“He was taken from our facility before we could make an incision.”
Those words alone were enough to make Cole’s gut clench. More specifically, the memory of what was wrapped around his gut made him clench. The Nymar tendrils were still there, but he’d learned to deal with the cinching pain reflexively tightening around him. He felt better after some rest, but it was still easier if he just didn’t think about the part of him that had been infected by the vampire spore.
“And speaking of that procedure,” Paige said, “you guys never did get around to making good on your promise of fixing him up.”
“That’s all right,” Cole said. “Forget it.”
“Which is exactly what he told our medics when they approached him to undergo the next proposed operation,” Adderson pointed out while holding his cigarette between two fingers and watching the tip smolder.
She looked back and forth between them and finally flapped her hands against her sides. “All right. Fine. You’re the one that called us out here, Major. What’s on your mind?”
“I asked about the Class Ones because we seem to have lost track of them,” Adderson said.
After somehow walking away from being encased in stone, the Full Blood named Esteban had kept himself busy by returning to Colorado and tearing apart two small towns and three correctional facilities in his quest to find more storehouses left behind by Jonah Lancroft. All he’d managed to do back then was create several dozen Half Breeds to keep the humans busy and level the town of Canon City.
“We need a better way to get to those bastards,” Adderson said. “Do you have any ideas?”
Although Paige only paused for a few seconds, Adderson bristled as if she’d turned her back to him and walked away. Finally, she said, “There was a weapon called the Blood Blade. It could cut through a Full Blood well enough. We’ve been working on a way to coat a bullet with melted fragments of it.”
“Similar to what’s inside those Snapper rounds?”
“That’s right. We’ve had some success, but haven’t had a chance to test them in the field.”
“With all the wolves running around, you haven’t had a chance to test them?” Adderson asked.
“Things have been messy lately,” she replied.
That was an understatement. Even with the werewolves running loose, the Skinners had been thrown into disarray with the emergence of the splinter group called the Vigilant. Professing to subscribe to the beliefs of Jonah Lancroft—known for capturing specimens, chopping them apart over the course of months or years, and mixing up toxins that killed almost as many civilians as monsters all in the name of survival—the Vigilant redefined the term “hardcore.” Since Adderson wasn’t privy to insider Skinner business, “messy” would have to cover it.
Adderson grinned around his cigarette. “You seem to be losing sight of the whole reason I wanted you people on board. You have the know-how, and we have the manpower and equipment to put that knowledge to work. In exchange for that—”
“No,” Paige said sharply, but politely. “We’re not signing on to become official military.”
“What’s your problem with the military?” Adderson asked. “Your daddy in the service and he moved you around too much?”
“We’re working with you to get through a tough time. We’re not going to hand over everything we are to the government. Any government.”
“Fine. Believe it or not, that wasn’t even what I was going to ask. We’ve already put together something that should bring the shifters to us. Class Ones and Twos.”
“Uh-huh,” Paige sighed.
Surely, Cole thought, she was thinking along the same lines as he was: that somebody in the IRD had gotten their hands on one piece of the Amriany device that was used as Full Blood bait in Atoka.
“What do you mean ‘should’ be able to bring them to us?” Paige asked.
“It’s a sonic emitter,” the major explained. “Experimental. Works on a frequency that’s had some success with the Class Twos. It didn’t take a whole lot of tweaking for us to find the frequency for Class Threes.”
Getting sick of the cold, Cole summed it up: “So you guys made a dog whistle for Half Breeds and Mongrels?”
“More or less. When cranked up to a certain degree on test subjects, it seemed to produce some pain.” Adderson gripped his cigarette between two fingers, exhaled some smoke and watched it drift up to the frozen stars. “After collecting enough data, we may be able to have a weapon capable of neutralizing these things before more drastic measures become necessary.”
“All right,” Paige said. “Two questions. First of all, what test subjects?”
“Just some Class Twos we trapped here and there. Despite some differences between the ones that have tusks and the ones that don’t, they all seem to have the same ears.”
“Second,” she growled, “what do you consider to be drastic measures?”
Flicking his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out, Adderson said, “Tactical nukes have been proposed for portions of the country that are overrun, but will only be approved in the event that such areas become complete losses.”
“You mean no humans left?” Cole asked. He chuckled more out of discomfort than any sense of humor when he pointed out, “We’re still a long ways from that.”
“Zero human population is well beyond what we’d consider to be a total loss,” Adderson said. “We’re looking more at the logistical certainty that we couldn’t retake those areas without having to level everything from buildings to shrubbery. We all know that Class Twos move too quickly for air strikes to be effective unless we hit an area at least five times larger than normal. So far, no strikes have had any success against Class Ones. According to spotters, they hear or smell the planes coming and are gone long before the pilots see their target.”
“So you want us to do something with those sonic things of yours?” she asked.
“Field testing. We need someone who can track those things down or at least get close enough to test its effectiveness as a viable option in a combat scenario. Seeing as how you know these things so well, you’re the ideal choice.”
“Plus,” Cole said, “we don’t have to roll in using helicopters and RVs.”
Adderson glanced back at the modified campers and nodded. “You got it.”
“Will you be sending anyone along with us?” Paige asked.
“Not unless you’d like it that way.”
“Will you be following us?”
“I doubt we could do so without your knowledge,” Adderson replied.
“What about satellite tracking?” Cole asked. “Electronic surveillance. Planting any GPS devices on us. That sort of thing.”
The major wasn’t the sort to twitch when someone struck a nerve, but the pause that followed that question, compared to the snap response he’d given them before, told Cole more than enough. “I’ll see to it that no such devices are planted on you. As far as satellite tracking goes, the military’s expense account is taking a big enough hit just mobilizing to respond to those new reports across the border.”
“You’re talking about those attacks in Brazil?” Paige asked, referring to a story that had found its way into the headlines over the last few days. Apparently, creatures resembling Half Breeds had been creeping in from the Amazon jungle led by a Full Blood that didn’t match any others photographed over the past few months.
“Correct. With everything escalating the way it has, you can’t even imagine the requests we’re getting from other countries for assistance.”
“How many other countries?” Cole asked.
“I’m not at liberty to divulge those details to civilian contractors,” Adderson said, without even trying to be subtle in his constant effort to recruit them. “Let’s just say that the U.S. is on the map for the majority of instances that have been made public, but there are plenty more leaking into public awareness from across the globe. Whatever these things are, wherever they came from, they’re obviously not contained within American borders. That’s what makes it even more pressing to create a more effective way of dealing with them that falls short of melting down or blasting apart large sections of civilian structures and population.”