Sleeper Agenda

  Completing his spin, the sleeper planted both feet, body tensed, ready to meet the next wave of attack. But there was none to be had: the security squad was either unconscious or moaning fitfully on the floor of the installation’s lobby.

  And then the sleeper’s eyes found him.

  Kavanagh’s first instinct was to run, but after witnessing what he just had, he determined that running would be pretty much pointless.

  The sleeper pounced, springing across the expanse of lobby toward him, a look suddenly burning in his eyes that Kavanagh had, just mere moments ago, come to believe had somehow been extinguished.

  But there it was, raging behind the face of a boy—the killer he’d worked so hard to create.

  Chapter 19

  TOM TOOK DOWN the last of the soldiers waiting outside the elevator, then stood, waiting to see where the next attack would come from.

  His eyes scanned the area in front of him, landing on a single figure standing across the room. Tom had never seen this man before in his life but at the same time knew exactly who he was.

  Brandon Kavanagh.

  And that was all that was needed to trigger the savagely visceral reaction he had on seeing the man. Tom wanted to kill him. He wanted to wrap his hands around his neck and strangle the life from him, and when that was done, he wanted to get a knife and cut his heart out, and when that was finished, he would take a gun and empty the bullets into the body, and finally he would find some gasoline and matches and set fire to the corpse, burning the beaten and bloody remains of the man to ash.

  And that reaction barely scratched the intensity of the fury he was feeling at that moment.

  Tom was seeing only red, bounding across the room with murder his intent, and the man stood his ground, never blinking, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing—not a weapon, but what looked to be a phone.

  What’s wrong with this picture?

  Pulling back his fist, Tom prepared to strike.

  Just as Kavanagh brought the phone up to his mouth and spoke.

  “Activate.”

  He stopped before the man, feeling something wriggling around within the folds of his brain.

  Kavanagh didn’t move, watching him carefully.

  Tom could feel something—The microchip implanted in my brain, he guessed—attempting to perform the function for which it was intended, to trigger a narcoleptic attack via satellite from wherever Kavanagh’s ally on the other end of that phone was located. But it couldn’t trigger what didn’t exist anymore.

  He slowly raised his head, the hint of a mischievous grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. The expression on Kavanagh’s face was priceless, the cruel son of a bitch suddenly realizing that things weren’t going to go as planned.

  Tom reached for him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and ripping the cell phone from his hand.

  “It doesn’t work like that anymore,” Tom said into the tiny phone, and then smashed it to the floor. He swung his fist into the older man’s face and sent him stumbling backward into the wall.

  The man knew he was in trouble, scrambling to get to his feet, but Tom was already at him, wrapping his hands around his throat, pulling him up, and slamming him roughly back against the wall.

  “I’m here to thank you for all you’ve done for me,” Tom hissed, starting to squeeze.

  “Don’t mention it,” Kavanagh wheezed through gritted, bloodstained teeth, and Tom noticed the man’s eyes dart to an area just to the right behind him.

  He started to turn just as a bullet clipped the top of his shoulder, throwing him forward. Kavanagh scrambled out from beneath him, throat bright red from where Tom had gripped it.

  “I was beginning to wonder what I pay you for, Mr. Wells,” Kavanagh said to the man stumbling from the elevators, pistol in hand.

  Tom pushed himself up the wall, painfully aware of the red smear that he left on the painted cinder block as he rose. This was far from over.

  “You mean it wasn’t my talent for stimulating conversation?”

  Kavanagh seemed annoyed by the man’s wiseass response. “Just kill him and be done with it,” he ordered, turning to quickly leave the room.

  “From God’s lips to my ears,” the man said without a moment’s hesitation, raising the pistol and firing repeatedly in Tom’s direction.

  Tom was already moving, pulling his own weapon from the waistline of his pants and returning fire.

  The entryway filled with the sound of thunder.

  Bullets were flying everywhere, but targets weren’t being hit. Wells had taken cover by a stack of crates and Tom behind a heavy metal reception desk pushed over into a corner, its gray surface covered in a thick layer of dust.

  There was an impatience in him now, something coiled tightly in the pit of his belly, something that cried to be unleashed, to express what it was capable of. A gun battle like this, where opponents were evenly matched, depending on the amounts of ammunition available, could go on for days.

  And time was something he didn’t have the luxury of—or the patience for.

  Slipping a fresh clip of bullets into his gun, he emerged from his hiding place, bringing the fight directly to his enemy.

  Wells jumped out from behind the crates and proceeded to fire.

  Tom charged his enemy, firing shots from his own gun as he made his way closer to his target. This was what he preferred, a more direct approach to combat—more hands-on.

  It was almost as if Wells understood what he was up to and was more than happy to oblige. The lanky man emerged from the shadows. He was fast and immediately relieved him of his gun, which was perfectly fine by Tom; the time for guns was over.

  Tom threw a punch toward the man’s face, connecting with the bridge of his nose with a loud snap. Blood gushed from the man’s nostrils in a crimson spray.

  “Good one,” Wells said, and without pause he brought his knee up to chest level, snapping out with his leg, the heel of his military boot connecting with Tom’s face. Tom flew backward, the power behind the kick making him see stars.

  His opponent was on him in an instant, and Tom quickly recovered to meet this next attack. Wells threw a succession of punches, driving Tom backward as he evaded the lightning-fast strikes.

  And all the while he was waiting for his moment. Waiting for the opportunity to end this as quickly and efficiently as possible. Wells launched a punch, exposing the soft patch of nerve clusters beneath his arm, and Tom reacted, darting beneath the blow, driving a balled fist into the extremely sensitive area, a blow that should have immobilized him.

  It had no effect whatsoever.

  Tom was surprised, and that turned into complete bewilderment as Wells locked his large hands around his throat and started to squeeze. Tom struggled to break the man’s grip on his neck. He brought back both his hands, clapping them savagely against the sides of Wells’s head, rupturing the man’s eardrums, the trademark move of Tyler’s that Tom had witnessed in flashbacks.

  Amazingly, Wells’s grip on Tom’s throat only tightened even as thick dark blood began to ooze from Wells’s ears. Spots of color blossomed before Tom’s eyes as his need for oxygen became more immediate.

  The man didn’t appear to feel any pain, even when Tom brought his knee up into the guy’s groin. Wells didn’t so much as grunt, instead slamming Tom backward against a nearby wall.

  He found his thoughts drifting, the explosions of color reminding him of Fourth of July fireworks. How easy it would be to stop fighting and accept his fate.

  There are worse ways to die.

  And that might have been how the old Tom Lovett would have dealt with the situation—giving in—but that person didn’t exist anymore and hadn’t really in quite some time, since he’d heard the mysterious word Janus spoken in his dreams. When everything had changed.

  Tom let his body go slack, and he felt Wells’s hold on him loosen ever so slightly. Seizing the moment, Tom brought his arms up and then down with everything he had, finally managin
g to break the man’s grip around his throat.

  Tom filled his lungs with air and slid along the wall in an attempt to escape and regroup.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Wells growled, reaching out to take hold of his arm in a steely grip, pulling him back.

  Tom rammed his knee up into the man’s chest. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that some of the ribs had broken, but Wells looked totally unaffected.

  Perplexed and a little frustrated, Tom put his newly acquired skills into overdrive, breaking free of the man’s grip and launching a series of blows and kicks. Wells did what any trained combatant would do, blocking and following through with his own moves, but Tom was stunned by the way he shrugged off the severity of Tom’s attacks. The man was bleeding from any number of places, but still he continued to fight, showing no sign of weakening.

  Tom spun around, bringing his foot up in a snap kick into the man’s jaw. Wells fell back, blood leaking from his mouth.

  But it did nothing to slow him down. The man charged at him with renewed vigor, the two slamming into the discarded reception desk. Wells was on top of him, his blood dripping down onto Tom’s face as he withdrew a knife from a sheath strapped to his leg.

  “I can see it in your eyes,” the man said above him, blood dripping from his lips as he attempted to force the glinting blade down into Tom’s face. “ ‘Why won’t this guy go down?’ ” Wells laughed, shaking his head ever so slowly, his face a bloody mess. “I can’t feel a thing,” he said. “Do you understand, boy? They made it so I don’t feel any pain.” The blade slowly descended. “It’s a battle of the science projects,” Wells grunted with exertion. “May the better freak win.”

  Finally Tom understood. But even though Wells couldn’t feel pain, it didn’t mean he couldn’t be hurt—or killed. And now that Tom and Tyler had blended, becoming someone entirely new, Tom had no problem killing—not when it was necessary and not when he knew without a shadow of a doubt that the person deserved to die.

  Bent backward over the desk, knife tip less than an inch from his eye, Tom lashed out, driving his heel into Wells’s knee. The bones went with a muffled snap, and his attacker suddenly listed to one side, dropping to the floor, his leg no longer capable of supporting his weight.

  As if sensing that this could be the final moment, Wells dropped his knife and dove for his discarded pistol. Sliding across the floor, he rolled onto his back and took aim, ready to fire.

  But Tom was already there, landing in a crouch to straddle the man, driving the palm of his hand into Wells’s already broken nose, sending a spear of cartilage up into the man’s brain before he could pull the trigger. Wells dropped backward to the floor, eyes wide in death.

  Tom took some solace in the fact that the man hadn’t felt a thing.

  His own body ached in places he hadn’t even realized could hurt, but there was little time to worry about that. He left the room through the doorway where he’d first caught Kavanagh standing.

  The former military facility was like a maze, and he navigated the gridwork of dimly lit concrete halls, prepared for anything. Tom slowed at the sound of something moving up ahead. Pressing his back against the cold concrete wall, he peered around the corner. He saw movement behind the metal cover over a ventilation shaft in the wall above. A kick to the cover caused it to pop loose from its screws and clatter noisily to the floor below. A pair of legs swung out from the shaft as a figure lowered itself to the hallway below it.

  Tom stealthily moved forward, drawing back his hand to strike if necessary, but his presence was somehow detected—perhaps the shifting of his shadow on the wall ahead. The figure spun, gun in hand, aimed in his face.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Victoria Lovett said, the hint of a smile instantly turning grim as she pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 20

  VICTORIA HAD FIRED off two rounds in rapid succession before Tom realized that she wasn’t firing at him but at the two armed soldiers sneaking up on them from around the corner.

  Tom found himself holding her wrist in such a way that the slightest amount of pressure could have snapped the bone neatly in two.

  Victoria said nothing, looking into his eyes, waiting for him to set her free. He released her, going to the two dead soldiers and helping himself to their weaponry.

  “Did you have to kill them?” he asked, fishing through their supply belts, searching for anything that could be useful.

  “If I didn’t, they would have killed you and probably me,” she said coldly. “It’s something that you learn in this game. No second thoughts: it’s kill them before they can kill you.”

  The words were so severe coming out of the woman’s mouth. It was hard to even imagine her as his mother anymore.

  “Where are the others?” he asked, walking past her, continuing on his way down the hall. His number-one priority was to find Kavanagh, and she was slowing him down.

  “Up above,” she said. “On the base grounds. We encountered a welcoming committee and engaged in a little firefight. I’d guess they’re probably wrapping things up now and will be down shortly.”

  Tom glared at her. “And what are you doing down here?” he asked.

  “I slipped away when things got a little hairy,” she said. “Nothing like an RPG blast to get people scrambling. I grabbed a gun from an unfortunate casualty and used a ventilation duct in one of the garage bays to get down here. A little advice: always familiarize yourself with the ductwork of any building you visit.”

  They carefully passed through a doorway to a metal walkway and a set of steps leading down to a lower level.

  Tom started down the stairs ahead of her. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “You know the answer to that, Tom,” she said.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, and he turned and looked at her. “No, I don’t. Why are you here?”

  “There isn’t time for this,” she replied, shaking her head, obviously exasperated with the young man. “I knew you might need help … that you might be in danger. I wanted to help you … to show you that… to show you that I’m sorry for what I did.”

  Tom couldn’t help but laugh. It was an unpleasant sound, void of any humor whatsoever. “You’re sorry?” he asked mockingly. “You damn well should be.”

  She pushed past him, moving toward a cross section of corridors. “This isn’t the time or place,” she said. “I think we need to—”

  “How could you do it?” he asked, feeling raw emotion bubbling to the surface. “I was … I was just a sick kid. How could you be part of something like that? What kind of person are you?”

  Victoria turned, weapon in hand. It was surreal, the sight of the woman who had once meant so much to him, standing there, covered in grease, holding a gun as casually as a cell phone.

  “I was a bad person. Is that what you want to hear, Tom? Okay, I’ve said it. I was a bad person.”

  “Was?”

  She came toward him, and he resisted the urge to back away.

  “I know it probably sounds like complete bull, but you changed me, Tom,” Victoria said. “Being your mother was the single greatest experience I ever had.”

  She reached out, touching his face. He found that he couldn’t pull away, almost as if he wanted her to touch him.

  But that was crazy. She disgusted him.

  Doesn’t she?

  “It started out as acting—a cover—but it turned into something much bigger than that. Believe me, I didn’t want it to, but it happened.”

  Childhood memories flooded his mind, tender moments with his mother. He pulled his face away from her hand, stepping back. “I can remember all this stuff—with you, but how do I know it was even real?”

  Victoria frowned, and he thought he might see tears in her eyes. “It’s a terrible thing, how they treated you, Tom Lovett,” she said, emotion resonating in her voice. “A terrible thing that I willingly took part in. And I know that it won’t
make up for even a fraction of what I did to you … to God knows how many other people in my less-than-legal activities over the years, but here is where I’m going to start.”

  Tom stared at her, torn. There was still a part of him that despised her for what she had done and doubted that it was possible to ever forgive her completely, but there was another part, not quite as strong, that was willing to allow her to try and win back that lost trust.

  It wasn’t going to be easy for either of them.

  “Which one?” he asked, moving around her toward the fork in the corridor. “Which one leads to Kavanagh’s office?”

  She looked at him then, saying nothing. For the moment, given the situation, they would accept each other. And after that?

  They would just have to wait and see.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the one on the left. “The place is like a maze, but I think his office and the labs are down this way.”

  “Labs?” Tom asked, a slight chill running up and down his spine.

  “Yes,” she said leading the way again. “Where our Mr. Kavanagh developed his … assets.”

  Tom followed, a growing sense of foreboding coursing through his veins.

  The corridor came to an end at a set of double doors.

  Tom cautiously approached them, craning his neck to look through the twin windows at the semidarkened room beyond.

  The pneumatic doors parted with a hiss and he leapt back, gun at the ready, but it was only a sensor installed in the floor, reacting to his presence.

  He looked at Victoria. She had stopped, a frown on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, a chill wafting out from the room ahead of them.

  “I’m not sure you want to go in there,” she said.

  “Why?” Tom asked, turning back to the room, an intense anticipation building inside him, as if something of great importance was about to be revealed.

  “Let’s just say this is where a lot of your problems began.”