Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) (31 page)

FORTY-SIX

Evangeline still remembered the day she received a notice during her off-world tour of duty. An old friend from her training class had written to inform her of the death of Kevin “Big Brother” Turner. B.B. had been Evangeline’s TRTV trainer, but their relationship went deeper than that. He had become her surrogate family, and after all her years of loneliness and rejection, his was a friendship she cherished above all others.

Seeing his face, and hearing his voice again, flooded her mind with memories. Remembering the day she received the news, a tear trailed down her cheek. Evangeline wiped it away as she continued to stare at him with a wide-eyed, disbelieving gaze. With no forethought, she swung her arms out and wrapped them around his neck.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” she whispered. She buried her face in his shoulder and shed another quiet tear of shock. B.B. embraced her in return, rubbing her back the way a parent soothes a distraught child.

She held onto him for a few moments before remembering where she was, and pulled away as fast as she embraced him. She brushed another tear from her eyes and gazed around the vehicle to see the faces of the men witnessing their exchange. Some had averted their eyes, while others continued to stare back with hard glares of suspicion. Evangeline’s tenderness turned off like a switch when she remembered she had been stunned, abducted, and sedated by the men in alliance with her former trainer.

The fury welled up inside her heart faster than she could control it, and Kevin was not able to raise his arms fast enough to block the first few punches. She hurled a volley that connected with his nose, producing a sickening crunch.

He howled in pain as she pounded her fists against his forearms raised in front of his face as a shield. The others leapt toward the scuffle and restrained her before she had been able to continue her attack. They had managed to grab her arms and pushed her back into a chair two seats away from Kevin.

“You want to explain to me how you’re not dead and how you’re part of my kidnapping?” she screeched, still kicking in his direction.

With a grimace and a moan, Kevin pressed his fingertips against his nose and popped the dislodged cartilage back in place.

“I taught you how to punch better than that,” he laughed, massaging the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t even draw blood.”

Evangeline had to gulp down several heaving breaths to get herself under control. The muscles in her arms relaxed and the men around her eased their restraint against her.

“Yeah?” she replied. “Well, I didn’t think the dead could bleed!”

She and Kevin engaged in a staring contest for what felt like an hour. Evangeline focused on Kevin like a snake ready to strike. Kevin smiled back at her, as if a child throwing a tantrum on the floor amused him. She never had been successful at staying mad at him for very long. His enduring patience was infuriating but unbreakable. Her fury melted away as she surrendered, a smile creeping onto her face.

She sat back in her seat and folded her arms in a pathetic act of defiance. Kevin scooted closer to her seat as her posture relaxed.

“I’m sorry about what you’ve been through tonight,” he began. “We had to make Olympus believe you were being taken against your will for your protection. This contingency plan has been in place for many years.”

“I
was
taken against my will,” Evangeline shouted. “I was just looking for answers to how my trainee ended up in a quarantine unit. Know anything about that?”

Kevin stole a glance toward one of the men in the far corner of the transport, watching the exchange with venomous eyes. Evangeline noted the open hostility between the two of them, knowing how even soldiers in the same unit could rub each other the wrong way. Kevin turned his eyes back to Evangeline. “It has something to do with what your parents were working on when they disappeared,” he said with a sigh.

The mention of her parents made Evangeline’s mind recoil, like anticipating a slap across the face. Surrounded by strangers, discussing the tender topic of her parents made her feel more vulnerable. If it had just been she and Kevin jostling around in the back of the transport, she would have been an open book. Unwilling to open herself up in front of strangers, Evangeline buried the anguished memories as best she could. Instead, she let her mind flood with her history with the man sitting next to her.

Evangeline had always felt safe with Kevin. He had been the only TRTV trainer that would take a trainee like her under his wing, what with all her well-publicized past and emotional baggage. Her guilt by association almost kept her out of the program completely, even though her aptitude tests and the results of the neural scan marked her as a shoe-in candidate. Once she was admitted into the program, however, none of the other trainers would associate themselves with the daughter of alleged terrorists.

None except Kevin Turner, that is. At first, he did it out pure pity. She was a young woman, marred by the scandalous reputation of her parents, but had achieved first ranking scores on all the induction tests. He could have claimed there were not enough instructors, passing her over for training by making her wait another year. She won him over with her tenacity and fighting spirit. He consented to be her trainer, and, she had no idea how glad he was that he had made that decision.

“Who are
they
?” Evangeline asked in a frustrated tone. She was shooting dark glares at all the other men in the back of the vehicle; she looked like a caged animal on display that wanted nothing more than to decapitate her spectators. “What’s going on here, B.B.? I want to know, and I want to know now.” She leaned forward, her eyes focusing on him like lasers. Kevin sat back in his seat, draped one arm across his stomach, and played with his lip with his other hand. His eyes bored into hers as he pondered about how answer her question.

Garrett interrupted his thought process.

“B.B,” he growled, “it’s not your place to explain anything about our mission.”

Kevin lifted his eyes from Evangeline and looked past her shoulder, letting the full force of his authority burn as he stared at Garrett. Garrett’s confidence dissipated like smoke as Kevin stared him down with an almost imperceptible gesture. Garrett tried rallying back to regain control, but he had already succumbed to Kevin’s strength of will.

Garrett dropped his eyes to the floor and cleared his throat. “Let’s just wait until we get back and let
them
determine what she will or will not be told, okay?”

“As I recall, Garrett,” Kevin sneered in disdain, “it was
your
actions that started the domino effect which has brought us to this point.”

Garrett opened his mouth to protest, but Kevin cut him off with a sweep of his hand. He rose from his seat - Evangeline had forgotten how tall B.B. was - and placed a hand against the transport wall on either side of Garret’s head, shoving his swollen nose within an inch of Garrett’s astonished face.

“That surprises you, does it? Yes, I know what you did to that pilot. Felicia contacted me while you were in transit to my station and filled me in. What were you thinking?” Evangeline watched this heated exchange in wonder. She had not recognized Garrett as the man who offered a drink of his flask to Daryl.

Garrett matched Kevin’s disdainful glare. He contorted his face, gritting his teeth and sneering into Kevin’s eyes. Kevin had been right, though; Garrett had only been thinking about his own private agenda when he poisoned that pilot in the LTZ.

Evangeline watched transfixed as the two men stared each other down, bristling and snarling like wolves. She was even more confused now than before they had pulled her into the transport. She stood and put her hands on Kevin’s shoulders, compelling him to put some space between himself and Garrett. Garrett’s posture drooped and he hid a sigh of relief as she pulled Kevin around to face her.

“B.B.?” she pleaded, “please, tell me what’s going on. Why I am here? What do you want from me?”

Kevin took a deep breath and smiled. He loved Evangeline like a sister. He put his hands on her arms and guided her to sit back down in her seat, again taking the seat next to her for himself. He looked at her with piercing eyes, willing her to understand the gravity of what he was about to say.

“We don’t want anything from you, Evangeline, but we are trying to protect you. From exactly what, I can’t get into right now. There’s just too much to explain. As far as what’s going on…” he paused, taking a moment to look around the transport at each person there with him. “You’ve stumbled right into the middle of a secret war. And that fact alone has put you and your husband in grave danger, along with the rest of us.”

Evangeline wanted to laugh. A secret war? How could there be any kind of war going on and she not know about it? She thought Kevin sounded like a conspiracy-theory nut job, but the lack of humor in his eyes and all the somber faces that surrounded her in the transport stopped her from laughing in his face. The speed of the vehicle dropped as the transport slowed around a curve and came to a stop. Someone banged against the side of the vehicle and the rear doors flew open. The men inside all stood up and collected their packs and other equipment. She knew that look on their faces. The ease written in their expressions told her they had arrived at a place of safety.

Garrett followed behind the four other men as they shuffled past their seats and exited the transport. Each one had slung a small backpack onto his shoulders hefted several crates labeled as medical supplies that had been stored in a compartment at the back of the vehicle.

Garrett shot Kevin a contemptuous glare, but Kevin ignored him until he had stepped out of the vehicle. Kevin and Evangeline were alone in the transport. He stood up and retrieved a backpack similar to the others from under a seat across the aisle. Evangeline sat still like a statue in her seat. He knew that she was inside herself, weighing her options. He walked up to her to invite her to follow him out when she suddenly jumped up, blocking his path. His footing faltered at her unexpected swiftness. Her eyes were wild with panic as she grabbed fistfuls of his coat.

“Please,” she begged, “I have to contact Jack immediately. Will you help me?”

FORTY-SEVEN

Jack had not been close to a refuse transport since he had been a little boy. People in the LTZ would see those transports shuttling discarded materials and products from Olympus out to the recycling complexes on a regular basis. He remembered how some drivers would stop along their routes, feign a mechanical problem, and open up the container doors for impromptu bartering sessions near the markets.

People would search through the discarded items for things they could fix or reuse. As far as he had known, that was just a part of life in the LTZ, and until his acceptance to the academy in Olympus, he never considered life could be any other way.

His parents were skilled at taking old and broken things and transforming them into something of use. Restoring furniture was their specialty. Jack, himself, developed his talents as a programmer by restoring old and unwanted toys and games.

Jack’s mind jerked back to the present when the transport hit a large dip in the road. He knew that the man driving was not a professional refuse transport operator. Jack recognized the occipital implant on the back of the man’s head, which, according to Evangeline, was the implant they offered those who were cut from the TRTV program.

Jack wondered if the driver had served as one of thousands of remote sentry operators. According to Evangeline, the device at the back of his head would have been installed during a simplified version of the procedure. It allowed an operator direct access to the visual systems of a robotic sentry, but it required them to control its other functions through hand controls.

Jack always imagined those operators sitting in a control room deep within the center of a base or carrier, as they remote-operated defensive weaponry on the perimeter. There were more sentry operators than there were TRTV pilots, but the bulk of the military was still comprised of non-enhanced soldiers.

As if compelled by marionette strings, Jack brushed his fingers through his hair and felt the small ports at the back of his skull. The procedure that the driver had undergone was similar to the one that Jack himself had experienced to become more efficient when working on his AI programs.

He glanced over at the woman on the other side of the back seat. She had slouched down with her knees braced against the back of the driver’s seat, creating a makeshift table with her legs. Her fingers flew across a tablet propped against her lap, her brow furrowed with intense concentration. She wore an unfamiliar type of uniform, but it was the only thing about her Jack did not find intimidating.

She had introduced herself as Felicia Romano, and she claimed she was part of a resistance movement that had been growing for the past twenty years. She would not give him any more details until they reached what she referred to as a safe place. Jack was not sure what that meant. Felicia’s pledges that Evangeline was safe were the only words that had fully registered in his mind since the Angel had attacked him in his living room.

After Felicia had stopped the agent from killing him, it still took Jack a while to believe she was not also a threat to him or Evangeline. Before Jack would agree to leave with her, he had insisted that he needed to go into his virtual workshop to close down a project he had been working on before the Angel attacked him. She consented, giving him five minutes while she stood guard and arranged for transportation.

Jack had gone into his study and put the interface back on his head to reenter his workshop. Gideon was there; the whole time he had been scanning through security feeds in his search for Evangeline.

“Are you alright, Jack?” he asked. “I calculated a 98% chance that you were going to die tonight.” Jack smiled at his creation. Gideon was amazing, even by Jack’s own lofty standards.

“Yes, Gideon, I’m fine,” Jack lied. He knew Gideon must have monitored the altercation he had just survived, but he did not want to get into the details. “Thanks for your concern. Any luck in tracking down Evangeline?” he asked as he looked from one display to another.

Gideon gestured and one of the displays enlarged. “I was able to eliminate all but one vehicle exiting the area around the time of her abduction as a possible mode of transport. This vehicle,” he said, highlighting a large transport, “left the LTZ. It has not reappeared anywhere that I am able to observe. I can only surmise that it has gone outside the LTZ where there are no security devices or power sources that can be monitored.”

Jack let out a deep sigh of despair. His wife was out there somewhere, and he felt helpless. He began to shut down consoles and displays, and then he walked over to the far workbench. He activated a virtual duplicate of his communicator and set it down. He opened a drawer, pulled out another glowing cube, and placed it on the bench next to his communicator.

“Gideon,” he said, placing the cube on the communicator and watching it become absorbed. “I want you to monitor my location. I’m installing a tracking beacon in my communicator that should enable you to find me wherever I am.” He paused. “Even outside the LTZ. If something happens to me, your instructions are to do everything within your abilities to protect Evangeline. Do you understand?”

He stared into Gideon’s eyes, hoping that his creation understood the gravity of his wishes beyond programming and clever software. Gideon gave Jack a reassuring, but lopsided, smile. “I will do my best, Jack.”

Jack stood there for what seemed like forever when he heard a disembodied voice echoing down the hall. “Mr. Evans!” It was Felicia. “We need to leave. Now!”

Jack took a deep breath, deactivated his interface once again, and returned to the real world. Felicia stood at the door of his study with an anxious expression on her face. He stood from his chair, folded his interface, and stuffed it again into his pocket. Felicia spun on her heel and marched out the front door. Jack had to jog to keep up.

Felicia was looking back at Jack out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to face Jack and fixed her eyes on his. Jack had not realized he had been staring at her while he became lost in his memory.

“What do you want?” she barked.

Jack shook the images of his near-death experience from his mind’s eye. “Sorry,” he stumbled. “I just wanted to thank you again for saving my life. I don’t understand why you did, but I just want you to know I appreciate it. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

Felicia’s eyes softened a little at his gratitude. “You’re welcome, again,” she responded with a slight nod of her head. “I can’t explain why right now. All I can tell you is that it’s not intended for people to become aware of certain things yet. Your wife was exposed to something not meant for the public and it became vital to find out what she knows.” She stared at Jack for a moment then continued. “And we also had to find out what you know.” Her gaze probed his face. He felt unnerved by how she seemed to be able to see down to his soul. It was as if he would be unable to keep anything secret from her even if he tried.

Felicia’s riddle of an answer did not satisfy Jack’s curiosity. “What I may know about what?” he asked, frustrated. 

Felicia set aside her tablet, sat up straight, and turned her body to face Jack. “I can’t discuss it until we reach our destination.” She held up her hands in defense as Jack began to protest. “That’s all I can say, Mr. Evans. If that isn’t enough for now, then I can just sedate you for the remainder of our trip.”

Jack sighed in deep frustration. “I don’t understand why that Angel attacked me. It makes no sense. It was like one moment she was just another Angel, then suddenly she turned into a homicidal maniac? What’s going on?”

Felicia tilted her head, as if looking at Jack sideways would help her decide what she could and could not tell him at that time. She did not think he was ready for the truth yet, but it seemed inevitable that he would hear it soon enough. He had seen too much to to be left in the dark for much longer. She knew her superiors would give him an opportunity to join the cause after they told him the secret. If he joined, then the resistance will have gained a valuable and skilled asset. If he did not join - well, Felicia thought that unlikely, but she chose not to think about what would happen to Jack if he refused the resistance after all he had seen.

“You’ll know the truth soon enough, Mr. Evans,” she said with an unintended air of doom. She returned to her slouched position and picked up the tablet. She resumed her furious typing for a moment before she paused, her hands hovering over the screen. She turned toward him with a look of pity on her face.

“Suffice it to say, the world you thought you knew no longer exists.”