Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (26 page)

‘
What about McDougall's avenging
angel, Celeste?’ Gustaf leaned back in his chair, running his hand
through his hair and sipping at his coffee again. ‘I do believe we
could use her on this team.’

Ami nodded her agreement. ‘We
could use anyone who could make the Yaoguai run from
us.’

Cindy stiffened. ‘I can't
believe you guys are saying that. We have no idea what she is and
no idea why the Yaoguai are afraid of her. For all we know, she is
a mammoth risk. We can't be stupid enough to let her on our
team.’

‘
I don't really care why they are
afraid of her,’ Gustaf conceded with a shrug, obviously not caring
that Cindy looked monumentally annoyed at his suggestion. ‘All I
care about is that she'll make the Yaoguai run in the other
direction.’

‘
Used correctly, she could be a
great advantage,’ Ami agreed as she nodded, her short-cropped black
hair bouncing around her ears.

‘
We still haven't confirmed her
back story.’ Cindy crossed her arms tightly in front of her
chest.

‘
Forgive me, Cindy, but I really
can't imagine that girl works for Shadow. They tend to draw their
operatives from the world of Special Forces and heavy infantry
units, not from your local freelance programmer magazines.’ Gustaf
relaxed further into his chair as he spoke.

‘
I can't believe you're all being
so complicit. Until she is cleared by Knight, we still have to
consider her a threat,’ Cindy rounded on them all.

‘
Okay, okay,’ Jack put his hands
up. ‘Celeste isn't joining our group . . . yet,’ he
added at the end. ‘And Cindy is right; she hasn't been cleared by
Knight. I'm not here to suggest her. I'm here to ask for your
opinions. In under a week we've got a mission planned for South
America, and it's an important one. I want this team working at its
best, and we're going to need someone we trust. So, what are your
suggestions?’

Ami and Gustaf sat there for
a while, mumbling their suggestions in turn, but Cindy simply stood
there and fumed.

Although their suggestions
were good, all their options were people Jack had already thought
of. He found himself blanking out a little towards the end,
thoughts returning to Celeste.
She really would be good on this team,
wouldn't she?
He
thought. That unflappable countenance of hers, her ability to
bounce back from shocks and surprises – even though it didn't look
as if she could be that useful in a combat situation now, she could
be trained easily. Hell, given a couple of years, she might be
better than he was.

‘
I think you are no longer paying
attention,’ Gustaf noted, clearing his throat and making his voice
loud.

Jack bristled. ‘These are good
suggestions, and I'll see what I can do. I'll have a short list
ready by the morning.’

‘
When are we deploying back to
Gresham City?’ Cindy insisted as Jack turned to the
door.

He looked at her and shrugged.
‘It's not my decision, Cindy. It's in the hands of
Knight.’

‘
For them to be keeping us here
so long, do you think they have a mission in mind?’ Gustaf asked
perceptibly.

Jack had to agree with him;
it was a suspicion he'd been entertaining for a couple of days now.
For Knight to keep them around so long, meant that they had
something in mind for Squire, or at least they wanted Squire close
at hand, in case something came up. At first, he'd wondered whether
it was just Celeste, but after he'd had several conversations with
Agency heads over the past several days, he'd realized they no
longer thought she was any threat whatsoever. Obviously, the fact
she went silently back to her room after every test, and spent the
rest of her day watching benign flower arranging and cake
decorating programs was starting to have an impact on them. There
was also nothing in her history to suggest she had ever had any
contact with Shadow. It simply seemed that for some unknown reason
the Yaoguai were afraid of her; and Knight being the pragmatic
bunch they were, were getting ready to exploit that
fact.

No, they weren't keeping
Squire around because of Celeste, so what was the
reason?

Jack got his answer at
19:05. He was pulled into the main office of Knight Headquarters,
and ushered into the Director's office.

The Director, an elegant but
incredibly hard woman in her late 60s, locked eyes on him the
second he walked through the door, and he didn't need to be
empathic to realize she was under a great deal of stress. Her back
was crooked, her shoulders hunched, and her hands clasped tightly
in front of her.

‘
There's been an incident,’ she
admitted, voice quick and dark.

Tension activated every one
of Jack's muscles, making him snap straighter.

‘
At Harley Airport,’ she
added.

Harley Airport was the biggest
airport in the State, a bustling international node that serviced
not just passenger traffic, but commerce and cargo too. It was a
huge airport, and the very possibility that there had been an
incident there involving a Yaoguai . . . was too
terrifying to entertain.

‘
We need to deploy Squire and we
need to do it now.’

Celeste Cross

She'd finished watching her
cooking programs, and she'd switched over to the news. Flopping
down on her bed, she'd brought her pillow up close, one cheek
pressed heavily into it as she watched with one eye.

Once she'd been the kind of
girl that thought watching TV was unproductive. Now she was a
prisoner and all she had was television for entertainment, she'd
had to modify that thinking. These days she would watch TV from the
time she got up to the time she rolled over and went to
sleep.

The news wasn't interesting,
but she found herself sitting up straight when there was a breaking
report. She'd never seen a breaking news report before; she'd only
read about them in novels or seen them in movies.

The report was about Harley
International Airport. Apparently it had been closed down,
something to do with a massive gas leak.

Celeste wriggled to the edge
of her bed, planting her feet on the ground, her hands suddenly
tense as she held them in her lap.

Everybody had been
evacuated, and it sounded as though engineers would be working on
the leak for the rest of the night.

As Celeste watched, she
couldn't shake the niggling sense of fear that pricked up across
her back.

She had no evidence to
support her supposition, but for some reason it sounded as if this
was a cover-up.

She usually wasn't one for
conspiracy theories. If you'd asked her several weeks before, she
would have doubted the existence of shadowy government agencies
too. Considering current circumstances, she found her mind snapping
onto one possibility – the Yaoguai.

Could the incident at Harley
Airport have something to do with them? Was the gas leak just some
story sold to the local news to get them to calm down?

Suddenly there was a knock
on her door. Whoever it was didn't wait for a reply, they just
pushed it open, the metal frame dragging across the
carpet.

It was Jack.

His expression was tense,
his jaw locked, his eyes narrowed, and his face pale, hell, even
the skin of his exposed arms was a sickly, mottled
white.

She jumped up from her bed and
took several steps towards him. ‘What's going on?’

‘
There's been an incident at
Harley International Airport,’ he said, confirming her
suspicions.

She put a hand up to her mouth.
‘The Yaoguai?’

He nodded
silently.

‘
What's happening?’

‘
A mass infestation. They were
trying to transport something, but transportation failed,’ he spoke
with a great deal of bitterness, and it was clear he was
frustrated.

‘
What were they doing trying to
do that through civilian transport?’ Celeste asked immediately, a
hint of indignation slicing through her voice. ‘If it was you guys,
and if you were transporting some relic, why not use military
facilities?’

Jack shook his head. ‘This one
was deemed safe. Turns out it wasn't.’

‘
My God,’ Celeste's voice was a
whisper. ‘Harley International Airport is right next to a massive
highway, just outside Parsons City.’ Parsons City was the capital
of the State. It was also one of those badly designed sprawling
metropolises, densely populated in every single direction. Granted,
Celeste didn't know much about the Yaoguai; she hadn't had much to
do with them to date. She could imagine however, what would happen
if several got loose in a city. It would be . . .
disastrous.

‘
Celeste, we need your help,’
Jack's voice was quiet and low.

She straightened up
automatically, taking several steps over to him. She nodded.
‘However I can help, I'll do it.’

There was a moment as he just
looked at her. Did he looked impressed? It was something like that,
but it also looked as if he had a tinge of guilt too. ‘This is
going to be dangerous,’ his expression was serious.

She didn't move away from his
side. ‘I understand that. That Airport is right outside the city.
If we don't contain those
Yaoguai. . . . '

‘
We are leaving in five.’ He
nodded towards the door.

She actually looked at him
suspiciously. Because she couldn't quite believe they were going to
allow her to up and leave. Especially not to go on a mission of all
things. In her head, Knight were still confused about whether she
was a monster or something like that. However, for them to suggest
she go on a mission, gave her more reason to hope Knight didn't
think she was a threat at all.

‘
Celeste, you don't have to
come,’ he tried one last time.

She answered by walking past
him, but as she did she turned his way. ‘I know that. I want to
come. It is my decision, Jack, so let's go,’ she walked out of the
room.

Jack West

Okay, maybe he'd been wrong
about her; she was turning out to be very determined and passionate
indeed. Her readiness to go on the mission was nothing short of
impressive. She'd looked surprised and shocked at the fact Harley
International Airport was under attack, but she hadn't been fazed
by it. At the invitation to join the mission, she'd jumped to
it.

Maybe she was just being brave,
maybe she didn't understand what was going to
happen . . . or maybe she did. Perhaps Celeste knew
exactly what the risks were, and was capable of accepting
them.

They all loaded onto the
chopper, and several other teams loaded onto more choppers next to
them.

As they didn't have time to
prepare properly, Jack had grabbed a Kevlar vest for Celeste, and
he'd brought her a gun too, though he wasn't sure whether he'd give
it to her. If she couldn't use it, he'd be putting her in more
danger by handing her one. In the heat of battle, she'd shoot
either herself or someone else in friendly fire.

Squire boarded quickly. They
all knew how important this mission was.

This time his team didn't glare
at Celeste as she sat down amongst them, though that couldn't be
said of Cindy. Gustaf nodded at Celeste, and asked her how she
thought the food was at Knight. Ami commented on Celeste's
hair . . . and Cindy just sat there and
glowered.

It would be about a
20-minute chopper ride to the airport, and Jack would need that
time, not only to brief his men, but to prep Celeste too. This was
going to be her first proper combat experience, not including when
she'd saved him in the forest. They needed to decide how best to
deploy her.

As she sat there, next to
Ami, she kept her mouth calmly closed, and Jack watched as she shut
her eyes several times and took steadying breaths, each one
relaxing her visibly until, even though she still looked pressured,
she appeared in control.

He brought out the Kevlar
vest and handed it to her.

She took it from him and looked
at it, nonplussed. ‘Are you planning to shoot me?’

He let out a snort of a chuckle.
‘No.’

‘
But the Yaoguai don't have guns.
Why would I need this?’

‘
It's a precaution.’ He nodded at
her to put it on.

She stood up, the move very
careful. She was obviously not used to being on a chopper, and the
way she moved suggested she thought it would buck around like an
angry bull.

She pulled it over her head.
She tried to do up the Velcro strap that ran along one side, but
she stopped, because it didn't fit.

Jack had grabbed the
smallest size he could find, reasoning Celeste was pretty small,
and, after all, a woman. However, he'd kind of forgotten about her
rather generous bust.

She cleared her throat
carefully, trying to pull at the strap around her waist until it
tightened up enough, but it wasn't ever going to work;
unfortunately her bust meant one of her flanks underneath her arms
would be unprotected: the blast vest wouldn't reach around and do
up properly.