These cyborg implants were far more advanced than anything we’d seen. Dangerous.Alien.
And they had either failed or been used to commit murder.
I exhaled slowly. “Jenkins, did the ME mention anything about Coalition implants?”
The detective crouched beside me as I pulled a pen from my pocket, used the pointy end to lift what looked like a wire from his flesh. It was thin, silver in color, and no thicker than a human hair. His frown deepened when he caught sight of the circuitry embedded in scorched flesh.
“Not a damn word,” he said. “Hell, I didn’t even notice that before.” Jenkins was a couple years older than me, had more years on homicide. He was one of the few people alive that I trusted.
“They’re everywhere.” I studied the burns spreading across the victim’s arms and tugged at the t-shirt to expose his shoulders, his neck. Fuck me. The marks ran down his spine, disappeared under his pants. I’d bet when they stripped him, the marks would run all the way to his feet. Head to toe. This wasn’t localized. It was systemic. A full-body mod malfunction.
“If I had to guess,” I murmured, “I’d say he didn’t just have an implant. He waswiredwith something. Something that didn’t just fail—it turned on him.” Wires, circuits—delicate, alien things that didn’t belong in a human body. Things that killed.
Jenkins dragged a hand over his dark blond beard, blue eyes cold as steel. “You think it fried him from the inside out?”
I nodded. “Looks that way.”
“God damn fucking alien motherfuckers.” Jenkins spoke quietly so only I would hear. “What the hell is this stuff doing in one of ours?”
One of ours. A human. As far as Jenkins was concerned, we were fighting a war the public was not aware of. There were only two sides. Us… andthem.
We’d lost more than one battle already. Events covered up and lied about by the wonderful FBI. Not that they would ever admit it to the public. God fucking forbid humanity realized contact with the Coalition Fleet wasn’t just about sacrificing soldiers and brides to their war. It was also about black-market criminals exploiting our world, taking advantage of Earth’s limited knowledge and primitive technology. Even worse, the oh-so-benevolent Coalition of Planets refused to give humans any of their advanced tech. It was used against us every day, and we had no way to defend ourselves without breaking the agreement and being left to fend for ourselves. Which, according to our new overlords, would lead to the Hive—if they even fucking existed at all—taking over our planet.
I didn’t insult Jenkins with a half-assed response. I didn’t have an answer. Not yet. The sick feeling twisting in my gut told me we weren’t just looking at an illegal mod job gone wrong. This was something bigger and far more complex than anything we’d seen before.
The burns told the story of massive failure. Of heat and electricity surging out of control, consuming the man’s flesh as if it had tried to devour him.
I reached for the other arm, my gloved fingers tracing the edges of the burns. The pattern was the same. Precise. Perfect.
Too perfect.
Then I saw the floor.
I pushed to my feet, my boots scuffing against the concrete as I took a step back. Scorch marks bled outward in a circle, faint but unmistakable marks of complex circuits.
“Ethan. Over here.” Jenkins’s voice was tighter now. He had moved away to stand near the wall, his flashlight trained on something just beyond the body.
“What is it?” I asked, joining him.
He pointed. “That.”
The beam of light cut through the gloom, illuminating the floor. At first, it was just another scorch pattern. But as I looked closer, the shape resolved into something more.
A circuit burnedintothe concrete.
Not just a mark. A scar.
I crouched again, my gloved fingertips tracing the edges. The lines weren’t just charred—they were fused. Like something heavy had sunk into the floor before burning away. Or being poofed away by one of the aliens’ transporters.
Jenkins exhaled sharply. “Forensics said it was just a burn. But it’s cutintothe concrete.” He hesitated. “Like somethingwas here—and then disappeared.”
“Or burned away.” A chill worked its way down my spine.
“What the hell are we looking at?” Jenkins murmured. “You ever seen anything like this before?”
“No.” I’d heard rumors. Horror stories shared between like-minded law enforcement officers—and a handful of spooks—late at night, after there was probably more whiskey circulating in our veins than blood.
Coalition technology for sale. Black market body modifications. Turning humans into cyborgs. Enhancements that allowed a once fragile human being to take a round of bullets and keep coming. The modified humans didn’t need much sleep. They were faster than we were. Stronger, too. Like keeping the peace and fighting bad guys wasn’t fucking hard enough when the criminals were of the everyday, human variety. Now we had this to deal with.
