Extraction Read online

  She shifted her view north along the shore and zoomed in on the locals that led to the crash site hours ago. Posing as a reporter, she’d gotten enough intel to ascertain that the Garda knew jack shit about what had happened, or who had been on the plane. They were frustrated with the American soldiers who barged in unannounced—that had caused quite a stink with the local brass—and taken over the crash site. She was assured the government was involved and in constant communication with the US State Department, but no one had said anything to the cops on the scene.

  Danika’s mouth twitched as she watched a cop wave her hands in the face of a stalwart Ranger—she ID’d the unit as Derek Alston’s—who shrugged, but didn’t move. It was no small relief that the brother of the woman she’d failed to save in the Underground had recovered from his exposure to the weaponized flu. Brenda was a good woman, and it had hurt Danika to follow through with the mission and let her die…but if she hadn’t done so, Chad Huntley would have been taken by Reginald’s men. By Darius.

  Danika clenched her jaw. Darius. The Council’s top male operative had been a constant thorn in her side while she’d worked for Reginald, one that she’d thought she left far behind when she broke with the Council. But Darius had survived the raid that took Brenda’s life and was out there again, working for Jayne. One day she’d find him and finish the job…

  Danika frowned. Focus. A line of soldiers toting rifles stood facing the agitated cops who’d been denied access to the entire beach. Several of the locals paced back and forth on cell phones and radios, red faced and angry. The situation wouldn’t stay contained for much longer. Everyone knew the soldiers wouldn’t open fire on the locals if push came to shove—but what kind of incident was Washington willing to risk by keeping things locked down?

  It only took her a couple minutes of watching the chaos down on the beach to realize they hadn’t found Jayne. Danika gripped the little binoculars tight and felt the plastic housing start to crack before she took a calming breath and relaxed.

  Of course she escaped. Fucking bitch.

  The question is, where did she go? To the best of Danika’s knowledge, Jayne didn’t have accelerated healing, and she’d been beaten to a bloody pulp in Edinburgh. Danika hadn’t even been sure the bitch was still alive when the Americans had carted her off…but if they were putting this much effort into finding a body, someone in Washington was worried.

  She lowered her binoculars and watched the soldiers work down the hill. The cool sea breeze rippled the grass around her as the sun climbed into the sky, cresting the dark smoke that lay across the water like a fog.

  “Skit.” Danika frowned. Shit. It felt good to swear in her native Swedish.

  Before long it would be too bright for her to slip away unnoticed. She lowered herself to the cool dirt and started to crawl back away from the crest. It was an hour long slog through the grass to slip back outside the police cordon and return to her stolen car down the road.

  Danika had to assume Jayne was still alive…there was a problem she’d have to solve pretty damn quick. But that would take resources—resources she didn’t have on her, or in her car. She needed a secure internet connection and a computer. A pair of Braaten’s fancy AR glasses would help, but Danika would manage without. As Jayne’s understudy, she’d always done that: survive and complete the mission without all the praise, the glory, or the high tech goodies that Reginald always showered upon Jayne. Jayne the perfect assassin. Jayne the invincible. Jayne the immortal.

  She felt the anger bubbling up in her blood, filling her arms and legs with strength, urging her to sprint, to destroy, to…

  Danika closed her eyes and froze, breathing deep. You do not control me, I control you.

  She repeated the mantra she’d developed in Edinburgh and channeled the power her exposure to Jayne’s gas weapon had bequeathed on her as it had killed everyone else who came in contact with it. That knowledge had fascinated Danika—there was something special about her blood, she’d always known that, ever since she’d been taken as part of Project Sanguine—but now there was something new. Something strong, something…feral. It surfaced in her less frequently than the first 24 hours, but each time she had to divert all her every ounce of her will to maintain control.

  She opened her eyes at the sound of someone coughing. Her light-absorbing, skintight outfit concealed her in the grass as a yellow-jacketed cop walked by on the road, his boots crunching on the gravel. As he passed, his radio chirped and she heard the announcement that American civil authorities were inbound.

  Danika smirked. Jayne was definitely alive. She could feel it now as strongly as the desire to jump up and tear the cop limb from limb coursed through her body. Danika tamped down the urge and locked it away.

  She lay there, fighting the urge to writhe and scream in fury until she was fully in control once more. The unnatural strength that flowed through her like a surging river faded to a trickle and she was herself once again.

  She exhaled and focused back on Jayne and the problem at hand.

  Where did you slither off to?

  6

  A New Venture

  Ilse of Man, United Kingdom

  Jayne Renolds glanced in the mirror at her reflection. Dark purple and sickly yellow bruises battled against several cuts and scrapes to see which set of injuries marred her flawless skin more. She touched the shiner under her right eye and winced. God only knew how long it would take her to heal if she hadn’t encoded her own DNA with Sveda’s advanced healing properties.

  Fuck you Sveda. And thank you Project Sanguine.

  “You know,” she called over her shoulder, “in the future, they’ll have skin tight body armor. It’ll stop this from happening.”

  Roland MacTavish cleared his throat behind her. “In the future, according to yon laddie at Celludyne, ye’ll grow a new face and just replace the old one.”

  Jayne picked up her makeup kit and loaded a brush with beige powder, her eyes traveling up and down MacTavish’s reflection in the mirror. “Oh?”

  “Och, aye,” he said, glancing down at the tablet in his hands. His finger tapped the screen as he talked. “If ye’re ready, I’ve got the quarterly reports,” he said in that brogue she found so endearing, rolling his ‘r’s like water tumbling over rocks in a mountain stream. “Mr. Myles, ye’ll remember the wee AI company ye bought…ProTek? He’s some bold predictions—and a message for ye.”

  Jayne turned from the panel of mirrors that surrounded her makeup station. The blanket she’d worn draped over her bare shoulders slipped to the floor in a whisper of fabric. She’d worn it since emerging from the tossing boat and that dreadful weather outside, and her once again exposed skin tingled in the castle’s air conditioning.

  “Oh?” she asked again, the makeup brush frozen halfway to her bruised face. Her Council training had had long ago allowed her to simply shut off pain and discomfort—unless it was life threatening—but the dull ache of so many injuries was a constant reminder that she needed time, even with Sveda’s stolen genetic advantage, to heal properly.

  Jayne smirked at her nakedness in the mirror. That didn’t mean she couldn’t look her best while she convalesced.

  “Mmmphm,” MacTavish said, making the Scottish sound that could mean all things from yes, no, maybe, to a sarcastic of course, and anything in between. “Seems a project that finally got the green light when ye…ahem, that is ye’r sister Lisa, funded them,” he said with a smile, “is showing real promise, but ProTek’s running into some government road blocks.”

  “Such as?” Jayne asked, as she applied the last of the foundation to her cheeks with a delicate touch, making sure it matched the un-bruised color of her neck. Jumping out of that plane over the Irish Sea hadn’t done her skin any favors, but she had escaped. It was a shame she’d been forced to kill the pilot—he’d been quite attractive—but the ends justified the means.

  “Aye,” MacTavish said in a voice dripping with long-suffering patience. “Want me to
give ye the wee summary, or just let the laddie tell his tale?”

  Jayne pursed her lips, stretching the swollen skin over one cheek to get a better angle. “There’s a video?” she asked, reaching for the concealer.

  “Aye.”

  “Well then, just let it play—be a dear and fetch me something hot to drink, would you?” She suppressed a shiver and pulled the blanket back over her shoulders, still feeling the ice-cold waters of the ocean embracing her body.

  He propped the tablet up on the makeup table, set the video to play, and turned to leave. “Aye, a hot toddy’ll do ye a world of good. Be right back, lass.”

  An image of the be-speckled young founder and CEO of the up-and-coming AI research firm, ProTek, appeared on the screen. He leaned into the camera and cleared his throat, the sound like a muted buzz-saw. Jayne flinched, smearing the makeup on her freshly set nose. That bitch Sveda had broken it in Edinburgh—one more score to settle when she healed up.

  But Sveda would never live to see her handiwork. Jayne smiled, ignoring the pain signals from her cracked, scabbed lips. She’d driven her knife into the Swedish bitch so far, she’d actually lost her grip on the handle. Council trained or no, even with her famous accelerated healing, Sveda wasn’t long for this world. Jayne cocked her head, examining her reflection in the triptych mirror, wondering if Council Operative 13 was dead already.

  There’s a pleasant thought.

  Jayne dabbed some more makeup on the one spot that didn’t seem injured, the little gap between her sculpted eyebrows.

  I hope you linger some and suffer for it first, bitch.

  “…so…ah, I wanted to talk to you about a pretty cool project we’ve got going here,” Myles was saying.

  “Do tell,” Jayne muttered at the video, perusing her collection of lipstick. “I love ‘cool projects’.” She glanced sidelong at the scientist. ‘Cool’? How fucking old are you?

  “In a nutshell, we want to do a full neural scan and impregnate a synthetic AI sub-routine with a human cerebral cortex for mapping.” With that simple beginning, Myles launched into a lengthy explanation.

  Jayne stared at the skinny, pasty man waving his hands in his excitement as he babbled on in techno-jargon she couldn’t hope to understand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she interjected into his monologue. She waved her arms, mimicking his excited gestures. “You are such a nerd.”

  Finally the young man paused, his eyes flicking toward something off camera, then nodded and took a breath as color crept into his cheeks. “I’m sorry if this is all too technical.” He flashed a wavering grin. “It’s just s-so exciting…I get carried away sometimes with all the p-p-possibilities if we could just…get there.”

  “Clearly,” Jayne muttered, peeling off the tattered remains of the surgical scrubs she’d been dressed in aboard the plane. The top of one pillowy breast appeared, almost completely purple with a ring of yellow around the edge that wrapped over the side and disappeared under her arm. “Son of a bitch,” she said, gingerly touching her abused flesh.

  She sighed, ignoring Myles as he rambled on about the current state of artificial intelligence. Research and development—both nationally and globally—had come to a screeching halt during the Pandemic, and had only just recently gotten back to pre-flu levels, only to crash down again in the wake of the bioweapon attack.

  Jayne looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. “I may as well take a bath in foundation at this point.” She stared at herself for a moment, then hooked a thumb under the elastic waistband of her scrub bottoms, pulling the waistband away from her taut stomach. She took a look down and smiled. “Well, at least something isn’t bruised.”

  “…that’s w-what’s been holding the industry back—fearful governments a-a-and bible thumping voters who are too s-s-stupid to see what true AI could do for humanity! Think about it—computers with the ability to think and react o-o-n their own, with the computational powers of a supercomputer—a true q-quantum computer—matched with the ability to think outside the b-b-box that we humans use every day…”

  Jayne rolled her eyes at the stuttering scientist, and got back to work on her face, barely hearing the boy prattle on about how fast scientific discoveries could be made with an AI working 24/7 on problems to which humans could only devote waking hours.

  “…not to mention, if we created a t-true AI, we could apply that to your goal of…of asteroid mining. We could send a fleet of AI controlled d-drones out to the asteroids right now to do the harvesting and transporting—there’d be no need to develop expensive rockets a-a-and the support they need.” He shrugged. “The possibilities are truly endless. That’s what’s so exciting.”

  Jayne froze, staring at her mouth as she applied lipstick. Right now. She put the lipstick down and replayed the video. Then she watched it again. She liked the sound of ‘right now.’

  MacTavish arrived without fanfare and deposited a steaming mug that smelled of scotch and honey on her credenza, then left in a swirl of khaki kilt, mumbling something about locking up the castle for the night. She waved him off and wrapped her hands around the mug, relishing the warmth that seeped into her aching fingers.

  She didn’t get a full grasp of what the brilliant young mathematician wanted to do until she perused the stack of digitized papers he’d sent along with the video. Charts, diagrams, schematics—it looked like everything he’d created in the process of launching the project. She couldn’t understand any of it except maybe a few pages of the executive summary, but after listening to the video—twice—and drinking the hot toddy, Jayne felt she had a better appreciation of what he was so excited about.

  Yes. Yes it looked possible. Rudimentary AI already ran most of the world’s finance markets and flew planes every day—autopilots had been able to land passenger jets for decades, even before the Pandemic. Self driving cars were, while not quite the most prevalent on busy streets, such a common sight that most people didn’t blink an eye when they saw a driver sleeping. In another decade, she figured “dumb” electric cars would be antiques.

  Another decade. Jayne glanced at her reflection again and noticed the dark circles under her eyes, still not quite hidden by the makeup that made her bruises disappear. How many more years could her body handle the level of abuse she’d suffered in the last 36 hours?

  Jayne inhaled the scented steam from her wine and smirked at the tablet, still playing Myles’ video. “All right, all right, you’ve got my interest. I’ll give you more money—get it done and get your precious AI,” she said, waving away the scientist and his video. MacTavish grunted and made a note on another tablet he carried.

  She closed the video and authorized a generous money transfer to the company’s bank account. “Remind me to pad the pockets of the congress-critters that are holding up ProTek, will you, Rollie?” Thumbing through the rest of the quarterly updates from her bevy of investment companies, she stopped on Celludyne, her newly acquired bio-tech firm.

  “How much will it take to make me live forever?” she mused.

  MacTavish cleared his throat. “Less than ye might think, Mistress.”

  Jayne spun in her chair and regarded MacTavish with cool eyes over the top of her steaming mug. “Do tell, you Scottish rogue,” she purred, rolling her ‘r’s.

  Color crept up MacTavish’s neck as his eyes struggled to remain fixed on her face.

  Jayne smirked as she sipped her drink, feeling the scotch warm her belly. She knew very well that one breast lay exposed to his gaze. Bruised or not, a breast was a breast and she knew hers were exquisite.

  “I rather enjoy seeing you put out like this, Rollie.”

  He cleared his throat again and gestured at the tablet. “Did ye no look at the ProTek reports, then?”

  “A bit,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. She couldn’t be sure, but the lightness in her head might have been caused by exhaustion, or something MacTavish slipped in her drink. “Mr. MacTavish, are you trying to drug me?”

>   He froze. “Nay,” he drawled, his face taking on an affronted look. “I wouldna think such a thing, and ye know it.”

  She laughed, a bubbly feeling in her stomach spreading the warmth of the drink through her body. “I’m teasing. I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. At least not without me telling you to first.”

  That got a rise of even more color into his cheeks. Jayne laughed as he scooped up the blanket from the floor and draped it around her shoulders with a chivalric flourish.

  “Yon laddie—Myles—has some verra interesting ideas for his AI…if he ever makes it. Or…would it be born, do ye think?”

  Jayne felt a shiver of desire creep up the back of her thigh. The adrenaline she’d been living on for the past few days was rapidly leaving her system. Over a long career of fighting and killing, she’d always found one perfect way to come down off a mission-induced high. She stared at MacTacvish’s biceps as he crossed his arms, the thin shirt straining against well-developed muscles. Her pulse quickened. She touched her fingertips to her lower lip, thinking.

  “I need a bath. A long, hot bath.”

  MacTavish swallowed, watching her.

  She stood, put her empty mug on the credenza and let the blanket fall to the floor again. This time she peeled off her sodden top and kicked off her scrub pants as well. Standing before him, completely naked, she felt her skin prickle against the cool air.

  “Care to join me?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she turned and padded into the bathroom, moving her hips just so. Her back protested when she leaned over to turn on the water, so she forced herself to straighten slowly to avoid pulling anything. If MacTavish followed her in, she didn’t want to miss out on account of a sore back.

  Jayne was beginning to wonder if he’d take her up on her offer when she heard the door close softly behind her. “Why Mr. MacTavish,” she murmured, turning and opening her arms to embrace—