Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
“My father is gone. Creed is gone. How do I find out who else on that list of soldiers with mutations are gone as well?”
“How do you know Creed is gone?”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. I know.”
“Right.” Her lips hint at a smile. “Just be careful. And I’m not given information on who is sent on what missions.”
“Are there scheduled tests being done for the X2-positive soldiers?”
She quickly keys into her computer. “Yes. There are tests planned in three weeks.”
“Here?”
“Here. Yes. Where else would they be tested? It’s a top-secret program.”
She pushes to her feet. “What’s going on in your head right now? Or what do you know that I don’t?”
“I’m interested in those fifteen men,” I say. “And with my father gone, I don’t know how to get in touch with them.”
“We’ve got contact info on all of them. I’ll email the info to you to keep you from hunting. But if you get them in, I want to sit in for whatever you do with them.”
I nod. “Okay. I’ll let you know.”
I rotate and exit her office, and travel rapidly back to my own. I’m quick to find contact information for all the X2-positive soldiers but my attempt to contact them is in vain. I connect with no one. I pray my father’s mission isn’t to lure them into captivity, because that would be bad. So very bad.
No, dangerous. That’s the right word. It would be dangerous for us to confine those men.
Chapter Nine
Creed
The foul scent of dead fish flares in my nostrils, made worse by the heat radiating beneath the canvas roof that covers the displays. Appropriate, considering today may well be “dead day” for one of the fools I’m about to confront.
I walk into the Kuwait City Fish Market off Arabian Gulf Boulevard in street clothes—casual jeans, a black T-shirt, with shades covering my eyes, arriving to hushed whispers and a general awareness of an American filling the air. Not just an American, but one who looks and reads like an American soldier, and when there is one of us there are more. Which is true, but I don’t need the back-up, not on this gig.
But while many of these people might feel uncomfortable by my unexplained presence, one man—the one standing a few feet away—already feels me right to his soul. A stocky man with dark, wavy hair, and dressed in white robes, good for hiding weapons, Raj Mustafad doesn’t know me, but I know him from his pictures and his reputation.
For starters, he comes here every Friday to shop, oh, so casually. As if he’s a normal human, when he’s a monster plotting a slaughter. The piece of shit is linked to an Iranian terrorist group hellbent on the annihilation of Israel by biological attack.
Three tables of stinking fish separate me from him, which I remedy, fading into the wind and reappearing right in front of Raj, not giving a crap about witnesses. Not in Kuwait City, where people are afraid to speak their own names for fear of being stoned to death in the streets.
“Who are you?” he demands, fear trembling through him by the obvious quake of his jaw. “What are you?”
“Where are the canisters?”
“Fuck you,” he says, proving his English to be top-notch.
He rotates and starts to run. My lips curve because the truth is, being jacked up on alien DNA does have its moments and this is about to be one of them. I let him dash and go all the way to the other side of the fish market before I fade into the wind and appear in front of him. He screams like a little bitch, rotates, and starts running again. At this point, there’s laughter in the market, and Raj is doing just what I want—wearing himself out, but I’m growing impatient.
This time when he reaches the other side, I appear in front of him, grab his robes, and fling him onto the center of one of the tables of fish, the slimy bodies smashing beneath him and flopping off the table.
Somehow, he has his shit together enough to pull a gun and point it at my chest. “It won’t hurt me, but I can hurt you without ever pulling my weapon. You know that. I know you’ve heard about men like me.”
“GTECHs,” he spats. “Creatures. You’re nothing but creatures.”
“Yes,” I confirm, and in moments like this, I embrace such a name. “Yes, that’s right. Where are the canisters?”
“Help!” shouts a woman. “Help! American! American soldier!”
Which equates to a cry for help from the very soldiers who would rape and beat the woman if given the chance, and the ignorance never ceases to amaze me. The wind shifts, and I don’t have to look up to know Caleb and Julian Rain, identical twins, stand on either side of me, covering my back. And while I trust Caleb with my life, Julian is another story.