Her father stood in front of her. To his right stood a dark-haired woman she did not know, and Dr. Chin, whom she remembered from Groom Lake. Behind them was a giant cage. She had a horrible feeling she didn’t want to know what that cage was for.
Suddenly, she realized her jacket was gone, her shirt disheveled. She could no longer feel the wire taped between her breasts. She was on her own with a man she barely recognized as her own father.
“Hi angel,” her father said, his words jerking her gaze back to him. “How’s that migraine?”
“Why are you doing this?” she hissed, hardly able to believe this was happening, but she had the presence of mind to scan for a door—one to the far left—and a phone, none to be found. Her purse was sitting on the lab table by her father; it was open, as if it had been grabbed and searched.
“I, my dearest, am trying to secure our great nation,” he said dryly. “It saddens me in ways you cannot comprehend that you, my little girl, have chosen to aid our enemies.”
“You mean the Renegades?” she asked. “Is it true, Father? Are you planning to use Red Dart against the Renegades? The men who have been risking their lives to protect us from Adam?”
“They are all GTECHs, Cassandra,” he said. “All lethal to humanity. I am doing what you wanted me to do. I am fixing what I created. I am limiting our damage.”
“My God,” she said. “Do you not see you are creating another nightmare? Adam has men inside the government. If he can’t get to Red Dart before you unveil it, they will take it when you do. You are handing him the ability to destroy the Renegades, and they are all that stands between us and the Zodius.”
“Adam will get nothing from me, Cassandra,” he growled, showing a rare moment of anger, his face reddening. “When have I ever been foolish enough to show my hand?” He glared at her, his face distorted, before he drew back and straightened. He dumped her purse and searched through her things. “Where is your phone?”
“I left it at home,” she said and added sarcastically, “The ringer made my headache worse.”
“Where is your phone, Cassandra?” he shouted.
She knew what he wanted—a way to contact Michael. “At home,” she sniped back, her gaze slicing to the woman who’d remained silent to this point, her dark hair and facial structure reminding her of Michael. “I know who you are. Jocelyn Taylor. I know you’re his mother.” The woman’s lips thinned, while her eyes flickered with a mixture of guilt and anger. “How could you betray Michael like this?”
“Michael has never been loyal to anyone but himself,” she said, her voice lacking the conviction Cassandra would have expected, considering her actions.
“Do you even know your own son?” Cassandra asked. “Michael chooses everyone over himself. Time and time again, he risks his life to save others.”
“Have you forgotten the blade he held to my neck?” her father demanded.
Cassandra glared at him. “If he had wanted you dead, you would be dead,” she said. “He saved you from Adam, and I think you know that. You just don’t want to be the one who needs to be saved. You are out of control, Father. You’re going to crash and burn, and take us all with you.”
“Enough,” Powell bit out. “What is the number to reach Michael, Cassandra?”
“I don’t know how to reach Michael,” she said. “And even if I did, why in the world would I tell you?”
He motioned to Chin. “Hook her up to the electrical pads, and shock her.”
Cassandra and Jocelyn gasped in unison. “You wouldn’t,” Cassandra declared.
“Tell me the number,” her father demanded.
Cassandra was terrified, but she was not giving up Michael. Her chin lifted defiantly. “I don’t know how to reach Michael.”
Her father glared at her and then motioned to Chin. “Do it.”
“She’s your daughter,” Jocelyn said, grabbing his arm.
He shook her off. “And Michael is your son,” he said. “We make sacrifices for the greater good, Jocelyn.” He walked to the monitors on the wall and yanked out a drawer, removing a walkie-talkie. “Get an electronic trace on Cassandra’s phone, or get me her phone records. I need one or the other now.”
Chin began sticking electronic pads on her arm. He reached under her hair to attach a device to her neck, and it was all she could do not to jump for fear he would see her mark. The mark.
Suddenly, she thought about her lifebond connection to Michael. Could she be shocked? Would they know when they tried that she was GTECH. Was she stronger now? Could she break that rope?
“We’re ready to go,” Dr. Chin announced.
The walkie-talkie went off. “Phone records coming to your email now.”
***
Michael paced the computer room inside Neonopolis as Sterling worked the keyboard, Caleb leaning over his shoulder. “I never should have let her do this,” Michael said. “What the hell was I thinking letting her go to the base alone?”
He stopped, eyed Sterling impatiently. “Anything?” The wire signal had disappeared fifteen minutes before. “Either you find her exact location, or I’m going in after her without it.”
“I’ve triangulated her cell phone ping.” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s still in her office. She must have taken the wire off, afraid she’d be discovered. She knows you can get a basic read on her from your bond.”
Michael shook his head. “She wouldn’t leave her phone and the wire.”
Caleb straightened. “She’s still in the building. If she’s with her father, she’s safe.”
“You weren’t on that phone with her like I was,” Michael said, “I could tell from her tone, she was distressed.” He paced some more, stared at the ceiling, and ran his hand over his face. “I should never have agreed to this. I’m going after her.”
His cell phone rang, and Michael grabbed it from his belt, answering quickly.
“Hello, Michael.” Michael went cold inside. It was Powell. He glanced at Caleb and Sterling and mouthed Powell’s name. “Cassandra is here with me. You and I need to have a conversation—alone. You should know that not only do I have the ability to use Red Dart, but Red Dart has the ability to create excruciating pain in the infected GTECH. Anyone who comes with you will find out firsthand.”
Michael turned away from Caleb and Sterling, aware that Powell had won. “Put Cassandra on the phone.”
A second passed. “Stay away, Michael!” she yelled into the phone. Michael leaned against the wall, pressed his arm over his head, and shut his eyes. What had he done by allowing her involvement?
Powell came back on the line. “I have a little extra incentive,” Powell said. “Every fifteen minutes that you are not here, Cassandra will receive an electric jolt.” He spoke in the background. “Shock her.”
Cassandra screamed in pain.
“No!” Michael yelled, feeling the electrical charge down his spine, a dull, shared pain with his Lifebond that confirmed her torture. “Damn you, Powell!”
Powell came back on the line. “You have fourteen minutes until the next jolt.” He recited an address that Michael recognized as near his mother’s house. The line went dead.
Michael turned to the other two men, already attaching his phone to his belt and preparing to leave.
“What just happened, Michael?” Caleb demanded.
“He has Cassandra,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Let’s go kick that sorry bastard’s ass,” Sterling said, pushing to his feet.
“I’m going alone,” Michael said. “At best, he wants me. At worst, this is a trap to use Red Dart on all of us. We can’t risk that.”
“You’re not going alone,” Caleb said.
“He’s shocking Cassandra every fifteen minutes until I get there,” he said. “I don’t have a choice.”
Caleb cursed. “Let’s think about this—”
“I have about twelve minutes until he shocks her again,” Michael said. “I’m leaving. You stay here and lead t
he Renegades. Just make sure that if Cassandra and I don’t make it through this, you make it worthwhile.” Vehemently, he added, “You make Powell and Adam pay, Caleb.”
“Is she still on base? Or is he moving her?” Caleb asked.
“I’m not telling you that,” Michael said. “I won’t allow you to risk your safety.”
“If he moved her, it can’t be far,” Sterling said. “We’ll use the satellite and find her. You might as well just tell us.”
Michael’s attention snapped to Sterling. “Caleb needs someone to do the dirty work if I’m gone. To cover his back. You be that someone if I’m gone.” He took off out the door before they could stop him.
Chapter 30
Appearing at the coordinates given to him by Powell with seven minutes to spare before Cassandra’s next shock treatment, Michael found himself at the back of a vacant house. Two soldiers stood in his path. One pointed him forward.
As directed, Michael walked toward the basement entrance, but they bypassed the door. Instead the soldier opened a trapdoor covered by grass and exposed a stairwell leading underground before motioning Michael forward. He walked down several feet before entering a narrow tunnel, the soldiers on his heels. It didn’t take him long to surmise that it connected at some junction to his mother’s basement. He tested his boundaries, reached for the wind. If there was the tiniest of cracks in the surface above them, he could call on it for aid. But he found nothing.
The tunnel was long, a good mile underground between the vacant house and what he assumed to be a lab beneath his mother’s place. He’d barely made it in the door when he saw Cassandra. “Damn you, Michael, I told you not to come!”
Michael would have laughed at Cassandra’s ability to challenge him even under duress, if she wasn’t inside a cage, and he wasn’t so damn pissed. Powell had proven he would do anything to control the GTECHs, and who knew how much more from there, even to hurting his own daughter.
“You know I had to come for you, baby,” he said softly, checking the lab for possible exits and finding only the one he had come through. “Are you okay?”
Anguish lanced her voice, tears pouring down her cheeks. “No. No, I am not okay. I would rather be tortured than have you come here.” She was sitting with her arms tied behind her, electronic wires attached to various parts of her body. No one else was in sight.
“Step into the cage,” came Powell’s voice over an intercom. Michael inhaled sharply. Once he was in that cage, he couldn’t do squat to get them out of here. “She’s on remote control,” Powell added. “One punch of a button, and those wires will jolt her. Would you like a demonstration?”
“You sonofabitch!” Michael growled. “She’s your daughter!”
Cassandra was crying harder now. “Don’t, Michael. Don’t come into this cage.”
He was going in all right, but he wasn’t staying. Michael charged at the cage, crossed the room with the agility of a GTECH on speed, his extra chromosome giving him an added jolt. He picked Cassandra up, chair and all, and then froze. Cassandra gasped and buried her head in Michael’s shoulder. Brock stood in the cage doorway holding a gun, his eyes as black as coal. He was a GTECH, which was impossible. That took months of injections.
“Green Hornets,” Brock said. “Compliments of your mother.”
Michael noted the shake of Brock’s hand. Whatever Powell had done to him wasn’t going over so well, and judging from the crazed look on his face, the man wasn’t stable. “Easy man,” he said. “I’m backing up.” Slowly, Michael moved back into the cage and set Cassandra down. He reached for the wires attached to her, not about to let her get tortured again.
“Step away from her, Michael,” Powell ordered through the intercom.
Brock cocked the gun. “You heard the man.”
Reluctantly, Michael did as commanded, holding Brock’s stare. “So this is your plan?” Michael said to Brock. “To be some souped-up GTECH doing Powell’s bidding? He’s using you, man. This isn’t going any place good for you.”
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up!”
A clicking sound sent Michael whirling around to face the weapon extending from a hole in the ceiling. Cassandra! His mind reached for hers, trying to shield her from whatever was about to happen as he could shield her from the Trackers now that they were lifebonded. Seconds passed as he reached for her mind, used their new bond, and connected, mentally forming a protective barrier around her. And just in time. A red light flashed on his chest. Powell’s laughter radiated through the room a minute before Michael’s body began to shake. Michael fell to the ground, blackness threatening to consume him. He focused on one thing and one thing only—keeping that barrier around Cassandra. Yet… somewhere in the distance he heard her scream. I’m going to kill you, Powell, he shouted in his mind before the shadows consumed him.
***
“Michael!” Tears rolled down Cassandra’s cheeks as she watched Michael lying face down in that cage, shaking from head to toe—her fierce, wonderful warrior taken down by her own father. Yet she could feel him in her mind, somehow protecting her through it all. Brock was down too, floundering around on the ground just like Michael. Whatever Red Dart was, it didn’t distinguish between one GTECH and another. If it impacted one—it impacted all.
Another soldier stomped into the room and picked up Cassandra, chair and all, and carried her out of the cage, the doors shutting behind her.
“He’s going to do that to you, too,” she said as he set her down a few feet away. “Do you want that?”
The soldier ignored her, walking away as if she hadn’t even spoken. Of course. Her father owned him in some way. Her father, the manipulator.
The sound of a voice had Cassandra looking to the door. Powell, Jocelyn, and Chin all entered the room. Jocelyn rushed to the computer panel and punched some buttons on the computer, speaking to Powell as she did. “You cannot leave him like this without damage.” She turned to Powell. “General!”
Her father grimaced. “I left West like this far longer than Michael,” he said. “Are you going soft because he’s your son?”
“Look at what Brock’s become!” She pointed at Brock, her hand shaking. She quickly folded her arms in front of her, as if trying to hide her reaction. “If you want him to lead us to victory,” she said, “he needs to be of sound mind to do it.”
“Father,” Cassandra said. “Stop! Stop hurting him!” She knew it was a mistake, but she was scared for Michael. “He’s my Lifebond. If you kill him, you will kill me, too.”
Everyone turned around and looked at her, stunned silence overtaking the room. Powell motioned Chin forward. He checked her neck and then nodded. “She has the mark.”
Powell arched a brow and then smiled. A laugh followed. His lifted his hands to his sides in celebration. “This is perfect.” He grabbed Jocelyn and kissed her. “Don’t you see? Michael will do whatever we wish in order to protect her.”
Cassandra’s stomach rolled. Her father was sick. Insane. She squeezed her eyes shut against the nightmare this had become, wondering where the Renegades were, knowing they weren’t coming. Her father had made sure of that.
The general set Jocelyn back from him, and Cassandra’s eyes met the other woman’s. To Cassandra’s surprise, she saw real regret. Both Brock and Jocelyn were having doubts. That had to equal hope. But then again, Michael was already marked with Red Dart. Hope didn’t matter. There was no escape.
Rubbing his hands together, Powell looked at Chin. “We have some time before we move them. Let’s test the new creation against the old creation, shall we?” Chin smiled his approval.
“What are you doing, Father?” Cassandra asked desperately.
“Relax,” the general said. “Michael heals quickly.” He arched a brow. “I imagine you do as well.” It was a subtle threat that had her recoiling and trying to work the rope at her hands. Either she wasn’t one bit stronger than before her lifebonding, or those ropes were enforced.
Cassandra
watched her father turn the dial attached to his neck, her eyes going to Jocelyn’s. “What is that thing? What is he doing?”
Jocelyn, to her surprise, answered by motioning to the cage where Michael and Brock were now alert and starting to get up.
“Michael!” Cassandra cried out in relief. He turned to her, awareness washing over his face.
Powell hit a button on the computer and spoke through an intercom. “Lieutenant Colonel West. You will attack and defeat your enemy.”
Suddenly, Brock lunged at Michael, throwing punches, kicking, growling like some sort of animal. Michael dodged and maneuvered. “I don’t want to fight you, West!” He shoved West against the bars and yelled to the room. “I will not fight him like some kind of animal.” Then to West again, “Don’t let him turn you into this.”
“Help them, Jocelyn,” Cassandra pleaded. Jocelyn cast her a helpless look, and Cassandra tried to get through to her. “Don’t force Michael to hurt him. Please. Before my father shocks them again.”
“I…” Jocelyn whispered. “I can’t believe Michael isn’t fighting him. I can’t believe any of this. It’s not what I thought…”
“You will fight!” Powell screamed, stomping closer to the cage.
Cassandra focused on Jocelyn and tried not to think about her father using that remote control again. “Michael is a good man, Jocelyn. He’s a good man. My father is not. Don’t help him.”
“Fight!” her father shouted again, and Brock went down with a bloodcurdling scream that ripped through Cassandra’s nerve endings and drew her attention to the cage. Brock was shaking, lying face down. Again Michael was not.
“What is going on, Jocelyn?” Powell demanded, still messing with the controller around his neck. At that point, Brock was shaking to near convulsions. Michael didn’t so much as flinch. Her father stormed toward the lab table, his face red, fury turning his features to a harsh grimace. “I said… what the hell is happening?”