Chapter 27

Pov Calla

It has already been two weeks since my reunion with Linda. I haven't done much during this time, only read some books and focused on healing.

I could already move around a few days after the fight but now my combat ability has returned to satisfactory levels so I'm comfortable to meet up with Darrel.

That day, Linda stayed the night, and the night after that but then she had to leave and meet up with Brian. She tried to talk me into coming with her back to the J.A.T.F. but I vehemently argued against that. I don’t want to be another cog in their machine, not after I have been used for my skills my entire life.

After some negotiations I got Linda to back off on that subject. She said she going to see what options she has, but I don’t think the J.A.T.F. brass has much against me not coming back. Or they do, but they can’t do anything about it. I after all played by their requests from the start and I left only because they couldn’t keep me safe.

When it was their men who got compromised and turned against me in the first place, I doubt they can force me to come back. And if they really want to use force, I’ll just hide. The Rabbit Hole is good for that.

Well, no point in worrying about it now.

But still, the way that attack came out of nowhere did scare me a bit.

I must be prepared. Who knows when they send more subjects after me, it might even be a good decision to leave town for a bit. Perhaps Darrel can arrange something?

There is also one thing that has been on my mind. It's something Cop said. Or Anthony, as I now know.

I guess it wasn't okay for me to call him Cop, even though Mox did it.

He said, that to think even the government has people who belong to the Caturix, and it made him wonder if 'Uncle Sam' knows of its existence.

So who is this Sam? And whose uncle is he? I think it could be smart to start looking for him if he knows anything... A little bit of torture in the right place can work wonders for intel gathering.

Well, those matters are for later. For now, I'll meet up with Darrel, hand him the contract, and find out if Rabbit Hole has some jobs in some other town as I don't feel comfortable knowing that the Caturix knows in which city I am.

And getting some body-armor might be smart.

No matter how fast I am, if I'm fighting against people like me, dodging every shot is going to be difficult.

Subjects huh...

I almost think of them as siblings.

But it doesn't matter who the enemy is. An enemy is an enemy, and I kill my enemies.

Young, old, female or male, it doesn't matter on the battlefield if they choose to enter it.

I have read one book that told about war and the use of child soldiers and the morality of fighting against them.

Well, I think I count as a child soldier too.

Only better.

I know what morality means. Well, I know its definition, but never have I thought about it.

And I'm starting to think that the subject of morality will elude me for the rest of my life. If a child pointed a gun at me, I would shoot first.

I have shot first.

In the mission for Al-Aman in the past that was the termination job in Africa, there were child soldiers protecting the mark.

Granted, I finished the job about two kilometers away with my lovely .50cal Barrett M82, but there was still some resistance getting to the sniping spot. It didn't bother me then, and it would not bother me now.

Anyway, time to go.

I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie as I exit the building and start looking for a cab.

I really should get a new motorcycle. Driving one was one of the best moments of my life, only superseded by meeting Linda, reuniting with Linda and getting my name from Linda.

Heh...

I'm so sentimental...

....

…

After the meeting with Darrel, I’m once again sitting in a cab, heading back to the library. I handed the contract to him, though the paper was worn out and crumpled, it could still be read. When Darrel asked about the attacker, I said little.

Only that he was obviously a professional, and that I and possibly Jeff was his target. I didn’t tell him about Caturix yet, as it seems too early for that. I don’t want him to realize that the hit had nothing to do with the Rabbit Hole. If I already had all the answers about the attack, he would have realized that I was expecting an attack on some level.

I also didn’t bring up my plans to relocate out of New York. I’ll wait to hear from Linda before that.

My cab is now a block away from the library so I pay the driver and walk the rest of the way. I have been keeping my guard up ever since the attack, but I haven’t spotted anything of note.

I enter the library and head to the stairs. I can smell something foreign in the air, but can’t place it right away. It is very faint, barely noticeable and the only reason I notice it is because it has lowered the oxygen level in the air. That means it is some kind of gas and not just some scent.

I ready my pistol and start slowly making my way up the stairs.

Something is not right, and I can tell the gas is spreading from upstairs. I halt my steps and decide to play on the safe side. I don’t know what this gas is but I’m not going to stay and find out.

But just as I’m about to turn and head back out, a thought comes to mind. If this really is a trap, and the gas is here to incapacitate or to kill me, then the building would already be surrounded. I have to make my way towards the hidden exit in the monitor room.

Luckily gasses don’t affect me much. I don’t know what kind of modifications they did to my genes when I was still in my mother’s belly exactly, but I know they did something. At my old home in the wintery forest, when they tested my limits. Or should I say, the limits of their subject, as they exposed me to all kinds of stimulants, one of them being gas.

Their baseline was some poor soul they dragged there, a male, about twenty of age. They put us in the same chamber and filled it with cyclosarin. Then they watched. They watched as the man started convulsing and vomiting.

They watched as he started bleeding from his eyes and hallucinating.

And then they watched him die, just as I was starting to feel something affecting me. But no matter how long I spent there, the gas didn’t give any symptoms to me except making me feel slightly dizzy.

And that is why I’m confident I can make it to the hidden exit before anything happens.

I keep my weapon ready as I open the bookshelf and enter my quarters. I’m guessing that the gas is being pumped from the outside, into the ventilation of the building as I don’t see anything that would suggest somebody has been here.

I walk towards the hidden door while avoiding tripping over all the books that are laying around. I’m feeling a small dizziness, that confirms me that this isn’t just your normal gas-leak. That wouldn’t affect me so.

Just as I’m about to open the door to the exit, something happens.

A pulse travels through the room. I can see it destroys the computer equipment and the lighting in the room. Everything electrical is destroyed but that isn’t what worries me.

It’s how the wave affected me. First, it was a stabbing pain behind my eyes, then it felt like my brains had gone numb.

Something shut down in my head. I can still think and feel, but the ever-present presence of something isn’t there. It was the thing that calculated bullet trajectories when I was sniping, the thing that kept my inner clock accurate and my aim true.

Never did I realize there was something like that in my head before I lost it. Now that it isn’t there, I can feel its absence more accurately than its presence ever.

I have no time for this!

A quick self-evaluation to my senses tells me that I’m still combat efficient so I can escape now, and think later.

As I’m opening the hidden door to the exit, something else makes its presence more known.

It’s the gas!

It’s starting to slow me down.

As I walk the narrow corridor that travels inside the walls of the neighboring building, I feel my senses to blur.

Every step I take is shorter than the last, and I’m feeling very sleepy.

Everything is starting to go dark in my eyes, but my hearing still works, and it tells me there are people behind me.

I need a plan of action and I have very little time.

I’m probably going to get caught, but at least they want me alive, why else use a gas with a sleeping agent.

So first things first, I need to make it more obvious to Linda and the others that I have been taken. My pistol hasn’t got its suppressor on, and that works to my favor.

Finally, the strength leaves my legs and I fall down. I didn’t make it even ten meters into the secret corridor. The steps behind me are now in the same corridor as I so they should be a nice target seeing how narrow it is.

With my last strength, I turn to my back and start emptying my weapon to the approaching blurry figures. I aim at them and the back wall of the monitor room so that they cannot hide the signs of a battle just by closing the door to the secret corridor.

*BAM*BAM*BAM

The noise of the shots will persuade my neighbors to call the cops. Anthony will hear about it, and Linda will also.

*BAM*Bam*bam*

I squeeze the trigger few more times. Now my hearing is also failing. The sounds of the shots are starting to sound distant and the blurry figures that are approaching me are coming closer.

*bam*bam*

I at least got a few of them, but can’t tell for sure…

I still have…bullets…

I don’t hear the shots anymore…

Impossible to keep eyes open..

I…ust… scape……

Pov Linda

I’m sitting in the local PD’s coffee room, waiting for Anthony to finish a phone call he went to take in the other room. By the sounds of it, it was his wife who was not happy him coming to New York and staying so long.

I wonder where Brian is. I haven’t seen him in a week, but his probably chasing down some lead.

I came to an agreement with General Raven. He wasn’t happy that Calla didn’t want to come back as he sees her only as a possible asset, but after using Calla’s own arguments against the general, he didn’t start to push the matter.

Calla was right when she said to me that she did everything we asked after we took her in and that she was forced to leave in the Alpha trainer incident.

So he gave me an option, a way in which I don’t have to be disloyal to the J.A.T.F. and at the same time I don’t have to betray Calla’s trust. Calla would be seen as an independent contractor. She would work for us as an operative but had the power to turn down a contract.

Independent operators usually don’t work well with big organizations and can never be truly trusted, but this way we can still keep tabs on her while still respecting her rights. And we know Calla’s character. She isn’t likely to betray our trust as long as we don’t betray hers.

The door slams open, startling me. Anthony comes in with quick steps

“There have been reports of shots fired at the library!” He informs me to my surprise. I hurriedly get up and start heading downstairs. We jump into Anthony’s car and drive off.

At the library, there is already a few patrol cars on the street. The patrolmen are keeping bystanders away and isolating the library. One of them comes to me and Anthony, probably thinking that Anthony is a local detective.

“Neighbors reported shots fired and we were the first to arrive at the scene. According to eyewitnesses we interviewed, they saw a black van leaving in a hurry. We tried entering the building but there is some kind of gas in there so we turned back as soon as we felt the dizziness, which came almost instantly after entering.” The patrolman finishes his report.

“Shit” I curse. “We need to get a look inside. Don’t we have masks?”

“No. But they should arrive soon. We already requested it from the dispatch.”

I nervously wait for a few minutes, while Anthony tries to explain to the local detective that arrived why he should let him and me enter first, without giving him information about Calla.

It seems he succeeded and now that the masks arrived, we head to the library. The local detective also comes in with two of the patrolmen.

We enter the library and immediately head upstairs. We arrive at the monitor room and I see three bodies, one of them in the room, and two of them in a narrow corridor which I didn’t know was there.

“What the hell?” The local detective exclaims. The patrolmen are checking the rest of the building while me the local and Anthony came to the monitor room.

Anthony walks deeper into the room and looks around after heading down the corridor. I’m trying to make sense of what happened here by studying the room. I don’t see Calla here, or any blood other than those of the bodies so she should be alright.

“Calla!” I yell, not caring about the local.

“Who’s that?” The local asks but I ignore him as I yell once more.

Anthony comes back from the corridor and turns to me. “It looks like that the exit of the corridor hasn’t been opened in some time so it’s improbable that Calla got away. Taking into account the gas, the three dead men wearing gas masks and the empty pistol in the corridor that doesn’t belong to the dead men seeing they have their weapons holstered, I think Calla got taken.”

“Fuck!” I yell as I uncharacteristically punch one of the many bookshelves. “We will find her.” Anthony tries to calm me down but I know that that is a hard task.

“How did they found this place in the first place.” I mutter under my breath but I now must concentrate on finding them. And as much I hate to admit it, the local PD is the best option right now. They know the city best and can track a car through their CCTV network more easily.

But I’m not going to leave it all to them. I need to contact Brian.

Pov White

HaHAHahaa! I will succeed where the old White didn’t. And for that, I need subject 7xx. I watch with Red as our men carry it deeper into the facility. Red managed to catch it in New York and transported it here. It took four hours to transport it to here, but in this facility we are safe.

After the previous White, I’m the only one who can continue this research and I am going to perfect it. With the help of subject 7xx, I can do it. Even if it kills it, the data received experimenting on her will be invaluable.

“Now that we managed to get her alive, you owe me big time.” Red tries to get me in debt but I am not going to let that happen. That stupid troglodyte doesn’t even realize the significance of subject 7xx and how much of a miracle it is that it won against 5xy.

“If I recall correctly, it was I who gave you the plan. It was I, who told you the way to win against it without killing it.” I remind him.

“But it was I who got her location in the first place.”

“That is hardly an accomplishment."

"Oh but it is! You have no idea how difficult it was to track it!"

“I don’t have time for this. I have work to do.” I say to him while turning my back. I hear his laughter behind me. The idiot thinks he won the argument, but after my work is done, we’ll see who has the last laugh.

I decent deeper into the concrete complex that has been built under the jungles of Puerto Rico.

Time to get to work.