Need me there?Madison asked.
Hold position, Nova,Katie said.
Copy that.
The electrical hum of blue emergency lights echoed in the space in which they found themselves. Kyle squinted through his tactical goggles, taking in the surroundings with a hard knot in his stomach. At some point in the past it may have been a storage area; for what product, Kyle didn’t know. What it had become was nothing good.
Viper, they had a Splice lab,Kyle said.
Fucking hell,Katie growled.You’re sure it’s Splice?
Can’t be one hundred percent certain they made the chemical here, but we got bodies strapped down to gurneys. Likely scenario, at the very least, is that Splice was administered down here,Sean said.
We need proof and your helmet cams are dead.
I can head down,Trevor said,get a quick assessment of the bodies.
As the team’s medic, Trevor could better estimate a cause of death than they could. Kyle didn’t much care how these people had died, just that they were dead, and if it was by Splice, then contamination was a big issue.
Strike Force needs to clear the area,Kyle said.
As metahumans, Alpha Team was immune to Splice and its deadliness, but every Strike Force operative in the field with them tonight was human—and vulnerable to that chemical weapon.
Splice had been created during war over one hundred years ago and had evolved into a weapon used by terrorists to inflict horrific damage on civilian citizens in countries around the world. Adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention was nonexistent amongst terrorists, and Splice was one of the deadliest. It killed through rapid catastrophic cellular collapse, liquefying organs and killing a person in less than a day. Splice killed 95 percent of those who were unfortunate enough to be exposed to it. The last 5 percent were turned into metahumans, but surviving was never easy.
Kyle didn’t want his old team to suffer what he and Alexei had gone through—again. The mission in Geneva all those years ago that turned him and Alexei into metahumans was a bad memory none of them could shake. They’d lost good men and women during that betrayal, and Kyle was determined not to lose anyone tonight. But he also knew death was a risk everyone had to accept when they signed up for the military, no matter what branch they served in. Strike Force was no different.
Matthew knew the risk, but he’d still followed Alpha Team into the field without hesitation.
Base has been notified. Decontamination procedures will be initiated with our exfil, which has moved up. I’m pulling Killjoy’s team,Katie said through the mental link for everyone on Alpha Team to hear.
Kyle stepped forward, needing to canvass the space they were in. The people who had died on the gurneys were strapped down at the ankles, waist, wrist, chest, and neck. He couldn’t tell if the bruises blooming on the skin around the restraints were from their struggles or Splice ravaging their bodies. Either way, they’d died horribly.
Sean’s fingers flexed against his wrist as they tallied up the dead. Kyle didn’t offer the other man any comforting words. Sean hadn’t come to the MDF through the military; he hadn’t lived through and seen some of the nightmares Kyle had survived. The last couple of months had definitely been an adjustment period for Sean, coming from the MDF’s intelligence division, but he was finding his footing. Alpha Team as a whole was trying to make the transition as smooth as possible for him, but they couldn’t coddle him.
So Kyle kept his mouth shut and relayed the number of the dead to Katie.
Thirty-seven bodies. Probably trafficked from Mexico,he said.
Unsurprising. We—
Katie’s telepathic voice abruptly disappeared and Kyle didn’t know he was reaching for his weapon until the weight of it pulled on his arm.
Viper?
Her telepathic voice roared back through his mind with a vengeance, making Kyle wince.Retreat, now! Cruise missile incoming!
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sean exclaimed as he jumped into the air, yanking Kyle and Donovan with him.
His power was different than Annabelle’s anti-gravity power. While hers could make others weightless and float, they were still solid. Sean’s power made those he touched intangible, capable of moving with more focused intent. It still made Kyle’s body feel weird as they quickly floated toward the low ceiling.
“Hold your breath,” Sean told them.
They’d trained for several weeks with Sean and his power before Alpha Team went on a mission with him. While Sean could phase through solid objects, that didn’t mean he or anyone else he took with him couldbreathethrough them. Even phased, they still needed air, so Kyle took in a deep breath and held it in his lungs as they passed through the ceiling.
Blackness filled his vision, the absolute void that was solid earth jarring to his senses. Kyle didn’t know how long it took for Sean to phase them back to the surface, but when they did, it was into the middle of the building they’d entered earlier. Kyle took a breath and two seconds later, everything went to hell.
Stuck inside the building, they couldn’t see the cruise missile when it hit. They didn’t miss when it found its target. The explosiveboomthat ripped through the air made Kyle’s ears pop even through the protective hearing portion of his hard helmet. He heard the rumbling of the deadly explosion even if he couldn’t feel it because of Sean’s power.
