agitation. “Lydia? You killed her?”

“Never mind Lydia right now. Open the fucking vault.”

Kitteridge closed his eyes, but his sig revealed that, far from doing as he was told, he was summoning the energy to fortify his defenses. He was a career soldier and an ex-POW, not a pampered asshole. He knew something about suffering.

Not as much as Mark did, though.

On to the next move. Mark opened the back of the large truck that he’d driven into the complex, and leaped inside. A teenaged boy lay in the cargo space.

“Joseph. You’re still breathing.” Mark grabbed him by the collar, and hauled out General Kitteridge’s grandson. He’d regained consciousness, and his eyes rolled in terror. He was hog-tied with dirty white ropes that showed blood where they’d rubbed his skin raw. Duct tape over his mouth, though. Easier than a gag. Harder to chew, what with the adhesive.

The boy was six feet and weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, but Mark hefted him as if he weighed nothing. Joseph twisted and fought as if dangling from a gallows, groaning as the shirt collar choked him.

“Joey!” Kitteridge’s sig turned inside out. Watery green alternated with pulsing yellow. Soul-chilling fear.
Yes.

“I don’t need to describe what I could do to your grandson,” Mark said. “Your imagination might be even more creative than mine.”

“Don’t hurt Joey!” Kitteridge stared at Mark’s unflagging one-armed grip. “Who in the hell are you? Are you modified?”

“Me? I’m just a piece of garbage you threw away years ago. It’s payback time.”

“You’re an older gen—? What year? I thought I was familiar with all of the . . . oh. Oh, God. You helped torch Midlands.”

“Bingo. You’re the second one on my list. You should be honored.”

“Second?” Kitteridge’s eyes kept darting toward his grandson. “Lydia was the first? Please understand, we had no idea what the researchers were doing. We were horrified when we learned about you kids but there was—it was a breakdown in command—”

“Of course. These things happen.” Mark’s soothing tone made Joseph groan again.

“We were never able to find you kids after that! We never intended anything like that to—”

Mark gave the man a vicious crack across the mouth. “Shut up, General. The bill’s due. You Obsidian pricks are going to pay.”

Blood dribbled from Kitteridge’s mouth. “I will. Go ahead and hurt me. Not—not—my grandson.”

“Shhhh.” Mark placed his free hand over Joseph Kitteridge’s skull, winding his fingers into the boy’s hair. “How about if I collapse his skull and we watch his brain squeeze out? On second thought, that’s too quick. I want him conscious when I do this.” He reached down and grabbed Joseph’s balls.

Joseph screamed behind his duct tape and jackknifed frantically.

“Stop!” Kitteridge begged. “Stop! I’ll open the vault! Just put him down!”

“That’s the spirit.” Mark let go and Joseph thudded heavily down to the concrete floor with an agonized grunt.

Bonus. The kid was crying real tears. Mark almost wished he hadn’t let go so soon. He sighed and turned to the general. “Do it.”

The older man’s eyes darted to his grandson. “I will, but . . . but you can’t use it. No one could, not even me.”

“Explain, fuckhead. Or your grandson gets something worse.”

Kitteridge talked fast, spewing out the words. “The weapons are keyed to the mods of the ultimate generation of enhanced slave soldiers, and they respond only to their specific mental commands.”

“Really. Well, I may be just a rough draft,” Mark said casually, “but I’m still curious to see the final product. Don’t make me wait. Joseph has a low pain threshold. Trust me on that.”

“I have to concentrate,” Kitteridge pleaded. “It’s not easy to use, and it’s impossible when I’m agitated! The system recognizes brainwaves generated while visualizing images, and if I can’t—”

“I understand the basic principles,” Mark interrupted. “I’m a GodsEye client myself, General, and I manage the brain/software interface just fine. Would it speed things up if I cut off a piece of Joseph’s body?”

“No! Just let me concentrate, please! Just give me a moment!”

Mark tapped his foot as he watched sweat roll down the General’s face. Payback was never as satisfying in real life as in fantasy. He’d cornered his first Obsidian target last year. Lydia Bachmann, CEO of a weapons manufacturing firm. He’d tried to compel Lydia to open a GodsEye safe for him, unaware of the safe’s unique biometric design. But the drug he’d used to lower her resistance to interrogation hadn’t worked right. She couldn’t summon up images strong enough to be read by the sensors.

The safe had stayed closed, to his intense frustration. For months, he’d been hauling the fucking thing around everywhere he went.

Lydia had regretted her sins, but it hadn’t been as much fun as he’d hoped. Plus, she’d lost consciousness far too quickly. Silence was not what he wanted out of the encounter. Screaming provided measurable feedback during the infliction of pain. She’d disappointed him.

He was learning how to make agony last, build it into a crescendo as he killed these power-bloated bastards one by one. And then, ahhh. Taking their masterpiece from them, and bludgeoning the living shit out of everyone with it . . .
that
promised to be a fucking blast.

No drugs for Kitteridge. He’d learned his lesson. The general’s mind needed to be crystal sharp. The kidnapped grandson was a more efficient stimulant.

Kitteridge squeezed his eyes shut, veins pulsing in his temples. Minutes crawled by. Mark drummed his fingers, monitoring the general’s sig for any sign that the man was stalling. All he saw was desperate effort.

Finally, the light panel on the vault door flashed green. The seal popped open.

Kitteridge sagged in his bonds, dangling his head between hunched shoulders.

In between the older man’s ragged, sobbing breaths, Mark heard nothing with his augmented hearing. Nothing moved in the desert for miles around other than small animals. He’d taken out the facility’s security personnel when he arrived. The place was strewn with their soon-to-be-desiccated bodies. How fortunate that they wouldn’t smell, considering that there were ten of them.

Now, it was just him, the two Kitteridges, and the quiet desert evening.

A quickie scan showed that neither Kitteridge was likely to inconvenience him at this point, so he took a leisurely inventory of the vault’s contents. Cutting edge weapons designed to be wirelessly synchronized with the newest gen of modified humans, who were basically a slave army awaiting the call to action, if and when it came.

Soon.

Mark was going to take their army and have bloody, noisy fun with it.

It took the better part of an hour to hump all that equipment into his vehicle. With his enhanced musculature, boxes that would take two normal men to lift were feather light for him. But he still hated wasting his time and energy loading fucking crates like a dock worker.

He was better than that. He was one of the original prototypes, goddamnit. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research and development had been plowed into producing supersoldiers. There’d been years of rough drafts, failed attempts, trial and error.

Now their worst error, their roughest rough draft, their biggest failure had come back to devour them, suck their living brains and tear at their warm flesh.

He couldn’t wait.

He found the flash drive inside the vault that Lydia had described, and plugged it into his laptop. The control freq wands that generated the signal codes were there, too. He entered the general’s hacked passwords. Found a folder entitled Control Codes.

But there were only six files in it. There should be files for twelve hundred slave soldiers in there. He already had the names and location of the six prototypes. He’d extracted them from Lydia under extended torture after she failed to open her safe. He knew who and where they were, but hadn’t been able to activate them without the freq wand.

Now he owned them. But he wanted the other one thousand nine hundred and ninety-four.

Mark walked out, and nudged the general with his toe. “Where are the activation codes for the rest of the soldiers?” he asked.