Cunning Revenge (Prey Security: Delta Team #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

This lab was a lot more remote than the others on the list they’d been given.

High on a mountain top, deep in the forest, with nothing much surrounding it for miles.

If he was running a secret lab to try to perfect a formula that turned people into super soldiers, then this was exactly the kind of place Voodoo would choose.

There was every chance that they might find real intel there. Possibly even the man he and his team sought, and yet …

The feeling of death hung in the air.

Before he’d signed up for the experimental drug program eleven years ago, he’d never thought all that much about death.

Of course, he’d been special forces before joining the program, but that only meant he’d thought about the fact that one day he might go out on an op and never return.

He’d lost people he cared about, killed plenty of people, some with a weapon, some with his own two hands.

But he had never considered the actual act of dying.

It has always just been something that happened.

Everyone died, everything died. Any living being, be they human, animal, or plant was going to die at some point.

It was a given. Something to be feared, sure, for many it was.

Something that might be painful or even horrific, would unfortunately be the case for many.

Now, he felt death in a way he hadn't expected. It was weird. His ability to heal was something that wasn't natural. Voodoo had even spoken to Whitney Daley about it and gotten an answer he wasn't expecting.

He was never supposed to be able to heal others the way he could.

According to Whitney, the former child genius who had created the original version of the drug before she was sold by her parents to Dr. Ridge Gardner when she was only ten years old, the variation of the drug he’d been given was supposed to bolster his own ability to heal himself.

Which it had, he’d seen himself come back from injuries he shouldn’t have, watching as his skin, flesh, and bone all but repaired themselves before his very eyes.

But he could heal others as well. Voodoo had no idea how it worked, or how he did it, and while he’d hoped Whitney might be able to explain it, she hadn't.

She promised that when this was all over, when Dr. Gardner, the man who had tortured all of them in his attempts to gain money, power, and respect for himself, had suffered and died, she would take samples of his blood and study it.

Now, as he and his team surveyed the small complex spread out before them, he could sense death hanging heavily in the air.

It was hard to explain to anyone else just what it felt like.

Dragon could smell death, Blade would be able to hear the moment a person’s heart stopped beating, their lungs no longer inflating, and Lion would be able to see that a chest no longer rose and fell from a great distance.

None of them could feel it, though.

“What is it?” Steel asked, and Voodoo cast their team leader a glance.

“Death,” he said simply.

“You think some of the experiments recently died?” Thunder asked.

“Maybe,” he replied, unable to properly explain that the death he was feeling was on a wider scale than just a couple of dead people who were unlucky enough to either be taken by Dr. Gardner or sign up for a program without understanding the magnitude of it.

Just because Dr. Gardner had lost access to the military after they were able to break free of their glass prison after three years being held captive and experimented on, didn't mean he had stopped his work.

If anything, the scientist had doubled down.

Now he might operate in the shadows, hidden labs, and secret experiments, but he wouldn't stop until he achieved everything he wanted.

“There’s no way he could know that we found out about this place,” Blade said with more confidence than Voodoo could muster.

“We only found Whitney and Terry Richards three days ago, only got access to Richards’ phone and this location two days ago.

All we did was plan things out, get on a plane, and come here.

According to Whitney, Richards had cleared his responsibilities so he could spend some time breaking her, readying her to return to her position, so there’s no reason to think that Dr. Gardner suspects his head of security is dead. ”

“Unless we tripped some sort of sensors as we approached,” Lion suggested.

Obviously, their enhancements gave them an advantage in every situation.

All their bodies were more resistant to temperature changes, either hot or cold, they could go longer without eating or drinking, they could handle operating with little sleep.

They healed well, were more tolerant of pain, and with their individual skills, they were a tough opponent to beat.

But they weren't impervious to making mistakes, and there was every chance a sensor they had missed had alerted the people in the secret lab to kill the current batch of experiments rather than allow them to fall into anyone else’s hands.

“Only one way to find out,” Steel said as he nodded at the building standing before them.

It was dark and silent, and while it was late, it wasn't late enough that everyone would necessarily be in bed asleep. Especially depending on whether the scientists working here were here voluntarily or had been coerced or outright abducted like Whitney had been. Not that there was any reason to believe that anyone other than the young woman who was now safely tucked in Blade’s bedroom back at their home had been forced into a position of working for the crazed scientist.

Like the well-oiled machine that they were, the six of them began to move without the need to communicate verbally.

It wasn't that they could necessarily read one another’s minds and therefore knew that they were all on the same page, it was more that they had been together for so long, lived in such close quarters, learned to depend on nobody but each other, that led to them having a kind of sixth sense when it came to the members of their team.

No one fired at them as they slunk through the trees, and there were no shouts or anything from inside the building.

When Blade gave a quick shake of his head to indicate that he couldn’t hear anything, Voodoo assumed that like the previous lab they’d searched, which had wound up exploding around them, almost killing the six of them and Rose Gardner and Cassandra Charleston, a white noise generator was running that messed with Blade’s ability to hear.

Dragon’s nostrils flared, and from the look in his unusual violet eyes, it was clear that the man could smell the death that Voodoo felt oppressively pressing down around him.

Whoever had been there had died. Recently.

Meaning the idea that they’d set off a sensor of some sort was a viable possibility.

With all of them wearing night vision goggles, Lion being the only exception, his enhanced vision worked perfectly well in the dark, they didn't need to flip on any lights as Steel picked the lock, and they all stepped inside the quiet building.

If he’d had any doubts, which he hadn't after ten years of living with his abilities, he didn't have to understand them to trust them, Voodoo knew he’d been right.

Death clung to this place like a second skin.

Moving as one, they worked their way past several labs that almost looked as though they had been abandoned in a hurry.

As they continued deeper into the large building, they found a living room with a TV still turned on but put on mute, and then a kitchen with the dishwasher still open and some dirty plates piled up beside the sink.

There was even a couple left sitting on the large table dominating one wall of the room.

They kept going, all hoping they'd find someone alive, someone who could give them intel that Whitney no longer had access to, had never truly had access to since she was there as what basically amounted to a slave. Of course, they’d all hoped that Dr. Gardner himself might be there, but at the very least they wanted someone who could give them the address of the scientist’s home so they could end this—end him—once and for all.

As they kept moving, they found a room lined with glass cages so reminiscent of the one he’d been trapped in for three long years that Voodoo had a visceral reaction to it.

One that passed quickly when he saw them.

Bodies.

Lying on the floor of each of the cells.

People like him, like his team, dead.

Killed right while he and his team were outside.

January 20th

10:45 P.M.

Flashing red lights lit the otherwise dark room.

Someone was coming.

That couldn’t be a good thing. Nothing in this place was a good thing.

Pain.

It had become normal for her to the point that while Indigo Yates registered it, it felt distant, dull, and almost disconnected from her.

How long had she been there now?

Days?

Weeks?

Couldn’t be months. Could it?

Honestly, she wasn't even sure anymore. Kept in a glass cage, no windows, no glimpses at the outdoors, it was hard to mark the passage of time. Other people were there, but the bulletproof glass cages were mostly soundproofed, and besides that, she’d learned pretty quickly that attempting to communicate was only going to wind up with more pain.

Tugging at the collar on her neck as she lay on the table she’d been placed on, she wished that …

She didn't even know anymore.

Wished for an end to her suffering.

Wished for rescue.

Wished for solace.

Wished for someone who would actually care about her.

Maybe the reason she was so good at enduring the pain they kept heaping upon her was because she was an old hat at it.

Pain had been part of her life for as long as she could remember.

It had filled her childhood as her dad beat on her every chance he had.

Some of her foster families had beat on her too.

Foster dads, or foster moms, or sometimes even foster siblings.