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The doors to the vehicle open and then slam shut, followed by the rumble of male voices in the air.
My team has a plan and we stick to it.
We allow two of the men to approach and then board, the men Raj said would do a security check of the fishing boat, before allowing the men we’ve now killed to retrieve the weapons.
The minute they’re on board, Caleb and Julian disappear and head to shore with the biological weapons now in their sights under limited guard. I flatten my enemy combatants with barely any effort, and I leave the boat, appearing just behind the truck where Caleb is illogically alone, standing on the ledge of the vehicle, lifting a canvas covering. Where the fuck is Julian? In that moment, a young soldier, a boy of maybe sixteen, rounds the vehicle and holds a machine gun at Caleb’s back. And I can feel him ready to shoot.
Time stands still as I react, drawing my weapon with one thought: GTECHs don’t die easily, but enough bullets in the right place from a machine gun could do the job. It doesn’t matter that the boy is a boy, probably forced to fight for his family, he could end Caleb, and I will not allow that to happen.
Without hesitation, I fire my weapon strategically, hitting the boy with a bullet in one arm, and then the next, for good measure. He falls to the dirt and begins to scream out in pain. Caleb jumps to the ground, a grim expression on his face, telling a story. I’ve known this man since we entered basic training and somehow two years ago, we ended up at Groom Lake together.
I was with him when he heard his parents were killed by a gas leak in their house right after the damn injections. It was a hellish time for all of us, but for him, he was burning alive with the pain. He was destroyed while Julian was indifferent.
Caleb is one of the best men, if not the best man, I have ever known in my life. Honorable, the Superman of warriors, and he’s torn up by what I’ve done to this child. I have only a moment to recognize and feel the relief of knowing that I am as well, that Raj and the boy are different to me, human versus monster, before trouble rages again.
The wind ripples, and Julian appears beside the boy and shoots him in the head. My anger is instant, the force of my ability to “feel” just that. A force—wind tunneling around me as I step toward him. Caleb is between us in an instant, facing me, hands on my chest. “Not here. Not now.”
“He just killed him,” I bite out. “We both know he needs to die.”
“Not here, not now,” Caleb repeats, while Julian laughs behind him, drawing a grimace from his brother.
“Shut up, Julian!” Caleb shouts over his shoulder.
But Julian doesn’t stop. “Stop with the fake emotions we both know you don’t feel, Creed,” he taunts, and Caleb softly reminds me, “The mission, man, and millions of people’s lives on the line.”
Anger burns through my blood, damn near boiling, but Caleb is right. The mission matters and that boy is gone. Dealing with Julian has to wait, but he has to be dealt with, and while I know Caleb knows this, he resists anything that ends his brother.
I turn away from both men, drawing in a breath, calming myself and the energy radiating from my body, and the wind that hums inside me in ways I could never explain to anyone, not even another GTECH.
“He’s human and a piece of shit,” Julian declares. “Weak in every possible way.”
I rotate to face him but I’m under control now. I’m contained. He hopes. “He was a young boy.”
“He was a weak human, corrupt in body and mind. You know it, because you’re like me, not like them. Caleb will too, one day, when he’s like us. You don’t have to pretend for his benefit.”
That comparison between him and me that hits far too close to home, shreds me. He’s right. Caleb is a GTECH, but for him, that means he’s a soldier who would be human if not for his extraordinary powers. Julian is something else. So am I, but I will not allow myself to become the same something that defines Julian. Exactly why I deny the part of me that wants to see him die a horrible death right here and now. Because I’m not like him. I will never be like him.
Gunfire sounds in the near distance and my teeth grit. “As Caleb pointed out, we have a job to do.” I walk to the truck, to a trunk Caleb’s exposed, to find three airtight canisters, small, yet lethal—each capable of killing hundreds of thousands. Julian reaches in and roughly removes a canister. “Eventually, there must be an end so that there can be a new beginning.”
