Mikal (Second Wave Book 3) (6 page)

Alpha Two would have worried if she hadn’t begun to feel so peaceful and calm the moment they landed. A moment later she knew why when she saw the golden aura of energy surrounding the woman in the doorway of the ship.

“What are you?” Two asked.

Lara chuckled and came inside the ship, sitting down beside Alpha Two.

“I’m Lara. I am what’s called a prime. We’re kind of old, and we don’t come from here either. But we’re considered the ‘good guys’ so you don’t have anything to worry about. We just want to help you get your sisters,” Lara said gently.

“Why?” Two asked, curious and still suspicious about why these people would want to help them.

Lara smiled and stood.

“Because you’re Mikal’s people, and we love him. Finding you and the others will make him happy, so that is what we’ll do. And to be completely honest with you, we think one of our people, their uncle,” Lara said gesturing outside the ship. “is being held in a lab like the one you were in. We’re hoping that by freeing your sisters, it will help us find him.”

Alpha Two nodded, appreciating the honesty and compassion she could feel in Lara’s energy.

“You will let us be free? You won’t try to use us?” Two asked.

Lara and Mikal both shook their heads and Mikal held her hand gently in his own.

“No, we won’t. When you see what we do, the people we help, if you decide to stay and help, you can. If you choose to leave, you can. You may not have been free born, but you’re free now, and we want you to stay that way,” Mikal said, hoping she could feel the truth in his words.

Alpha Two knew that in order to get her sisters, she didn’t have a choice but to believe them. Even though she could feel their honesty, she was so overloaded mentally and emotionally she wasn’t sure if she could trust her own energy.

Two nodded and stood.

“OK, let’s get started,” she said.

Lara chuckled and help up her hand to stop Two and Mikal from leaving the ship.

“Not so fast! We have one problem . . . I refuse to call a free woman by something like ‘Alpha Two’, so what would you like to be called?” Lara asked gently.

Alpha Two looked at her in surprise.

“I never told you my name,” she said.

“I told them when I called them to help us. Do you have a name you want to be called?” Mikal asked, hoping they hadn’t pushed her too far.

Alpha Two immediately thought of the last words she’d heard from her sisters before she had left.

“You’re our last chance,” Alpha Six had said.

“Please don’t forget us,” Alpha Nine, the youngest had said.

“Don’t blow this chance!” Alpha Four had said gruffly, her affection and worry for Two coming though her words.

Alpha Seven had cried and begged her to free them so they would have a chance at a real life. A chance to be happy and free of the cages they were forced into.

That’s what she was . . . a chance. A chance for her sisters to truly live—to be more than killers for human monsters with no soul.

“Can I be called Chance?” she asked tentatively, wondering if a word like that could be a name.

Lara grinned broadly and squeezed her shoulder.

“I think it’s a great name. It’s wonderful to meet you, Chance. Now let’s go see how to get your sisters out of there,” Lara said before hopping out of the open door and disappearing outside.

Mikal smiled down at her.

“I agree. I think it’s a beautiful name for you,” he said then gently tugged on her hand until she followed him outside the ship and into the large, revamped hangar.

Chance looked around in wonder at the huge building and all the stuff inside.

“What is this?” she asked as her head swiveled left and right to take it all in.

Mikal chuckled and led her to the conference room where he knew his siblings were waiting for them.

“This is an abandoned human airport. A small one of course. At least on the outside. My father had this place redone for us. It serves as an emergency supply center for any of our local bases or passing aircraft, but it was specifically made as a base for us. There’s a lot of us, so the extra space is always a bonus,” Mikal explained.

Chance nodded absently as she looked around at all the crates, alien aircraft, human SUVs, and motorcycles.

“How big is this place?” she asked.

Mikal led her into the room and everyone got quiet the moment they walked in, causing Chance to stop and Mikal to have to avoid bumping into her.

Dree waved her hand wildly from a chair not far from the door.
“Over here! I saved you a seat!” she said with a brilliant smile.

Chance couldn’t help but smile; Dree was so happy and excited, Chance would have felt mean to do otherwise.

Chris spoke up.

“Hey! Let’s all get seated so we can get started! Chance, we’re going to need you to tell us where the lab is so we can get satellite on it,” Chris said.

When Alpha Two didn’t respond, Mikal gently nudged her and spoke in her mind.

“He’s talking to you, Chance. We need to know where the lab is so we can get details on it,” he said encouragingly.

Alpha Two shook herself and realized that they’d called her by the name she’d chosen.

“I’m sorry . . .” she said, feeling a little embarrassed.

Dree laughed and slapped her knee.

“Girl, don’t worry about it. Around here, you’re bound to be called all kinds of things; you’ll learn to answer to just about anything,” she teased.

“Don’t be a bitch, Dree,” her brother Mir, short for Mirage, said.

“See! I told you,” Dree said as she created a soft ball in her hand and threw it across the table at her brother.

When Mir and Dree began throwing illusions at each other, Chris whistled loudly to get everyone’s attention.

“This is not devolving into chaos. Focus. We need to get those girls out before they do something to them or move them,” Chris said. “Is this a daycare or a special operations base?”

Chance cleared her throat.

“I don’t know where the base is. I just how to get there,” she admitted.

“That’s alright, darling! We got just the man to tell us,” Reign said helpfully as he and Jason left the conference room and came back a minute later carrying the doctor in, still bound to the chair.

“Can I do it? Can I? Please?” Dree begged while everyone groaned.

Chris looked around the room. When no one objected, he nodded his head at Dree.

Confused, Chance watched as Dree walked over to the doctor and slowly began to peel the duct tape off his mouth. When she got to where it was caught in his hair, she didn’t speed up and ignored the doctor’s screaming as she slowly ripped out the hair at the back of his head.

“Damn, what a whiny bitch! I pulled Dree’s hair worse than that when we were kids,” Trick said, enjoying the doctor’s discomfort.

At Chance’s horrified look, Mikal spoke to her mind.

“He’s only teasing. He would die before he ever harmed his sister,” he said reassuringly.

Dree got the first wrap of tape off and turned to Chance with a grin.

“Want to give it a shot? It’s rather cathartic,” she said.

Chance saw the doctor’s eyes flare in fear, and she shook her head. They needed answers, and she didn’t think they’d get too far if they terrified him too much.

Dree ripped it off the rest of the way, and when the doctor refused to stop sobbing, she slapped the hell out of him again.

“Knock it the hell off! Damn, it’s bad when I’m a female half your damn size, and I don’t cry like that. Find your balls, man, and suck it up like you made those girls do,” Dree said with disgust.

“Where is the lab?” Chris demanded when the doctor calmed enough to be heard.

Dr. Mussberger shook his head vehemently.

“They’ll kill me!” he exclaimed.

“I’ll kill you first!” Dante mocked as he drew a throwing knife and began cleaning his fingernails with the tip.

Everyone laughed for a second until Chris decided to take control again. He walked over to the doctor and leaned down so that he could look at the man eye to eye.

“By now, you’ve guessed that you aren’t among any of your own kind anymore. You will never be found. If they do find you, it’ll be your mutilated body and nothing else. Now, we can use our unique abilities to draw out an agonizing death for you,” Chris said as he drew on his Dranovian energy.

Chris clenched his fist tightly and the doctor screamed in pain at what felt like someone twisting his stomach into a knot.

“Oh dude, save some fun for us!” Alex said as he snapped his fingers and two large serpent-like whips of energy formed in his hands.

With an expert flick of his wrist, Alex sent both energy whips out and grinned when they hit the doctor’s knees, his pant legs smoking from the contact. There was no blood—the heat from the energy cauterized the wounds.

Dr. Mussberger screamed in agony, barely able to catch his breath from the fear and pain rolling through him. He looked at the creatures with wide eyes. He’d only seen their kind in videos, prior to using their DNA to create the Destiny hybrids.

One part of the Destiny hybrids were created from the DNA found beneath the ice. It was the other part that had been taken being held by other military divisions. They were the ones standing around him now.

“Oh brother, you aren’t allowed to have all the fun,” Dane said as he twirled his pointer fingers in the air and two circular discs of lightning began spinning rapidly around them.

Dr. Mussberger jerked so hard in the chair that he toppled it as he screamed over and over again.

Lara laughed and stood up.

“OK guys . . . terrify the hostage. Check. Let’s see if we can get somewhere with him now,” she said then blasted the doctor with a bolt of energy, instantly silencing him.

Chris picked up and the chair and wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“Damn it, guys! You made him piss
and
shit himself! I ain’t hosing him off. You guys can handle that later,” Chris said in irritation.

Dane and Alex high fived each other.

“It was worth it,” Dane said with a grin as Alex nodded in agreement.

“Enough!” Lara said, turning to them with a grin.

From what Mikal had told them, Lara thought it was nothing less than what the man deserved for what he’d done to those girls. She didn’t feel too bad about giving him a taste of his own medicine, but time was running out, and they needed information.

“Man, that’s pathetic,” Dree said as she threw up a shimmering barrier between the doctor and them, reducing the quickly spreading smell.

Lara knelt in front of the doctor, ignoring the blade shaking violently in his thigh as he trembled in silent fear and pain.

“You have a choice here. You need to think about this very carefully. You see, you can still save your life,” she said, watching his eyes get big as his hope flared in his energy.

When Lara knew she had his attention, she continued.

“You have to work for us,” she said, stunning everyone in the room.

Chapter Six

The entire room was silent for a long moment, the only sound the heavy breathing of the doctor and his sniffling. But that changed as everyone erupted in angry protests at Lara’s declaration.

“Get him out of here and cleaned up! Everyone else stay where you are!” Chris yelled out before the siblings could make the situation worse.

They’d just gotten the doctor to a point where they knew he would cooperate, and Lara’s bombshell statement was threatening to ruin that. Chris glared at his siblings until Jason and Reign lifted the doctor up, chair and all and headed towards the door.

Everyone remained quiet while they took the doctor out, but once the door shut again they began shouting their disapproval of Lara’s plan.

“Hush!” Lara said, sending out a wave of energy to calm everyone down.

When the room was quiet, Lara explained her reasoning.

“This isn’t about what you want or what you think is the right thing to do. It’s about Mikal, Chance, and her sisters. That jerk may be the only person who can tell them anything about themselves. Where they come from, who they are . . . besides being able to help us get her sisters out and find other labs,” Lara explained.

“OK, I didn’t think about that,” Cade relented.

Most of the others quickly agreed.

“Are we sure that’s what they want?” Sigmund asked, affectionately called Siggy by his siblings.

Everyone looked at Chance and Mikal.

“I want him alive,” Mikal said without hesitation as he gently squeezed Chance’s hand.

Chance slowly shook her head as well.

“I would also like to know what we are. Where we came from. Where we belong. They wouldn’t tell us anything,” Chance admitted. 

“The belonging is easy! You and your family belong here with ours!” Dree said with a big grin on her face.

Everyone nodded their agreement, and Mikal looked down at her with a gentle smile. He was proud of his family and friends and their easy acceptance of Chance. He could easily feel her confusion and inability to deal with the emotions that they were bringing out in her.

Mikal looked up.

“Thank you for being so understanding. I know this won’t be easy for any of us. He’ll have to be guarded every second,” he said.

“That’s OK; every time he screws up we’ll let Dree slap him,” Dusty said with a grin as everyone chuckled.

Chris clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention.

“Alright! New plan is to convince him it’s in his best interest to change sides. He seemed to respond well to the prospect of remaining alive, so we’ll give him an incentive to do so . . .” Chris began when his brothers brought the doctor back inside.

The soaking wet, bright red doctor saw everyone in the room and began screaming again.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Anything! I’ll work for you! Please! Please . . . just stop,” Dr. Mussberger said as he dropped his head to his chest and began sobbing.

Everyone turned to Jason and Reign with accusatory looks.

Reign held up his hands.

“What? We just hosed him down,” he said.

Jason chuckled and nodded his head.

Everyone turned as an alarm began to sound around the hangar, and Siggy looked at his comm.

“Amun is arriving now,” he said.

“Awesome,” Chris muttered quietly when the doctor started sobbing harder.

“Oh shit!” Cade muttered at the same time everyone felt who else had come.

The siblings all looked around at each other with the dawning realization they were all in deep shit. At that second, the room doors were thrown open and Grai T’Alq stormed inside followed by Amun and Traze.

“Who the hell thought it was a good idea to do something so dangerous without telling me about it?” Grai thundered as Amun ran across the room to the wounded doctor.

Everyone looked at the floor, avoiding their angry father’s eyes. Except Chance. She looked around at the downcast faces of those who’d tried to help, who’d offered her friendship and safety, and she was pissed. Not knowing that Grai was their father, she stepped forward to face the large, imposing man.

“They were trying to help,” she said, trying to keep her nerve as Grai’s dark eyes swiveled to her.

Grai took two steps closer to the woman who looked strikingly like his son with the exception of their skin color.

“I’m their father, and I’ll still put them over my damn knee and spank their asses if they do something like that again without telling me,” Grai said, allowing her to feel his love and fear for his children, as well as his concern for her.

Grai was very familiar with Mikal’s energy gift and knew if he allowed her the same level of access to his energy and emotions then she would be able to tell his intentions and know that he was a friend. He was right.

Chance smiled. She’d seen TV shows and movies about families with loving, doting parents, but she’d also seen so many terrible stories about children who were horribly harmed by their parents too. She’d never felt sure if loving families were real or not and was surprised to know that the adoptive father of all these unusual beings was the patriarch of one such family.

Grai folded his arms over his chest and looked at Chris and Lara.

“So what exactly is the plan here?” he asked.

Chris cleared his throat and met his father’s gaze.

“The doctor has agreed that in exchange for his life, he will work for us. He’ll tell us where the lab is and tell Mikal and Chance everything they ever wanted to know about themselves. When we find the labs, we plan on rescuing the other captives,” Chris admitted.

Grai looked at the doctor with barely-restrained fury.

“He knows where the labs are?” he asked with gritted teeth, wondering if the man knew where Koda was being held.

Grai didn’t realize that he’d taken an angry step towards the doctor until he felt Chris’s hand on his chest.

“Dad . . . don’t. He only knows where the one lab is that Chance came from, but he’s communicated with other labs. When we get in there, Siggy and Nick are going to go through their computers and find out who they’ve been talking to and where they are,” Chris said, hoping his dad wouldn’t kill the doctor before they could get answers.

Dr. Mussberger looked up, saw the fury on Grai’s face, and immediately began speaking.

“The lab is at the base of Maplewood Mountain, northwest of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The physical entrance is on the northeast corner. There are 22 security personnel on site at all times that work in 12-hour shifts. I swear I don’t know where the other labs are . . .” he said, his words coming out so fast he was a little hard to understand.

Grai held up a hand.

“Shut the fuck up if you want to remain alive,” he said before he turned to Chris and Lara.

“Get your answers from him. When he begins to speak of the origins of Mikal and his people, I want Dr. Amun Nassur, Dr. Lauren Campbell from Fiorn’s Folly, and Dr. Sergei Rostovic watching it live so they can ask questions. Someone other than him,” Grai said pointing to the doctor. “Needs to know about them and how they tick.”

Chris nodded his head, understanding why his dad would want Dr. Sergei Rostovic to be involved. Grai had initially befriended the doctor decades ago and grew to trust him enough to allow him to be the exclusive doctor of his children.

The doctor had been taking care of all of the Dranovian children for about 30 years and would be ecstatic to learn more of Mikal so that he could treat him better if he was ever seriously injured.

Grai looked around at his children and gave them a stern stare.

“You will all keep me updated in 30 minute intervals. No exceptions, no excuses. If I have to come back here,” Grai paused and looked directly at his manipulative daughter, Angel.

“Or anywhere else because you didn’t keep me updated, there will be hell to pay, and every single one of you,” he paused again and looked pointedly at Lara. “Will spend some quality time helping dig out tunnels at Base Beta.”

Grai looked around the room, and when all of his children—including Lara and the Tezarians—nodded and looked away from him, he turned to Chance.

“Welcome to the Earth Alliance. You and your family, all that we can find, are more than welcome with us for as long as you would like to stay,” Grai said, opening his energy to her the same way he did with Mikal.

He wasn’t very surprised when moments later, she spoke in his mind.

“Thank you,” Chance said.

She followed the maelstrom of Grai’s energy to the path in his mind, feeling the truth of his words and his incredible love for his children and his people. And darkness. There was a darkness inside of him as well that she couldn’t penetrate, but it wasn’t directed at her sisters or his people.

Grai nodded his head and turned back towards the door; Traze followed him wordlessly. Grai stopped and said, “Every half hour! No exceptions,” he said, then left with Traze.

Cole whistled low.

“What the heck was that?” he asked in surprise and concern.

“What the hell happened to Traze? No joking, not even a smile! I don’t like this,” Reign said, shaking his head.

The others all agreed and were commenting on how cold and distant Traze appeared when Chris interrupted.

“Enough guys. We all know why Dad and Traze are acting this way. The best way to fix it is to find Koda and bring him home where he belongs,” Chris said, turning to Amun.

“Amun, is he stable enough to talk?” Chris asked looking over the still soaked but now-calm doctor.

Dr. Amun Nassur quickly finished his scans and stood, turning to Grai’s children.

“I gave him a calming agent. Since he’s human, it’s already taken affect, and his heart is no longer in danger of exploding in his chest. But if you plan on keeping him while we get information, there is a heart problem that needs to be corrected or you can kill him the next time you frighten him like this,” Amun said, knowing they wouldn’t like hearing it. He was right.

“Figures he’s such a pussy,” Nick muttered while a few of his brothers made similar comments.

Chris sighed and looked over at Mikal, leaving the decision up to his brother. It was Mikal’s people and his chance to learn of who he was and where he came from, and Chris thought Mikal should make the call.

Mikal already knew the answer that Chris was seeking.

“Amun, can you heal him enough to have him lucid in the next few hours?” Mikal asked.

Amun entered the parameters into the comm and studied the data.

“If we move right now, yes,” Amun said, studying the comm.

Mikal didn’t hesitate.

“Then do it.” 

“Help me get him to your medlab,” Amun said and five of the brothers stood immediately and helped Amun move the doctor out of the room.

Mikal moved to the table in the center of the room and entered the lab’s location into the computer. He waited while their satellite systems zeroed in on the location. When it did, he magnified it enough to see the mountains more clearly before picking it up from the table and making it 3D.

Chance watched in open-mouthed wonder until she saw the mountains pop up on the table, and then she gasped.

“That is amazing,” she whispered with a grin as she stepped closer to the table.

Chance put her hand out to touch the mountains and grinned in wonder as the image shimmered.

“Do you recognize any of the mountains?” Mikal asked with a smile.

He didn’t trust the doctor at all and wanted to see if Chance recognized anything before he narrowed down the location further.

Chance shook her head sadly.

“I wouldn’t. When they let me out for missions, they would drug me and drop me off near the hotel they wanted me to use. I had three days to complete the mission and meet my handler at a predetermined location, or they would detonate the charge in my neck. Once I met my handler, I was drugged and returned to the lab. I’ve never seen the outside of it,” she admitted, feeling helpless.

“You were never let outside?” Angel asked in disbelief.

Chance shook her head.

“Not outside the lab, no. We were taken out for human interaction training periodically, but we were always drugged and put in a van with no windows in the back so we could never see where we were,” Chance explained.

Alex snorted.

“Bastards were smart enough to be afraid of you ever coming back for them,” he said.

Mikal magnified the northeast corner of the mountain and they all stepped closer to the table, looking for a sign of where the regular entrance to the lab would be.  

Declan pointed to a small hump in the earth and began magnifying the area with his fingers.

“Yeah . . . this isn’t right. Remember back in the fifties and all the underground bomb shelters? That’s what this is,” he said with a grin as the doorway of the facility became clearer on the image.

Siggy dropped into a chair and slid to the control center on the other side of the conference room.