“Ughh.” I sat up, then registered that I wasn’t in my bedroom. I looked around, and saw that it was a sparsely furnished hotel room, with tacky wallpaper. Marc and Caitlin weren’t here, but the bed was soft, though when I moved I was conscious of aches and pains everywhere, and I could probably have eaten a cow and have been still hungry.
All of a sudden, yesterday flashed back at me. Waking up, hearing voices, meeting Marc, the car crash. “Damn.” I whirled at the sound of a chuckle.
Marc stood in the doorway. “Awake, are you? Good. We need to get moving.”
I stared at Marc. Suddenly it was too much.
“Is that all you have to say? That we have to move? Well I have news for you, Mr. Juilliard,”
I paused for breath, then continued acidly.
“Yesterday I woke up in a strange hospital ward, was told I could hear and control thoughts, met a man who wants to see if he can use me as a weapon, then almost got my niece and me killed when I decided to trust him, and after pushing him out of a burning car, I find myself in this crummy hotel, and all you have to say is that we need to get moving?”
I was practically yelling at the end, and Marc came forward with his finger to his lips.
“I realize that, but right now, we need to leave.”
But I was on a roll now, and enjoying myself.
“I’m not moving until you explain. And where on earth is Caitlin?” She appeared from another door.
“What’s going on?” Then I spoke out loud, using the odd resonating voice. “Now.”
Marc moved forward and sat down in one of the old chairs. I took the one next to him, motioning for Caitlin to sit down.
“Marc is going to explain everything,” I said, using a silky smooth and very dangerous voice.
Caitlin nodded. “Good.”
Marc struggled, and then seemed to give up.
“When the nanotechnology outbreaks started, I was in what could be called the French version of the SEAL’s that you have here in the USA. I was given a team of men, and we were supposed to look at what America has to offer in terms of people we could use as weapons.”
Caitlin shifted, obviously outraged.
“What we found was a man named Conner, who could shoot fire out of his eyes, a women named Colette who could attract water in huge amounts.”
Marc took a deep breath, and rubbed his hand across his face as though he was extremely old and tired.
Despite myself, I was sympathetic.
“However, I looked closer at what was being done to these people. They were being trained as weapons, most of them against their will. I couldn’t bring myself to continue.”
“So I pretended to go along with everyone, and when we came to the compound where the people were being kept, and all the other men on my team had gone, I freed everyone in the back, and we stormed the compound. Together, Conner, Colette, and I freed the captives.”
His voice held indescribable bitterness.
“I was an idiot. Most of the captives had gone insane. Not in the technical sense, though. They were normal, they could think properly. But the brainwashing they had gone through was too much. When they saw all the other people, a mix of the drugs they had been given, panic, and stored hate made them all lose control. It was hell. Fire, water, and tons of metal appearing out of nowhere, people changing into animals or grotesquely transforming into killing machines with giant blades.”
“At exactly the same time, all of the people stopped and returned to normal. Like a switch had been flicked. They looked at all the dead, and the rivulets of blood all over the floor and some started to cry, or scream.”
He took a deep breath.
“When they saw me, covered in blood, badly injured, they got me out. But they wouldn’t leave. They said they had something that could be released at anytime to make them be unable to control themselves. They told me to leave, to go. But they also talked about the people who did this to them. It isn’t the French only. A group of men and women, the heads of the biggest criminal organizations around the world, Mafia’s and such, have all come together in one organization, to recruit people to use as weapons. And then of course, the government is trying to stop them, or get there before them, but the government is completely corrupted.”
Here, he regained some of his old composure, enough to say wryly, “You could take all the sincerity and honesty in the government, place it in a firefly’s bellybutton, and still have room for three seeds and an assassin’s heart.”
