Chapter 120

 

 

Angry tears boiled behind Calla’s eyes and fell again on the detail she’d read in Alex’s file. She zipped around, her eyes blurry. Her face felt like it was burning from the consequences of the sale. Her throat felt dry clogging her voice. She couldn’t leave the nightmare. Calla raised her head and soon images began to form in front of her.

Haven shot up and kneed her. The thrust smashed her in the dressing mirror, and dropped her in a pile of glass shards.

Alex booted her in the gut. Calla couldn’t fight, her mind clouded with the knowledge that her deepest self had been exposed to the world and she couldn’t claim it back.

“Calla!”

The voice, though loud, sounded muted. It was Nash.

“Calla!”

This time Jack.

Calla rose to her feet as Nash wrestled Alex behind her and Jack took on Haven pinning them to the ground,

“No!” Calla said. “Leave them.”

Jack and Nash turned as Calla rose shoulders back, cranked her neck muscles and pulled a small piece of glass from the side of her lip. “Let them go. Let’s see how well you two cope with a real operative.”

Alex shot a fist charging for Calla. Calla froze it midair willing control over Alex’s emotions with her mind and stared her deep in the eyes. She read every pain point. From being abandoned by her mother, to being taken to foster care. Every torment at being tested on, every heart-wrenching training she endured at the NSA and even the sting of jealously and heartache from not being able to win Nash. All inopportune events Calla had been spared. For the first time in her life she thanked Nicole and Stan in her heart for giving her away. She’d been spared the same fate, or worse, that Alex and her twin had endured.

Haven lunged from behind and without turning, Calla caught her hand and pressed at her pulse nerve. There again she sensed every needle that had sank into her skin, every lie she’d told to survive boardrooms of men looking down at her instability, and every man she’d manipulated to get ahead.

With the twin’s reality circling in the neurons of her head, Calla knew a fisted fight inflicted here would cause more pain. She had to do something more powerful than beat them into submission.

She channeled her energy and flat-fisted a side cut to the back of Alex’s neck, cutting the activity of a gene the twins had been born with but could not control. A gene that to a science-hungry world manifested in the form of genius without emotion. With her bare hand, Calla had administered gene silencing and turned off a gene that had haunted the girls from birth. The gene expression would be reduced.

Alex stopped struggling and fell back on the bed.

Next, Calla turned and focused on Haven’s eyes. She felt her pain and disappointment. She hit fast and fierce at the same nerve as her twin. Haven fell on the bed beside her sister.

Jack and Nash gave her a long stare, their jaws dropping.

“They’ll be fine,” Calla said. “They’ll heal from the memories our world implanted in them. They’ll never remember any of this.”

Nash took her trembling hand in his. “What just happened?”

“A reset, if you like.” She pointed to the brown folder on the floor. “Fay Jasso studied them all their lives, even from a distance. He regretted letting them go from his care and made it his life’s mission to find a way to help them.”

“Did he?” Jack said.

She nodded. “It was my clue. He found a spot in their brains, a nerve below the base of their necks that releases a chemical that coordinates thought, emotion, behavior, movement and sensation, only it does it several degrees above the average human. Science sometimes knows it as gene silencing. That’s what turned them. As well as the life they endured in government care. It says here in his folder if that gene could be incapacitated, it would erase bad memories, and essentially set them on a path for a new healthy life.”

She sighed. “I think he may have tapped into the operatives’ greatest weakness.”

The inability to deal with a fully active brain such as one the operatives had, without nurture and love was their greatest weakness. The government and Mason Laskfell had bred monsters in them they couldn’t control.

Nash took her into his arms and she drew in his comforting scent.

Humanity was what they needed and not the power of the operative brain they hadn’t been able to control since birth.

Jay Fasso had determined right but never had the chance to intervene.

 

 

 

 

Baie Rouge, St. Martin Island

 

One week Later

5:00 a.m.

 

Nash stopped in the hallway and checked the network box Jack had sent them. He slid his bare feet along the sandstone flooring and caught a glimpse of the beach through the high windows of the expansive entryway. The crash of waves told him a storm was brewing on the Caribbean island.

He crossed his billiards room to his upstairs office and flipped on a light switch, then checked his laptop for incoming mail. He’d covered his tracks. Project Horizon had been wrong from day one.

Room 717 would now be a distant memory. He sank into his chair and pulled out his Ellipse card, only kept as a reminder to what should never be allowed to happen.

That morning, Calla had phoned Fay with intel from Stan’s MI6 connections and given him news of Alex and Haven’s new lives as promising professors at MIT, not a memory in them of their past life. They didn’t have to deal with a gene they couldn’t control. She’d also thanked him, for his study that had helped them bring down a global dark net the girls had started.

Vortigern and Lascar had disappeared without a trance, but he knew one day he would discover their true motives.

Nash tried not to think of what he’d lost in all of this.

A child.

Would his child have possessed the same gene? Nash had spent the good part of the night next to Calla awake. Could he ever keep his family safe?

He stared at the card he had once decided never to use. It was his only way to ensure Project Horizon would never resurface. Keep the card and destroy all lasting evidence of its existence, even if it meant he’d destroyed every reminder of Room 717.

Motion drew his eye and an alertness that had kept him alive for years made him turn round in a flash.

“There’s a reason Ellipse cards were issued with a unique identifying number linked to one’s DNA. I could smell your card a mile away. It wasn’t hard to find you, Nash, not as long as that Ellipse card exists.”

The voice was stern and very familiar. His superior, Cook, who’d recruited him for the K-J20 Ops stood grinning in his door. Nash’s eyes locked with a man who’d not only supervised his training, but taught him everything about the NSA. Once he was trusted, but now he had conspired with the British prime minster to demean Britain, steal her secrets with a questionable operative, Vortigern and his gang of desperate operatives. What would he do next? How much had gone on when he wasn’t looking?

“You owe your government an explanation, not to mention billions that you blew up in decades of research,” Cook said.

Nash rose slowly. “There was nothing of value in those research centers. Just data on people’s lives who didn’t know you and all other digital eyes were looking.”

“That card is government property,” Cook insisted.

Wiping the entire brain of what the NSA had on the operatives was the only way to protect his family. Nash’s chin lifted. “Sue me, if it makes me public cyber enemy number one,” Nash said and took a step toward Cook, a sureness in his stride. “What do you really want, Cook?”

“Answers.”

“What answers?”

Cold combat steel waved in his direction as Cook’s gun purposed to do the rest of the talking.

 

 

 

 

Calla dropped the book she was reading when she heard the gunshot and charged to the top floor where the blast had come from. The noise came from Nash’s work room. Calla stumbled into the room and her eyes locked with Nash.

Her skin tingled when she saw the large man behind the door waving a firearm at him. The first had been a warning shot. A second bullet sizzled from the man’s gun. Nash dodged it by caving to the floor.

Nash, unarmed, was a moving target for Cook, who shot another bullet that chipped by Nash’s bare feet.

“I told you when I recruited you that we would finish Horizon together. The twenty years I spent on it and it took you forty-eight hours to destroy!”

The man barked the words and they sank into Calla’s psyche. This had to be Cook, a name Nash had often mentioned. The man who’d recruited him into the NSA.

“Why, Shields? Why?” Cook said.

Calla’s eyes drifted from agent to agent, unable to decide whether to shield Nash or go for Cook’s gun. Cook’s eyes suddenly found Calla’s. His gaze was intent as it pierced into her. “Was it your influence?”

Calla stepped forward. “Put the gun down, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I would listen to her if I were you, Cook,” Nash reasoned.

“Is she your best defense? Get out of my way!”

Calla’s look met Nash’s, communicating she could take Cook on, but then again, he had the one thing she would not fire.

A gun.

Cook cocked the gun again. “Shields, I don’t think that was necessary. We spent years putting the research together. I could have you court marshaled for this. Destroying billions of government property and research. You may not care much for your career, but I value mine and my reputation.”

“I guess you’ll have to,” Nash said.

“You’ve destroyed decades of work. In the mid-1990s, the CIA discovered the existence of official paranormal activity and this was then documented by the NSA. I think that’s what you called operatives in your report and this was the result of the research conducted by the U.S. government—at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the Navy, and other organizations. You’ve destroyed all the intelligence we have … why?”

“The world doesn’t need this information. Think of it, this whole thing put you and your own child in danger,” Nash said.

“That’s not your call. Classified documents from the Horizon program included several references to meetings attended by representatives from the NSA, who were interested in paranormal intelligence and collection on anything to do with psychic powers.”

“I’m sure they collected a lot of interesting literature.” He glanced at Calla. “But there’s more for you to find.”

“I believe it’s you that needs to be court marshaled, Cook. You claim to have been concerned about technologies getting into the wrong hands, but my notebook says you funded forty percent of the digital auctions. Why? I wonder. You sold the very technology you wanted to keep safe for America. You sold the list to Talon and double-crossed your own government. You see, from where I’m looking, there’s only one crook here.”

Calla smirked.

Cook moved toward Nash, anger crossing his face. He raised the gun and pointed it at Calla. He moved steadily toward her. “Show me that as head of ISTF you won’t listen to a cybercriminal talk. Your license to eliminate cyber criminals covers you.” He placed the gun in her trembling hand. “Go ahead and pull the trigger.”

Cook reached for another gun from his coat. “Or, I’ll pull the trigger on you.”

Calla’s heart raced as Cook secured the cold steel in her hands and aimed them at Nash. Soon his other gun dug in her temple.

Nash’s eyes narrowed. Calla knew that nothing scared Nash, but a gun to her head was more than he could take.

“No—” Nash began.

Calla slowly raised her hand to meet Cook’s grip over the gun. He remained focused his eyes darting between her and Nash.

In a quiet confident voice, she said. “I have a better suggestion,” Calla said. “Give the gun to Nash. You know he never misses. I might.”

A puzzled look crossed Nash’s face and he almost began to protest. In one abrupt movement, she turned and met the muzzle of his gun to her face. “Give him the gun.”

Cook shrugged. “Have it your way. Either way I want no record of anyone who knows my business.”

Cook tossed the gun from her hand to Nash’s feet and he picked it up reluctantly. His gun then mined deeper in Calla’s temple. He had his target in sight and would control Nash’s will by haggling her life.

 

 

 

 

Nash’s eyes blurred at what he was about to do, but Calla’s gaze gave him confidence. His pulse raced under his skin. Perhaps he could miss on purpose.

He had seconds to decide. Either he fired or Cook would take that pleasure before he could take him out. Why would Calla ask him to do this?

Now!” Cook roared “Or I’ll do it myself.”

Nash took a deep breath. He raised the fire arm trembling in his grip. He shut one eye and launched a round.

 

 

 

 

The shot reverberated.

Nash opened one eye. Where was Calla? Had he hit her. Dread swirled in him. He should have missed. He blinked twice quickly scanning the room unbale to locate Calla or her fallen body.

Cook stared blank at him, stiff as a bone. Calla slowly appeared from behind Cook, her hand on his weapon, point blank. The all-knowing eye of the gun pointed to the back of his head. He was defenseless.

She’d done it.

She’d not dodged the bullet.

Better.

She’d used her brain to calculate its speed and moved faster than it ever could. That nerve in her brain was something. A perfect decoy.

While all eyes focused on Nash’s shot and the bullet, Calla was working on her speed to not only race past his ammunition but secure Cook’s gun. Pride swelled in Nash’s insides as he rose from the floor, took the gun from Calla’s hand. “I told you to listen to her. Next time it may do you good.”

Cook’s eyes took on a dumbfounded glare.

 

Seven hours later, a government car pulled up at the house. David Masher and a team of agents made their way through their entryway. Nash greeted them at the door. “Nash, we came as soon as we could get a flight.”

The agents led Cook to their waiting car and Masher turned back and advanced toward him. “I’m sorry for everything you had to go through. It took us several months to pile up what we had on Cook. I’ll take it from here. It’s the least I can do.”

Nash gave Masher an assuring nod as his men took Cook away. Calla strode into in the front room.

“Miss Calla Cress? You’re legendary. I hear they like to call you the Decrypter.” Masher turned to Nash. “I can see why you’d give up everything, son.”

Masher reached out to shake Calla’s hand, took it gracefully and kissed it. “Nothing does you justice ma’am, no photo, no compliment I’ve heard.” He pat Nash on his shoulder. “My promise is this place will be wiped off all grids and networks. Cook followed your Ellipse card ID. That’s how he found you but will make sure no one else does.”

Nash handed him the card. “I don’t want to see this again. It now is in the hands of the most powerful man in the NSA. Be good to it.”

“Destroy it yourself,” Masher said.

“No, I want you to do it for me. Please.”

Masher nodded. “Come see us soon.”

“No. Not for a while,” nash said.

“I understand,” Masher nodded. “We owe you that much. A vacation.” He turned to Calla. “Take care of him. He’s a son to me.”

Calla settled under Nash’s arm as they watched the car pulled off the property.

“Does it stop, Nash?” she said.

“I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t. But—” He glared in her eyes. “Does it matter as long as it’s me and you against the world?”

She shook her head and kissed the side of his lips. “Does it scare you that our child is still out there. Possibly in someone’s lab?”

“It does, Calla. It really does.”

“Don’t ever do that again to me, soldier.”

“What?”

“Make me grieve you.”

His eyelids sagged showing pain. “I won’t, Calla. I really thought I’d lost you too. Can you forgive me? When I created the list, I didn’t know you. I was new to the NSA and didn’t know what it could lead to. I wanted to come to the bottom of something that had puzzled me for a year, really. When I joined the NSA, much was happening in the world of science and tech and innovation. The government felt they had to be a step ahead of everything. That’s why they hired me. I didn’t know it would lead to this.”

She lifted her finely arched brows. “Nash, you never have to apologize for loving me. It’s the best thing you’ve ever taught me. Without it, I may have easily ended up like Alex and Haven.”

 

 

 

 

Maui Island, Hawaii

 

Three Weeks Later

 

Scorpion Tide, a yacht with power in its cruise, had toured Hawaii for ten days. They would then move on to the Providenciales –Turks and Caicos Islands. The honeymoon he’d never given her. Nash had hired a captain and five crew members to man the beast.

“It’s a wedding present,” Stan had echoed when Nash and Jack returned the yacht after Malta.

Calla lay sunbathing on the deck. Her slim legs, olive and toned glistened in the sun’s rays. She was beautiful. Perhaps more now, if it was at all possible. Her ebony locks were pulled back under a large sun hat. It was great to see her relax without the looming weight of knowing her unborn child had been the world’s most wanted scientific development.

Nash smiled to himself and moved passed the terrace to the bar and grabbed a cool drink. A honeymoon was what she deserved. A quiet one. He strolled into the observation cabin and gave the captain his instructions for their next destination.

His cellphone buzzed and he set the phone to his ear as he strolled back into the sun.

“Shields, my friend.”

“Salib?”

“I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you for a long time. But there’s something I want to discuss with you.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t truly open with you, my friend. I have something I believe belongs to you.”

“What?”

“Something I won and bought at auction to protect you. You protect others and it’s time we returned a favor. For your loyalty, friendship and self sacrifice.”

Nash sank into the terrace deck chair. “What is it?”

“I actually don’t know exactly, but I believe you may.”

“You’re one of the twelve Blackhorse Commanders?” Nash said.

“My whole bloodline has been,” Salib replied.

Nash drew in a breath. “When my win was delivered, it made sense. A DNA sample worth fifteen billion, believed to have military use. You can do much better with it than I can. When I slotted the drive into the computer, the instructions revealed that the sample genes could be used for reproductive cloning. The instructions went on to say some of the human enhancements included genetically improved sight, sense, speed and strength extracted from a very powerful operative. As you know, we didn’t know what we auctioned for until the items were delivered. That’s what made the game so enticing. I’ve made arrangements for the DNA capsule container with the gene samples to be delivered to the vault in your private bank in Zurich. I trust the details are still the same?”

Nash didn’t know what to say.

Salib continued. “It’s the least I can do for the man who saved my entire family more than once.”

“How did you know, Salib?”

“She’s one of us, Nash. Her seal, which I saw on her ankle. A photo was attached to the file. She’s your girl, Nash. And like you protected my family. I protect yours.”

A combination of emotions swirled within his soul. Least of all, a weight lifted from his conscious. “I don’t know what to say—”

“Take it, Nash. You know I never take no for an answer. In any case, it’s already too late. It’s on its way to you.”