Sami nodded. “Yeah, but I hooked up with a group that used, ah, unlawful methods to take down sex traders and pedophiles, so I don’t think the law really wanted us until Scorpius hit.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jax snapped.
She winced. “Seriously? You, Raze, and Tace are all former military, Lynne worked for the CDC, and Vinnie worked for the FBI. The FBI wanted me, damn it. I couldn’t tell all of you guys that I was a criminal and not a good government person like you all were.”
“That’s why you pretended to be LAPD,” Lynne said softly.
“Yeah. I wanted to belong here, and that did it.” It was the first time in her life she’d felt complete and like she was doing something good that other people couldn’t do. She was special, and she worked hard. Very hard.
“Did you take down the Internet when Scorpius got bad?” Tace drawled.
She sucked in air. “No, but I was with the guy who did. I tried to stop him, failing, by the way. Soldiers showed up and there was a firefight.”
Lynne gasped. “You saw the Brigade?”
Sami shrugged. “Spiral thought they were the Brigade, but they were just soldiers from the Bunker, who brought me to Los Angeles and the Bunker there.” The Brigade was the country’s first line of defense when Scorpius had taken over, but Sami wondered if they really existed any longer.
Jax sat forward. “There are more Bunkers?”
“Yeah.” She drummed her fingers on the table, her nerves short-circuiting. “The Bunker is actually a series of underground facilities spread across the country, all with resources and unique purposes.”
Lynne gasped. “How many are there?”
Sami shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. Based on the infrastructure and data I worked on, I’d say about ten, but I could be off a couple in either direction.” Even though everyone was angry at her, the relief she felt in telling the truth made her constant jaw ache stop. Finally.
Jax shook his head. “You said LA. The Bunker is in Los Angeles?”
“Yes. It’s located beneath the Maritime Plaza building in Century City,” she said, forcing herself to face them all. Her legs itched with the need to run hard and fast.
Lynne’s jaw dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. There are several floors beneath the lobby, all cement, and all owned secretly by the government,” she said. “None of the businesses in the building had any clue about the Bunker.”
“Unbelievable,” Tace muttered. “The entire time it has been right here, and you haven’t said a word.”
“Why is that?” Vinnie asked almost gently.
Sami focused on the ex-profiler. “I escaped the Bunker and I don’t want to go back. Ever.”
“Escaped?” Raze asked. “You had safety from Scorpius underground, and you escaped that?”
“Yes. My family became infected, and I wanted to go home to be with them, and we were on lockdown. At that point, we already knew about the vitamin B concoction, so I’d been taking supplements, which helped when I contracted the disease after I’d escaped.” She’d arrived home to find most of her family already gone, but her sister had hung on—for a short while.
“Why didn’t you go back afterward?” Lynne asked.
“I didn’t want to go back at that point,” Sami said, her voice quavering. She cleared her throat. “The Bunker became hell, I’m telling you. All of a sudden we went from a computer center to an experimentation hellhole. It was horrible.”
“Experimentation?” Tace asked.
“Yes. The computer center was just part of the underground bunker, and there was a whole other side I was unaware of until right before I left. It was a myriad of cells and genetic labs that was largely unused until Scorpius. Then it became a place to not only create and store the vitamin B concoction but a place to conduct experiments on survivors—cruel ones.”
Jax reared back. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” she whispered. “So a couple of us figured out how to override the system—it was still on its own generators—and open all the cell doors. Then we ran. I’ve probably committed treason at the very least.”
“Again,” Tace muttered.
She shivered from his furious tone. “Huh?”
