Tienan growled low in his throat and, once again, Kathryn was reminded of a lethal animal just waiting to pounce and devour his prey. She shook her head and then had to stifle a groan as pain shot through her skull. “You should be safe here for another day or two. After that…” she trailed off, not wanting to consider what might happen if they didn’t find a way to get both men out of the city.
“Are you in any immediate danger?” Logan gently squeezed her fingers.
“I don’t think so.” She refused to tell them just how terrifying the interrogation had been for her. The General himself had questioned her for hours. She had bruises on her upper arms where he’d dragged her out of her chair and shoved her against the wall.
His breath had been hot against her skin as he’d spewed his venomous anger. He all but accused her of helping the men escape. Only his knowledge of whom her father was had saved her from imprisonment or worse. But she knew that wouldn’t save her for long. And if her father discovered what she’d done, he’d personally hand her over to the General.
“Kathryn?” Tienan came to crouch beside her.
“I don’t know, okay?” She jumped to her feet, needing some space. “I need to think.” She headed for the door. “Stay here and hide if anyone comes. They might do a random search for security reasons.”
“We know where the tunnels are,” Logan assured her.
That was the one good thing about living in this huge mausoleum that she called home. Her ancestors had built several escape routes and they’d used them more than once over the years. Now she was using them to hide her friends. She wasn’t even sure her father knew they existed. She only knew because of some old blueprints she’d found in the attic.
“Kathryn,” Logan began but she shook her head, not wanting to talk about the situation any longer. The memories of her traumatic day were still too fresh. She needed some time alone. It would be easy to lay her head on Logan’s shoulder and cry and that she couldn’t do. She had to be strong if they were to have a chance at surviving.
The attic. That was what she needed right now. Space to think. “I’ll be back in a bit.” Not giving them a chance to question her further, she hurried out the door, taking care to close it behind her. There was no one around as she made her way to a door at the end of the east wing of the house. It was late and most of the servants had departed.
Her father disliked having too many people in his home and only a trusted few actually lived in the house. The rest lived in barracks on the estate. The security guards were stationed outside. They were a constant.
She looked around before she opened the door enough to squeeze through. She needed no light to find the stairs and climb them. She’d been coming to the attic for years, since she was a teenager. It was her private space. A place not tainted by her father’s presence.
Opening the door at the top of the stairs, she sighed with relief as she stepped inside and flipped on the light. Years ago, she’d cleared out a corner, setting up an old comfortable chair and table for her own use. She went to that chair now and sank into its welcoming depths. What was she going to do?
Burying her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. Her father and his team of scientists had started Project Alpha about thirty years before. They’d gone beyond the Gate to find victims for the experiment.
Using a mixture of genetic engineering and computer programming, they’d created male babies who would grow into alphas. Their purpose was to be faster, stronger and to live much longer than any human. Their genetics were manipulated in such a way as to give them the best of everything. But they were also given computer implants to make learning quicker and to make them controllable by their handlers. The Ruling Council had decided that they needed an army of super-soldiers, men who would fight until they dropped and who were expendable. If Project Alpha were a success, they would use that technology to create a race of super-soldiers to protect them and the city against the ever-increasing unrest beyond the Gate.
Over the years, most of the subjects had been weeded out as unsuitable. Kathryn remembered how horrified she’d been by this when she’d come across the dusty old file several months ago. Many of the boys had barely reached ten years of age before they were murdered. She knew the scientists saw it as simply destroying expendable test subjects. To her it was outright genocide.
Now thirty years and many failed experiments later, they were ready to terminate this project. They’d been working on robotic soldiers for more than a decade now and these were deemed more acceptable to the task at hand.
There had been problems with Project Alpha.
The two remaining subjects had developed as they’d hoped, quickly becoming experts in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat as they grew. By the time they were twenty, they were experts in every weapon known to mankind. Unfortunately, rather than living longer, they were aging at a rate just the tiniest bit faster than humans. Their life expectancy was just around sixty to sixty-five years. Kathryn speculated that this was due to the extreme physical and emotional strain that they’d been under since the day they were born.
The scientists had also not counted on the men thinking for themselves. Even with the computer implants, they were not easy to control. They reasoned and thought and made their own decisions, plus they’d showed emotions, something the scientists had tried to breed and train out of them.
The Council deemed the experiment a complete failure and General Caruthers had ordered the termination of the two remaining Alphas—Alpha One and Alpha Two— Tienan and Logan.
Kathryn sat back, leaning her head against the cushions. She’d been the only one to object, the only one to find the edict heinous and unacceptable. The other scientists on the team had looked at her with pity and disdain as she reiterated the fact that Tienan and Logan were men, not machines. They were living, breathing people. No one listened. No one else cared.
A child prodigy, Kathryn was used to being viewed as unusual, as a freak of nature.
She’d always been different, advancing quickly in her studies when she was young.
Speed-reading was a talent that had allowed her to get through school quickly, that and a photographic memory. By the time she was twenty, she had advanced degrees in robotics, genetics and computer science, as well as degrees in botany and chemistry. By the time she was twenty-three, she’d added a medical degree to the list. Her father had supervised all her studies, pushing her harder as each year went by. Failure was not an option for a Piedmont. She had no friends and no life beyond her work. Kathryn had long felt like just another study subject, one who often disappointed.
For years, she had desperately wanted to leave this house and have a place of her own, a life of her own. But she was just as much a prisoner as Tienan and Logan. Rental units were at a premium inside the Gate. They were costly and offered only to those who met stringent requirements. Kathryn certainly had the pedigree to get one, but the one time she’d tried, her father had sent a note to the rental company and that had been that. The offer of the unit had been withdrawn, leaving her with nowhere else to go.
Her father often said it was for her personal safety but she knew better. He’d invested a lot of money in her over the years and Smithson Piedmont always made sure his investments paid off.
She’d gone to work at Piedmont Corporation at the ripe age of twenty-three and had begun working closely with Tienan and Logan. That was seven years, and seemed like a lifetime, ago. Back then, she’d believed in what she was doing. Back then she’d truly thought she could make a difference for good, to help the people beyond the Gate.