Retrieval (34 page)

“I’ve got Skylar. Don’t worry, if it’s within my power, she’ll come out of this just fine. Besides, she’s got to be alive to tote the ass chewing I’m going to give her right?” Sebastian groused.

“Yeah, well, I think it might be you that’s going to tote one. If you haven’t seen her angry, you’re in for a real treat.”

Sebastian grunted at that and then, “We’re all set to insert Dawn. It’s killing me to wait, but if what you’ve told me is true, and I feel right here,” he thumped his chest, “that it is … she’ll go off half-cocked if we move too soon. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened Mic.”

“Well, let’s not chance it. I’m due back at the estate in three days, so you’ve got me for a little while longer. I’ll help any way I can.”

Chapter 20

“It’s inherent to the efficacy and inevitably, to the quality of the enhancement, if we use a synthesized virus to introduce the new genetic material into a host. Naturally occurring viruses are too unstable and prone to change, thus infecting the host before the genetic replacement material can be inserted onto the DNA strand.”

She’d give her father one thing: he was brilliant. Not once over the past two weeks since he’d let her into GenTech lab facilities had he failed to impress her with his absolute and irrefutable knowledge of genetics, splicing, and integration introduction. He’d furthered disease research to a level that even a cure for cancer was possible; though it was obvious he had no desire to do that. No, he wanted to
create
the things that went bump in the night, creatures that haunted your nightmares. Curing disease wasn’t on his agenda.

He was one sick mother-scratcher, and it never failed to amaze her how perverted his desire to play God was. He’d twisted the scope of creation into something so deadly that if any of the beings he’d manipulated through his genetic research got out into the public and decided to do harm—the human race would be toast.

He’d yet to let her into the cells beneath the lab floor that housed those beings. He was still testing her limits and trying to find out exactly what she wanted, why she’d come to him so easily. He was wary, but she was breaking down his distrust. She’d even completed a project herself. Of course, she had only created a new form of corn that would grow in a waterless, dark environment, so Daddy hadn’t been happy. Something to
help
the world? Shut your mouth.

Most of his staff gave her the willies. They were all as slimy as good old Dad, go figure. She spoke with Everly daily and was even now communicating with the beings under the floor through her. She shuddered to think of what those humans and animals had gone through. Everly had told her some; Sky had downloaded the rest.

Goolsby was nowhere to be seen, and while that relieved her to some degree, it also caused her a measure of anxiety. The devil’s puppets were best seen. It wouldn’t do to let him creep up on her. But so far, Smythe-Ward had managed to keep him away. Skylar really didn’t want to blow everything by killing Goolsby before she had a chance to kill her father. That would make her father run and hide. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder exactly what Goolsby was up to. Were her sisters safe? Was Sebastian okay? Was Goolsby even now planning a strike against them?

“But, sir? What if the synthesized virus does self-destruct or kill the host?” This from a new blonde scientist, what was her name … oh, yeah, Dawn.

“Oh, Dawn, you show great promise. Good question. The introduction of the virus containing the genetic enhancements is done under stable circumstances. Over the past few years, the availability of hosts has increased, though I’ve had to become more selective. I have found that the virus will self-destruct, and this most often causes catastrophic hemorrhaging in subjects who are, shall we say, less healthy? It is the ones who have a better natural genetic makeup to begin with that are able to destroy any antibodies that would attack the virus and cause an immune system meltdown.”

Come on, Dawn, duh.
Listening to Smythe-Ward rattle off scientific jargon in that nasally, grandiose fashion made her stomach twist.

The woman, Dawn, was an unknown. Since coming to this facility, Skylar had been able to scan everyone who worked here, all at her father’s behest and to Sky’s advantage. She knew that the data-entry workers were all disgruntled former pharmacy company workers who had signed on for a paycheck only. She knew that the lab assistants were all genetically enhanced and compliant to their creator’s will. She knew that each scientist had been hand-picked by Smythe-Ward, for both their knowledge and for their willingness to bow low before him as the God of Genetics.

She’d scanned them all, ferreted out all of their deepest darkest secrets, and relayed what information she herself had been willing to divulge to the genetic despot. She’d not yet scanned Dawn. The woman seemed never to be around when Skylar was.

“Dawn? What’s your background?” Skylar asked as she gazed down the lens of a microscope.

Something about the woman didn’t ring true, though Smythe-Ward couldn’t see past the woman’s incredible T&A to discern it. That was fine with Skylar, as long as the woman wasn’t here to cause further harm. She had no doubt that just as Micah had been a plant for the DOD; there were possibly others here for various government watchdog groups.

“I have an Advanced Genetics degree from Johns Hopkins University with a subspecialty in viral mutations. I did some work for the CDC right out of school, but I was drawn to GenTech because of their cutting edge work in the cancer field,” Dawn told her with just the right amount of sexiness in her voice to make Smythe-Ward look at her with lust, and enough hesitation to make Skylar even more curious.

“Well, good on you then. Sounds like you’ll be a terrific addition to the team.” Skylar couldn’t keep the sneer from her voice.

It was becoming harder and harder to block the calls for freedom from the cells beneath her. Their conditions were deplorable, and some of them were dying. It pressed on her and limited her ability to block her own true feelings. With Everly’s help she was able to filter out most of the tortured minds screaming at her for help, but being so close to them allowed for a lot of bleed through.

“Father?” she called out.

Smythe-Ward turned to her and peered at her over his eyeglass rims.

“When will I be able to view the other projects?”

Nothing ventured, nothing gained she always said.

“Soon, daughter. How about tomorrow? I have something particularly delightful I would like to show you.”

“Tomorrow then. I’m going to my rooms. Will I see you tonight at dinner?”

“No, I’ll be out tonight. I’ll meet you here at twelve o’clock sharp tomorrow afternoon,” he ordered and then turned and walked away to the other side of the cavernous lab.

“Fine.” Skylar stated to his back. She turned to leave.

Dawn, was standing directly in Sky’s path of retreat. Deciding now was the time to gather some information, Sky pretended to trip, and when Dawn grabbed her to keep her from falling, Sky placed her arm on the woman’s.

Images ripped through Skylar, and she couldn’t contain the gasp that issued forth from her lips.

“Leave. Do not stay here. You tell them I said no,” Sky told the woman through clenched teeth.

“It isn’t my call to make, Ms. McKannon,” Dawn said quietly.

“You aren’t worried I’ll rat you out?” Sky asked in disbelief.

The woman only shook her head.

“You should be because if you don’t leave, I’ll sacrifice your life to protect Sebastian and my sisters. Why don’t you ruminate on that for a while, and then decide if you still want a part of this,” Sky said around the huge lump of anger lodged in her throat before she turned and stalked out of the lab.

There was no way to outpace the anger she was feeling. She’d hoped that her sisters and Sebastian would leave well enough alone. It was taking longer than she’d anticipated to take care of Smythe-Ward but apparently, it was giving her siblings and the man she loved time to mount an attack.

Did they think to free her? Dammit. Now she had to escalate things. That woman was probably even now reporting to them that she’d made contact and that Skylar was aware of who she was.

Damn it. Shit. Damn it.
For a woman who never cursed, Piper’s favorites resounded in her head like a litany for her rage. She had no choice now. She had to move, maybe even as early as tonight, to free the people being housed beneath GenTech and then destroy her father. Goolsby wasn’t in place and neither had she been able to find out anything about Peter Dempsey, but time was getting away from her.

Maybe she could hold out for another day or two, try to find a location on Goolsby and get him back here under false pretenses. She needed to speak with Everly and have her prepare the ones who were caged up like animals beneath the lab.

So much to do, so little time. Still she took a moment to reflect back on the image of Sebastian that she’d pulled from Dawn’s mind. His face had been drawn, and he hadn’t looked happy. He seemed to have a lost a little weight. Was that because she had left? She’d known she had hurt him, but surely he would move on quickly.

“Not going to happen. You’ll come back to me safely Skylar or else.”

His voice was so beautiful, so needed, reverberated in her mind.

“Go away, Bastian. Now I’m talking to myself in your voice,” she wailed in a whisper of her own.

“No you aren’t. See the thing is, for all of your incredible intelligence you have four sisters who have quite a bit themselves. They showed me how, and when you touched Dawn I reestablished our connection, and there is no way you’re getting rid of it this time. I’ve spent hours since you left my house in Idaho perfecting this mind-link thing we have—no. Don’t even try it. You cannot break what my will has put in place.”

His voice, though hard and cold, sent shivers of heat up her spine. Joy washed through her, but it was tempered with fear that he might suffer.

“La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la,” Sky said as she stuck her fingers in her ears and denied what should have been impossible.

And had he said four sisters? Was it possible that Sasha was in the fold now?

“If you’d come back to me, you’d know for sure.”

He taunted her.

“Go away,”
she screamed in her mind and for a split second was tortured that he might and scared that he wouldn’t.

“You cannot make my decisions for me, woman. I’m a grown damn man, and Skylar, even though you’re powerful, you have nothing on the sheer ferocity of my will.”

And she could tell that it was so.

“Please, Bastian. I have to do this. I don’t want to die, but I think it’s the only way to destroy him. He has experimented even on himself, and Sebastian? There are others beneath the facility. You remember me telling you about the Haitians? These people make the Haitian experiments look like play. I have to free them and prevent him from ever doing this again. Please let me go.”

“No. You’ll come back to me, or I’ll come get your ass. No more discussion. We’re moving on that facility tomorrow, Skylar, and his estate will be hit at the same time. Where will you be?”

“I didn’t think there was a person alive more stubborn than me,”
Skylar let her frustrated tone reverberate in her mind.

“You mean that much to me, Sky. Now where will you be?”

“This from the person who told Morrissey that he wished he’d never taken the job to begin with?”

There was a tense silence, as if she had taken him by surprise.

“Maybe you shouldn’t eavesdrop, baby. And try to keep in mind you haven’t exactly acted over the moon with me. Now where will you be?”

“Ohhhh. I’ll be at the damn facility come noon.”

“Be prepared for me, Skylar. Be prepared to live.”

Then the connection was gone as quickly as it had come.

She heard the sound of the door to her room opening and looked up to see Everly walking swiftly toward her.

“Ma’am says that you must stop speaking so loudly. She says that the good doctor has ways of listening.” Everly spoke quietly and with great profundity as if the words she was speaking held world secrets.

“Who is ‘ma’am’?” Sky asked perplexed.

“She is who she is, but she says you know her … that you speak with her in your dreams.” Everly was enigmatic now and that shiny, bright, silvery luminescence was shifting back and forth in her eyes, mingling with an amethyst shade that startled Skylar. Once again, the color reminded her of her Raina’s eyes.

“Everly, I thought I’d seen and heard everything, but sometimes you wig me out. Now listen, we have things to discuss, and I feel better doing that with touch rather than with words. You on board?”

“Of course. I’m on board for anything that saves my family.”

“Well come on over, it’s time for you to know what I do,” Sky said and touched her new friend’s forehead with a sureness that was mocked by her shaking hand.

It took but moments for Skylar to communicate her intentions for tomorrow. Within the span of a short commercial, she’d relayed her plans and received Everly’s memories of how to locate the cells under GenTech.

“You’re so very brave. They picked well with you. I didn’t believe it when they said you were the first and therefore the strongest. I thought surely no one was stronger than the Alpha in the labs, but you my sister, you are more power than one being should hold.” Everly’s voice was awestruck.

Skylar nodded her agreement and then on impulse, hugged the other woman close.

“You’ve become one of my family, Everly. If anything happens to you, it would hurt me very badly. Remember that,
changer
, as you’re flying through GenTech tomorrow.”

Everly gasped as she looked at her. Skylar had divulged Everly’s greatest secret, one she had managed to hide even from Smythe-Ward.

“Go now, get ready. I’ll see you in the morning.” Sky shooed the other woman away.

Skylar knew she’d get no rest tonight. Tomorrow it all ended. By nightfall tomorrow there’d be no more Dolan Smythe-Ward and no GenTech. She’d probably be dead, but the ones she loved most would be alive.