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“Appreciate the support, Beck,” a new voice said dryly, and Davenport’s image appeared in another subscreen. “I’d do the same for you.”
“Fuck, Davenport,” Dev said, fury in his voice. “How?”
“I’ve got friends with tools that make hacking your systems child’s play. On that note, while your plan is relatively sound, I have one that covers all of us and removes the threat entirely.”
Silence followed his words until Cali finally spoke up. “Then read us in.”
~
“Once I saw what they were doing to Drake, I knew I had to figure out an escape for all of us,” Davenport said, his expression grim. “I wish I could have extracted you sooner, but I needed to find a solution for all of us and making a move earlier would have jeopardized that.”
Jordan understood his motivation, but she didn’t have to like the end result.
“When did they finally kill me?” Benny asked.
Jordan shot him a sharp look. Why was he doing this to himself, especially after the shock of seeing Overlander’s face?
He clasped her fingers in his and squeezed. “I need to know.”
“You became… problematic the last few weeks. Fighting them a lot.”
“I saw in the memo that they were considering neural manipulation. Is that why I can’t remember anything?”
Oh shit. Jordan hadn’t even thought about that, and from the expressions on everyone else’s faces, they hadn’t either. They’d all just assumed that the trauma had been what was blocking Benny’s memory, at least until her revelation about it potentially being the nanites, and she hadn’t shared that with anyone other than Benny and Dr. Hancock.
Davenport shook his head. “They never got there. I need you to understand this. Overlander is a crazy, scary bitch. She has a zeal for her work that is creepy at the very least. She enjoyed what she was doing to you, what she did to me, what she did to my associate. She may say that it was in the pursuit of knowledge, but to her, inflicting pain was just as important. She’s far more dangerous than Hayes. He’s is the overseer for this project and had the clout to have me reassigned from Delta, which tells you something, but in reality, he had no idea what she was really doing to us. He only came to the site once, during set-up, and all the other updates were made electronically.”
“So that’s why I had such a visceral reaction to Overlander’s picture,” Benny said dryly.
“Dude, she gives even me the willies,” Davenport replied, making Benny smile. “That last day, she removed your kidneys to see how long you could live without them. Watched everything in you shut down until I reminded her that Hayes wouldn’t be pleased if you died. She put you back together, and when you didn’t respond right away, she just kind of threw up her hands and went, ‘Bummer.’ In her mind, she had the rest of us to experiment on, and all of us were expendable. So I flatlined the monitor when she wasn’t looking, and when she walked away, I goosed your nanites with the same device I used on Lyons. Then I told her I would dispose of the body, and she went back to plotting whatever she was plotting.”
“Jesus,” Cali breathed.
Jordan knew it had to kill her healer’s heart to hear the words. When she snuck a look at Benny, he’d gone stone-faced.
“Then apparently I have more to thank you for than getting me out of there. Thank you for saving me.” His voice was quiet and solemn.
Davenport just nodded at him. “You’re welcome. Now here’s what I’ve got in mind.”
Davenport had been busy, Jordan realized as he laid out his plan. It had been in the works for months as he infiltrated DARPA’s computer system and began chipping away at the classified vault that held their test information.
“I hired a black-hat hacker who copied the software used to document the project and then had them recreate a completely different set of records showing the entire endeavor to be a complete failure. Since none of you sought medical care, there’s no record that any of you were ever hurt, nothing to show that you healed from devastating injuries or fatal wounds. I left in the pieces about Overlander declaring you dead on the scene and planted enough suspicion in the records to show you’d been gravely wounded. Then I made it look like her experiments killed you and that she and Hayes arranged for the disposal of your body.”
Just wow. Jordan could see why it had taken so long to set all of this up.
“I’d hoped to throw their organization into enough disarray that I could get you out, but then Overlander took it too far.”
Devin had remained silent throughout the whole reveal but spoke now. “Are you looping us in because you’re ready to proceed?”
Davenport nodded brusquely. “Hayes will be here the day after tomorrow. He’s pissed that Overlander didn’t do the autopsy, and she’s ghosting him. She stopped answering all of his emails and texts, so he’s on his way. I’m picking him up at Nellis at ten. In order for all of us to be free of this, we need to discredit them as well as destroy the body of work. So having them physically together and then using part of your plan,” he said to Devin, “by involving OSI and the FBI, two independent agencies, should be enough to shut it all down permanently. Did you have an OSI agent in mind?”
“Grant Eaton,” Cali said without hesitation. “He and the psychiatrist who treated us, who’s also aware of Benny’s new reality, are a couple. He’s a solid guy, with a great rep within the Air Force.”
“I’ve got someone in the FBI we can use that can’t be traced back to any of us,” Dev said.
Because of course he did.
“Who’s watching Overlander now?” Benny asked.
