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And in his rage he had become a monster.
He had reveled in the extraordinary power.
He had tested these new gifts.
And he had felt the eyeless gaze of Dark Watchers.
Then he had returned to human form, shaken, overwhelmed, scared, and yet excited. He had become what he had been tasked to destroy. And now he would destroy those others, one by one: the Darby girl and those with her; the traitor Dekka; Justin Knightmare, if DiMarco had somehow failed to kill him.
And anyone else who opposed him.
His mission was vindication. He would prove that he and he alone was capable of addressing the threat to all of humanity and all of human civilization. He was far greater, far more powerful than any of the weapons—biological or mechanical—that he had overseen at the Ranch.
I am the most powerful single creature ever to walk the earth!
He was fascinated by the process. After all, Peaks was not just an administrator; he had degrees in the fields of nanotechnology and zoology. But one thing was clear: lacking the support of HSTF-66 (temporarily at least, he reassured himself), he needed an ally, at least one. No matter how powerful his own morph was, Peaks knew he could not see in every direction at once. He needed someone to watch his back. Someone to throw into battle at just the right time to tip the scales. Someone to launch diversions when necessary.
Someone with power.
Someone with nowhere else to turn.
Someone with absolutely no moral qualms who would happily follow orders to maim, torture, or kill as Peaks required.
And thus had he come here, to this particular stretch of desert.
Peaks returned to his parked rented car, now broiling hot under the desert sun. He pulled clothing from his bag and dressed quickly. He turned on the engine and the air-conditioning and opened his laptop. He stuck the stolen hard drive into the USB slot and opened a file he’d read many times before.
Then he opened the detailed analysis derived from news reports, police reports of strange deaths, and the reports of sadistic rapes. The clever geeks at the Ranch had cross-tabbed all the data they had, analyzed possible hiding places, and reached a tentative conclusion: Quail Mountain.
Peaks drove the few miles to Juniper Flats, nothing but a flat space between mountains, but an easy place to take the trail that led across a mile and a half of sun-blasted desert to Quail Mountain.
He had a large bottle of Fiji water weighing down one side of his light jacket, and granola bars stuffed into the other pocket. He carried a burner phone with a spare battery pack—not that there was any coverage out in the middle of nowhere. And because he was still far from sure of how exactly to use the monster that now lived within him, he carried a Colt .45 automatic pistol and a spare clip.
It was not so easy to search the mountain. Quail Mountain was almost six thousand feet high and cut with multitudes of gullies eroded by the infrequent rain and more frequent wind, each of which was an obstacle to movement. Other obstacles were prickly bushes and cacti, the blinding sun, the burning heat, and the ever-present possibility of poisonous reptiles. He soon wished he had more water and better boots. Hours of climbing yielded no clues, and by the time the sun touched the distant western horizon, he was feeling defeated.
He was torn between continuing his search and racing back to the car—now something like three miles away—and continuing the search the next day, or sticking it out, possibly through the night. In the end he could not bear the thought of slogging all the way back to his car and spending the night in a motel. So he gathered bits of brush and knocked the limbs off a dead Joshua tree and made a fire.
He made the fire the old-fashioned way, with a lighter. That fact made him grin.
Night came with a suddenness familiar to those who’ve stayed too long in the desert. The fire soon consumed the dry-as-dust kindling and he had little of anything larger to burn, so he sat hunched over in front of dying embers as the sky above blazed with stars and planets. He listened to the too-near yips of coyotes.
He had no warning.
Half asleep, he heard a sound like a bat flitting through the air, and then something was around his chest and he was yanked away from the fire and onto his back.
He yelled an inarticulate “Hey!” and the thing that had grabbed him now pulled away, only to come slicing forward to land on him with such force that it tore his jacket open at the shoulder, ripped through the shirt beneath, and bit into his flesh.
“Aaaahhh!” The pain was shocking and Peaks was mortally certain that he would be dead in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, but in his pain and panic he still cried out just the right word.
“Drake!”
No second blow fell. The pain was what branded cattle must feel, but he rose shakily to his feet, trying to peer into the darkness.
“You know me?” The voice was oily smooth, utterly confident, unafraid but curious.
“Yes. I know who you are. You’re Drake Merwin. I’ve been looking for you.”
Peaks heard someone move closer but stood his ground, and slowly Drake emerged from the pitch black into the weak orange light and sinister shadows cast by the embers of the fire.
