The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (19 page)

Within a minute or two of her departure, Jax was pounding on my door. He handed me a rifle as soon as I opened it and then led me back to the shooting range, where I let myself demonstrate a small but significant degree of improvement with my marksmanship.

Weapons training was followed by some careful hand-to-hand testing. Jax took it easy on me in light of my 'injured' hand, which was a good thing. He was a lot bigger than me, and his muscular bulk made him deceptively quick.

When those advantages were added to his superior training and experience, I wasn't a match for him—at least not without the benefits provided by my nanites. If I'd actually been trying to kill Jax, that wouldn't necessarily have been a problem, but given that it wasn't the case, I had to be careful about exposing the true extent of my abilities.

The strength and speed my nanites provided on a constant basis could be explained away as the result of training and practice, but I knew as soon as my adrenaline kicked in that my reaction time would become quite literally super human. Fortunately, as long as Jax wasn't going all out and I kept reminding myself that the fight wasn't for real, I was able to keep the nanites from bypassing parts of my nervous system in order to speed up my reaction time.

Even so, there were several times where it was obvious that Jax sensed something was off. I was fortunate that my trainers from back home had designed a distinctive fighting style for me based on my size and strength. If they'd tried to cram me into the same fighting style used by the Society's military personnel, I would've had an even greater chance of having my cover blown.

Once Jax released me from training, I headed back to my room, showered, ran to the private cafeteria just off of the headquarters area for some food, and then reported to Brennan's room freshly dressed with my hair and makeup done. Brennan answered the door on my second knock. I'd known that we were going to be spending a lot of time together, but somehow that knowledge hadn't translated into realizing that he was going to be answering his door shirtless.

"Hi, Skye. I need just a moment to finish getting dressed and then we can go check on the progress down in the foundry."

I shifted my rifle around uncomfortably as he walked over to his dresser and pulled out a light gray shirt. I'd known that he had a muscular build just based on the way he'd picked up the ammunition when we'd gone to meet with the insurgents in the parking garage, but I was astonished at just how tightly ripped he actually was.

I found myself torn between staring and looking away as he pulled the garment over his head. I ended up trying to stare until the last possible moment when I could look away without him realizing what I'd been doing. My timing was off and he chuckled as he met my gaze.

"You can sit down, Skye. You're going to be spending enough time here that you might as well make yourself comfortable. Even once I'm dressed we won't be going anywhere until Jax shows up. He tends to get more than a little irate when I leave my room without my full guard detail. I can only imagine that he's going to be even more touchy now that the normal detachment has been reduced in size."

"Do you ever get tired of it?"

The question seemed to have taken him by surprise. "I think you're the first person who's ever asked me that. For most of the new arrivals inside the compound, bodyguards for a gang leader or warlord are just a fact of life. Truth be told, I'd like nothing more than to be able to walk around without worrying about someone taking a shot at me, but this is the world we live in. If I have to be surrounded by bodyguards, I couldn't ask for a better security chief than Jax."

"It sounds like he's been with you for a long time."

"Yes, basically from the beginning—but that's a different story."

It wasn't like Brennan to be so evasive, but before I could pin him down, a knock at the door signaled the arrival of Jax and the other bodyguard who would be shadowing Brennan for the next ten hours. Jax frowned when he saw me there waiting inside Brennan's room.

"Typically we meet up at my room and then all proceed to Brennan's room together."

Brennan turned to the other guard. "Alan, could you please wait outside for just a moment?"

After Alan had left the room and the door was closed, Brennan turned to Jax. "We talked about this. If Skye is going to be able to play the part we've assigned her, then she can't act like all the rest of your men. If the ants have really placed an operative inside the compound then every part of this illusion must be perfect."

It was obvious to me that Jax still wasn't happy with Brennan's decision to lure the assassin out with a show of weakness, but he nodded. "Very well, I won't raise any more objections around my men, but I'm still not sure this is a very good idea."

"Maybe not, but it's the way I want to handle it. Go ahead and be your usual surly self around your men though—the point is for everyone to think that you're convinced this is a mistake and I'm leaving myself uncovered. It shouldn't be too hard for you given that it's exactly how you feel."

The next few hours passed in a blur. We spent a good chunk of the day down in the foundry helping clean up the damage from having the circuit breakers fail and the resultant overheating of the arc furnace.

I knew very little about electricity or smelting iron either one, but as nearly as I could tell, the furnace was a big circular bowl lined with bricks and topped off with three electrodes at the top that actually did the work of melting everything down. It wasn't that there weren't any moving parts—the lid containing the electrodes was designed to move up and down—but there were so few moving parts that I initially had a hard time understanding what needed to be fixed.

That deficiency in my understanding didn't last long. Given that we were down to just three guards, Brennan didn't expect any of his bodyguards to help with the actual work of rebuilding the foundry, but I still got to watch as he and Tyrell directed a crew of more than two dozen people as they ripped overloaded wiring out of the wall and began the process of running replacement electrodes through the lid of the furnace.

The foundry was actually quite a bit smaller than I'd envisioned—the furnace was only capable of pouring a few tons of metal at a time—but repairing it was still just as big of a job as Brennan had told Piter it would be.

I split my time between watching the foundry crews work—because it was fascinating to see how everything came together—and watching our surroundings to make sure that Brennan was safe. It was silly—
I
was the assassin whom Brennan and Tyrell were so worried about—but that didn't stop me from tensing up each time one of the workers approached Brennan with a tool that was big enough to be used as a weapon.

Partly that was because maintaining my cover required me to look like I was doing my job as a bodyguard, and partly it was because Brennan was a mystery. Some combination of his dark good looks, drool-worthy body, impossible knowledge of my home, and towering brilliance had allowed him to get under my skin. I'd been sent to stop him from weaponizing his new generator—which I was going to do—but before I left I also wanted to know for myself which version of Brennan was the real one.

Keeping such a close eye on him meant that I noticed things that the regular workers didn't. Brennan kept a smile on his face during each interaction with the people around him, but I could see that he was growing restless.

When he'd sent Jax away the day before to go help Tyrell supervise the cleanup, he'd implied that the two of them could get the foundry back up and running without him, but that was only half true.

The work of replacing overheated pipes and electrical wiring wasn't rocket science, but none of the workers really understood how all of the pieces fit together. Just because someone was capable of welding two lengths of pipe together didn't mean that they understood the complex weave of pipes required to cool the scorching temperatures involved in melting steel.

Singly, each and every task involved in the rebuild was only barely more than trivial, but keeping all of the pieces moving smoothly forward took something very close to genius. Tyrell was obviously competent. He was directing his team with a skill that I never could have hoped to equal, but he was still missing something—some spark of genius that Brennan possessed.

Some guys would have lorded their intelligence over the rest of us. Knowing that you were the smartest person in any given room was the kind of thing that could inflate a person's ego, but that didn't seem to be the case with Brennan.

He appreciated each and every person working at his side. He seemed to understand that they were absolutely indispensable in a world without computers to monitor and control processes, but that didn't stop him from resenting the fact that he had to be down there supervising the cleanup efforts.

For the rest of us, the foundry—including the systems that delivered electricity into the smelter, and the pipes that kept the ambient temperature down to where humans could stand to be inside the cavern—was straining the edge of what we could comprehend. Getting the foundry back up and running was a worthwhile endeavor for us, but for Brennan it was nothing more than an unfortunate means to an end.

Brennan didn't want to be the power-generation czar inside the city any more than he wanted to be the steel-pouring savant who was slowly reclaiming all of the useless steel inside of the battered skyscrapers that towered over us. When you got right down to it, Brennan probably didn't even want to be the man who was going to wage a war against the Society.

Those things were all peripheral. They were nothing more than a means to an end. Brennan wanted to be the man to discover a new energy source—he was just going to have to rediscover all of the foundational technologies that had been lost in order to reach his real goal.

He kept a smile on his face and remained polite to everyone he interacted with, but by the time we all broke for lunch, I could see it pulling at him. He wanted to be away from the foundry, wanted to be working on his generator.

Brennan waved Tyrell over as everyone trickled out of the man-made cavern where the foundry equipment was located.

"I need to get away and clear my head. I'll swing back by the guard post and grab a replacement for Jax so that he can come back here after lunch and help supervise things."

Tyrell sighed. "Okay, but you're going to have to spend most of the day here tomorrow if we're going to keep things moving along."

Jax wasn't quite as resigned to the plan, but he looked around to confirm that we were alone before voicing his frustrations. "Brennan, I scheduled myself and Alan during this shift for a reason. If we're going to be down to two guards, then it only makes sense to make sure that we've got two of our best."

Brennan rubbed his temples. "Fortunately, even once you are back here helping Tyrell, I'll still have two of your finest people with me. I know you don't like it, but it's not like I'm leaving the compound. The workshop level is the most secure location anywhere inside the city. If I'm not safe there with three guards, then we've got much bigger problems than any of us are willing to entertain."

Alan and I exchanged embarrassed looks as Brennan turned on his heel and walked away, leaving the rest of us to follow along behind him. Jax only let him get a few steps away before breaking into a run to catch up. The two of them exchanged words—too quiet for me to make out—and then Jax took the point position, leaving Alan to take rearguard and me to walk alongside Brennan.

Making our way out of the bore and picking up a new guard to relieve Jax took only a few minutes, and then Brennan headed off to the secondary entrance that led down to the secure living quarters and the headquarters level. We passed a pair of Jax's handpicked guards just inside of the doorway, and then another set as we went past the headquarters level.

My stomach was growling that breakfast was nothing more than a distant memory, but I was too nervous to pay it much notice. I was finally going to see the workshop area where Brennan was working on his generator.

Once we hit the housing area, we crossed the entire length of the building before Brennan finally stopped in front of a nondescript door. He fished out his master key, and slowly opened the door—apparently so as not to spook the two guards stationed just inside of the room.

Brennan turned to Alan and the other guy and pointed to a pair of chairs against the wall. "The two of you aren't off duty, but you might as well take a load off—I'll be at least an hour or two."

Alan flinched. We all knew Jax was going to be furious when he heard that Brennan had taken me into the workshop rather than one of the 'trustworthy' guards, but Brennan didn't seem to care. He simply walked over to the large, vault-like door set into the outside wall and entered a combination—screening the dial he was turning with his body.

The master key from around his neck completed the unlocking process, and then the vault door was swinging open and Brennan was waving for me to follow him down the dimly-lit stairs that had just been revealed.

My attention split between watching Brennan and keeping track of my surroundings, I misjudged one of the steps and stumbled, but Brennan caught me with surprising ease.

"I'm sorry about that. We wired this level up before we had the secondary generation facility up and running. Getting more lighting in the stairway has been on my to-do list for months now, but there's always a dozen other things that are higher up."

I struggled for a moment with what to say—not because I was worried about blowing my cover, but because I'd never had a guy wrap his arms around my waist like that before. It was all innocent—nothing more than him trying to save me from a broken leg—but that didn't change the fact that I had industrial-sized butterflies rampaging around inside my midsection.

He was all hard planes—that were somehow still noticeable through the heavy material of my vest—and he was surprisingly warm. Back home I'd never had time to let anyone pursue me, but I'd still thought about it sometimes. In my imagination the first encounter never took place in a dim stairway dozens of feet underground, and the male lead had always been played by someone wearing some kind of cologne, and a dark suit.