“I don’t think so.” Caro’s voice gained strength. “Slow down. I’m getting out of the car now.”
“Not at this speed. I want to know who’s messing with you, and why.”
She sat there, too exhausted to protest. Astonished, too. She’d been mooning helplessly at this guy nonstop since the moment he’d entered her field of vision, but she’d realized in a sudden, spine-tingling rush, that she’d never really seen him at all.
Not until now.
*
“Escaped?” Mark snarled into the phone. “How in the fuck did she do that?”
Carrerra hemmed and hawed. “I sent in my three best operatives. But the guy with her had serious combat skills. He took them by surprise.”
“But you didn’t go.”
“No.”
“Three trained, armed professionals, and she got away. Again.” Mark’s AVP was starting its nasty buzzing drum roll inside him. “Where are you now?”
“The hospital,” Carrerra admitted. “Two of my team have broken knees. Ripped ligaments. All three have broken jaws. They’re being checked for brain bleed—”
“As if I gave a shit. As if they had any brains. Why aren’t you out looking for her right now?”
“I’m about to—”
“To leave the fucking hospital? Good move.” Mark bit the words out with lethal softness. “Do it. This minute. Find Caroline Bishop.”
“I’m on it.”
“Don’t fuck up a second time.” Mark slid the phone into his pocket.
It took a few minutes of concentrating just to drag his raging AVP under control and remember what he was doing. Product testing.
He’d found the perfect place for it. The abandoned gravel pit off the highway was protected on three sides like an amphitheater. No people for miles around. He’d checked for thermals, listened with his augmented hearing for approaching cars. He was eager to get to Seattle and collect Caroline, but he had to be realistic. When he activated the rest of the slave soldiers, they would outnumber him twelve hundred to one.
He had to develop his control technique very quickly.
Marc wrenched open the nailed crate and lifted out the multi-mode slave soldier control unit. Lydia Bachmann had babbled on about the amazing new special weapons back when she was still hoping that she might survive the encounter.
Hadn’t taken long for her to realize that she was so fucking finished.
The equipment wasn’t elegant in its design. Just a large, clunky helmet. The freq wad was inserted into a larger amplifying console. Commands synched wirelessly with implants inside the slave soldier’s brains and could be sent to multiple subjects at once.
Plus, there were many modes. Verbal commands relied on the slave soldiers’ programming and brain stim, but wireless commands from the console went straight to their cerebral implants. There was also an FMC mod, fine motor control, that gave the controller complete command over the slave soldier’s nervous system, but that required more equipment and was more complicated to learn. Later for that. There would be time.
He wanted to play with the quick and dirty toys right now.
He looked out the back of the parked truck. Brenner was out in the gravel pit, setting up two extremely realistic dummies that Mark had found in Kitteridge’s vault. They even had fake blood pumping through surgical tubes and artfully simulated soft tissue and organs. A young woman dummy, and a child dummy, a girl about the size of a five-year-old. The little girl dummy held a doll, a detail which he found perversely kinky. Those Obsidian pricks thought they were so fucking cute.
Brenner had finished getting them in place. Now he just stood, staring at them. There was a sickly gray green pulsing in his sig around the level of his liver. Dread.
Mark’s anger flared. Sloppy design. Brenner should have no emotions aside from an eager desire to serve his controller. Mark had to burn those feelings out of him.
There would be plenty of opportunities for that coming up real soon.
Mark approached him, savoring the moment. He could have used the pain setting on the freq wand from a distance, but it was more fun up close.
A long, hard zap broke the pattern of colors in the slave soldier’s sig into a muddle of disoriented agony. Better. Softening him up.
Mark gave Brenner a moment to recover as he looked over the settings on the amplifier. The one he was most intrigued with was the last option. TOT. DES.
Total destruction. At his fingertips. He liked it. Felt right.
Mark pointed at the female dummy. “First target,” he said. “Go.”
He pointed the console at Brenner, and pushed the TOT. DES. button.
The effect was immediate and violent. Brenner threw back his head and roared like a wounded bear. He leaped at the female dummy, knocked it to the ground, and proceeded to rip its limbs off. Then its head. Realistic high-pressure blood spurted out of the breached fake arteries, drenching him.