The Judas Contact (Boomers Book 1) (23 page)

“The labs are experimenting with xenogenesis and recombinant DNA. Summer passed away two years ago, but they used his body and combined it with human DNA somehow. I can’t even pretend to understand how or why they would do something like this. But the beast was both Summer and not Summer. I know he came to me because his chip was still active—likely a direct result of seeing me in that stairwell last week. Summer was my first success. They—” Anger shook her in voice and she curled her hand into a fist, visibly fighting for control. “We signed an agreement when we came to work for the laboratory, a dedication and oath to the common good of all. This—travesty is not for the common good.”

“And you think destroying the laboratory will end the work?” The mild note in Simon’s voice aggravated Garrett.

Don’t encourage her.

The telepath ignored him, his attention on the reports in front of him.

“Maybe. Maybe not. There are a dozen locations for R.E.X. laboratories. Each location is tasked with different projects. But I know where most of them are and I’ve worked in four of them. That’s why I want to go in. I want to go to the tenth floor. I want to see for myself exactly what they are doing.”

“We could take her in.” Michael drummed his fingers on the table. “Straight forward snatch-and-grab. Take out the security cameras, infiltrate the system so her card is clear and let her passcode her way up. We go along for support. She does the research she needs, we get her out. We evacuate the building and detonate.”

“You know, Captain.” Garrett kept his voice deathly calm. “I wasn’t kidding about leaving my gloves off.”

“No one else will know exactly what to look for,” Ilsa gave him an impatient look. “I do. This has to stop.”

“Bull. Simon can pull the facts he needs right out of your head. You don’t have to be anywhere near there, especially since we still don’t know why they wanted to bring you to this mysterious director to begin with.” She needed to see sense on this and she needed to see it right now.

“Not exactly, Garrett. I can understand the type of data she’s looking for, but her instincts and analysis I can’t replicate.” Simon shook his head and pulled a second folder out. Flipping this one open, he pushed the paper toward Ilsa. “You should also know they’ve begun human trials with your chip.”

Any chance he had of convincing her against this damn fool plan vanished in the spasm of pain rippling across her face. She snatched up the papers and began to flip through them. When the muttering started, Garrett sighed.
Later, Simon, you and I are going to have a very long conversation about whose side you’re on.

Garrett, she’s one of us now. We’re obviously on her side. But we do not keep secrets and we do not shut each other out.
The chastisement brought him up short. She was one of them now.

She’s human, Simon. A very fragile human.
Fear cramped his insides. He could not—would not—lose her now.

She is not that fragile.
Simon turned his head and met his gaze directly.
She can handle you and everything your body can throw at her. Remember that.
“Michael, you have a plan already?” He asked the question aloud, and the Captain nodded. They had a plan long before Garrett and Ilsa arrived at the warehouse. She’d barely slept the night before, worrying over the data she had collected.

Folding his arms across his chest, he watched her rise from the table and begin to pace. If her muttering bothered the others, they didn’t say anything. They were already debating entry points and timing. Garrett didn’t need to listen. He remembered the soft and hard targets from their first trip to the laboratory. He’d climbed to the roof under the cover of darkness, avoiding the security cameras, the watchmen, and the dogs. He’d tucked himself into the corner of the building and waited hours for the moment he
might
be needed.

None of that mattered. What mattered was the moment he’d punched through the stairwell door and took Ilsa’s hand. His world shifted that day, turned and spiraled out of his control. He just hadn’t realized it yet.

Ilsa glanced up from the papers to meet his gaze. She lifted her brows. Would he help her or keep fighting with her? She was stubborn and wouldn’t give up easily. He could restrain her, make it physically impossible for her to participate. He could do that.

But the cost might be greater than he was willing to pay. “Captain,” he addressed Michael but kept his gaze locked on Ilsa. “She doesn’t go in alone.”

“I can be at her side in five minutes,” Drake interjected. “She’ll need the time on her own to get the info we need. If we go in guns blazing, they may have a system wide wipe.”

“Garrett, I can do this.” She stared at him steadily. “I can walk in there, go to the tenth floor and find out what we need to know.”

“And if they’re waiting for you?” His jaw clenched.

She smiled. “Then you save me.”

Damn right he would.

Damn right
we
will.
Simon interjected. The others stared at him, waiting, saying nothing. Not even Rory, with her comment for everything, said anything.

“You exactly follow the plan we outline.” He relented finally and ignored the warmth that bloomed under the worry when she grinned. “Exactly, Ilsa. No deviations. No cowboy maneuvers. If you need us, we come in—immediately—and you carry Rex with you.”

“Hey now,” Rex glanced up. “Ask a guy before you pass him off as an accessory.”

Garrett shot him a bland look. The shifter would do it, whether he asked or not. He looked at Ilsa, still waiting for her agreement.

“I’m going in, checking the equipment and the labs and the files. Then I call you if I find anything hinky. That’s it.” Ilsa set the file down and circled around the table to stand right in front of him. Her chin jutted out just enough to announce her stubborn resolve. He fought the urge to kiss her. Unlike Michael and Rory, he wasn’t inclined toward public display.

“Then we do it. When’s the best time?”

She threaded her arms around him and hugged him. The wild pleasure that accompanied the strange sensation still surprised him, but he allowed her to unfold his arms and put one around her. The fear didn’t go away nor did he relax. They had a job to do and he had a woman to protect.

Michael rose, taking charge of the meeting. “We’ll go in at the end of the day, during shift change…”

“…shift change means the guards coming on duty are waking up and the ones going off just want to go home. Blind spots will appear in the security system.”
Michael’s words echoed in her mind as she parked her car and walked towards the entrance she frequented.

“Simon will hack a guard and update Ilsa’s credentials in the system. They haven’t actually been canceled as far as we can tell. Using her pass, she’ll enter and go directly to the elevator. Once inside, choose floor three for your lab and then enter the security key and choose ten. Hold both down, that will override the system and take you up.”

The security guards barely looked at her as she slid her tote purse through the scanner and swiped her code key.

“Rex will be your purse. Don’t worry about trying to communicate with him. He can hear and function just fine. He will also get right through security, so don’t sweat that.”

Retrieving her tote, she swung it over her arm and tried to ignore the pull on her stitches. She worried about the weight factor, but somehow Rex seemed to displace mass when he shifted, another fascinating topic she wanted to explore at some point. Most of the Boomers seemed to possess special abilities—talents that fascinated her. At the elevator, she pressed the button for up.

“The team will deploy on the perimeter, and Garrett will be on the roof. The moment you give the word, we will act to evacuate the building and destroy it.”

Inside the elevator, she slipped in the access card and pressed floors three and ten at the same time. The light hesitated on red and then flipped to green. The earbud she wore was silent. The camera in the upper right corner of the elevator turned off as she stared at it. Simon must already have control of a guard somewhere.

“I’ve never been a hero,” she said to herself and to those listening on the com channel. “Do you think I should pick out a name?”

A familiar feminine snicker filled the silence. “How about Brains?”

“I said a code name, not a zombie predilection.” She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but she did have to suppress her own snort of laughter.

“Could just go for Doc.” Drake’s deep voice resonated with humor.

“Focus. This isn’t a game.” Tension snapped in Garrett’s tone and she sobered. He really disliked this plan. At the tenth floor, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. It was a whole different world from the third floor with its institutional corridors and laboratory spaces. The tenth was almost all white, heavy tiles on the floor and the walls, which gave it a glaring appearance. The elevators arrived in what looked like a plexiglass box. Strips of heavy plastic marked two doorways into decontamination chambers. Resettling the tote, she went left and slid between the strips. Inside, she pulled on the white anti-static gear and, based on the three scientists she could see working, a helmet and boots. Then she added the hose for the small oxygen canister on the suit. She tucked the tote down next to the door.

“As far as you can go, Rex.” She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t wait for one. The passkey engaged the air-pressurized door and it swung outwards. She waited for the first to close. White air rushed down around her, likely sanitizing the suit before the interior door opened. This laboratory took up the full expanse of the tenth floor. Thankfully, all the dog kennels along one wall were empty. Her heart squeezed at the thought of Summer being dragged up here when he should have been at peace.

The other scientists ignored her. She grabbed a clipboard hanging next to the door and checked the schedule as she walked, away from them to an unoccupied workstation.

“The key to a successful infiltration is to act like you belong. Walk with purpose, meet the gazes of others and keep your head up. When you look like you know where you are going, few will question it.”
Simon’s sound advice seemed to be working.

At the computer, she flicked on the monitor and studied the login screen. She had three login attempts before the system locked the machine out. She vacillated on whether to use the code the Boomers provided or her own. Using her own would alert internals that she was on the system and could bring the wrath of the director down on her head. The other code, however, might send up other flags.

“The only way this will work is if you trust us and we trust you.” Michael’s guarded expression held her captive. His blue eyes were hard, cold, and ruthless. “Can you trust us?”
That wasn’t even a decision she needed to make anymore. She trusted Garrett. He trusted his team. They’d come for her twice now—
twice
—when she’d been in danger. On some level, she could make the argument that their choice to see her precipitated the director’s actions, but she didn’t know that for certain. Quantum time argued that every decision split the future. In some parallel world, she never met Garrett and may even now be locked up for some manufactured violation.

She entered their login information and the screen unlocked. It flickered once, but then began to scroll through a host of current projects. She didn’t look around, but kept her attention on the screen. She belonged here. Her microchip project was filed under her name.

A folder labeled
Bag and Tag
curdled her stomach.

Clicking it, she read the cold facts of a project to tag superheroes with the chip. The project’s current success rate remained low. They’d had two candidates for testing, one remaining on site. The second had been shipped to a facility in Russia.

Why would R.E.X. have a facility in Russia?
She searched through the file, but no names were given, nor any other pertinent information. She climbed back up the data tree and selected the file for
Xenogenesis Chip Implementation
. Photographs of Summer assaulted her. The golden retriever was subjected to a number of injections over the course of six months. The canine DNA began to mutate, recombining with the human stem cells, until Summer’s dog-like appearance gained human bulk and the ability to walk upright.

The project notes listed difficulty with irritability and the following of commands. Outbursts of aggression increased in frequency. One observer noted that, on the day of Ilsa’s flight from the lab, Summer became unmanageable, shattering his way free of his cage and injuring three technicians. The notes ended with a single comment.

Subject escaped.

The poor thing, the chip had still been active and likely telling him to return home—to her. His aggression would have heightened every time they prevented him from acting on the command. Tears burned in her eyes. The unapologetically clinical terms in the report made her sick. Yes, she used dogs to test the chip, but she’d never forgotten they were living, breathing creatures with emotions and needs. She loved them, played with them, and treated them as she would any pet.

Swallowing hard, she forced herself to continue down the data tracks until she found the lists of human experiments. Over one hundred chips had been implanted in humans—with subjects coming from as varied backgrounds as a special ops military unit to several prisoners at Riker’s Island.

She didn’t want to read about the men they’d chosen, but she needed to understand what they were attempting. Their crimes varied from breaking and entering to carjacking to murder and—bile burned in her throat—pedophilia. They instituted a single command into each chip, requiring it to send an electrical deterrent into the hippocampus whenever the subject contemplated a crime it committed before.

Oh my God. They released them.
A wave of nausea punched through her. They released criminals back to the streets for live observation on the chip’s efficacy. She scrolled through the reports, looking for any notations on them, but the
subjects
had been handed off to the department of special research in the Washington offices.