Chapter 19
GAGE
My night vision painted everything in sickly green, like I was swimming through toxic waste instead of moving through abandoned mining tunnels.
My left hand trembled against my rifle grip, worse than it had been in weeks. The biohacking always flared under stress, but tonight it felt like my body was staging its own private rebellion. I flexed my fingers, trying to force the tremor into submission.
Didn’t work.
Never did.
I kept moving anyway, each step taking me deeper into the facility and further from direct orders. Ethan was going to have my ass for this.
If I lived long enough for it to matter.
But fuck it. I wasn’t officially a member of Edge Ops. They’d found me in California after the earthquake, hiding from my former employer.
Halston Security Solutions wasn’t what the glossy recruitment brochures promised. It looked legitimate on paper—a private military contractor with government contracts, corporate security, and high-end protection details. The reality was something closer to organized crime with tactical gear.
I’d signed on after three tours in Afghanistan, lured by the promise of good money and meaningful work. Instead, I found myself doing jobs that made my military operations look like church picnics. Wetwork. Intimidation. “Asset retrieval” that was really just kidnapping with fancier terminology.
Then came Project Catalyst.
The tremor in my hand spiked at the memory, gold fractal patterns flaring beneath my skin. I paused, pressing my palm against the cold stone wall until the patterns faded.
They’d selected twelve of us. The best operators.
Most loyal. Most effective. We thought it was for some elite team, maybe presidential protection or high-value extraction.
Instead, Halston and Innovixus strapped us to tables and pumped us full of experimental nanotech designed to enhance human capabilities.
Strength. Speed. Sensory perception. Reaction time.
Nobody mentioned the side effects. The pain, like your bones were being carved from the inside out. The way your thoughts sometimes weren’t your own. The tremors that started small and got worse as the tech burrowed deeper into your neural pathways.
Six died during the initial integration phase. Another three lost their minds, becoming violent, uncontrollable. They were “decommissioned.” That’s the euphemism Halston used. Like we were equipment, not people.
Only three of us survived with our minds intact. For a while, anyway.
And then there was only me.
I pushed the memories down and focused on the mission, adjusting my path around a fallen support beam, ducking under a tangle of exposed rebar.
The tunnel narrowed, forcing me to turn sideways for a stretch before opening into what had once been a natural limestone cavern.
Dutch’s maps had been accurate so far, every turn matching my memorized route.
Static crackled in my earpiece, followed by Kate’s voice, tense with worry. “Gage, I’m tracking you. Your vitals are spiking. The tremor in your left hand is at forty-seven percent above baseline.” A pause. “You need to slow down.”
I didn’t respond, just kept moving, boots silent on the rough-hewn floor.
Kate couldn’t see what I could. Couldn’t know what I knew about Innovixus and Halston and their fucking “research.” The surveillance feeds at the cell tower had shown it all—the monitoring equipment, the medical restraints, the specific arrangement of electrode placement on subjects’ temples.
Exactly the same setup they’d used on me two years ago in that underground lab outside Minsk.
The tunnel forked ahead. I paused, orienting myself against Dutch’s map, which I’d committed to memory before the op. Left for the main facility entrance, heavily guarded. Right for the service tunnels that would take me deeper, to the medical wing. I went right.
“Talk to me. Please.” Something in Kate’s voice made me pause. It wasn’t the professional tone she normally used. It was softer, more personal. Worry, maybe fear.
I sighed, pressing my back against the cool limestone wall, giving myself thirty seconds to recover.
My heart rate was too high. It drummed against my ribs.
The metallic taste in my mouth meant the biohacking was releasing its chemical cocktail into my bloodstream, the combat enhancers Innovixus had pumped into me starting to surge.
“I’m fine.” My hand tremor intensified, little lightning bolts of pain shooting up my arm.
Not a good sign. When the pain started, the control issues usually followed.
Then the rage. Then the blackouts. I pressed my trembling palm against the rough stone, using the texture to ground myself in physical sensation.
An old trick I’d learned after escaping Innovixus. Sometimes it worked.
“You’re a fucking liar, is what you are,” Kate muttered, and I exhaled a soft laugh. Only she could get a laugh out of me in this situation.
The tunnel began to change around me. Bare rock gave way to reinforced sections.
Modern steel beams replaced old timber supports.
The air changed, too. Less dust, more of that clinical antiseptic smell that haunted my nightmares.
My boots, which had been moving across packed dirt and loose stone, now clicked softly against concrete flooring.
I killed my night vision, no longer necessary as recessed lighting began to appear overhead, casting pools of sterile white illumination at regular intervals. Security cameras nestled in ceiling corners, their red activation lights blinking steadily.
My earpiece crackled again. “Your heart rate just jumped,” Kate said.
“Keep telling me about my heart rate,” I muttered, “and I’ll rip off the bio sensors.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
She hissed in annoyance. “Okay, fine. At least tell me what you’re seeing.”
“Infrastructure,” I whispered, flattening myself against a wall as I approached an intersection. “Modern. Military-grade. Security systems. This isn’t some billionaire’s pet project. This is a black site.”
I imagined her fingers flying across her keyboard, processing what I’d told her, cross-referencing with what she knew about Innovixus operations.
“The satellite thermal imaging shows a significant power draw from that location,” she confirmed. “Way beyond what a standard mining facility would need.”
I waited as a security guard passed the intersection, moving with the relaxed gait of someone who didn’t expect trouble.
Once he’d passed, I slipped across the junction and continued deeper, following the increasing hum of generators, the soft whir of advanced equipment, and the unmistakable medical facility smell that reminded me of my own time on their tables.
Each step became harder than the last. Not physically—the biohacking made me stronger, faster, and more durable than I should be.
But mentally. Each meter forward took me closer to the source of my nightmares, to the people who had turned me into something not quite human, something with an expiration date written into my modified genes.
Bravo team would be moving into position now. I should wait, should hold position, should follow orders like the good soldier I’d once been.
Instead, I rounded another corner and found what I was looking for.
A reinforced door marked “Laboratory Section C” stood at the end of a short corridor.
Through the narrow windows embedded in the door, I could see a clinical space carved directly into the rock, with white walls and floors, computer stations, and, beyond them, beds.
Hospital beds with restraints. Medical equipment arranged with surgical precision.
Monitoring stations displaying vital signs.
And people. Test subjects in various states of conditioning. Some catatonic, some twitching with involuntary movements, some awake and terrified, straining against their restraints.
But it was the woman on the closest bed that made my blood freeze in my veins.
Beth Morris. The kindergarten teacher from Garnett’s elementary school.
The one who’d tried to harm Evelyn’s daughter with scissors, her mind not her own.
She lay strapped to a bed, electrodes attached to her temples in the distinctive triangular pattern Innovixus preferred for direct neural access.
An IV fed clear liquid into her arm. Her eyes were open but unfocused, tracking invisible movements across the ceiling.
Her lips moved in silent words, responding to stimuli only she could perceive.
A figure in a white coat stood beside her bed, making notes on a tablet.
The figure turned, and my breath caught.
Not because I recognized her specifically, but because of what she represented.
The precise movements, the clinical detachment, the methodical notation—this wasn’t just someone following orders.
This was a true believer. An Innovixus researcher.
I’d seen dozens like her during my time as their “guest.”
The rage flooded me, hot and primal, overloading my system.
Not the rage the biohacking had infused me with—though that was there too, chemical fury building in my bloodstream.
No, this was the righteous kind, the kind that comes from seeing innocent people tortured in the name of progress.
The kind that had kept me alive when Innovixus had me strapped to a table just like Beth.
“Gage!” Kate’s voice was sharp with alarm. No doubt my heart rate had gone through the roof. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. Wait for backup!”
My fingers curled around the breach charge in my tactical vest. Bravo team was still minutes out. The plan called for coordinated entry, controlled chaos, and precise targeting.
Beth’s fingers spasmed against her restraints, a silent plea for help.
Plans change.
“Kate,” I said, my voice steady despite the fire in my veins. “Tell Bravo I’m going in. Northeast entrance, Laboratory Section C.”