TKG08 WE WILL BUILD Rel 01 (15 page)

“Yes.
 
I’ve been introduced.” He replied, confused a little with her question.

Cheryl Lynn looked around then pushed her chair to slowly make her way to the door and shut it gently.
 
She turned around to regard Marcus, “You’re human, right?”

“Yes.”
 
He made his way back to his chair.
 
Even as ‘out of it’ as Marcus was for most social conversations, he could tell this wasn’t a science talk.

She pursed her lips, “How do you deal with it all?”

Sitting down, he said, “Could you clarify your question?
 
What do you mean ‘all’?”

“This,” she waved a hand around. “We are in a former military base.
 
You have capabilities I thought only the deepest CIA type groups have.
 
You just took my daughter.”
 
She paused, “My
only
daughter,” she eyed him so he understood.
 
Once he nodded his understanding she continued, “to outer-space.
 
Not only took her there, but she went safely and was ‘back in time for dinner’.
 
My own cousin is a mountain.
 
Don’t get me wrong, he was big before and I know he’s been fighting the nosfertwos for a while…”

“Nosferatu.”
 
Marcus clarified.

“Whatever,” she waved a hand, “the bad Vampires.
 
My point is that even with all of that, do you know he was perfectly willing to take on three guys to help me?
 
He called it nothing more than ‘a light scrimmage’.
 
He was more worried that Bethany Anne was going to take away his chance to beat the crap out of those men than getting shot.”
 
She paused.
 
“Did you hear me?
 
Getting SHOT!”
 
she blew out her breath.
 
“Bethany Anne’s own father looks younger than I do.
 
You are the only one who looks close to his actual age.
 
What are you, late forties, early fifties?”

Oh well, it had been going so well Marcus thought.
 
“I might be in my sixties.”

“Wow,” she said, “Good genes.”
 
She continued on, not thinking about Marcus, “And don’t get me started with Bethany Anne!
 
She is hell on wheels, smart and driven.
 
If John hadn’t talked her out of it, I’m not sure she wouldn’t have just killed those three guys that attacked me.”

“Well…”
 
She put up a hand to stop Marcus.

“I’m just venting, Marcus.”
 
She breathed in and out. “Don’t get me wrong.
 
This is all incredible, but it is incredible good.”
 
She looked over to him, “What if I’m not up to this?” Waving a hand to encompass his lab she continued, “What if I’m not good enough to be a part of the team?
 
What if I have to take my children and go back out again?”

Marcus waited for her to finish.
 
When she seemed to finally stop.
 
He answered her in the kindest tone he could manage.

“Can I tell you a story?”
 
She nodded her agreement. “When Frank found me in California, I was a washed up has-been rocket scientist who had not only been fired from NASA after 30 years of service, but I had been kicked out of Space-X, one of if not the pre-eminent commercial venture as well.
 
Why?
 
Because I held onto outrageous beliefs and spoke my thoughts out loud and too often.
 
No one in their right mind in that industry wanted me.
 
Until Bethany Anne’s group, that is.”

He looked around, smiled a little, then continued, “You know what makes this group so wonderful?”
 
She shook her head, “It’s because Bethany Anne and her team doesn’t give a … a…” He floundered.

“Shit?”
 
She offered.

He nodded, smiled his thanks and continued, “That you are the best.
 
She cares about your heart.
 
She wants to know that you are committed and will do your very best for the cause, for earth.
 
Do you care enough to make this big blue globe of ours safe?
 
Safe for your children?
 
Safe for the children of people you will never meet and possible could learn to hate?”
 
Cheryl Lynn was surprised at the question.
 
For her children, of course but he was asking her to think about those who might, one day, try to attack her children.

It was a hard question.
 
But it finally crystalized her understanding.
 
She opened her eyes to truly see what was around her.
 
The teams far away, the ships she knew about but had never seen.
 
The people she had only heard about.

These people had opted to be above politics, geography, country.
 
They believed in the future, the fight they knew deep down in their hearts was coming. They didn’t believe that the people of earth would unite in time to be capable of defending it.

They were becoming the first line of defense for groups that would hate them, revile and ridicule them.

She stood up and walked over to Marcus.
 
She put her hand out and he took it.
 
“Thank you,” she said. “Next time, the answer is yes, but explain what you are doing with my daughter first.
 
Got me?”
 

Marcus nodded his understanding then watched her leave his office.

Washington DC, USA

Barb was arching her back as she got out of her car.
 
The neighbor’s cat had peed in her garage.

Again.

She sighed and started looking for the urine.
 
She also needed to figure out how bad the cat hair infestation was.
 
She hated her allergies.
 
The cat was cute but would look at her in a ‘you are my slave’ sort of way. It was a look that dogs never manifested in her opinion.
 

After three minutes she calmly stood up and walked to her small workbench and picked up her can of disinfectant.
 
She walked back and reached under a shelf to spray it at the bag of dirt she used for her potted plants.
 
Once that was done, she calmly put the can away, got in her car and acted like she needed to get something from the store.

Actually, the store was a fine place for her to think.
 
Especially since she had spotted an electronic surveillance piece hidden in her garage.

Thanks to her next door neighbor’s cat.

She didn’t have the shakes until she had left the neighborhood.
 
She wasn’t sure if they had gotten to her car yet, but she would operate on the assumption that her house was bugged.
 
Not that bugging her house would net them much.
 
She had not dated in years due to her work load and now the most they might ‘see’ was her sleeping or watching TV.
 

She swallowed as she continued to think about what those watching her were probably doing.

    
The hunter had become the hunted and she didn’t know what to do.

She was in deep shit.

QBS Polarus, Mediterranean

“Come to me, you heartless little bitch!” Frank murmured to himself in his room.
 
He was staring at his laptop screen.

Frank had a wonderful time with Michael the previous evening.
 
Frank let his previous concerns about Michael evaporate and just enjoyed Michael as a very long-lived individual while he tried to ignore Michael’s previous reputation.

Make that very, very long-lived, actually.
 

Michael had been a little sad to understand just who was causing trouble in the east, but it didn’t surprise him.

“Yes,” he had answered Frank’s question. “I did know her mom.
 
She was exceptional in all things both in and…”
 
Then Michael suddenly looked around.
 
“Sorry, but Tabitha can have sensors anywhere.
 
That girl isn’t happy, happy unless she can hear everything.”
 

Frank looked around, “Are you sure she hasn’t bugged this room?”

Michael nodded, “Pretty sure.
 
I’ve read her mind for anything to do with this room as best as I could.
 
As of this morning, it was still fine.”

“She would eavesdrop on you?”

“Oh,” Michael shrugged, “She wouldn’t think it was eavesdropping on me, but that at some point we might have people in here that she would need to know what they are saying.
 
She would simply consider it advanced preparation.”

“You seem relaxed about that.
 
That isn’t the Michael I knew before.”

“Women seem to have a way of changing men.”

“For the better?” Frank asked, itching to write some of this down.

“Perhaps.” Michael answered, smiling like he knew what Frank wanted to do.

Shit! It was because he
did
know what Frank wanted to do.

“Hey, no reading my mind over wine!”
 
Frank laughed.
 

“Is that a rule somewhere I wasn’t aware of?”
 

“No,” Frank took a sip, “but it should be.”

“If it helps, I didn’t read your mind.
 
I just know you enough to realize that when you looked around, you wanted your little writing books.”
 
Michael reached back behind him in the study and grabbed a small notepad and pen. “Here,” he handed the two to Frank, “feel free to jot some notes.”

And just like that, Frank was interviewing a thousand-year-old vampire over wine.

He left a few hours later, a smiling Tabitha patting him on the chest and telling him to ‘remember her offer’ as she went inside.
 
He shook Michael’s hand and went back to the ship for some sleep and then more research.

Which is where he was now, pulling together the puzzle pieces on Kamiko Kana.
 
What a sad disgrace of talent she was.

Frank had read enough reports that what was ‘between the lines’ was just about as informative as what the report actually said.
 
This was one savvy woman who had been working behind the scenes to acquire power for a long time.
 
After his talk with Michael, Frank could understand she had a grudge. She believed that Michael was, effectively, the one who killed her Mom.
 
Since her Mom had been involved with the serum, she had been at the labs when the bombs went off. There had been no chance for her Mom to survive.

Then, it got tricky.
 
She had made a few trips that he could track to China.
 
That made her his prime suspect behind the Chinese efforts to hack Bethany Anne’s, formerly Michael’s, companies.
 
She could either walk the Etheric or could swing into the myst form that Michael had spoken to him about.
 
That certainly meant advanced Etheric skills of some sort.
 
She had a large group of followers.
 
So, either she held some type of respect or she had an advanced form of charisma.
 
Either way, it was a pain to track her and would be difficult to keep her cornered somewhere.

Frank went back to the Etheric tracking satellites, but so far nothing was
 
reporting as positive hits.
 
The one time they knew she had moved, the satellites hadn’t been in place.

Well, perhaps the old fashioned method of finding someone would work.

TQB Base, Colorado - USA

Cheryl Lynn walked down the hallway and stopped in front of Patricia’s office door, pausing for a second she finally knocked. Hearing a, ‘come in’ she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her.

Patricia was looking at her as Cheryl Lynn asked, “Do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure,” Patricia waved to one of her chairs, “take a seat. What’s on your mind?”

Cheryl Lynn thought about that question for second as she settled herself in a chair. “I need to ask you something, about why you are part of all of this.” She waved her hand around.

Patricia smiled, it seemed that John’s cousin was finally
getting
it. She leaned back in her chair and made herself comfortable. “I can do that, what would you like to know?”

“I know this is something that is not supposed to be asked between women, and I apologize for doing it upfront.”
 
Cheryl Lynn squared her shoulders to forge ahead anyway, “How old are you?”

Patricia burst out laughing and had to reach over and grab a tissue to dab at a couple of the tears that were threatening to mess up her makeup after a few moments. “Of all of the questions I thought you might ask, that wasn’t in my top three.” She turned and dropped the tissue into the wastebasket, then looked back to Cheryl Lynn. “Can we say that I am at least 3 to 4 decades older than I look?” Even with the body she now had, Patricia was still a little sensitive about admitting her age. It might take her another good decade or so to get comfortable with how old she was compared with how old she looked. Patricia’s eye’s glinted with humor as she continued, “But I am curious about why that was your first question.”

She replied, “I just had an interesting conversation with Marcus. Because of that conversation I realize there is a short game and a long game going on in the group. It wasn’t until I left Marcus’s office that I realized he looked a lot younger than his actual age. However, I was so caught up with the fact that you and your husband look so young that I didn’t realize that Marcus was looking younger than his age as well. If it wasn’t so far to walk back over there I would go back and demand that he tell me his real age.” She paused for a second and nodded her head quickly, “He owes me that much for pulling that field trip trick and taking Tina into outer space.”