Crossing the Line (27 page)

T
hen the door banged open. “Get. Away from her,” Nikki said, with her gun held out and a fierceness so different from her usual kind demeanor. I met her eyes, and I had never felt more transparent. She moved closer, pointing her gun at Chin Ho's skull. He froze with the needle on my skin, seconds away from puncturing. Even my tougher-than-steel handler didn't want to die.

Nikki leaned toward Chin Ho, her eyes widening when she saw what was in his hand. Then, in one easy motion, she knocked him out. “I got her,” she said into her comm.

The syringe clattered on the ground and I dove for it. Nikki got there first. She snatched it away and sprayed the Gerex all over the floor. A fierce fury burned in my stomach—enough to make me want to attack her.

“Hey!” She grabbed my face, sandwiching it between her hands. “You don't need that. You
know
you don't need that. We have a job to do here and we need you with us.”

I focused on her eyes and my breathing. I had a mission. A mission that had to be more important than anything. I felt the adrenaline start to flood my system. I nodded. “Yeah,” I said; my voice sounded breathy and detached. “Yeah, I'm here.”

She let me go and nodded. “Good.” She handed me a comm and a
gun. I took them from her, working the comm into my ear while she found Chin Ho's keys and locked him in the closet.

“We have a situation,” I said, pressing the comm in so the rest of the team could hear me.

“Raven?” It was Travis. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said, burying my craving even deeper. “I have a lot to fill you in on.” I told them everything I knew about the missile, the hovercrafts, and Dr. Foster.

“He's here?” Travis asked.

“I saw him this morning.”

“Okay,” Travis said, and I could practically hear him working out a plan, but I already had one.

“I'll get to the control room. I know where it is and I can get there faster,” I said. That missile had to be stopped and I was the best person for the job. Even if it meant I'd leave here a KATO traitor. “Scorpion, get to Foster, and the rest of you take out the hovercrafts.”

For a moment everyone was quiet, waiting to hear if they should listen to me or not. Then Travis spoke. “Do it.”

“Command, did you get that?” I asked.

“Oh, I got it,” Sam said. “I lost the hack into their feed but I'm working to get it back.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I'm going to need your help.”

“Just keep your eyes open. They know I was in their system, so they're going to be looking for all of you.”

“I'll see you later,” Nikki said, before sprinting off to meet Cody and Rachel.

I held my gun low in front of me, then closed my eyes. I focused
on the metal between my fingers. I'd done a lot of things in this facility, but running around with a weapon was something new. I took comfort in the feel of it in my hand and the power it gave me. Then I opened my eyes. I could do this.

I crept back to the main entry hall and ducked behind a pillar. I peered around it, down one of the hallways, then darted to the next pole. I didn't look back. “We're outside the room,” Nikki said in my ear. I kept moving, quickly glancing around the pillar after each move, then hurrying to the next until I got to the hallway that was slightly off the atrium. I pushed my comm in. “Okay, Command. I'm staring at the door. I'll let you know when I'm outside it.”

Then I heard a gun click a bullet into place near my ear. I stiffened.

“Well,” Chin Ho said, his lips tight and his jaw locked. “This is quite the disappointment.” I dropped my weapon without being asked. The closet didn't hold him. We were running out of time.

I stayed frozen, and my heart started to speed up. I was more terrified than I'd ever been. And for the first time in my life, I didn't see a way out.

In my ear Nikki, Cody, and Rachel were rushing Sam—they were still stuck outside the hovercraft room.

Chin Ho circled me, and when he came into my field of vision he had a vial of Gerex between the fingers of his other hand. “I saw it all over the floor. Which means you must be
desperate
by now.” I was outside of their control and he knew it. He was so close to me I could feel his breath on my face. “Even if you have been off it for months, I know you still want it. As I'm sure you have figured out by now, it does not matter how long you have gone without it or how clean you
think you are—you will
always
want it. It is how it was designed.”

I swallowed hard, because he was right. I wanted it. My
mother
made me want it. But not as badly as he thought I did. I was on an assignment, and right then, that was all I felt.

I fixed him with a look of total disgust, breathing evenly through my nose and trying to think. I needed a plan. It didn't matter that I didn't have a weapon. I would
not
let him win. Not after everything I'd done to stay free.

“What?” He cocked his head to the side and stepped closer to me. “You are not even going to beg for forgiveness?”

I snapped. “You killed my
mother
. I don't have to ask you for
anything
.” I quickly grabbed his wrists, then twisted, pointing the gun at the sky. Two shots fired off into the air. My cover may have been blown, but now I could use that to my advantage. It meant I didn't have to pretend anymore. I kneed Chin Ho in the groin, temporarily stunning him so I could knock the gun out of his hands.

Then Sam was in my ear. “Raven, what the hell are you doing?”

I kicked his legs out from under him and pressed my comm in. “I'm a little busy.”

Chin Ho popped up and came at me, faking a punch to my head and landing one to my unprotected stomach. I forced myself to stand straight and fight. We battled until I got an advantage. I hit him in the head with enough force to make him stagger away from me. I saw his gun lying on the floor. I knew I couldn't get to it, but I had enough time to kick it far away from both of us.

He bounced back with an angry fire in his expression. He wasn't amused anymore. He started cursing at me, saying things designed
to break me, and dangling the Gerex in front of me, hitting me with the biggest weakness I had, but it wasn't working.

He faked a punch, then tried to sweep my legs out from under me, but I saw through it and jumped up, kicking his stomach in the process. He sprawled across the floor, landing far too close to the gun. He glanced back at me with a mixture of delight and disappointment in his eyes, then army-crawled over to it. There was no way I could get to him before he got to the weapon, so I retreated, running back to the hallway I'd first come down—where my gun had been kicked aside.

I grabbed it and spun around to find Chin Ho on the floor with his gun on me. I liked my odds better in a hand-to-hand situation. He knew about a dozen moves to kill me in seconds, but I had always been quicker than he was. When it came to guns, however, he had the best shot in KATO.

For a moment we were both frozen in place. I edged closer to him, tightening my grip on the gun, trying to figure out a way I could
not
shoot him. I'd killed enough people because of him. I wasn't looking to add to that number, even if I
did
want him dead. “You need to come with me,” he said.

I clenched my jaw, but kept walking. I didn't stop until I was practically standing on top of him. “Not a chance.”

He sat up a little bit straighter. “You know I'll kill you if I have to.”

I swallowed hard, knowing he wasn't bluffing. I fired two rounds fast. They sliced through his thigh, accurately hitting their target. I dodged to my left, knowing what was coming. He fired two shots of his own. The first cut into my right shoulder as I fell to the ground, and the second flew past me, so close to my ear that I could hear it. I
swung my leg high as I fell, kicking the weapon out of his reach. I held mine tight in my left hand and pushed myself off the ground. I aimed for his head, wanting so badly to pull the trigger. But I couldn't. He'd raised me, and no matter how much I hated him, I couldn't kill him. I tipped the nose of the gun down to his stomach and fired.

I stood over him, panting and trying to ignore the pain shooting through my right arm. The bullet was still inside. I holstered my gun and reached for his, praying he would bleed out before he could get any kind of help. I gave him one last look and saw him squirming, before I moved toward the control room. I struggled to press my comm. “Command, did you get back online?”

“Give us a second,” Sam said. “We're close.”

“Get closer.”

It was a few seconds before Sam answered. “Okay, I'm back in. You're right outside the control room and you've got KATO agents heading your way.”

“How much time do I have?”

“I'd say about thirty seconds.”

I exhaled. “Can you get me inside, then seal the door behind me?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I can do that. But once you're in you're going to have ten or so agents to deal with.”

I nodded. “That's okay; I can take them.”

Then Travis's voice was grunting in my ear. “Don't get reckless.”

“I'm not. Control is a secure, disarmed room.” I could hear the KATO agents getting closer. “You worry about what you're doing and let me handle this.”

“Just be careful.” His voice was tense. I was afraid he was having problems, but I didn't ask. I trusted him to know what he was doing.

“Command, get me in that room.”

The guards were getting closer. I could hear them storming the halls that led to the atrium. I would be surrounded in seconds.

“You're in!” Sam said.

I pulled the door open as dozens of agents poured out of the hallways. Bullets flew as I pushed the door shut. “Seal it now. And jam their system. I don't want anything getting in this room until I'm done.”

I heard the room vacuum shut. I was using their own protection protocol against them. In case of emergency, this room, made solely of bulletproof glass, was supposed to seal itself. There was no way they'd be able to get in while Sam had a hold on their security system. I turned around and started taking out the tech operatives. They had all been through training, but they didn't practice regularly enough to be able to take me. Plus, the room bottlenecked in a way that made it impossible for more than two of them to get to me at the same time. I handled them quickly, even with my labored breathing and the pain shooting through my entire arm with every movement. I was down to one guy sitting at a computer in the center of the room.

“Raven, you got to hurry up,” Sam said. “I've got one active computer trying to push me out.”

“I see him.”

I charged at his back, using the fact that he was distracted with Sam to my advantage. I knocked my gun hard on the top of his head and he flopped across the keyboard. I pushed him to the ground and took his seat. Then I tore a piece of his shirt off and used my teeth to tie it tight around my shoulder. I needed to control the bleeding
to stay conscious. “Command, I've got the room,” I said, once my wound was wrapped. “I need you to walk me through this.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Priority one is shutting down the missile, but you have to do
exactly
what I tell you to.”

I swallowed. “Where do I start?”

“You're sitting at the main computer, right?”

“If that was the last active computer, then yeah,” I said.

Then Travis cut in. “He's dead.”

I froze. “What?”

“Foster's dead.” His voice was thick and heavy.

“He was alive a few hours ago.”

Travis didn't say anything for a moment. “Stop the missile.”

I knew what this meant to him. This was never
just
a mission. “Scorpion—”

“Focus,” he said, with a sharp edge. “They can't win.”

“Okay.” I exhaled heavily. “Command, I'm at the computer.”

“All right,” Sam said. “I'm going to get in there and pull up the screen you need, then you need to take it from there. I can see your screen, but this can't be done remotely.” He went quiet, then a few seconds later my monitor blinked and a dark background with complicated computer code filled the screen. My heart skipped.

In my head, Nikki asked for Travis to come help them. Cody and Rachel had chimed in and all four of them were talking back and forth.

I tried to focus on my task. I'd never felt so out of my league on a mission before. “What am I looking at?”

“It's the backdoor into the missile command,” Sam said. “You need to find the line that starts with five zeros and a one.”

I scanned the list of zeros and ones and dashes and carets. My stomach twisted. “I can't do this.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “I'm not a hacker.”

“Shut up,” Sam said in a tone so bored I could practically hear the eye roll. “You're the most capable person I know. Relax, focus, and get to work.”

I bounced my foot up and down, biting my lip hard as I took in the situation. He was right. I pushed aside the pain in my shoulder and pulled my chair close to the computer. “Okay, what do I need to do?”

“Find the five zeros and a one.” His voice stayed calm, like he never doubted me. “You'll know you have the right line if there are two slashes after it. “I'm looking at it right now. It's halfway down your screen.”

My eyes jumped. “Okay, I see it. Now what?”

“Go to the end of the line and type
exactly
what I'm about to tell you. And whatever you do,
do not
hit enter until I say so.”

I waited for the rest of his directions, then followed them to the letter. I typed everything like he said, jumping from line to line as he told me. And after two minutes, he finally told me to hit enter.