Power Play (Book 2)

Chapter 27: Needles and Haystacks

Recap: As Brandon's team moved out to a new location, they discovered that Samsara had been in Chicago trying to deploy an airborne nano virus that could potentially turn everyone it touches into one of the genetic duplicates. Horrified, the team disagreed on whether they should torture their Samsara prisoner for more information, or maybe even turn to Agent Corrales and the government for help in stopping the threat.

Winning Choice: We need everyone looking for Samsara that we can get, and that includes the government and their task force. Even if it means exposing us again, we need to tell Agent Corrales what we know and let him handle the duplicates and their virus.

Samuel watches me with those large eyes of his, standing as still as his twitching and tics allow. They're a strange group, these fighters Nicole pulled together. All regular people once upon a time, or as regular as anyone gets. Pulled from their lives, experimented on in a covert government program, and turned into the first generation of a new wave of mankind. All of it under the guise of protecting our country and their loved ones.

They may have been pulled into this madness because they were criminals, or because they wouldn't be missed, or because they had some quirk in their genetic makeup that made them an ideal candidate. Each story is different, and I don't remotely know them all. In part because I haven't had time to ask, and in part most of them don't like to talk about their past and what they've lost. Who we all were is gone. That's part of what binds us together.

Yet even if you try to let go of your past it doesn't leave you. It's what makes you who you are, both the good and the bad. I can see in Samuel's eyes, in the intensity with which he watches me and carefully avoids looking at Nicole, that he was not someone who would be okay with torturing another human being. I'm sure he is not alone.

Nicole wouldn't have been okay with it either, at least the Nicole I knew and married. She was too gentle and had too big a heart, and I don't think that's really changed. It's just buried under all the rage and hatred for everything that's torn our lives apart. She has a sad fury for what she did, and it's drowning her.

Sometimes when you love someone, you support them, and sometimes you take a stand against them when they try to do something they'll regret... no matter how much they might hate you for it.

"We're not going to torture the duplicate prisoner, Nicole," I tell her. She scowls and shoots a look at Samuel, but he carefully keeps his eyes on me. "You're right, though. This is too big for us to handle on our own. We're going to have to work with Corrales."

I reach out to her but she slaps my hand away.

"He will use you," she says. "He cares about one thing, and that's it. We're collateral damage to him, and he will do anything to lock us back up and continue his experiments. You can't trust him."

"I don't have to trust him to work with him. I won't let any of us fall back into his hands. I won't." I step towards her but she backs away, raising her hands.

"Don't," she says. There's a lot of pain in that single word. For both of us. I step back.

"Stay away from the prisoner," I tell her. "Work with us on this. Please. We need you."

She shoots a final look at me, then at Samuel, and runs back out into the warehouse. I suppose that's her answer. It hits me again that I may never get her back, at least not in the way that I want.


"Brandon?" Samuel says.

"I'm okay," I lie. "Keep a guard on the duplicate. Make it clear to everyone that she's not to get in to see him, not to talk with him, not any contact."