“Nice,” she said with a smile on her face. “I feel betteralready.”
The storage company was located within New Seattle’s city limits, the rows of buildings rising five stories high to maximize space. Robots glided through the buildings, accessing various sized storage containers and rooms to retrieve items requested by their owners. Access was open to those who owned storage space, but most people opted for automated retrieval anddelivery.
The MDF paid a premium price for a ground-floor storage room big enough to house a military-grade, armored SUV and boxed-up weapons and gear. This was a drop-spot accessible to MDF agents in trouble in the field. Similar ones were scattered in major cities across the nation and in just as many foreigncountries.
The three stepped inside to get out of view of the security cameras. Trevor and Madison started flipping open cases, sorting through what weapons were available, and began to load up the SUV. Sean opened a crate and pulled out a few articles of civilian clothes vacuum-packed in plastic. Changing out of his blood-stained suit into jeans and a plain T-shirt meant he would no longer stand out in a crowd. Kicking off his dress shoes, Sean laced up a pair of sturdyboots.
They’d needed Trevor to hail an automatic cab to get them out here since his and Madison’s bioware was burned out. This airport was outside New Seattle’s dense city center, and the ride felt too long to Sean. The mental timer counting down in the back of his mind left Sean jittery in a way he hadn’t felt since enduring his probationary year withtheCIA.
Madison came around the SUV and handed him a Beretta M90 tactical pistol and holster. “Figured you wouldn’t want to meet your family with a long guninhand.”
Sean grimaced at the thought, but took the gun regardless, holstering it to his belt. “You’re taking some with us,right?”
“Packed in the vehicle with a few fun ones. No explosives though, so it’s a good thing youhaveme.”
“Yeah.”
Madison gripped his shoulder, giving him a quick smile, though her brown eyes were serious. She was shorter than he was by quite a few inches and had to tilt her head back some to look him in the eye. Sean was always amazed at how much bigger Madison seemed, despite how smallshewas.
Small, but vicious, and she packed one hell of apunch.
“Let’s go get your family,”Madisonsaid.
Sean nodded in the face of her determination and got behind thewheel.
New Seattle was located forty-eight kilometers east of where Seattle once stood. In the middle of the last century, the Cascadia subduction zone erupted in a devastatingly destructive 9.8 earthquake that sent a tsunami roaring across the Pacific to crash against the shores of multiple countries. In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of I-5 was inundated by that same tsunami, as well as landslides that reshaped the mountains and buried cities and townsalike.
Mother Nature at her fiercest swallowed the region, killing tens of thousands, injuring twice that number, and leaving countless people homeless. Cities up and down the West Coast were shattered by the sea, but none were so fully lost as old Seattle. The coastline changed with that earthquake, carving out a wider bay than had been there before when Puget Sound existed as anestuary.
Seattle had twice built over the foundations of its city throughout its history, but it couldn’t build on the sea itself. So the city’s name and its history were shifted east, to land the tsunami hadn’t reached. The government rebuilt New Seattle at the base of the Cascades, within spitting distance of the sea it felt like on some days. Humanity was nothing if not stubborn, and unwilling to break, even when the earth itself moved beneaththeirfeet.
Sean’s parents still lived in the four-bedroom apartment they’d bought years ago, and which he and his brothers had grown up in. Four rambunctious boys close in age, born through a surrogacy firm because his parents were too busy with their respective careers to do much more than donate some sperm and an egg, decline to choose physical attributes, and let nature take its course through amachine.
Sean and his brothers had grown up with a rotating number of nannies to help his parents out while they settled into their careers as a surgeon and a lawyer. His parents had been hands-on with them growing up, despite the help. Sean never felt ignored or lacking in love until the day he chose the CIA over his brothers’ band and his parents’ desire to see him graduate from college. It didn’t matter that he had, eventually, graduated under a cloud of lies. Considering what was happening right now, Sean couldn’t help but wonder just how badly he misjudged his decision to join the CIA all thoseyearsago.
The apartment complex took up an entire block in a trendy residential neighborhood. High-rises weren’t as common in New Seattle, but clusters of apartments surrounding an interior courtyard were. The subterranean garage still had his scanprint on file, so even without bioware and his RealIdent chip, Sean was able to get them past the security gate. A row of parking spots for guests was located on the second level; several spots were open and Sean took the first one he cameacross.
They scrambled out of the SUV, with Sean not bothering to lock the doors. The MDF had eyes on the apartment building, according to Trevor, and so far no sign of the enemy. Considering they were trying to beat ex-Special Forces soldiers, Sean was a little uneasy about their odds. They hurried to the elevators and Sean scanned them into it, relieved to see his parents still had him on the approvedvisitor’slist.
“Base confirms your parents and brothers are in the apartment,” Trevor said, head tilted fractionally as he listened to his comms. “No one else is present, as far as they can tell through the backdoor in the securitysystem.”
Sean nodded. “That’s good,right?”
“Maybe. If Declan is going to send his people after your family on orders from the CIA, then we shouldn’t waste timemovingthem.”
“Keep your shield up, Bones. If they’re armed with neuro-jammer guns, I don’t want to get hit,”Madisonsaid.
“Don’t worry, I got uscovered.”
The elevator slowed to a halt and the doors slid open. Sean led them down a brightly lit hallway painted in a warm beige and ivory color. His parents’ apartment was on the fourteenth level, one of the larger layouts at the time when they bought it. Taking a deep breath, Sean pressed his hand to the scanner, waiting impatiently for the door to unlock and slide open. When it did, he wasted no time walkinginside.
The apartment still felt like home, even after all these years. The rugs over the hardwood floor were different, some of the furniture had been swapped out for a newer design, but the holopic displays and his mother’s prints of landscapes that no longer existed still hung on the walls. The television was on, currently projecting a baseball game into the living room, the three-dimensional holographics making it seem like a viewer was right in the field. His father and brothers were all watching the game, but they turned their heads to look at Sean and his teammates as theyarrived.
“Sean?” Zach said indisbelief.
Zach was a year older than Sean, and they used to be close when they were younger, but now Sean was lucky if he even heard from his brothers around the holidays. Zach played drums in the band and had been the driving force behind creating Atomic Grace years ago when they were all teenagers. Parker was the youngest at twenty-nine, the baby of the family and the band’s lead singer. Caleb was thirty, forever a middle brother like Sean, who played bass. They’d had to bring in Zach’s best friend to play guitar for them once Sean left the band, days before a show at a localmusicclub.
His brothers had never really forgiven him for choosing to walk away. Sean had wondered over the years if the brittle relationship he had with his family would change for the better if they knew what he really did for a living. Somehow, breaking the truth to them had never sounded so terrible in hisdreams.
