Kaiden Read online

  “Are you okay with this? I can go in alone if you’d rather survey the area outside and hunt for any overlooked evidence.”

  “No, I’m all right to continue. In a way, it doesn’t feel as if those things happened to me,” he assured her. “They’re like memories of something I watched happen to another person.”

  “Your choice. Let me know if that changes.”

  Kaiden didn’t answer. He stood alert and still, his face turned toward their immediate left. “Something’s not right,” he muttered.

  His comment dampened her confidence regarding the peaceful, neglected environment of the jungle planet. A chill raised the fine hairs on Nisrine’s forearms and tickled her spine. “Why do you say that?”

  “We’re not alone. Look.” He scooped up a pebble from the landing pad and hurled it with all of his strength. It sailed a distance then struck an unseen object. A cloaking shield shimmered in the distinct outline of a shuttle.

  “How did you know it was there?” Nisrine blinked at the distortion.

  “I felt it. And whoever it is must be aware of us, too, by now, aye? We’d better go ahead.”

  “Can you disable the cloaking on that thing first?”

  “Certainly.” He crossed over and set his hand against the rippling distortion.

  The invisibility field warped then vanished to reveal a small, unmarked craft. Nisrine’s frown deepened as a dozen possibilities whipped through her mind and culminated into one dark suspicion. “This is bad. I recognize the model, it’s a stealth prototype discarded by Command Intelligence last year.”

  “Looks small,” Kaiden observed. “What’s the personnel capacity?”

  “It seats one comfortably and can fit two if needed. What I would like to know is how our friend’s gotten ahold of it. Only one was ever built before they decided it was too costly to manufacture en masse.”

  “Let’s go ask him.”

  Kaiden took point, leading the way inside the building. Empty offices and silent corridors filled the first floor.

  “According to the report, everything of relevance was in the sub-levels,” Nisrine said.

  “Scientists and doctors packed up overnight and flew off on the evac ships. Told security an experiment escaped. I heard them searching for me.”

  “I read your accounting,” she told him in a low voice. “Our visitor isn’t up here. With any luck, he doesn’t know we’ve arrived.”

  The lower labs looked as though a tornado had blown through them. Overturned desks, smashed console displays, and shattered cybernetic parts littered the floors.

  “Why didn’t United Command remove all of this for processing into the evidence banks?” he whispered. “Why is it still here? Why does this building have power?”

  “After we retrieved you, teams were sent to investigate and bring back any relevant information. Or, so we were told.” Their surroundings told a different story. “It was a classified operation so only a few groups were given access to the surface.”

  “Can we get the names of the team members assigned to the project?” Kaiden asked. “I can’t find any digital record of them without breaking through serious barriers. I need breadcrumbs to follow.”

  “Deep classification would be my guess. I can ask my contact to get me a list.”

  Kaiden became eerily still beside her, his eyes glassy and unfocused. When he came around again, he presented her with startling news. “This entire place is rigged to blow and keyed to detonate once the demolitionist clears a specific range.”

  “How do we know if he’s still within range?”

  “I can hear the detonator signal,” Kaiden replied, “and it’s coming from the room ahead of us.”

  “Can we—”

  Thwack. The sudden shot rang out in the room, the sharp ping of metal striking metal. Beside her, Kaiden grunted, and, in the next second, she was spun in place and strong arms encircled her waist. To protect her, Kaiden had placed his back to their attacker and made himself into a living shield.

  She counted the rounds as he held her. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen shots fired toward them, but she only heard the thunk of contact seven times before the rapid patter of retreating footsteps echoed around the metal walls. As Kaiden released her and stumbled back, she whirled to face him and saw the pain etched into his features.

  Over the years, she’d seen cyborgs take hits to the torso, but rarely as many and remain standing. There was still flesh and blood in his body, living human tissue, nerves, and bones beneath the metal lacing. With his gun drawn, he spun around and scanned the empty corridor, revealing his bloodstained back.

  “Shit,” Nisrine breathed. “We need to get you medical attention.”

  In a too calm voice, Kaiden said, “Worry about me later because, if he returns to his ship and skips out of here, this building is gone. I’ve got the bomb. You get that asshole.”

  Nisrine hesitated at first, then took off at a dash while drawing her phase sword. The slim, retractable blade hummed to life with a press of a button, electric blue crackles running up and down the razor-edged metal.

  The man ahead moved fast and he took every opportunity to try and slow Nisrine down. She leapt over a fallen filing cabinet and sprinted down the hall. Skidding around a corner, she ducked down and rolled behind a powered-down server cabinet while another hail of bullets whizzed through the air.

  She waited, body coiled tight as a spring, then sprang to her feet and warped the space around her hand. The resulting telekinetic surge shot across the space between them and knocked the man back out into the hall. Somehow, he kept on his feet and used the momentum to his advantage, turning and pounding down the debris-strewn hall.

  “No you don’t,” she muttered.

  Nisrine sent a chair hurtling across the floor into her opponent’s path with a telekinetic push. When the idiot tried to jump it, his foot caught on the edge and he crashed facedown to the cheap linoleum. Crossing the distance, she adjusted the setting on her sword from lethal cauterization to stun. Upon touching the tip of the weapon to the groaning man’s side, his body seized, legs kicking in an involuntary spasm before his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Once he was completely incapacitated, she crouched and searched him for the detonator. The small device blinked up at her from his tactical vest.

  “Target is down,” she said into the comm unit on her wrist. “I have the detonator.”

  “Will rendezvous with you in the lobby after I deactivate the explosive.”

  After Kaiden met up with her and secured their captive, they explored the administrative offices for overlooked clues.

  “There’s nothing here.” Nisrine tossed aside a broken picture frame. “Only trash.”

  “Wait. Let me have a look at that.”

  Using his shirt, he wiped aside grit and dust collected over time. A young, dark-haired girl with braces, no older than twelve, smiled up at him.

  “Lockhart?”

  He ignored her in favor of staring at the photograph, his bright green eyes fixed. His pupils dilated and his grip on the photo frame tightened. “Mary Elizabeth Watson. Age eleven, daughter of Portia Watson and Doctor Hubert Watson. Planet of birth, Tallulah.”

  “You got all that from a picture?”

  “Facial recognition. My programming included the current registries, but our sleeping pal over there doesn’t show up. Not surprised. He’s probably a merc born and raised in the Amun System.”

  “I didn’t know you had access to facial recognition software.”

  Kaiden’s neutral expression wavered and hints of a weak smile raised the corners of his lips. “That’s why I asked if you read my file. I’m able to access all tiers of United Command’s intergalactic system including MI5.” He paused a second, then added, “I also have some minor access to Lexar files. They’re pretty generous.”

  “To be honest, I think they purposefully didn’t detail out your every capability in your file.”

  “That’s a surprise to me
. They’ve spent the last year documenting everything.” He smiled sadly and lowered the photo to the desk. “There’s nothing else useful here. They’re expecting this place to blow. I say give it to them, report in, and see what else they’ve got planned. Maybe have a word with Doctor Hubert Watson.”

  “If you have a current address, I think that’s a good next move.”

  “I do. It’s forwarded to the ship. This is something our friends from Investigations should have found. They should have run her photo, but we were told no evidence pertinent to discovering the medical staff’s identities remained.”

  They searched deeper, separating fiction from truth while lifting fingerprints and critical pieces of evidence the government sweep team should have confiscated over two years prior.

  “These computer systems have been accessed almost daily.” Nisrine frowned at the log displayed on the screen. “No one should have been here. None of these files should have been left.”

  “So they’ve continued their work, and there’s a confirmed leak in the chain of command. Why choose today to demolish what has been a risk to them for two years?”

  “They knew an investigation was opened. Blowing the place up was sloppy, which means they were on a short timetable and willing to lose whatever they were doing here.”

  “Sloppy means they’re panicked, which is to our benefit. They’ll make more mistakes,” Kaiden said.

  By the time their captive showed signs of awakening, they’d already completed their sweep of the main level. They dragged him into the lobby for interrogation and found him uncooperative.

  “You think you can scare me? I’m not going to talk. Beat me all you like.”

  “Tch, beatings are barbaric, lad. No, we’re not going to hurt you until you talk. If you don’t tell us the truth, I’m going to set her loose on you,” Kaiden nodded his head toward Nisrine. She stood in silence, arms crossed and face impassive. “I have it on good authority that she’s a fantastic psychic. Once she’s done, I’m going to drop word on a few channels that a…hmm, judging from the looks of your gaudy attire, I’d say you’re a member of the Yellow Jackets. And I also know they don’t take kindly to cowards. I’ll have to put word out on the bands that a mercenary squealed everything he knew to us, along with photos of your face.”

  “Wait, no. You can’t do that. They’ll kill me. They won’t believe it was coerced—”

  “Then you have five seconds to voluntarily tell us everything. We’ll both know if you’re lying.”

  Nisrine took a single step forward, pulling off her gloves.

  “All right!” the man yelled. “I’ll tell you, just keep the witch away from me.” His eyes crawled over Kaiden’s bleeding side and the spots of crimson standing out against his shirt. “What the hell are you, man? I’ve never seen cybernetics let someone take a hit like that.”

  “We’re the ones asking the questions here,” Kaiden growled at him. “I don’t have time to play nice with you, and since you look like a five-quid merc, I’m willing to risk allowing her into your head. What can you tell us about this place?”

  “Look, I don’t know much about the operation they had going on here. Somebody big in the chain hired me to make this building disappear. I was told some specialists were on the way, but I planned to be long gone before you arrived.”

  “Why’d they wait so long to handle this?” Kaiden demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the guy replied.

  “Who hired you?” Nisrine asked.

  “I don’t have names. That’s not how they operate. We receive dead drops at random locations in the physical world and in virtual space. We retrieve our jobs and do as we’re told.”

  “I want the location of your drop points. Where are you supposed to report in after this?”

  The man hesitated, prompting Nisrine to step forward and grab him by his chin. “You can tell me willingly, or I can drag it out of you. I’m sure you know what can happen if I try the latter.”

  Psychic invasions in an unwilling mind could be painful. In a worst-case scenario, they left the victim a vegetable.

  “Houston!” the man cried. “There’s a false rock outside the Houston Vault in the Spellbound game. I get data caches there then leave confirmation in the same place.

  Kaiden scrunched up his face. “You’re using an online video game for dead drops?”

  “No real faces. Anonymity. Everybody plays it, so no one thinks twice about you logging in to grind for levels.”

  “It’s logical,” Kaiden agreed. He seized the man by the hand and turned his wrist up. “I’m going to link to your user interface and claim your data.”

  “Can you do that?” Nisrine looked over in surprise.

  “Easily.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her. There’d been a scam a few years ago about hackers stealing pertinent customer data from online video servers, and in the cases of some people, hijacking entire accounts to suit their purposes.

  After tranquilizing their prisoner, they returned to the ship, sedated the guy, and locked him inside a sleeper pod. His stealth craft became theirs, and once Kaiden disabled the tracking signal, they loaded it into the hangar.

  Nisrine returned them to orbit but delayed setting the autopilot. She stepped inside the lounge instead and found Kaiden perched on the edge of the sofa, an open bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him and an empty glass beside it. His bloodied shirt lay across his lap.

  He’d taken numerous bullets for her, no doubt saving her life in the process. Although none of them had actually penetrated his torso to the organs within, five flattened rounds gleamed against the bare skin of his back, three more on his side. Torn flesh and clotted blood surrounded all eight. “How bad is it?”

  “My skin heals. It’s mostly semi-synthetic grafts, but it heals,” he explained. “Would you mind?” He held up the first aid kit to her, a wan smile on his face. “I’m not flexible enough to patch my own wounds.”

  “Of course.”

  Nisrine moved around behind him and began the messy work of cleaning him up. Her touch remained light as she patched torn skin and pulled out flattened bullets embedded in the cybernetic muscle mimicking the tissue of his upper back.

  She hesitated, reluctant to wrench the final slug free. “Ugh. This one won’t budge.” She wiggled the resistant piece of metal.

  “Just tear it out,” he muttered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I can take it.”

  After a few minutes with pliers, it clattered into the bowl with the rest.

  “You have a good dent here now, but hopefully Doctor Vargas can smooth it out when we return.”

  Once the bandages were in place, Nisrine leaned back to examine her handiwork. She ran her fingers over the bare skin left undamaged by the bullets and frowned. Scar tissue left fine lines between his shoulder blades running lateral to each side of his spine. They weren’t as bad as she remembered, but it still enraged her just the same.

  Monsters.

  “I know,” Kaiden said, although Nisrine hadn’t spoken. “I’m sort of a horror show now.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t need to,” he replied. He pulled on a fresh shirt and tugged it down to conceal his scars, also hiding the damned fine muscles of an upper body sculpted to masculine perfection. Kaiden had a physique any marine would kill to have, the ideal blend of human body and cybernetics. Though she knew at least a half-dozen officers on the waiting list for elective work in Xander’s OR, what mattered most was that Kaiden’s choice had been stolen from him.

  Nisrine didn’t like the bitterness in his voice. Didn’t like the fact that their shipmates had put those ideas in his head, because she’d overheard—and shut down—plenty of shit talk among some of the other officers regarding Kaiden Lockhart over the months since he’d returned to active duty.

  “Did you know I can read emotions? I lost my psychic sense when they meddled with my brain, but they gav
e me something else instead. I can pick up on elevated heart rhythm and read all the subtle nuances of expression. I may not be able to read your thoughts, but I can tell when someone pities me. Save it.”

  The lid to the first aid kit snapped shut and Nisrine rose to her feet. “I have felt many things when it comes to you, Kaiden Lockhart, but I assure you, pity has never been among them.”

  A single step forward brought him into her personal space. Standing her ground, Nisrine refused to move back, even when his chest brushed against her. His breath stirred her hair, and the warmth of his skin sent a pleasant tingle down her spine. At risk of stumbling back and losing her balance, she rested a hand on his hip.

  “Aye, you’re right,” he murmured after a moment. One of his hands ghosted over the middle of her back, barely making contact. “That’s not pity.”

  Definitely not.

  What the hell was wrong with her? She didn’t pity Kaiden—she wanted to rip his pants off to see if the rest of his body was as hard as his torso, to trace all his scars and to kiss each one until she pushed out the bad memories of their judgmental shipmates and only pleasure remained.

  Then she risked looking up into his handsome face. Green eyes smoldered back at her, filled with profound and open desire, the kind of need Nisrine hadn’t seen reflected at her in years, since Lopez’s murder. It hit her like a sucker punch in the gut, stealing the breath from her.

  And this was not the time. The niggling voice of reason snuck through her mind and cooled her wild thoughts. They had a mission to focus on and a prisoner to transport.

  When she retreated, he made no move to stop her. “I should report in.”

  “Aye. Good idea.” Kaiden retreated to the cockpit and slid into the pilot’s chair. Now that they were ready to go, the plan was to detonate the facility below and make their way to Tallulah.

  While he handled his task, she stepped into her makeshift intel center and arranged a meeting with her contact. It took her five minutes to report in and give the status of their detainee.