January, 2005
"This is Samuel. He'll be assisting you in your work today."
Kyle had his arms crossed over his chest, expression dead set as he stared stoically at the elderly man who had been introduced then dumped in their lab.
"I don't like him," he stated, eyes narrowing for a second before he turned to look at Corrine. "He's got funky mojo."
Corrine closed her eyes and took a deep breath, remind herself for the umpteenth time that Kyle, despite his annoying tendency to be a complete psychic mumbo-jumbo asshole at theworst moments was actually an intelligent, valued member of her staff who was indispensable to their current work.
"I apologize for Kyle," she stated simply, almost automatically as she smiled at the man, offering him her hand as she did so.
"No need," Samuel replied with his own easy smile, his eyes straying to her aide, examining him shrewdly for a moment before refocusing on Corrine. "I find his candor refreshing."
"You would probably be the only one, then," Corrine smiled before turning her attention back to the microscope in front of her.
"You've been working on the re-sequencing for X7 genetic cocktails, haven't you?" Samuel moved through the lab with ease, standing next to the video microscope she'd been using to examine the DNA strand in front of her.
"They want bat DNA in the mixture," Corrine stated, going straight into business. Samuel wasn't the first 'assistant' she'd had over the years and while she found it beneficial to be polite, it was pointless trying to make friends. Samuel was here to help fix this problem and while Corrine was sure he was a perfectly nice person the sooner he was gone, the happier she'd be. She liked order, she liked routine, and she hated problems. And the DNA strand in front of her was definitely a problem.
"We've tried nearly three hundred different species so far and not a single one has stuck. The strand keeps unraveling before a zygote can even occur."
"What other species combination have you tried?"
"See for yourself," Corrine handed him the folder, its edges worn from millions of paging throughs by both Corrine and Kyle. It contained the index of all available possible DNA combinations they'd been asked by Program directors to create.
There were days – far more numerous in the past seven weeks – that she wanted to take the folder and shove it down the throats of all the higher ups that spent their time breathing down her neck, expecting her to make rainbows out of the pisswater they handed her.
"You haven't diversified enough," Samuel noted as he flipped through the pages.
"Hey, watch it, doc," Kyle snapped defensively from the opposite side of the room. "We don't come up with the combos – we're just supposed to create them."
"What he said," Corrine agreed, turning her attention away from the screen in front of her to look over at the folder in Samuel's hands once more. "But what does diversification have to do with it?"
"The average human picks out patterns within the context of things," Samuel stated, flipping another page. "Whoever put this list together put it together by region – they picked DNA from animals who exist in similar environments."
"Adaptation," Kyle stated, showing his interest and immediately backpedaling when both Corrine and Samuel turned to look at him. "It makes sense," he continued on, defending the aides now even though he spent half the time he was in the labs calling them idiots.
"In theory," Samuel agreed readily enough. "But in practice diversification is a must. Each species genes mutate, or evolve, over time to adapt to whatever environment they exist in. Though there isn't a specific chromosome that can be targeted to combine cross-species, the chromosomal similarities have an inbreeding effect."
"They mutate," Corrine nodded her understanding, focusing her attention back on the screen, picking up on the subtle pieces of the puzzle that had clicked into place at his words.
"Redneck molecular biology," Kyle snorted, leaning back against the counter as he too studied the screen.
"Damn," Corrine muttered, feeling both elated and pissed because damn it really was that simple.
"How could they not have caught this before?" Corrine murmured. X5 and X6 weren't on the same scale as X7 was supposed to be, but still she found it somewhat difficult to believe that nobody had noticed this before.
"X5 was created using DNA from different environments so they could operate across all environments," Samuel stated. "And X6 only had a few alterations from X5."
Made sense – the most sense anything had ever made.
"Fuck," Corrine swore, tugging at the end of her pony-tail as she leaned back against the counter and glanced over at Kyle. "You know what this means."
Kyle pulled a face and for once Corrine fully agreed with him. Changing anything in genetics was hard enough on your own, but when you had to go through half a dozen committees and crackpots to do so…
"Don't worry, Dr. Bailey," Samuel smiled pleasantly enough as he spoke, heading for the nearest phone line they had to the outside world, aka the people who weren't lab techs. "I'll make a call and get this settled right away."
"Settled right away?" Kyle sounded absolutely lost which was good – Corrine's mind was already playing connect the dots and she really did not like what she was seeing.
"You do that," was all she said even as she took and uneasy step back from Samuel.
Samuel was poised to dial when an ear-splitting alarm screeched through the facility, deafening anyone and everyone. It stunned Corrine straight to the ground, tripping on her own heels and banging backwards with a loud cry that was all but a whisper in the wake of the sudden influx of too-much-fucking-noise.
"What the hell – " Corrine's volume lowered as the siren suddenly went silent. " – was that?"
Samuel ignored her, frowning as he hit a number on the phone, listening for a second before hitting another number. When that didn't work either, he hung up and turned to Bailey, all vestiges of kindly old man gone as he stared at her.
"You need to listen to me carefully, Dr. Bailey – the lives of everyone here depends on it."
Corrine didn't doubt him, not even for a flippin' second even as Kyle scoffed his disbelief.
"I'm listening."
"What's the sitrep?" Kincaid asked, striding through the hastily erected base camp with purpose.
"Facilities in lockdown," one of his aides reported. "Sirens went off at approximately 1403 and silenced approximately thirty second later."
"Any communications to the inside?"
"Not yet."
Not good.
They needed communications and they needed it now – the faster it was established, the quicker he and the rest of fucking Manticore could figure out what the hell had gotten fucked up in the Seattle facility and fix it.
"It's Shepherd," someone spoke from inside the tent, stopping Kincaid dead in his tracks as he stared at the man on the other side of the flap.
"Well I'll be damned," he muttered, before hastily adding, "Sir."
"At ease and drop the formalities, Son," Colonel Lydecker ordered in his rough rasp. "We've got a real problem we could use your help with."
"Tell me what you need."
Corrine was having a real hard time associating fact with fiction because Samuel – god, transgenics were one thing but this – Samuel was trodding into beyond science fiction territory.
"Keep this close," Samuel instructed, pulling the necklace he'd been showing her for the past three minutes from around his neck and settling it over her own. "It'll keep you safe."
"What, like with super powers or something?" Kyle inquired from where he sat on the sidelines, looking like a weird cross between freaked and nerdvana. Superhuman's were real…this was practically a dream come true for his little geekiness.
"There are others who wear it," Samuel continued on, ignoring Kyle. "They're your friends, the only people you can trust in here."
"Where are you going?" Corrine asked, letting him settle the necklace around her neck before asking her question, feeling half-frantic when he didn't immediately respond. "You can't just leave, not after telling me – "
"Quiet." Samuel's voice was even, but there was no mistaking that one word for anything but an order and Corrine was a scientist now but she was still a soldier in the United States military so she shut the hell up and listened.
Footsteps, marching footsteps too heavy to be any of the transgenics, and heading straight their way. The shit was about to hit the fucking fan.
Shepherd looked bat-shit crazy. Granted – he always looked bat-shit crazy, but today the insanity seemed to just glow like a rotten halo slung around his head.
Kyle opened his mouth to say something but a hard elbow to the gut from Corrine quickly absolved him of the desire – and the oxygen – to be his usually cocky self.
"Bitch," he managed to wheeze out, scowling when Corrine shot him a hard look, her message clear – behave.
"Samuel," Shepherd all but purred the man's name. "Or should I say Sandeman?"
"Careful, Shepherd," Samuel replied, one eyebrow arched pointedly. "The walls have ears."
"They're inconsequential," Shepherd waved off whatever cryptic message was hidden in that comment, his entire focus on Samuel. "You're the only player that matters and you belong to me now."
"I belong to no one," Samuel replied, sounding fully arrogant and slightly offended, like Shepherd had real balls to even suggest the idea.
Crazy or not Shepherd always had a knack for figuring out when he was being insulted. His smile dropped fast and Corrine's heart beat responded to more than make up for it.
"Think what you want," Shepherd replied. "But we both know the truth now."
"Truth?" Samuel laughed at that, shaking his head as he stared at Shepherd with pity,of all things. "Be grateful that you know less than that."
"I know about the Conclave." That shut Samuel up. Shepherd's smile returned, scary and crazy, but it was Samuel who Corrine edged away from, carefully tugging Kyle along with her, the boy more than eager to follow as the two of them took in Samuel's merciless expression.
"You're a fool, Shepherd, to think that you could even begin to know anything about the Conclave."
"I know more than anything," Shepherd laughed this time, running his fingers along the counter top. The two guards who had entered with him cringed at the sound and Corrine took advantage of that brief to distraction to try and arm herself.
"Put it back, Miss Bailey," Shepherd spoke with deceptive calm, his gaze shifting from Samuel to her, pleasant smile on his face. "The scapel – put it back. We wouldn't want anybody to get hurt now, would we?"
"Course not," Corrine replied faintly, holding very still while one of the guards stepped forward and relieved her of the only even remotely deadly object in the room, aside from the guards guns and Shepherd's bare hands, that was.
"Good girl," Shepherd cooed his praise with a smile of delight. "I have big plans for you, Miss Bailey – big plans."
He laughed again, so happy and pleased Corrine couldn't help but feel sick by even the idea of whatever plans Shepherd might have made involving her.
"Oh, that's nice," was all she said, collapsing back onto a stool, barely noticing Kyle's hand as it was suddenly on her shoulder, helping keep her balance as the world sort of tilted to the side.
"I want a child, Sandeman," Shepherd stated. "A special child and you're going to be the one to bring him to me."
"I would never – "
"He's already here," Shepherd replied and Samuel went quiet again. Corrine was left with the impression that this meant something to him, something big, but her mind was still stuck on Shepherd's plans for her, so she wasn't really all that focused.
"Then what do you want from me?" Samuel's tone was careful and even, giving nothing away as the two men faced off.
"Give me the necklace," Shepherd stated, holding out his hand. "I know you brought it with you and I want it – now."
Fucking shit,Corrine thought to herself, feeling the sudden heat of the necklace Samuel had just given her hanging heavy around her neck, carefully hidden beneath her blouse. The second Samuel said he didn't have it, Shepherd was going to go looking for whoever did. And there were only two other options.
The Colonel had all the rooms in all the Manticore's wired – twice. There were the public wires, the shit that was so obvious a monkey could spot it, and then there was the super secret stuff – so secret not even Manticore Brass knew about it. Hell, there was only one person who knew about them – two now, if you included Kincaid.
"What necklace?" Kincaid asked, leaning back in his seat as he stared up at Lydecker from his position in the corner.
Today of all days was the day Kincaid had picked to head off on an adventure to the Seattle facility. Lydecker wanted to ask Kincaid if there was a special reason he couldn't have waited even another couple of hours, but he was afraid he already knew the answer and he didn't want to have to kill the kid. He had plans for Manticore's newest Director – big ones he didn't want to have to fuck up in the name of OPSEC.
"It's irrelavent," Lydecker replied. "I'm more concerned about the child."
"Do we know who he's talking about?"
That was why he liked Kincaid – always asking the right questions. Unfortunately, he always asked the wrong ones at the same time.
"No," Lydecker replied succinctly and to the point.
"Do we know why he's looking for a special kid? Hell – he's got hundreds of them at his beck and call right now."
Kincaid sounded disgusted with the whole affair which was on par with how Lydecker was feeling. Shepherd had been a hostage-crisis waiting to happen – he'd been crazy when he'd gone into the service, crazy when he'd been discharged, and crazy when he'd been redeployed straight into being Manticore's pain in the ass. Hell, Lydecker usually reserved that spot for Martinez, who wasn't so much crazy as sadistic.
But Martinez wanted monsters and Shepherd just wanted power – Manticore could forgive Martinez's training methodologies but they had a short fuse when it came to power plays.
"I don't know," Lydecker replied, expression tight as he lied. Oh, he knew what Shepherd was after. He also knew Samuel wasn't going to give it to him. Shepherd was too crazy to see the resolve in the older man. Samuel had been in far worse situations, with far greater threats hanging over his head, and he'd never so much as flinched.
Shepherd was going to lose this one. It was Lydecker's job to make Shepherd was all Manticore lost.
"You don't need the necklace," Samuel replied, continuing on even as Shepherd's face curled up into a snarl. "He doesn't know what it means."
That drew Shepherd up short. "You haven't told him?"
"He has no idea," Samuel confirmed.
"Which is on par with the rest of us," Kyle muttered under his breath, poking Corrine in the side to get her attention. "Do you understand anything they're talking about?"
"Do I look like I speak crazy?" Corrine replied, her temper reaching the end of it's fuse with all the dramatic ups and downs her normally placid heartbeat had taken in the past five minutes. Goddamn – there was a reason she'd opted for a nice, cushy lab job as opposed to combat medicine. Her nerves were shot.
"This is wonderful, then," Shepherd clapped his hands, all smiles and sunshine once more as he turned back towards the door, thankfully leaving.
"Watch them," he ordered the guards cheerfully. "If any of them try anything, shoot them. Preferably in the knee caps."
"Yes, Sir," the two guards chorused, fingers hovering over the triggers of the semi-automatics as they shot the three of them their most intimidating glares.
"Well, that went well," Kyle was the first to break the silence after Shepherd left, sliding off the counter under the watchful eye of the guards and heading for one of the side freezers. "I'm hungry. Lunch, anyone?"
The call had been made and the orders had come down from above – fuck OPSEC, Manticore wanted Sandeman cleared and they wanted him cleared now.
"I can have him out in twenty," Kincaid offered, following as Lydecker headed for the main coms.
"Too late for that," Lydecker replied. "We've already got men inside."
"Who?" Kincaid asked.
"Jacobs," Lydecker answered in clipped tones.
"The Major?" Kincaid's eyebrows arched in surprise. "How the fuck –"
"He knew," Lydecker bit out. "Jacobs fucking knew this was going to happen and he already had plans in place."
"If he fucking knew then why didn't he goddamn tell somebody?" Lydecker paused to turn and look at Kincaid.
"He did."
"You wouldn't happen to know what his plans are for me, would you?" It was a shot in the dark, but Corrine was feeling real uneasy and it was only getting worse with every passing second rescue didn't come.
"You don't have to worry about that," Samuel assured her, once more the picture of benevolence and peace as he watched Kyle eat his sandwich. "He won't have a chance to execute it."
"Execute," Corrine shook her head as her stomach dipped. "Interesting choice of words."
"Relax," Samuel focused his attention on her, reaching out to lay a hand on her arm. "It's going to be alright."
Corrine normally liked taking orders – there was a chain of command to be followed, a sequential order to things that appealed to her organized scientific brain. And even though Samuel had this eerie aura of calm and authority, Corrine wasn't about to listen to a guy who believed in weird hoodoo like genetically superior natural human beings and the almighty powers of a necklace made of rock.
"Okay," was all she said, earning her a snort from Kyle and a tight smile from Samuel. What-fucking-ever – for the next ten minutes or so, Corrine was gonna just focus on enjoying the slightly stale lab air cause after that, chances were pretty good she'd be dead and deprived.
{We have a Priority Alpha personnel on site}The radio operator repeated what Lydecker had told him, contacting Ezekial Knight and his two teammates to be rerouted to the labs.
{Copy that.You want me to conduct a snatch and grab?} Was Ezekial's rough reply. Lydecker's lips twitched involuntarily at the thought – there was a reason the Committee hadn't tried that with Samuel before. Primarily because the man was almost solely responsible for all of their genetic successes so far and partially because, initially, when they'd tried, he'd killed every man sent after him.
Sandeman had been a civilian, looking to create something special. He'd attracted the attention of the military with his initial successes and only funding had moved him from the private sector into military special ops.
{Negative,Charlie.Observe and secure.Understood?} The radio operator's voice was calm despite the fact that Lydecker was hovering at his shoulder, carefully monitoring every word.
Solid kid,Lydecker thought, giving the kid an encouraging squeeze on his shoulder and nearly smiling as the kid paused in what he was doing to give Lydecker a strange look before refocusing on the coms.
{Understood.} Came Ezekial's staticy voice after a moments pause. The radio operator nodded once, more to himself than anybody.
{Good. Here are your stats…}
Kincaid hovered in the background, taking in everything with a careful eye as he struggled with the urge to grit his teeth in frustration. He'd come to Seattle specifically today to visit with the very man who was going to be disappearing the second Shepherd's little take-over was hostilely ended.
He knew what it was like to have answers right at your fingertips only to have them slip away in the space of a single breath, but there was really no way to easily compartmentalize the feelings. He was mad, plain and simple, and if Shepherd's death warrant hadn't already been signed, he would have killed the bastard himself. With his bare fucking hands, goddamnit.
Corrine wanted alcohol, or drugs, or a magical time machine that could take her back to this morning when she woke up with the urge to stay home and for once in her life do the smart thing and listen to it.
"You don't look so good," was Kyle's helpful contribution. Corrine shot him a slitty-eyed gaze. Her assistant was far too chipper about this whole hostile take-over. She'd be suspicious about his involvement, but Kyle wasn't really a team player and he knew she was the only scientist on sight who wouldn't slip something toxic and potentially embarrassing into his food. There was a reason he stowed his lunch in the lab and not the employee lounge.
"I have to go to the bathroom," she hazarded on the off chance that one or both of the guards had become completely dumb in the last ten minutes.
"There's a sink over there," the one of the left jerked his head towards the lab sinks, expression completely unsympathetic.
"We won't look, promise," the one of the right grinned and for some strange reason Corrine didn't believe him even a little bit.
"Right, then," she decided. "Guess I'll just hold it."
Jacobs was in position, Ezekial had moved into the med-bay next to the lab, and some soldier named Creed had liberated a bunch of Trainer's trapped in a Psy-Ops cell and as a bonus, killed a bunch of disloyal people and captured Shepherd.
The end was in sight, but Lydecker wasn't going to relax until Samuel was somewhere safe, off-site and away from curious eyes.
"We're moving in," he informed Kincaid tersely, strapping a gun to his thigh before letting the M16 carbine he had slung over his chest fall easily into his waiting hands.
"I'm coming with," Kincaid started, but Lydecker was already shaking his head.
"You stay and coordinate from here. I want to know the second Samuel is safe, understood?"
A dozen different emotions flashed across Kincaid's face, but it was the last one that held Lydecker's attention – frustration, which was exactly the reason Kincaid was staying behind. Lydecker had faith in the kid, but greater men than he had been killed for their curiosity. Someday Kincaid would understand it was all for the best.
"Understood, Sir," Kincaid saluted, waiting for Lydecker to return the gesture before dropping it and turning to head back inside, pausing to turn around once, expression once more unreadable. "Good luck."
"Thank you," was all Lydecker said in reply, motioning for his men to rally and follow as he headed for the nearby hummers.
"Time's up," Lefty's statement had Corrine jerking from her thoughts to blink at him in surprise.
"What are you talking about?" She asked, standing up and placing herself between the men and Kyle, some inborn instinct warning her that something bad was about to happen.
"Get out of the way, Bailey," Righty ordered, lifting his gun to point it in Kyle's general direction.
"Really, what are you doing?" Corrine's voice rose slightly in pitch as Kyle's hand was suddenly on her shoulder again and as much as she liked to think he was just being supportive, she was fairly certain he was trying to do something stupid, like push her out of the way so Tweedle Asshole and Tweedle Fuckhead could shoot him.
"Out of the way, Bailey," Lefty stated, raising the gun. "We have orders to transfer the two of you – the kid is surplus baggage. He goes."
"So you shoot him?" Corrine was running the emotional gauntlet again – from afraid to pissed to scared to enraged. God, if Lefty would just wait a second, she'd fucking throw the fifty pound, custom ordered-took-fucking-forever-to-requisite microscope at his sorry skull.
"We're not moving," Samuel interrupted Corrine's mental plotting, drawing half her attention his way, the only half focused on keeping the suddenly-dumb Kyle located behind her, for all the good it did. Shepherd had stated it was okay to shoot her in the kneecaps if she didn't cooperate and oh, look – not cooperating.
"Think again, old man," Righty lowered his weapon, obviously aiming for kneecaps as ordered, and that was when all hell broke loose.
There was gunfire, which Corrine wisely tried to duck, pulling Kyle down and rolling on top of him even as he struggled to reverse the situation, his male ego insisting he at least try. In the corner of her eye she caught two blurs of movement, one quickly racing past her field of vision, the only coming to a screeching halt.
She couldn't process what she was seeing, not at first. Dead little eyes staring at her from a child's face with the smell of blood filling the air. Dimly she recognized that the gunfire had stopped and Kyle was pushing her off of him, but it was all foggy – surreal.
"Are you okay?" Somebody asked, kneeling in front of her, blocking her view of the dead kid, and she wanted to laugh and punch him at the same time because no, she wasn't okay. She'd been a hostage for fuck knows how long, some cuckoo with a necklace had told her an apocalypse story, some other nutjob had 'plans' for her, and there was a dead kid on the floor of her lab.
"Great," she declared, taking a deep breath and letting it out before accepting the hand he'd offered and letting him pull her to her feet. "Never been better."
He let out a bark of laughter that distracted her attention to his face. He smiled at her but it was grim and without humor.
"You and me both, lady," he shook his head in disbelief, smiling more to himself than her. "You and me both."
{Priority Alpha is on his way out}
"Good," Kincaid stated even as he struggled with the urge to punch something. Years of effort, opportunity gone in an instant – God.
"I'm heading in," he stated, clapping the radioman on the shoulder as he headed for the lone remaining hummer, his men already waiting. "You know what to do."
"Yes, Sir," came the distracted reply, the radioman already fully immersed in his job.
"No chance, then?" Sergeant First Class Will Skarsten asked as he climbed into the hummer next to Kincaid.
"He's gone," Kincaid replied tightly, confirming his SIC's answer. Skar didn't disappoint him with his reply – concise, well-worded, and a perfect summation of everything he'd been feeling since he'd been roadblocked and diverted all those hours ago.
"Fuck."
A/N: Right. So Chapter 4 of Bohica…foreshadowing in a major way. I'm not kidding when I say I have this whole world inside my head and everything happens for a reason.
Kincaid, for those wondering Huh? is the Director for the Las Vegas facility. Since Las Vegas, Syracuse, and Atlanta are all original character based, I'm establishing them heavily in Toy Soldiers and Bohica so you become familiar for them and don't go into their stories completely blind.
TS is on temporary hold while I catch the other stories up. I'm planning on finishing the first chapters of Obsolete (Atlanta) and Burn & Bleed (Las Vegas) this week, so hopefully those stories will be up soon.