Chapter 1
Chapter One
There were three things Zadie Noor did not do.
She didn't eat breakfast before noon. She didn't apologize for the number of screens she needed to function like a normal human being. And she absolutely did not use her gaming name—or any other name she could be associated with—on the dark web.
She was Felicity. And right now, Felicity had a problem.
Felicity: You knew people at Blackridge Security?
God, she missed being Hopper. Not because Felicity wasn't still a piece of her, but Felicity had to be more careful.
Quieter. More hidden in the dark corners of the web.
Hopper had the ability to be a little more like the real Zadie.
Fun. Flirty. A little outrageous. Felicity barely tapped that part of Zadie's personality, and sometimes it grated on her nerves.
She watched the cursor blink while she sat in silence in the comms room.
It was after seven in the morning, which wasn’t early, but today it seemed that everyone thought it was acceptable to be lazy and either sleep in or pretend to.
Zadie had never been a reasonable person when it came to rest. Not that she didn’t know how to sit still.
Obviously, she knew how to do that. But her brain that struggled to shut off when the moon came out.
Flatline: There you go, putting words on my fingers again. I said, I’ve heard of the company.
She smirked. Two weeks ago, she came across "Flatline" on a thread she shouldn't have accessed, observed him doing things he definitely shouldn't have been doing, and she had been quietly impressed—and entertained—ever since.
Whoever he was, he moved through encrypted systems as if he'd built them himself.
Which, given some of the architecture she'd seen him navigate, wasn't entirely out of the question.
Felicity: Your impressions?
Flatline: That they’re much like my name these days.
Felicity: That might be accurate, but I hope you have a pulse.
Flatline: I do, but that’s not what you really want to know. Let me save you the time. The official word is that they closed up shop. But I heard they had some trouble. Not the money kind. The enemy kind, and it crashed their CPU. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Zadie leaned back in her chair and chuckled.
Her teammates, Neve, Scout, and Wynn, constantly made fun of the fact that sometimes she preferred speaking to her screens rather than to humans.
Wasn’t true. But there were some personalities that came across digitally that tickled her the way most didn’t.
Felicity: Interesting. Anyone take credit?
Flatline: Not that I’ve seen. And from what I can tell, whatever they built got taken apart faster than it went up. Which says more about the foundation than the demolition.
She tilted her head at the screen. There was something in the phrasing—the serene confidence of someone who'd built enough things to know exactly how they failed. It reminded her of someone. MacGyver. God, she missed him.
Felicity: You're annoyingly useful, you know that?
Flatline: I've been told.
Felicity: Don't let it go to your head.
Flatline: Too late.
Knock. Knock.
Zadie shifted her chair. "Hey Darwin."
"Do you ever stop?" Darwin asked as he leaned against the doorjamb, wearing a light blue button-down shirt and a pair of faded jeans. If he wasn’t wearing that, it was a white shirt and dark jeans. Or a purple one with stone-washed jeans. The man didn’t have very many outfits.
But it worked for him.
"Do you?" Zadie folded her arms and smiled as if it were a challenge.
"I supposed I don’t." He adjusted his glasses. "We need you in the war room. I want to give an update on Kane, and I only want to do it once." Leave it to Darwin to be efficient. She appreciated that about him.
She reached for her tablet because it was like an appendage. It was no different from Scout being a human compass and Wynn knowing the exact placement of everything in her bathroom medicine cabinet and getting twitchy when someone moved it.
A game Zadie enjoyed on the days they weren’t going anywhere. Wynn didn’t find it nearly as enjoyable. Childish game, but they were stuck in a bunker when they weren’t fighting bad guys, and Zadie couldn’t play her video games, so this was what she’d resorted to.
Zadie held her tablet in one hand, her soda in the other, and followed Darwin around the corner and into the war room.
Everyone was already there when she walked in. Her team leader, Neve Monroe, and Captain Coulter Barrett were near the window, looking like they were trying not to be cozy, and failing miserably. They were a cute couple.
Zadie blew them a kiss.
Neve just narrowed her stare and shook her head, but her lips drew upward. Coulter didn’t hide his smile. It was obvious, even under the circumstances, that they were happy to be back together.
Scout Lennox sat on the table because Scout was always on the table—something that had started when they’d moved into the bunker.
Zadie wasn’t sure if it was because while the bunker was massive, the furniture was sparse and not always the most comfortable.
Or Scout just liked the position it gave her in the room.
It didn’t matter. Scout was the kind of person who could adapt to her surroundings.
Before they came to the bunker, she’d been the one who could sleep anywhere and live on peanuts and water if necessary.
She’d usually been the easiest going of the group.
Usually was the operative word.
Wynn Whitmore, their medic, stood near the front of the room—waiting for Dawin.
She wanted to be near him, and the sexual tension between those two was about as subtle as a foghorn—only Zadie didn't know if they’d acted on it, and it was the best kept secret in the bunker, or if they were both just oblivious.
Jeremiah Shepherd, the man who kept the bunker running, was currently unavailable. Zadie had it on good authority that he’d bugged out early to go meet with General Augustus "Gus" Esposito, the man who owned the bunker.
Darwin sat at the head of the table, Wynn taking a seat next to him, and Zadie set her soda on the table next to Wynn, directly across from Scout.
Zadie made sure all systems were running on her tablet before setting it down. No one ever expected her to unplug completely. Not even in these meetings.
Neve looked at her over the rim of her coffee mug. "What time did you go to bed?"
"Does it matter?" Zadie asked.
"You’re wearing the same clothes as you were yesterday." Scout lowered her chin.
Zadie didn’t want to have this conversation for the fourth time in five days.
When they weren’t out of the bunker dodging bullets and trying to take down Finch, she had a job to do.
And that job never ended. Not that the others didn’t have stuff to do.
Wynn with her medical stuff and dealing with Kane Archer, their teammate who nearly died two months ago.
Or Coulter, when he’d first arrived. Or Neve, keeping everything together.
And Scout was always tracking something.
Zadie couldn’t do what she did without all of them.
But if they were going to achieve their goal and take down Finch for what he’d done, then she needed to find a way into Hyperion's main server. She needed to see everything they were missing so that they could prove what Finch had done.
"You need more sleep," Wynn said.
"Define sleep." Zadie knew everyone meant well. But it wasn’t helping.
"The thing humans do at night that keeps their organs functioning." Scout inched off the top of the table and moved to a chair. " Lately, you don’t do it enough. And when you do close your eyes, it’s at your desk, or on the sofa and only for an hour here, or an hour there. You’re going to burn out. "
"Was I called to the war room to discuss the fact I sleep in my clothes and tend to crash while watching TV?" Zadie asked. "Or was it to discuss Kane?"
"We’re just worried about you," Neve said softly.
"Point taken." Zadie shifted her gaze to the front of the table.
Darwin unfolded his hands, as if he’d been waiting for class to start.
"Kane had a physical today. I also got back some lab results from the institute.
" Everyone in the room came to attention when Darwin spoke. He wasn’t commanding, like Neve and Coulter could be.
But he had the kind of voice and authority that made people want to listen.
"Prewit and I are both quite pleased. The AXS-1 protocol is functioning as it was designed. The spinal repair is progressing on schedule. According to the blood markers, the treatment hasn’t elicited a negative reaction. "
"Does Prewit want to keep him on the AXS-1? Or will he take him off the drug?" Neve asked.
Dr. Prewit Howell was an old military buddy of Darwin's, and Prewit was the director of Elysium Neuro & Spinal Institute where they'd taken Kane.
Prewit had saved his life. According to Prewit it was the least he could do considering all that Darwin had done for Elis, Prewit's son.
Regardless of all that, everyone on the team, Zadie included, were a bit unnerved by the use of the drug AXS-1.
It was the mother drug of what had been used to create the enhanced soldiers, and that made everyone understandably anxious.
"Eventually, he’ll be slowly titrated off. But we're not there yet," Darwin said. "Right now, we're focused on putting him on a strict physical therapy regimen, and he’s had some opinions about that."
"What kind of opinions?" Coulter asked.
"Apparently, he believes our methods might not be suitable and suggested something a little less..." Darwin cracked a smile. "Painful."
"Your approach to PT sucks," Coulter said. "And that’s me speaking from experience."
Wynn laughed loudly which was unheard of in these meetings. She kept things quiet. Professional.