Deadly Genesis (Boomers Book 2) (16 page)

“That’s because he likes her. He’s always liked her, but she sees him only as a brother or a friend, not a lover. So yes, he can be skeptical. I’m skeptical of it. Have you seen them together? He’s pushy and overbearing and a jackass. They fight. A lot. When you love someone…” She clamped her teeth together.

“You what?” This wasn’t the crux of the argument, but her thoughts unraveled, spinning in a different direction. “When you love someone, you never disagree? You never put their safety above your own? You don’t feel a burning desire to keep them from harm, no matter the cost to yourself?”

“It’s just—he’s hard and he’s cold and he’s so many of the things she isn’t. She’s spontaneous. He isn’t. She’s affectionate and faithful and dedicated…”

“Michael would cut off his own arm to save an innocent. He’d step in front of a bullet to protect us. For her? He’d burn the world down. Their differences are their own, but he loves her more than the mission—more than the rest of his team—and, if push came to shove, he would choose her. Always. That’s why he’s on this mission now, to protect her. Would Josh do the same?”

No.

The kneejerk response tempered his defense, and he blew out a breath. Laying his hands gently on her shoulders, he massaged them gently. “Sweetheart, I do not want your Josh to be a traitor. But we don’t know if that’s even your Josh. If it is Fizz in a disguise, or if Josh and him are somehow working together, we have to assume he’s been compromised for the safety of all. To protect you, to protect Ilsa, to protect us all.”

“This is like a nightmare.” She pulled away and walked across the cold, damp grass. The distinct glow beneath her skin warmed the midnight chill. “I went out dancing and I come back to—I don’t even know what anymore. We haven’t done anything to anyone to justify this. Why take me? Why take Josh? Why compromise us all? We do good things.”

A cry of frustration tore loose from her throat, and she threw a bolt at a nearby rock. It shattered to dust in a blast of heat and energy. He shared her aggravation. He truly did, but he couldn’t react to it as she did. The center had to hold. “Feel better?”

“No.” She blew up three more rocks, and he let her. The rage boiling inside her, born of an inability to find ready answers, needed an outlet. He saw no lack of control. She directed the energy and sent it where it needed to go. When she’d vaporized the fourth rock, she turned to face him. “We need answers, and we need them now. That means you go deep, and you pull it out of me.”

“We will proceed, but slowly. Reconstruction takes time. We have to create new pathways for the information to regather…”

“Fuck that.” She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “We don’t have time. Your team may be compromised and so is mine. I want to help them. You have to help me help them.”

“I will not risk your sanity for a few answers you may not even have.”

“It’s mine to risk.” She glared at him.

He shook his head. “No.”

“Really?” Her chin came up. “So you don’t want to help them?”

Exhaling a slow, patient breath, he refused to let her heated glare get to him. “Patience. What good will you be if you become a vegetable?”

“Well, I won’t be a threat and I can’t compromise the mission, but you were right about one thing. Michael isn’t the only one willing to die to save his friends. They’re in danger. I can’t sit here and do nothing. If the answers are in my brain—my damaged, melting down brain—we need to extract them while we can. If it kills me, it kills me.”

Something snapped inside of him, and he shook his head. He would not lose her. “No.”

She paced up to him and tipped her chin up. “Please. Help me.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking—”

“Yes. I do. I’m asking you to do your job and let me do mine. This thing between us? I like it, too. Maybe too much. But you’re not Michael, and I’m not Rory. Don’t put me ahead of the team. I’m begging you.”
Because I can’t put you ahead of mine. I need you, Simon. I need your help. I trust you. I don’t know when it happened or why or if it’s just another symptom of my mental state degrading, but I trust you with my life and I trust you to do the right thing. You said you sat on the sidelines for years and I heard the guilt in your voice when you told me that. I don’t blame you for those choices. You had to survive and I am profoundly glad that you did. But I need you to get off the bench and take one for the team.

A bitter smile curved his lips. He didn’t know when it happened, either. Her logic was flawless. They needed the information. She had it. He could get to it.

But at what cost?

She pressed a hand to his chest, and he closed his eyes. He understood the primal need that throbbed through Michael and turned Garrett to stone. They would do anything for the women they loved.

Could he do any less?

Cupping her face in his hands, he opened his eyes and leaned down to press a kiss to her lips. She welcomed him with a sigh. She saw capitulation in his gaze and he let her. He buried his feelings, buried them deep. Loyalty and honor before love. The needs of the many outweighed his one need. He could do this. He could save them all.

Okay.

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. Simon stared up at the night, cradling his woman to his chest. He could do this.

Even if it ripped his soul out of his body.

We’ll do it together. We’ll save them.

Six months ago…

Amanda plunged into the ice bath and screamed. She superheated her core and the ice turned to steam. Skin burning from the cold, she slammed into a wall as a blast of cold water shot out from the wall. Pouring energy into her hand, she sent a blast of fire at it. The water ceased, but four more jets turned on and hit her from all sides. As fast she could build the energy, the chilly shower stung. She scrambled for purchase against the slick metal floor and managed to bring up enough power to kill another sprayer but, when the ice poured in from above, she fell to her knees. No way to escape it and the freezing temperatures began to penetrate her core.

It took everything she had to stay warm and the power at her fingertips barely sparked. The torture went on for hours. Her teeth chattered and her lips turned blue. Barely conscious when the water finally turned off, she fought to get to her feet but proved no match against the three men hauling her dripping wet ass through a maze of too white corridors. Hard metal cuffs closed over her hands and seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

Fizz stood there, staring at the devices. Her vision blurred. Green lights lit a solid bar on each of the cuffs. “She’s good to go. Strap her head and bring in the doctor.”

“Why?” The word vibrated through her chattering teeth. Why was he doing this to her? They were friends once.

“Because there is a new order coming and we have to conform or die.” Fizz must have squatted because his face was level with hers. “I’m trying to save all of you. This won’t be so bad, and you’ll still have your life.”

“If not so bad, why kidnap?” She was so cold.

“Because you would never have agreed to it.” He brushed the wet hair away from her face. “None of you would. I know you must hate me, and I’m sorry for that. But this is the right thing. You’ll see. We’ll save so many, and the world will be a better place.”

He kissed her forehead and rose. She wanted him to stay—to explain—but doctors filtered into the room. Her gaze darted from side to side, but they all moved behind her. She could hear them talking. A man in a surgical mask used a marker on her forehead and then they were parting her hair.

“What are you doing?” The flicker of heat she could generate didn’t do much against the frozen state of her body. A drill hummed to life behind her. She clenched her fingers. “What are you doing?”

A chin strap locked her face in place. She couldn’t move. Sparks danced on her finger tips, but the manacles shackling her didn’t budge. The drill came closer, it echoed in her ears. The whine of it against bone terrified her.

She screamed.

Now…

Simon caught her hands as she flailed. He suppressed her nervous system, killing her automatic defenses and shunting her abilities sideways. Copper filled his mouth, but he ignored the drip of blood from his nose. The deep scan took him further into her mind than he’d traveled before. It was all potholes and empty places as he rooted through her memories, assembling them like a teetering house of cards. If only her mind could time stamp the images—the required assembly wouldn’t take so much time or bear so much risk.

The brain rejected what didn’t belong. Few realized how precarious memory was. False memories were easy to construct. Repeat the same story enough times and a person will believe it. The mind would just store the data as any other real memory. Witness statements troubled police for the same reasons. Conversely, if a person rejected a reality—if it was too horrible to cope with—the mind erased the memory, blacking it out and creating a type of amnesia. It was as though the brain possessed the capability of controlling a person’s reality.

Amanda’s mind refused this memory. It hated the sense of helplessness, the pain, and the fear ratcheting through her. It bucked against his control, but he continued to parse the pieces of the puzzle together. The torture in the med room seemingly went on for hours, but the reality of it was far shorter. The darkness he associated with an unconscious state included floating bits of conversation.

Fizz stating it was done. A doctor giving statistics then a debate on when to activate the chip. He braced himself for what must come next. When the Boomers underwent the implantation procedure, they were the only five to survive it. But survival came at a cost. He saw the images, lived in them and, beneath it all, was the awareness of the frown on Amanda’s face. She struggled—living through the nightmare—again.

Six months ago…

Her head hurt. Cotton coated her mouth. Even her muscles ached, protesting as she forced herself upright and stared around the plain white room. She lay on a cot and wore only a tank top and underwear. Cold slicked her skin like frost on a wintry morning. Rubbing her arms, she slid off the bed and walked a circle around the room. Her mind struggled to reconcile where she was with the last thing she could remember. She touched a hand to her scalp and found the stitches through her hair. The rough bump was swollen and tender to the touch.

No mirror let her get a look at the damage. Her gaze slid over the walls. She couldn’t see a camera—hell, she couldn’t even make out a door.
So cold…
She stomped her feet, trying to get the feeling back into them. She paced back to the bed and grabbed the sheet off of it. Wrapping it around her body, she concentrated. Energy equaled power. Power equaled heat. She had to build energy to get warm. The spark inside her flickered, uncertain against the cold holding it at bay.

Her legs trembled from the effort, her muscles protesting. Sinking down to sit, she huddled into the sheet and tried again. A kindle of light filled her belly, the weak heat almost enough to make her weep. She concentrated—one reaction could breed another. Power surged through her arms and heat crackled under the surface, burning away the cold. She dropped the sheet and took aim at the wall. She didn’t need a door because she would blast her own exit.

Stop.
The mechanical voice echoed around her, and she jumped. Turning in a slow circle, she saw no evidence of anyone. She was alone. Hands up, she gathered the power between them.

Stop.
The repeated command didn’t startle her so much as piss her off.

“You want me to stop? Show your fucking self,” she shouted at the walls and took aim. The power tingled through her, cascading toward critical and then stopped. No blast erupted from her fingertips. The wall remained untouched. Turning her palm over, she stared at her hand. Nothing.

But the power she wanted still burned inside her, heating her from the inside out. She flung her arm out.

Nothing.

A door slid open and a doctor walked inside. “Good morning, Miss…” He consulted the chart as if unfamiliar with her completely. “Kincaid. How are you feeling this morning?”

“Pissed off.” She walked straight toward him. Maybe she couldn’t blast her way out, but she sure as hell could take down one doctor. Two men in black uniforms closed rank behind him and she faltered.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Headache? Fatigue? Nausea?” He stared at her patiently.

She held up three fingers, ticking off the words by curling down her ring and index fingers and leaving her middle one pointed at him. “Kiss. My. Ass.”

“Your lack of cooperation will not help you.” His bland patience drove her up a wall. She concentrated. Maybe she just needed to fully heat her core to blast her way free of this insanity.

“Where the hell is Fizz?”

Cooperate. Sit down.
She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed.
What the fuck?
The doctor nodded and walked into the room. She stood up.

Sit.

She sat down.

Her heart squeezed. “What did you do?”

“We’ve made some improvements to your disposition. Please remain still.” He set the clipboard and pen down on the bed and tilted her head down. She wanted to lift it, but every time she attempted to do it, she remained exactly where he’d put her. He parted her hair and probed the area around her stitches. It hurt, but she remained still. Somewhere deep in her mind, she screamed and pummeled at the walls, but it didn’t work.

She obeyed.

Her fingers twitched out, and she snatched the pen between two of them. Rolling the metal against her palm, she lifted her chin when he tapped it. The doctor used a small cylindrical flash light and tested her eyes. He worked his hands along her jaw and then against her neck.

“Okay. We’re done for now.” He reached for the clipboard, but she stabbed him in the neck and shoved him at the two guards rushing forward. She didn’t slow down and ran for the door. Freed from whatever held her limbs locked in place, she raced for freedom. The empty hallway as bland and nondescript as her room, she skidded around a corner and looked for a door—any door. Something that could get her out of the hall, and then she could blast her way free.