Authors: K.M. Ruiz
“She needs to feed.”
Samantha knew better than to argue and merely nodded, careful to keep her thoughts as neutral and settled behind her cracked and damaged shields as she could.
“Jin Li,” Nathan continued. “We leave for Japan shortly. Prep the shuttle. I have to maintain the
illusion
of living as a human. Dismissed.”
The four of them got to their feet and left Nathan to the task of spinning this latest victory for the Serca Syndicate. Once out of sight, Gideon teleported away immediately. Samantha didn't bother to hide the disgust on her face at her twin's eagerness to please. The remaining three took a lift four levels up to the last public level of the Serca Syndicate. Getting farther than that required passing through a host of biometric security features before they could take the stairs to the first restricted level of the Warhounds' headquarters. Samantha left Jin Li and Dalia once they arrived in that brightly lit place.
The top of the city tower that the Serca Syndicate was located in had been built with no real windows to look out and see the polluted sky. Instead, hologrids flowed over every outer wall, detailing scenes of blue skies that no one had actually seen in the past few generations. Samantha didn't notice them as she worked her way to the top floor of the tower, passing through a few security checks on the way up. The last door she walked through led into a short sterilization corridor. Every possible speck of contaminant was stripped from her body in the time it took her to cross that short space in four strides.
Samantha came out into a level that was all white, bright lights shining down on everyone. The medical level was geared solely to psions, and she made her way to the special room assigned to her younger sister. Samantha ignored everyone she passed, just as she ignored the headache that was pounding out a rhythm against her skull. Faint traces of blood had dried around her nose and chin. She scraped them off with one hand, pressing the other against the control panel to a heavily secured door.
It took biometric measures to open that medical room, and only six people in the entire Warhound ranks had access to the person who lived behind that door. Samantha was one of them by right of blood. The door slid open and Samantha shored up her shields as well as she could before stepping inside.
“Been a while, Sammy-girl,” a rough, amused voice said from the corner.
At sixteen, Kristen Serca didn't weigh much more than forty kilos, and the specialized skinsuit that she wore was as much her prison as her clothing. With built-in bioware that could monitor her status at all times, it acted as a leash for those with the controls. The skinsuit had the ability to short-circuit Kristen's nervous system and keep her in check when sanity slipped from her, which was often enough for the dysfunctional Class III empath to be a problem for everyone else.
“Hello, Kristen,” Samantha said, her voice leached of all emotion.
The girl lifted her head, face full of sharp angles and that ever-present smile, which was her default expression, a rictus grin of happiness. Lank, straight blond hair barely touched her shoulders. A sick silver sheen radiated outward from her pupils and dark blue irises, giving her a vacant, almost dead gaze that most people believed meant she was incapable of paying attention to the world around her. Samantha knew otherwise.
She couldn't ever recall a point in her life where Kristen didn't need the death of another person to keep her mind from falling apart. Maybe it had something to do with all the genetic altering Nathan had done to each of his children, trying to make them into something that none of them were. Kristen hadn't been born this way, mentally unbalanced and always looking for a little bit of sanity. She had Nathan to thank for her predicament, for her need to model her shields and her thought processes on another person's mind in order to try to stabilize her own. It never stuck long.
When she managed some semblance of sanity, the empath knew exactly what she was doing. Outside of those moments, it was anyone's guess what was going on in Kristen's mind.
Samantha eyed the deep scratches on Kristen's face, which were covered with the distinctive shine of a quick-heal patch. Kristen tore herself up just as often as she tore up everyone else. She didn't register the pain for what it was; her empathy didn't let her. Pain was both physical and mental, and while Kristen understood that her body and mind were connected, that understanding got lost in the ravages of her power. She could feel nothing, produce no emotion of her own except a twisted, maniacal glee when given someone to kill. The emotions of other people, however, were easy enough for her to tamper with. There was something to be said for instinct, after all.
“Hungry?” Samantha asked, staying exactly where she was.
The brightness in her sister's eyes matched the spike on the mental grid. Kristen pushed herself up on surprisingly steady feet and approached Samantha with grasping hands and a needy mind. Samantha, still reeling from Nathan's punishment, didn't bother to be gentle when she sent a driving telepathic spike straight into Kristen's mind. The empath grunted, falling to her knees, but she was still smiling as a faint trickle of blood slid out of her nose. She licked it off her lips.
“You taste good,” Kristen slurred.
Samantha turned on her heels and left. “We've got a briefing to attend. Keep your mind to yourself, Kristen. Or I'll stick you back in that cell of yours.”
The soft laughter that followed Samantha down the hall was cheerful. The gaping, raw need for the kill tainting the mental grid was too dangerous to ignore, and Samantha kept her shields up high and tight as Kristen closed the distance between them.
[
SEVEN
]
JULY 2379
TORONTO, CANADA
“You're sure?” Ciari said, staring at the face on the vidscreen. The connection wasn't the best coming out of the Slums, but it had still been picked up by a communications officer. “You didn't find anything?”
“Not a single body,” the Stryker in the field said, her voice thick with a Portuguese accent. “Emilio and I searched a wide area once we teleported in from BrasÃlia. The cathedral is a mess, but we found no remains.”
“Thank you, Imenja. I appreciate your efforts.”
“We can extend the search if that's what you want. Move into a different cartel area. I don't know if it will make a difference, though. We've spent twenty-four hours here already.”
“That won't be necessary. Return to your posts in Brazil.”
“Sir.”
The connection was cut, leaving silence behind in Ciari's office. She hesitated a long moment before tapping out a request for an uplink. It took ten minutes for it to go through, for her code to be screened by two separate communications officers in two cities, before Erik's face appeared before her on the vidscreen.
“Ciari,” Erik said. “I'm heading into session within the hour. You have five minutes.”
“Preliminary reports from the team in the field confirm that the four Strykers we sent into the Slums are missing, sir.”
“Can you confirm that they're dead?” Erik asked, gaze cool.
“Negative. We've found no bodies.”
“Then we're going to presume they're somehow still alive and MIA.”
“Did you want to initiate a hunt or kill order?”
“You know the law as well as I do. There are enough rogue psions in the world as it is. We can't afford to add more to the mess we're still fighting.”
“That's a Class II telepath you want to terminate, sir. I realize you don't much care about the rest of them, butâ”
“That's a
dysfunctional
Class II telepath I'm telling you to terminate,” Erik interrupted sharply. “There's a difference between a psion that is worth something to me and one that hasn't proven useful in all the years we've let him live.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir.”
“If you're going to try arguing for their lives, then no. Terminate them.”
The screen went blank, Erik having cut the connection on his end. Ciari rubbed a hand over her face, mouth twisting slightly before the expression smoothed away. She hated this part of her job.
Getting to her feet, Ciari left her office for the lift beyond her doors, taking it down to the busy command level. It was a maze of hallways, offices, and command rooms, full of humans and Strykers alike monitoring Strykers out in the field on contract and those within their headquarters. All Strykers showed up on the government's security grid through bioscans from the signal that their implanted neurotrackers transmitted, a precaution that was law. If they dropped off the grid, they were either dead or attempting an escape, the latter of which resulted in the former.
There was no way out of the Strykers Syndicate except by death. Everyone knew that.
Ciari made her way silently to a room where a Stryker and a human were still struggling to locate four missing Strykers and having no luck. When she entered, the Stryker stood as a sign of respect. The human remained seated. Ciari didn't take it as an insult.
“Contact Jael,” Ciari said. “Tell her to report here for a termination.”
The Stryker bit back whatever protest he wanted to voice and did as Ciari ordered. He was a telepath, as was Jael, so in seconds Ciari felt the other woman's mind pressing against her mental shields.
You can't be serious,
Jael protested.
That's one of our strongest teams and our strongest telepath you want to terminate.
It's the order Erik gave. I need you as a witness and to sign off on their deaths.
For all that the World Court owned the Strykers and had control of their lives, their capacity for justice paled in the face of their cruelty. That wasn't a popular opinion, but most people weren't psions, beholden to a tangle of delicate, devastating bioware in the back of their head capable of killing them. Rarely did the World Court terminate Strykers themselves. They gave the order to do so.
The OIC initiated the punishment at the World Court's command in situations like this. The act was a punishment in and of itself. A reminder of who was really in control.
Jael arrived some minutes later, her white scrubs spattered here and there with blood. She'd been doing rounds when Ciari had summoned her. Ciari knew the other woman would prefer to be there and not here, but they both knew how to do their job, as distasteful as it was sometimes.
“Ciari,” Jael said, her voice flatly neutral.
“Dismissed,” Ciari said to the pair of handlers. The Stryker and the human left in silence. Ciari knew word of this termination would spread through the ranks within the hour.
Hate,
when projected by several hundred people directly at her, always gave Ciari a migraine, despite her shields.
The door slid shut, leaving her and Jael alone in their personal hell. Jael stepped forward, her eyes flickering over the data on the hologrid before them, a map of what was left of the world prominently displayed.
“I hate this part,” Jael said through clenched teeth.
“Me, too,” Ciari said quietly before raising her voice. “Computer, mission override. Authorization code Sigma Two Seven One Zeta. Request termination sequence.”
“Voice identification confirmed. Ciari Treiva, Officer in Charge,” the computer's voice announced in a gratingly pleasant tone so at odds with what they were doing. “Initiating termination sequence.”
Jael let out an explosive sigh. “Chief Medical Officer Jael Dawson present as witness.”
“Medical authority present, witness acknowledged,” the computer responded. “Request Stryker files.”
“Pull entire files of the following Strykers,” Ciari said, her voice curiously calm. “Threnody Corwin, Quinton Martinez, Kerr MacDougal, and Jason Garret.”
“Acknowledged. Files found.”
Four dossiers opened, laid atop the world map on the hologrid. Four faces frozen in holopics stared out at them. Four lives were written out in reports of strengths and weaknesses, missions accomplished and missions failed. Numbers, words, that didn't fully encompass the lives Ciari was being forced to cut short. They never did.
“Location of targets?” Ciari asked.
“Location unknown.”
Ciari's gaze never wavered as she pressed her hand down on the biometric scanner. The computer read her print in an instant. She formed the word reluctantly. “Terminate.”
Their network was fully integrated into the government's security grid that spanned the world, enabling them to track Strykers anywhere on earth. With these four Strykers, Ciari was hoping it wouldn't work, but recklessly hidden or not, neurotrackers would always respond to their programming, even if the person was already dead.
Four sharp spikes on the bioscanners that monitored baseline readings erupted somewhere on the east coast of Russia. The computer magnified the area five times, satellite feed finally pinpointing an area in Magadan, Magadan Oblast, as the final resting place of
someone
. They just weren't Strykers.
The baselines terminated by those neurotrackers were human.
Jael took a step forward, surprise filtering through her voice. “Ciari?”
“Acknowledge the results, Jael,” Ciari said, never taking her eyes away from the hologrid.
Jael swallowed tightly before saying, “It is my assessment as the Strykers Syndicate's CMO that the four baselines on record do not match the ones which were terminated.”
“Confirmed,” the computer said, recording Jael's report for the record.
“This doesn't make any sense,” Jael said.
Ciari tilted her head to the side. “No, it doesn't.”
They stared at each other, both of them reading between the lines of what they were saying and what was showing up on the grid.
“Computer, save files and shut down,” Ciari said.
It took less than a minute for the computer to obey Ciari's command. Only when the terminal went dark did Ciari turn to look at Jael, easily reading the uncertainty in Jael's troubled expression.