The Pack (10 page)

“Go near your home, two blocks up. My motorcycle is there.
I'll take this kid to my hideout and get some answers out of him when we get to my cycle,” Valens said from behind her. Shamira sped, and the boy was right behind them, his slim body fitted with a light jacket for the cold Mars night. She focused on the road ahead of them. Taking several deep breaths to calm down, she felt a sensitive tingling on her skin from the remnants of the fight. She wanted to hurt someone. The training room will have to do for tonight.

She pulled up to Valens' motorcycle and paused to look up at the two moons in the sky.
Crap, nothing is going as planned.
He slowly slid off, letting a hand linger on her waist. She turned to him and frowned, and he smiled a dimpled smile back at her, and then walked toward Mitch. She got off her cycle and followed him.
Valens, you won't be the only one to get answers from this kid.
Frowning, she looked Mitch over. This kid looked her age, but he was now a killer.

“So, Mitch, what's your story?” Valens asked, his hands on his hips. Shamira walked over, crossed her arms over her slightly bloody black jacket, and frowned at Mitch.

He rubbed his hand through his hair. “Well, about a year ago, I came home to a massacre. My aunt, who moved here to help my dad with my sister and me after my mom died, was stabbed, lying on the living room floor. My dad was missing, but he gave whoever took him a fight. Everything in the front room was broken, and there were holes in the walls. They didn't find my sister. She was hidden in a spot I showed her when we played hide and seek,” Mitch said. His
eyes watered. He got a dazed look, as if reliving that horrible moment.

“What's your dad's name?” Shamira asked. She distanced herself from his pain, not wanting to think of that as a reality for her family.

“Carl Poole. He was one of the Sector Seven Security Elite. A lot of good it did him, since he got taken and got my aunt killed,” Mitch said.

“So, where's your sister?” Valens asked. He crossed his legs when he sat down and faced them on his bike.

Mitch started to pace slowly and said, “I don't know exactly. I found my sister and figured we'd better hide. We contacted the Security Force in our Sector, and they helped us out for a short while, and then they just forgot about us. We got hungry, and street junkies tried to take us and sell us to Fisher.” Mitch stretched, and then crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Did they sell you?” Shamira asked flatly, sizing Mitch up to see if he was telling the truth.

Mitch frowned back at her and said, “What do you think? Anyway, that guy I killed back there, his name is Snake. He… well, I thought I had bargained with Fisher's cronies. I decided to sell some dream for them so Kate and I could eat. I started working for Snake and Kimble.”

He shifted and turned to Valens, “They work under Fisher, the leader of the human trafficking part of the gang named Monev, or The
New World, they sometimes call it. Well, they took Kate and promised me that Slasher, their leader, would not hurt her if I did what I was told. Then, they put me on the street to sell dream. I haven't seen my sister since, and I haven't gotten paid.” A lone tear dripped from his eye, and the anger he felt showed through his pain.

‘You can't go back,” Valens said.

“I know. They have my sister and my father – that is, if he isn't dead already. You don't know what they're capable of. I also know where they may be keeping some of the kids and maybe the adults too. If we go, we have to go with guns, or we're dead,” Mitch said, his eyes now dry.

“Oh, we are going. You can bet on it. But for now, boys, I have to run. I'll see you tomorrow,” Shamira said sternly.

She heard Valens say to Mitch, “I got a place for you, dude. Follow me.”

“Meet me here tomorrow!” she yelled back. She hopped on Pearl and rode home. She had to go to the training room to exercise away the excess energy from the night's events.
Crap.
She hated waiting. As she came up to the house, she let out a breath of relief. Her parents were not home. She climbed off her bike and walked toward the house. “Pearl, go park and clean yourself,” she said.

She walked in the house and straight to her room. Opening up the clothes compacter, she told it to clean her soiled clothes. Then, she walked naked to the shower to wash off the blood and dust from her night out. She couldn't wait to go to the training room. Sleep was
the furthest thing from her mind. She was filled with adrenaline that she had to shave off before she could face her parents when they returned.

In the training room, Shamira worked herself to exhaustion and slept just a few hours before returning to the training room again. The training room was underground like many of the Elite had in their homes. This fact was unknown to anyone not on the Elite Security Force, including the support staff.

Her parents both worked out in the training room, though her mom did most other training at the Security Force Headquarters for their Sector. Her parents led Sector Five and were virtually the rulers of their Sector. When the Security Force members started turning up
missing, the second in command would lead, but those Security Force members were not enhanced, only the Elite few were. The Elite had certain abilities they gained from training at a young age, and their special suits only left them vulnerable on their heads and groin areas. Shamira wondered again how Monev was able to bring the Elites down. The tags or tracking devices they wore were only traceable from the supercomputers at Headquarters, and even she couldn't break in that deep. It would take her years to get past the barriers to access that information.

She punched the bag in front of her again. Her preference was working with the punching bag and sparring with the android when her dad wasn't available. Today though, it wasn't doing the trick. Turning away from the bag, she touched the control on her wrist to activate the fight simulation. The punching bag disappeared into the ceiling.

Besides the punching bag and the sparring android, the training room also had an obstacle course, weights, and a simulation room for learning flight maneuvers and finding information about a particular enemy that would allow her to build a replica and find their weakness. She went to a nearby table to get some dot tags that stuck to the vulnerable parts other face to simulate a punch on either one of those areas. Its purpose was to make the trainee used to accepting pain, which was something Shamira did rather well. The simulation created a virtual reality with the enemies she programmed in with her wrist controller. She knew it would
effectively replicate the pain and even the smells associated with being hit, and she was ready. She zipped up her form-fitting simulation suit that covered her from head to toe.

“Multiple fighting sequences with obstacle course,” she said to the computer in the training room. The lights dimmed, and she closed her eyes to get her former rhythm. She readied herself and made sure she was able to sense all things around her. The simulation created a twenty-man attack on her home. She was thrown into a replica of her living room, and bad guy Fisher that she created for the simulation burst through the front door. She ran toward him and front-kicked him in the face, feeling the adrenaline rush she was searching for. His cronies came from behind, and she followed through on a back-kick just as another nameless foe punched her on the side of her face. She smiled. This is what she needed—a good fight. She was just getting started when the simulation suddenly ended.

“What? Restart simulation now!” she yelled.

“Not Today, I need a sparring partner, so I cut off your simulation,” she heard her mom say.
Now this is rare,
Shamira frowned.
I've never sparred with her before, so why does she want to do this now!
She didn't want to hurt her mother by turning her down, but she was afraid to let her mother find out what she was capable of. Especially know that she was all keyed up from what she'd seen and heard that evening. She just had so much anger and frustration built up in her that she didn't think she had the control to
hold back from hurting her mother or concealing her hidden strength.

“Mom, I kinda want to do this alone today,” Shamira said as she took off her simulation gear.

Ignoring her, Shamira's mother said, “Computer, we're going to the sparring room.”

Great.
Her mother was wearing a green form-fitting sparring suit. It had a zipper up the front, and her feet were sticking out at the bottom. Her mom was in better shape than Shamira realized. She had strong legs, a muscled stomach, and firm, yet softly muscled arms.

“Don't worry, Shamira. I can take anything you can dish out. The question is, can you take what I dish back?” her mother said and squatted into a fighting stance.

Taking off her simulation tags, she tossed them to the floor. Shamira followed her mom's lead, and the lights in training room lit up brightly. The wood floor beneath Shamira's bare feet felt cold, and she looked into her mother's eyes and saw a fighter there. With no hesitation, she lunged and punched at her. Her mother dodged the attack with speed. Her mom followed through with a punch to Shamira's stomach, but Shamira didn't flinch. She was used to hits and responded with an uppercut. Her mom quickly moved to the side to escape her punch and landed a punch to Shamira's face. Shamira was getting tired of holding back, and her threadbare hold on her control started to slip. She dipped and punched her mom hard
in her stomach, which pushed her mom back about two feet.

“Shamira, I do believe you are stronger than you let on. Don't hold back. Push it, girl! Let it go,” her mom said, not a bit out of breath from Shamira's punch. Shamira released her hold on her strength, and she and her mom did a fighting dance of punching and kicking across the room. Even with Shamira pushing to maximum strength, her mom kept up. Her mother landed more punches, jabs, and kicks than Shamira did just by attacking Shamira's weak points. At the end of their sparring session, they were both out of breath and Shamira felt much better, having let off the steam of her frustrations.

“Shamira, I'm impressed. You're a worthy opponent,” she panted, “You even found some of my weak points I had forgotten about. Thank you! It was fun.” She rubbed a sore spot on her shoulder.

Shamira was stunned. She had rarely gotten compliments from her mom, and she felt joy spill over inside her. Now she knew she was ready to do what she had to do. She also realized that the power that was within her grew the more she challenged it. Her mother had taught her to push harder than she would have with her dad.

“Thanks, Mom,” she blushed, “Are you going back to Headquarters? Have you all found some answers?” Shamira asked.

“Well, now you are going to get me all angry again. As we suspected Monev is behind the attacks. Of course, you realize that Monev spells V-E-N-O-M backwards, right? I guess they use that
name to describe the drugs they're pushing. Anyway, we didn't plan for this type of attack, and a lot of families of the Elite have been lost in the process of the Mars Planet Police efforts to control the crime. Earth wants nothing to do with this, of course, and won't allow any travel between Mars and Earth until we get control of the problem here,” her mom said while she folded her legs to a crossed-leg sit.

“How are they finding the Security Force Elite members,” Shamira asked, folding her legs in similar fashion to her mother's.

“Well, we don't know exactly how they're doing it, but we figure they are using the Security Force Elite's tracking devices against them. They've obviously found a way to find us,” she answered while stretching.

“Okay, well finding you is one thing, but how do you catch an Elite?” Sharmira asked frowning in thought.

Her mom sighted, “We're pretty sure they have also probably spent years spying on us and building a device that scrambles the nanos that give our suits their strength. Besides, we're strong even without our nano boost. So, the truth is, I don't really know how they're bringing us down,” her mom said then started to stand.

“How close are you to finding David?” Shamira asked.

“Not as close as I'd like to be—not nearly as close.” Her mother winced a bit at the question. “Hon, I've got to go. Your dad is coming home in the morning to check on you. Please take your earlink if you leave the house,” her mom said before she headed out the training room door.

After her mother was gone, Shamira's thoughts moved to her next meeting with Valens that night. She pictured his face, and her breath caught at how beautiful he was. She knew it was stupid to think of him this way, he was simply too beautiful for her.
I just don't deserve him for myself—not like that, anyway,
Shamira's thoughts teased. But part of her wouldn't let the desire to have him for her own slip away.

She took a deep breath and thought to herself how things were a lot easier when she couldn't see. Being blind, she wasn't captured by a person's outer beauty. She could stay in the safe shell she created for herself. Now, she had to work harder at not being charmed out of it. She forced her mind to put thoughts of Valens away.

Reminiscing on her brother, she couldn't help but picture the horrible things that could be done to him if she didn't find him soon. She didn't want to involve so many others in her quest, but unfortunately, she realized that for now, she needed Valens' and Mitch's help. She needed them as backup and for the information they were easily able to gain from their friendships with other street kids. She put her face in her hands, took a deep breath to relax, and went to change to meet Valens in a few hours.

When she drove Pearl to the designated meeting spot, they were waiting for her. She was not surprised. Valens was always punctual. He was wearing black leather pants and a matching jacket. His wavy blond hair escaped from his black hat. Mitch cleaned up
well, too, with jeans and a matching jacket.