Lie to Me (3 page)

“I count twenty guards in all,” Dutch’s voice came at them through their earpieces. As their resident hacker, she could hack into the local security feeds and shut them down or use them against their enemy.

“Copy that,” Reaper said. “Like before, I’ll distract while you set the charge.”

Creed surveyed the landscape from the rooftop with a bootlegged sniper rifle and night-vision scope, ready to drop guards with his tranquilizer darts. He’d made a fortune selling illegal items on the black market.

That some dregs obtained financial success pleased her. She despised those who thought they were better than others simply because of their hefty bank account. She also reviled them for treating all dregs like expendable civilians. Every single soul should matter in this world where too many had already perished. What she loathed most were the spooners who felt it their due to indenture innocent Xenos.

While killing wasn’t necessarily their game—and every spooner involved in indenturing X-genes deserved to die—they preferred tranqs to keep a clear conscience. Despite taking the moral high ground, good intentions wouldn’t matter because there was no defense for a man of Creed’s low rank—any of them really—owning a gun. If ever caught with the weapon or doing his preferred trade, the offense came with a mandatory immediate execution. Might be why he chose to maintain a decoy house in the Quad, but resided mostly in the badlands.

“Ready, Creed?” Kella asked.

“It’s a go,” came his gruff reply.

She and Reaper slunk through the darkness, sticking to the shadows as they moved. She heard a grunt and then nothing else. Best guess, Reaper knocked a guy out and then settled him on the ground for the least amount of noise. She’d seen him execute the move a dozen times. By the time she finished delivering the EMP blast, every guard would be unconscious.

Kella kept moving. Staying light-footed, she zipped behind a guard without the man noticing and shot him in the back with a stunner gun. Another bootlegged weapon.

At the building, she paused long enough to assess her perimeter. Two guards to her right, one lighting up a cigarette. An outline to her left shifted, but she recognized the way Reaper moved, like a predator on the hunt for unsuspecting prey. He drew closer to another shadow, and a moment later the silhouette dropped never noticing him.

Damn, but he was good.

She popped the two guards closest to her with a stun as Dutch’s voice came through the earpiece, “You’re invisible to all cameras.”

Going to one knee next to the building’s ventilation system, Mack opened the pouch at her waist and selected a mini drill set. The low hum of the electric screwdriver sounded as the bit released all four bolts in a matter of seconds. The grate slid up with a small creak. She sent a last glance around to verify no one had stolen up behind her—even while knowing Reaper or Creed would’ve neutralized anyone that brought danger to her. Dutch would’ve given her a heads up too. Stone taught her to trust no one, and old habits die hard.

She went headfirst into the ventilation system. It was a tight fit, but not so snug she couldn’t move. Her petite size was why she performed this part of the mission and not others in the X-Diplomats.

Even with her small stature, she likened her tight quarters to a hamster in one of those tiny tubes.
I’ll be a hamster in a tiny cage if captured
.

Thankfully the DNA clinic was a small building, and she didn’t have far to travel before reaching her destination. Just a right and left and a few more wiggles had her arriving at her destination.

Before she opened the grate into the lab, she tapped her earpiece. “Status.”

It was a request to verify she remained alone in the clinic. The least amount of casualties was their gameplay, and these EMP blasts took out not just computers, but re-hardwired the electrical neurons in a human’s brain resulting in immediate death.

“Just you,” Dutch confirmed.

Satisfied their hacker had run life-scans, Kella pushed the grill up and tossed the charge inside. Had Reaper elected not to ‘distract’ the guards, over half of them would have died once the charge detonated. Not that any of them would offer any thanks for valuing their lives. They were on the Regency payroll, and traitors to their own class of people, but it wasn’t their fault the Regency brainwashed them. Too many of the dregs were like sheep, believing the house of lies they were fed from the moment of their birth. If a person was born a dreg, they’d done something wrong in a past life to deserve their punishment in this life. Karma or whatever, labels didn’t matter when too many people believed the bullshit for Kella’s peace of mind. The X-Diplomats planned to open society’s minds, drag them kicking and screaming from their malaise if need be, and deliver them the truth.

“The package is delivered.” Kella scuttled back the same way she had come, making a left and right turn this time, before shimmying down a twenty-foot tube to where she’d entered. After sliding the grate back into place, she reset the screws. Couldn’t have the higher-ups easily determining how she’d infiltrated the building. Of course if they read the blueprints the same as her, they’d know the building’s security required an upgrade. That the Regency expected total submission of the dregs worked in their favor. It also detailed the control the spooners held over their sheep.

She palmed a paint can and sprayed their calling card on the wall.

F
lipping the safety cap off the palm-sized tube she dug out of her pocket, she paused. One click to the button set the timer on the EMP. Thirty seconds later the charge would blow.

On the birthday of my resurrection...
“The revolution begins.”

She’d waited eight years to utter those words. Instead of feeling the satisfaction she’d anticipated, she thought of her husband, Stone Emmerson. A Regent in his own right, now. Powerful and part of society’s problem.

Tears blurred her vision, and her heart ached for him. Regret for not giving him the benefit of the doubt and allowing emotion to rule her actions eight years ago, soured her gut. She should’ve confronted him about the accusations his dad made...but she’d made her choices, and she’d live and die by them. Pining for Stone was her greatest weakness and her biggest frustration.

The heart wants what the heart wants.

Welcoming the burn in her sinuses, she blinked back the tears. She would
not
cry for him or for the things she’d lost. Like her innocence. At least that’d been sold of her own free will. She longed for just a few minutes with her mother though. In the dead of night when she couldn’t sleep, she craved a smile from Stone, yearned for one of his hugs... Her stupid, pathetic heart wouldn’t give up on Stone.

Eight years ago she’d made her bed. Didn’t matter that she’d been a hormonal, emotional fourteen-year-old who believed the story of a spiteful old man. A man who had every reason to lie to her.

Kella straightened her spine, while chastising herself for sniveling over a wasted friendship that’d meant more to her than it had Stone. Everything she’d lost in the years since her escape, those tribulations made her stronger.

“What’re you waiting for, Mack? Get the fuck out of there.” The alarm in Reaper’s voice jerked her to the present. “T-minus fifteen seconds. Run, goddamnit!”

A
ugust 9, 2282 A.E.E.

––––––––

“T
ime to go, sweetheart.” Stone Emmerson nudged the shoulder of the woman in his bed. Dark hair, but not as black as his Kella’s hair had been. The unnamed woman had been a poor substitute for his wife. When he missed her most, he sought out a willing woman with petite features and dark hair. None measured up. Thankfully, melancholy plagued him only on the anniversary of her death. He could thrust Kella from his mind most of the year, but August eighth hit him hard and reminded him of what he’d lost. The singular most special individual in his life, and after eight years he still mourned her.

“Get out.” James, his bodyguard and best friend, entered the room unannounced. The man rarely announced his presence. Then again, he’d seen Stone every way possible, puking his guts out, and even buried deep inside a woman.

“What crawled up your ass, Mr. Grumpy?” Stone scratched his stomach and stretched.

“Just read.” James shoved the clear, electronic pad into Stone’s hands.

As he perused the article, he elevated his eyebrows, surprised by the attack, while giving a little hoorah inside for the bravery of the X-Diplomats. “Damn.”

“Yeah. I’m impressed. The skillset of the dregs who did this is extraordinary.”

No shit. Technology was outlawed to the low class. It kept them complacent, at least that’s what he’d been taught. Since taking the seat of Regency, Stone had enacted freedoms other Regents restricted from their residents. He gifted his citizens with tech if they wanted, but on one condition. They had to take a class to learn how to properly use it. His former-Regent father had balked at the idea, but this was Stone’s term, and he honored Kella’s memory any way he could. The people were slow to engage the new knowledge, but every year saw more and more of them embracing their new freedoms.

Stone swiped his fingers through his hair as he continued to read the email from Regent Jones.

“Let me guess,” James said in a smug voice, “you just got to the part where he wants access to your X-gene clinic.”

He nodded and tossed the e-device aside. His first act as Regent three years ago had been shutting down the clinic to honor Kella’s memory. If any new X-gene existed in his Quadrant, he was unaware of her, and she was free to live her life at her leisure. She was even free to marry whomever she wanted and bear the offspring for the man of her choosing or none at all. Kella would’ve approved. They’d spent hours discussing this change.

“Xeno distribution is so wrong,” a thirteen-year-old Kella had said, as she watched the announcement of a recently discovered Xeno in their midst. “She’s my friend.”

Stone had wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to his side. Accepting his support, she’d hooked her arm around his waist.

“Did you know she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up?” Nursing to dregs wasn’t a formal teaching in the school he and Kella learned in, but an informal training from the local herbalist. Kella peered up at Stone, and he focused on her. Her expression so woebegone, he would’ve changed the world to suit her if he could. “She wanted to dedicate her life to helping others. Now someone will buy her, and her dreams are forgotten. How many babies do you think her owner will force her to have?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I’d kill myself if that happens to me.”

Loathing that statement, he squeezed her arm. “I’ll
never
let that happen to you.” Four months from now, his Kella would be forced to submit to her own X-gene test. If positive, James already helped him make plans to save her from that life.
No man will ever own my Kella.

“You’re the best friend ever, pretty boy.”

“Hate to break it to you, but no one wants you anyway because you’re a holy terror.” As he’d planned, she’d giggled at his teasing. Regardless of her bent to find trouble, her pretty looks would make her a high commodity if she tested positive. She’d hugged him and went back to watching the Xeno-reveal, and Stone decided not to borrow trouble until he had to deal with the devil. All he’d wanted to think about then was hiding his growing erection and the wonderful way she felt in his arms.

Stone jerked from his memories when James snapped his fingers in his face.

“Jesus Christ,” James bitched, “you do this grieving shit every year around her death. I hope marriage to Katarina soothes your pining for the holy terror.”

His buddy’s harsh words hit him hard, like a gut punch, but Stone couldn’t deny the unhealthy aspects of his continued bereavement. “She’s my first love. I can’t just forget her, James.” He threw back the covers and rolled out of bed. “I want to marry Katarina as much as I want to be castrated.” And she was the total opposite of Kella. Katarina’s tall, blonde looks were nothing similar to his Kella. Just what he needed to get over Kella. Or that was his father’s favorite line anyway.

“Marrying her to please your parents is fucked up. I repeat, brother, call off the nuptials.” When it came to Stone’s upcoming marriage, James was a broken record. “She’ll only make you miserable.”

“I’m already miserable. Get my Kella back, and I’ll be happy again.”

“Christ, you’re a masochist.”

“Tell Regent Jones his request is denied and to go to hell,” he said as he walked toward his bathroom.

“Think I’ll reword that to be a tad more tactful.”

Stone didn’t give a fuck how James worded the missive. He’d shut down the clinic for a reason, and nothing would cause him to reopen it.

––––––––

T
wo months later

The X-Diplomats—X-Ds as the news christened them—had hit clinics in two more Quadrants over the last couple of months, all in the northern Quads. The Regents were in a panic with no guess on the identity of the terrorists, or how they attacked, and all worried they’d be next. Except for him. Stone found himself amused by the alarm the X-Ds incited in his fellow Regents.