Two Delta India Echo Read online

Chapter 3

  “So tell me Jack, why are you even doing this?”

  Jack paused for a moment, as it was a question he often asked himself, but didn’t often answer. The shimmering from the Aurora temporarily lit up her skin like an electric eel. It was only the adrenaline from the day’s activities wearing off, he assumed, and tried to calm down enough to think through the purpose of his existence, again.

  “I guess it’s part penance, part retribution, Sin.”

  “Wow, regular yin and yang guy. So tell me, for my own amusement, what is the Yin, and what is the yang?”

  Jack got up and grabbed another beer from the fridge, before moving over to sit on the couch next to Cindy. She flicked her feet onto the couch and cosied up to him, which was nice. Well, he figured it was nice but didn’t want to read too much into it.

  “Well, the yin is really all of the bad things I’ve done in the name of peace and justice. It took me a while to realize, but it’s all bull-crap and charades. Everything in my life until the incident was based on me moving through ranks, the focus being put on what I was going to do, not what I was doing now. That is the thing with the military, they brainwash you into forgetting your morals, before programming their own skewed ones into you.”

  “How very poetic, my dear. I’m surprised you remember any of that with all of the booze you drank in the year after.”

  “HEY, it’s anaesthetic!”. Jack finished with one finger pointing to the beer while he knocked the whole thing in one go. To be honest, he was surprised he could remember his own name after half to crap he took.

  Cindy shook her head, knowing full well he was pushing her buttons. She desperately wanted him clean, and he knew it, but trust was a notion he was having trouble sharing these days, even with her.

  The two of them sat on the couch silent for a while. It was quite relaxing, and Jack could feel the familiar numbness of the alcohol starting to weigh down his eyes. They were heavy, real heavy. He was about to doze off when he heard a bang outside. He quickly shifted Cindy’s legs and got up, drawing his pistol.

  The house was dark, and it suddenly became silent outside. As he made his way to the corridor he heard a crash back in the living room. He quickly spun and dashed back down the hall. As he swung into the kitchen he saw a shadow move across the living room and dive through the plate glass viewing window. Jack ran across to the living room, forgetting all of his training, and jumping over the couch to see a shape and pool of blood on the floor.

  His heart rate was going at a million miles per hour as he turned the body. Cindy looked back at him, with a slight wrinkle of a smile from the edge of her mouth, before closing her eyes. Just as Jack was about to scream out he heard Cindy shouting his name.

  “Jack, wake up, wake up!”

  He opened his eyes to see Cindy standing over him. He was laying on the floor and had the taste of vomit in his mouth. It took him a few moments to gather himself before he realized he was on her workshop floor, in piss-covered pants and no shirt.

  “Jesus-H-Christ, Jack. What the hell have you been putting into yourself? Your Bio-stats are all over the place. I thought you were going to die”. The last words fading to a near whisper as she punched him in the chest.

  He lay there exhausted, barely able to speak. As he slowly regained himself, he could feel the blood start to rush through his body. The whirlpool of emotions and thoughts began to slow, collecting themselves and stowing away from his mind’s eye, right where he liked them.

  He sat up and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ve been off the hard-core crap for a while Sin. Those beers I had earlier is all I’ve had for weeks. Honestly. Run a Tox Screen on me if you need to.”

  “Don’t worry I am. I want to trust you Jack, but if it comes up red, well, I don’t want to think about that”.

  She dipped her head and got up from the floor, walking over to her equipment. She stood there for a moment, then spun on her heels to face Jack. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

  “What is it, Sin”, Jack got to his feet and walked over.

  “Is Ivan the only person you saw today?”

  “Yup.”

  “And he made your deal, put you on the team?”

  “Yup. That’s what we shook on.”

  “Well, my dear, his idea of ‘team’ and mine must differ, because I don’t try to kill my team members.”

  Jack turned to look at the screens, but it was all gibberish to him. But if Cindy’s stare was anything to go by, it wasn’t good.

  “I had a hunch when your fingertips went green”. Jack looked down, they were. “It happens when you get hit with what we call a ‘DNA disruptor’. Nasty as hell stuff, literally strips your body from the inside out.”

  “So what was the talk about me being on drugs?”

  “Most obvious answer first Jack, and I needed to hear it from your voice, not rely on a computer. I’ve put a lot of trust into you, more than anyone else since I lost my parents.”

  “Fair call I guess. I have been a bit of an ass since we met.”

  “Uh huh, a ‘bit’ you say?” She allowed herself a little smile. “But, back to this crap, the only thing that saved you were your nano enhancements. I don’t know what your dad did to you, but that crap that enhances your vision and reflexes also seems to have a natural dislike for foreign objects. They have been completely shut down.”

  “Still in my body?”

  “Yep, you’ll have to ‘pass’ them naturally.”

  “Any way you can identify who made them?”

  “I already know. When I hacked into MDC, I managed to strip some data that seemed to be random partial files. But, it was anything but. My analysis shows it as a blueprint to their covert weapons development plan.”

  Jack paused for a moment, waiting for the punch line. There wasn’t one, only a concerned brow looking back at him.

  “Holy crap Sin, sounds pretty hard-core. Anything we can take to bury them?”

  “Nope. It’s all ‘subjective’ in its interpretation. Kind of like a jigsaw with a dozen solutions, you won’t know which one is the right one. But, we know they are up to something, otherwise Ivan wouldn’t want it, and he wouldn’t be wanting to kill you for knowing that.”

  The two of them stood there for a moment contemplating the situation. They had no friends, no back-up, no hard evidence, and some of the most powerful people in the world looking for them. There had been better starts to the day.