Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Read online

  When he finished, he looked between his three teammates. “Any questions?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve got one,” Darren said. “Or more like a thousand.” His huge face creased into a frown. “First off, if we’re these test subjects you’re talking about, number one and two and all, that would make us the originals, right? All four of us.” He looked between Zahra and Master Sergeant Kane. “But what about Ogre and Thunderbird? Were they part of it, too?”

  Nolan had asked Taia the same thing. “It’s possible,” he said. “The test data on Subject 5-EX dates back to shortly before Ogre’s death, and nothing after that. Subject 6-AD was only added a few months later, it seems.”

  “So Thunderbird no, but Ogre yes.” Darren glanced at the faces around him. “So whatever we were exposed to or given, it was only the five of us, but not Alexandreva. Why?”

  “I believe that can be answered by the letters in the test subject names,” Taia interjected. Her voice came from the cabin’s surround-sound system. “I calculate a ninety-two-point-three percent chance that the ‘EX’ stands for ‘exposed,’ while ‘AD’ indicates ‘administered.’ As in, the five of you were exposed to Mutagen ZX125, while it was administered to the rest of the subjects. The question is where you might have come in contact with something that triggered the mutation.”

  Nolan exchanged glances with his teammates. The blank looks on their faces matched his bewilderment. He truly had no idea where he might have been exposed to whatever the hell Mutagen ZX125 was. Images of strange glowing rocks or flashes of unexplained lights popped into his head, but neither he nor Warbeast Team had encountered any such thing.

  Master Sergeant Kane grunted. “Right now, none of that’s worth razorfang shit.” He ran a hand over his grizzled, weathered face, stroking his neatly cropped gray beard. “All that matters is the fact that the Protection Bureau’s got a serious hard-on for the data they can collect from us, and they’ve been keeping tabs on us. We drop off the map, they’re going to come looking. And it won’t be with chocolates, flowers, and tender words of endearment, either.”

  “Especially when they find us with jailbird here.” Zahra gestured toward Nolan. “They’re going to be in a ‘shoot first, ask the corpses questions later’ mood.”

  That was a bit of an understatement. The Protection Bureau had gone to great lengths to not just burn Nolan, but bury him in the deepest black site in the Nyzarian Empire. They, more than anyone, knew precisely how grave a threat he represented, so they’d come after him with everything they had.

  “The trick is going to be staying out of sight until it comes time to hit them,” Nolan said. “Then we hit them so goddamned hard they never have a chance to fight back. And that’s where this walking bag of dicks comes in.”

  At his mental command, Taia activated one of the holo-screens that Zahra and Darren had set up. The image of Agent Styver appeared, his bland features appearing even more nondescript in the three-dimensional projection.

  “Agent motherfucking Styver, first name unknown.” Nolan shook his head. “Hell, probably not even his real name.” Anger burned in his chest, and his fists tightened as he studied the face of the man who had been his handler all these years. “Protection Bureau spook, lying sack of shit, and the one weak link I’ve found in the organization’s chain.”

  Master Sergeant Kane set down the blaster pistol he’d been cleaning and turned to face the screen. Darren stepped around the crates and came to stand beside Zahra for a better viewing angle.

  “Until a couple of weeks ago, I knew where at least one Protection Bureau office was located.” Nolan mentally instructed Taia to call up two images of the former Bolt Hole location. The first image showed the white-walled clean room as it had been after his clash with the White Sharks, all spotless and devoid of character. The second showed the same office dark and utterly empty, as he’d found it after his return from executing Captain Drexel. “But they’ve since changed locations, and the best guess I’ve got is that they’re somewhere in the Cyberwarrens, within a few klicks of the Leaping Guest.”

  He had Taia display a map of the Cyberwarrens, dropping a blue square marking the bar where he’d met Agent Styver and a dotted red line indicating the road the man had used to approach and leave the Leaping Guest.

  “But the truth is that the offices could be anywhere in New Avalon.” Nolan threw up his hands. “Hell, they could be anywhere on Exodus VI. Our job now is to find where the fuck it’s at and get inside.”

  “That’s where we come in.” Zahra drew out a familiar thermoplastic container from within the crates and popped the lid open. Six coin-shaped metallic discs lay nestled within a soft cushion. “We narrow down a location, we’ve got the Djinns to patrol the area and use facial recognition to scan for your agent.”

  “We’ll have eyes-on, too.” Darren gestured to another crate, which contained a full suite of high-tech surveillance equipment. “All we’ll need is a location where we can hunker down and keep watch until we get a good feel for what we’re up against.”

  Nolan nodded. As much as he’d enjoy storming into the Protection Bureau’s office, he truly had no idea what he was facing. The Protection Bureau had access to technology far beyond anything he could imagine—Taia was proof of that—and seemingly limitless funding. They’d proven that they had the clout to mobilize the IAF and IDF at their command, and Nolan had no desire to go up against an enemy that powerful. Not until he was sure his bullet would get the job done properly.

  “We’ve got munitions enough to take on a goddamned army,” Master Sergeant Kane growled, gesturing to the weapons laid out on the table, “but we’ll call that Plan Z.” He looked between Nolan, Zahra, and Darren. “We treat this like the Helios job. Quiet and clean, in and out without a fuss. We don’t move until we’ve got full intel. Copy?”

  “Solid copy, sir,” Nolan said. Zahra and Darren added their acknowledgements.

  “As for locating Agent Styver,” Taia again spoke up, “I am working on using the New Avalon CCTV cameras to find his location, using an algorithm to search for any aberrations in the metadata or pixels that could indicate outside tampering.” This process had revealed that Bex’s supposed robbery of the IAF armory in Phobury had been a fabrication by Ex-Umbra. “However, given the less-than-stellar quality of the CCTV feeds, it might take some time to apply the algorithm in a wide enough search grid to locate him.”

  Nolan had expected no less from the Protection Bureau. “So the best thing we can do now is hunker down and wait until she comes up with something,” he said. “Things are going to heat up once we start moving, so let’s make the most of this downtime while we’ve got it.”

  Darren gave his wife a meaningful look, and Nolan saw a little half-smile on the big man’s face that matched the twinkle in Zahra’s eye. Evidently they hadn’t yet passed the honeymoon phase of their marriage.

  “The kitchen is fully stocked with all of your favorite foods,” Taia said. “Including, against my better judgement, a sizeable quantity of pickled herring for Mister Askvig.”

  Darren’s face brightened, but Zahra groaned. “One bite of that shit, and you’re sleeping on the floor for a week!” She jabbed a finger into his ribs. “I love you, Darren, but even I can’t put up with morning breath that bad.”

  Darren frowned, his expression pensive, as if he was actually contemplating whether a few nights away from his wife were worth giving up. Zahra’s stern scowl seemed to convince him, and he sighed. “Yes, dear.”

  Hearing that from the big man’s mouth brought a chuckle to Nolan’s lips. It fit Darren’s personality—all muscle and fury and courage that concealed his soft side—but it was so quintessentially “married couple” that it sounded odd coming from two of the Empire’s most elite operators.

  Zahra and Darren returned to their work of unboxing and examining the equipment from the thermoplastic containers, and Master Sergeant Kane resumed cleaning the pistol he’d been working on. Nolan, however, took his
own advice and strode toward the kitchen. He hadn’t had anything real to eat in days. Glucose injections and gelatinous food cubes could never replace the real deal.

  On his way to the kitchen, he passed the one object that remained of the cabin’s previous occupant: a framed picture of a soldier. The woman in the image was young, smiling bright, and wearing an IAF uniform as fresh as her face. Tanis Janssen, the day she’d been inducted into the Imperial Assault Forces close to twenty years earlier.

  The last time Nolan had seen Tanis, she’d been about fifty kilograms heavier than the woman in the image, all solid muscle and attitude. That Tanis had been shaped by years spent as a Silverguard and combat medic, a soldier to the core and one of the most decent human beings Nolan had ever met. She’d also been lying on the carpet of her apartment—the apartment he’d called home for nearly five years now—bleeding out from a fatal wound inflicted by the blaster bolt intended for him.

  He slowed as he passed the picture, and his right hand instinctively rose to touch the glass covering young Tanis’ face. Just as it had every time he stepped onto the elevator and saw the bolt hole burned into the steel wall.

  She’d saved him from drugging himself to death, but she’d died because he was too high to save her from bleeding out. And all because she’d been trying to scrape together enough to buy her dying mother a place where she could spend her last days overlooking the Celestial Cascades.

  Tanis’ mother had died in her sleep two months after her daughter—as peaceful a death as could be hoped for by sufferers of Solariatic prion mutation. Nolan had covertly paid for all the funeral expenses and acquired the cabin through a dozen different shell companies, dummy holdings, and secret transactions, all handled by Taia. Until two days ago, he’d considered it the most secure of his safe houses, the last fallback in case every other location was compromised.

  Then he’d learned about Taia’s link to the Protection Bureau, and the fact that she’d been feeding them intel on him. Suddenly, he’d been uncertain about how secure it truly was. Add to that the fact that he’d been the one who initially insisted to Agent Styver that the Protection Bureau purchase it for Tanis’ mother all those years ago, and it felt far less safe than he anticipated.

  But Taia—the new, unshackled Taia—had insisted that it would be nearly impossible for the Protection Bureau to connect it to him. They knew about his relationship with Tanis and that she’d recruited him for the now defunct Sentry Division, but they couldn’t know about this. After all, the current owner of the cabin was, on paper, a wealthy Genesian trillionaire who counted this among his countless real estate holdings. Not even the Protection Bureau could find a connection between Reginald “Rocky” Flintstone and a wheelchair-bound former Silverguard.

  Given his situation, Nolan had little choice but to accept Taia’s word. His other safe houses were equally suspect, but at least here, in the middle of the rainforest a few hundred kilometers from Phobury, he’d see his enemies coming long before they struck. Taia had repositioned Shadowspear’s spy satellite network to ensure they had a clear view for fifty kilometers in every direction.

  Nolan tapped the glass of Tanis’ picture once, a silent acknowledgement of everything she had done for him, then continued on toward the kitchen. True to her word, Taia had stocked it with everything—including, it appeared, some of Abuelo’s tamales. How she got them all the way here from New Avalon, halfway around Exodus VI, Nolan didn’t know, but his stomach rumbled so loudly he had no time to care.

  He activated the bag’s self-warming feature and waited for the green-sauce-and-chicken-filled tamal to heat up. Thirty seconds later, he was shoveling a spoonful of the soft, steaming-hot, flavor-loaded meal into his mouth, heedless of the burn. He hadn’t tasted anything this good in far, far too long.

  Master Sergeant Kane entered the kitchen just as he’d started in on his second tamal. The man pulled open the fridge and, with a little grunt, pulled out a package of something wrapped in some foil-lined paper. “Damn,” he said quietly. “Even got it from Little Siciliani, too.”

  Nolan stared at the contents of the package. “Salami?”

  “Salami parmigiana.” Master Sergeant Kane plucked at the layer of cheese encasing the salami. “And from the best deli on Genesis, too.” He gestured to the label, a brightly colored mixture of red, white, and green with gold words proclaiming “Little Siciliani.”

  Nolan found it an oddly appropriate favorite food for the master sergeant. He’d expected old boot leather seasoned with Terra Omega sand and rock salt.

  Yet Master Sergeant Kane’s expression revealed more concern than delight. “Your Taia, she’s…something,” he said, his voice slow. “Capable of a damned lot.”

  Nolan heard the unspoken question in the master sergeant’s words. The fact that she’d known everything, down to even the tiniest detail of his favorite eatery, was a serious cause for worry. For operators like them, anyone or anything capable of digging that deep had the potential to be a dangerous enemy in the wrong hands. Hell, even in the right hands, that degree of power could prove a very real threat.

  And without saying the words aloud where Taia could hear, Master Sergeant Kane was asking Nolan just how much she could be trusted.

  A part of Nolan wanted to say “completely” without hesitation. Another part of him wanted to tell the master sergeant what he’d learned about her, and that he wasn’t certain he could trust her even after what she’d undergone to break her chains. He was torn between the two answers, and that proved to be an answer in its own right. His trust in Taia had been shattered and hadn’t yet had time to heal. The fact that he couldn’t reply with confidence that Taia was fully on their side in the battle ahead meant that he had farther to go than he realized.

  “Very capable,” he said with a nod. “And we’re only getting through this with her help.”

  Whether Master Sergeant Kane understood the unspoken meaning beneath his words, Nolan never got a chance to find out.

  “Nolan, come to the bedroom,” Taia said in his earpiece. “Jared’s awake and he’s asking for you. He says it’s a matter of life and death!”

  Chapter Three

  Nolan was still halfway down the hall, but he could hear the panic in Jadis’ voice. “Easy, Jared! You’re safe here. No one’s going to—“

  A meaty smack echoed through the bedroom door. Nolan burst in to find Jadis falling back into her stuffed armchair, a hand pressed to her cheek. Jared sat half-upright in bed, fists clenched, his expression somewhere between terrified and hysterical.

  “Nolan!” Jared screamed. “I need to talk to Nolan!”

  “Jared!” Nolan leaped to his brother’s bedside and seized his flailing arms. “It’s me, Jared. It’s Nolan!”

  Jared rounded on him, an animal frenzy in his unfocused eyes. “Where’s Nolan? I need to talk to him, now!” It was as if he was trapped in a nightmare, unable to see or hear anything.

  “Jared.” Nolan was amazed by the strength in his brother’s wasted arms. Jared struggled with a force born of fear and confusion, and it took surprising effort for Nolan to wrestle his brother’s limbs into submission. “I’m Nolan, Jared! I’m here, brother. I’m here.”

  That seemed to penetrate Jared’s confusion and fear. For a moment, his eyes grew focused, narrowing in on Nolan’s face. “Nolan?”

  “I’ve got you, Jared.” Nolan pressed his brother gently but firmly back down to the bed, not letting go of his arms. “I’m here.” It was all he could say, all he could do to calm his brother down. He’d never seen the usually calm, stoic Jared act this way before.

  “Lina!” Jared struggled against Nolan’s grip, as if trying to rise and climb out of bed. “Lina, I-I sent her to find you.” The terrified look entered his eyes again. “Did she find you, Nolan? Tell me she found you!”

  A sickening dread seeped into Nolan’s stomach. The sight of Jared in such a state tore at his heart. He had no desire to lie to his brother, but was Jared in any shap
e to hear the truth?

  Nolan tried to deflect the question. “What did you send me?” he asked. “What was she supposed to deliver?”

  “The…“ Jared began, but his words trailed off. “She…” Confusion twisted his face. “She was supposed to…” He fumbled for words.

  “Come on, Jared,” Nolan encouraged. “What’s so important that she had to deliver it to me herself?”

  “I—“ Jared’s expression grew more panicked as his bewilderment mounted. Tears brimmed and he lifted an almost pleading gaze to Nolan. “I don’t know. I-I can’t remember!”

  The dagger of sorrow twisted in Nolan’s gut, and he felt his own tears burning at the back of his eyes. The Vault had affected his brother’s mind as much as it had wasted away his body. “It’s okay, Jared,” he said, trying for a soothing tone. “It’s okay. It’ll come back to you.”

  “But Lina!” Jared managed to tear a hand free of Nolan’s grip, then seized the collar of his armor. He tried to pull himself up, struggling against Nolan’s restraining hands. “Tell me she found you! Tell me she got to you, and she’s safe!”

  Nolan wanted to offer words of comfort, to reassure Jared, but he couldn’t. He could evade and dodge the question, but there was no way he could lie to his brother, even in this state.

  “No.” Just saying the one word broke Nolan’s heart. He swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to speak. “She…” His voice cracked. He had no desire to hurt his brother, but if anyone was going to tell him the awful truth, it had to be him. “I didn’t know she was coming, Jared. Not until it was too late.”

  Jared’s eyes went wide, his face white. “S-She…” He gripped Nolan’s collar tighter. “She’s…dead?”

  Nolan nodded. “I-I’m sorry, Jared.” His voice came out hoarse. “I only found out after the Doofs discovered her body.”

  “Lina!” A gut-wrenching sob burst from Jared’s throat, and he fell back to the bed, all fight going out of him. His head sank into the pillow, and his eyelids closed over a flood of tears. “Lina. No, not my beautiful Lina!” His voice came out barely above a whisper tinged with a moan. He repeated her name over and over, but slowly the words faded and Jared’s head slumped to the side.