Chapter 7
Jane
Something was happening to Jane. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in the dormitory Lucas Stone had managed to obtain for her, and she was trying hard to look up at the night sky outside, but she couldn’t concentrate. The buzzing was back in her mind. Boy, oh boy was the buzzing back. For some reason, her hands were fidgety and her legs were bouncing up and down. Yet no matter what she did, she couldn’t keep still.
She was afraid. Yet there was nothing to be afraid of. The feeling had come upon her slowly and didn’t seem to be related to any event or thought. One moment, she’d been staring up at the night sky, trying to let her body rest as her mind raced, and the next thing this ominous foreboding had crept up on her.
It was as if somebody had reached right into her brain to flick some kind of switch, sending alarm twisting and writhing down her back and burning deep into her gut. The more she sat there and tried to rationalize it away, the more it grew until she snapped her legs up and hugged them close to her chest.
“Calm down. Calm down,” she told herself forcefully. “Nothing is wrong. There is nobody after you. You haven’t done anything, and you aren’t injured or sick. There isn’t anything to be afraid of.” She kept talking to herself out loud as if somehow hearing her own voice would make her believe her words.
Though it was a mutinous thought, she got the urge to call Lucas. Firstly, and most importantly, she didn’t know his number and didn’t have access or authority to call him. Secondly, he was Lucas Stone, and Jane didn’t like Lucas Stone. He was the kind of man she had no time for – arrogant, self-important, and far too adventurous for her. Yet that didn’t stop Jane from desperately wanting to find him, to see if he could fix her. It was such a strange thought, and it gave Jane pause to laugh at how silly she was. But it was only a sweet, short pause, and in just another second, she was feeling trapped and frightened again.
As the tension rose in her body, her thoughts became more forceful. She also felt a cold kind of detachment creep up on her.
She stood suddenly, her limbs twitching so fast, the move jolted through her.
For a fraction of a second, it felt like she was no longer in control of her body.
She headed to the door, her hands now slick with sweat, her shoulders shaking.
“This is crazy,” she told herself, “completely crazy. Go sit back on your bed,” she pleaded as she opened the door and closed it behind her. She started to half-jog down the corridor. “Try to get some rest,” she told herself as she ran toward one of the linear lifts that would take her anywhere in the Galactic Force in seconds. “This is just crazy,” she said one last time as she entered the closest transport hub into the panel of the lift. Or, at least she intended to enter the location of the closest transport hub, but her fingers seemed to have a mind of their own. Before she could stop herself, she’d entered the location of one of the research levels. In the blink of an eye, the lift took off.
“What?” Jane blinked wildly as the lift reached the research facility in a little over two seconds, the door opening with a snap. When Jane doggedly tried to stay in the lift and make her hand type in the correct location of the closest transport hub, or simply the location that would take her back to her dormitory, she found her legs walking her out of the lift. She barely had any control over her limbs anymore. They appeared to be doing whatever they wanted to, taking her wherever they directed.
Her legs walked her right down the corridor and right toward Research Lab Two.
There were two guards standing outside of it, and as she approached, they looked at her askance. “Can we help you?” one of them asked, her expression careful but stern. “This is a restricted area. Unless you have the correct access, you have to turn around and leave at once.”
Jane found herself nodding. “I need to go back to bed, because this is crazy,” she said.
Both of the guards looked at each other, sharing that particular look that all species do when they realize someone off-putting has just said something entirely crazy.
“Okay, ma’am, you can’t come any closer.” One of the guards held out his hand in a stopping motion.
Jane understood, but her legs didn’t pay any attention whatsoever. She kept walking right up to them. “My god, oh my god, oh my god, what’s happening?” Jane choked out her words. Her face and voice appeared to be the only things she could control.
One of the guards reached for his plasma stun gun and pulled it out, first pointing it to the ground and then pointing it at Jane as she clearly kept walking toward them. “Ma’am, you have to stop now.” The other guard leveled his gun as well. “Just turn around.”
Jane paid no attention. Well, her body paid no attention; Jane herself was screaming at her limbs to stop, to turn her the hell around, and to walk back to bed. But they were beyond suggestion.
As she watched the lead guard tighten his grip on his plasma stun gun, obviously readying to shoot Jane, Jane did something odd.
She put on a burst of speed and tucked into a quick, tight roll. Before she knew it, she’d come up right next to the guard, one of her hands jerking up, latching onto the gun and pulling it sideways as another hand pushed hard into the guard’s opposite shoulder. Then, hardly stopping, Jane twisted to the side, rolled again, jumped up, brought the gun around, and setting it to light stun with her thumb, she shot the other guard. Twisting, she shot the remaining guard. In a quiet instant, both were still on the ground.
Jane hadn’t killed them; she’d only stunned them, and both would be awake in under an hour though with considerable headaches.
Yet even though Jane hadn’t killed them, she hardly felt that she’d shot them, either. Something else – whatever had control of her body – had done that. Never in her life had she showed such agility, speed, and strength. Many doctors had told her that her general mobility was below that of the average human. Yet what Jane had just done was not average in any sense. She’d overcome two tough, well-trained guards. And she wasn’t even sweating.
“Oh my god,” she said to herself quickly as she gulped back her fear. “What have I done? What have I done? What’s going on?” No matter how often she pleaded with herself to stop, turn around, and go back to bed, her limbs had a different idea. The gun was still lightly and expertly clutched in her right hand. With the other hand, she reached up to the panel on the side of the door that led into the research lab beyond. The panel and the door would be locked out – the second Jane had fired a weapon, the whole defensive net in this section would have turned on. Jane had little doubt that an entire team of security officers was on their way now. No doubt her gun would no longer work too, an interference field likely in place in the corridor by now.
As if to confirm her suspicions, the lighting in the corridor flickered and then cut to half illumination. Then a blaring siren echoed through the hall.
Rather than turn around, put the gun on the ground, crumple up against a wall, and wait to be dragged off to prison, Jane watched as one of her hands reached out to the panel, and she started typing something blindingly fast. She had no idea what she was typing, and in a second, she stopped and latched her fingers onto the side of the panel. In a neat and even move, she easily pulled it away from the wall. Then she turned the gun around in her grip, ripped off the panel that led to the energy node that powered it within, and pulled out some kind of glowing crystal. She expertly managed to place the crystal into the exposed panel, and she hooked it up to the system core. She put the panel back on the wall and typed something into it, her fingers still blisteringly fast.
The doors opened.
“My god, my god, what’s happening?” Jane kept asking. She walked through the door to the scene of three security officers with plasma rifles, not stun guns, trained right at her, and several other scientists standing off carefully to the side.
It was now far too late to turn around and go back to bed. Jane had just attacked two security officers and had apparently
hacked right into the Galactic Force computer. Nope, she wouldn’t be going back to bed for a long time yet, but a quick trip to the morgue wasn’t out of the question.
Filled with horror at what she was doing, she waited to be shot. Her body had other plans.
…
Lucas Stone
By the time he made it to the Galactic Force, it was in full shutdown. Lucas, via his armor, was getting live security feeds telling him that two shots had been fired on the research level and that an interference field was now in place. While the research level wasn’t where Specimen 14 was, the Paran Artifact was being kept there.
Lucas paused, his head swiveling from the different buildings that held Specimen 14 and the Paran Artifact.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?” he asked through his live com-line, directing his message right to the Head of Security.
“We have a massive energy drain in Basement Level One. We’ve had two shots fired outside Research Lab Two,” the Security Chief said, her breath heavy and loud. She was obviously midway through running or chasing something.
“Direct me,” Lucas said.
“They’ve just hacked – Prack! They’ve just hacked through the Galactic Force computer. They are into Research Lab Two.”
That made his mind up for him. Without waiting for another word, he set his priorities. And his priority was to get the hell to Research Lab Two as fast as his armor could manage. As he ran, he sent a quick message to Alex, telling him to get his butt down to Basement Level One as soon as he arrived.
Lucas had no idea what he was up against, but something or someone who could hack so easily and quickly into the Galactic Force was something he needed to stop.
So Lucas ran.