Hush (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 1) (31 page)

That the large armored giant, who
was at least nine feet tall, was still able to stand was amazing to Cindy.
Impulse was about as powerful as anyone in the world, after all. Not that both
of them didn't stop fighting a few seconds later, when the red headed soap
opera watching fiend started to glow blue and shoot out what looked like a
solid laser blast of similar colored light at the two people fighting. The
thing there was that she could only really hit the bigger one. Bridget realized
what was happening, before it took place, and dodged behind the giant, blocking
the beam with her opponent's body. Then, grabbing a huge arm, she started
pulling, and jumping up to kick at the shoulder joint at the same time, being
careful not to get hit.

With the large lady stunned,
working so fast it was hard to tell what was going on, little Bridget tore off
the armored right arm. Being stunned or not, Lauren screamed. Blood poured from
the wound, as the girl backed away, smiling. Her eyes were dead, and staring as
she panted hard, sucking in air rhythmically.

It was Brian that called out, his
voice raw.

"Medic! Crap! Get
someone..." Then he ran, striping off his tan heavy shirt, to use as a
bandage. There was too much blood coming out. It didn't take a genius to
understand what had been done.

On purpose too.

Bridget stood there, her story
unfolding now that Cin had time to read all about it. Lauren, older than she
was, and lonely, had been her best friend once. Then, a few years before, the
woman had been influenced to think that Prime had been sexually abusing her.
Everyone there had been pretty much, but the betrayal of her best friend, lying
about her like that, and then trying to kill her dad, instead of believing her
about the whole thing... It had been too much.

That would be ended now. After
all, the armor that protected Lauren was too strong to be gotten around easily,
and there was no real way to even stop the blood from coming out at the
destroyed joint. Or there was, but it would take a powerful healer to do it, and
Phoebe, the one they had, was out of town, visiting her parents in Chicago.

So everything had come together
perfectly that way. In a few minutes, the woman would be dead. Finally.

The main thing there was the
blood, of course. Brian was trying to use his shirt, but the tearing had been
too uneven, and bits of broken shell and armor were in the way, preventing a
good seal. Everyone just stood there for a bit, thinking of what to do.

That
part was really strange, since it
was kind of clear that several of them had good ideas about what was needed.
They were all just too stunned to consciously think of ordering it done.
Rolling her eyes a bit, Cindy sighed, and pointed at Dave. He should have
already been working on it, understanding what he could do.

The blue man looked at her,
scared. Lauren was his friend, after all, as much as he had one there. A
traitor too, it seemed. That could have him named one too, if he wasn't
careful.

"Use your field to stop the
bleeding for now. Turner, call in Kerry, so she can repair the damage. Proxy,
get out of the way in... Three, two..." They all did what she said, which
was funny enough she nearly laughed.

Lancaster, the big man she wanted
to kill, looked at her and nodded.

"I'm on Burkes then. I can't
fucking believe it. Are you certain?" The words were angry, and more than
a little bit tense, really.

Cindy resisted rushing him, not
having one of her knives, but it was hard to do, really.

"No? I picked that up from
Lauren only. I can check on him. Um... Can you leave? Fast?" It was clear
the man didn't get her meaning, but he nodded, thinking that she was asking if
he could get off the base, to hunt Burkes, right that moment for some reason.
That worked well enough for her, for the time being, so she pretended to mean
that, instead of asking him to get away before he had to burn her to a crisp.

Thankfully he turned and ran off.
Planning to get a car and actually vanish, right then, thinking it might be
needed in order to stop the rogue Agents. His people. The bitter sting of
betrayal ripped through him then, but he didn't hesitate. He'd known that it
had to be at least some of them the whole time. No one else could have gotten
the information that was needed.

Once he was gone there was a
small measure of relief that came over her. Not that it wasn't going to get
worse now that it had been triggered. That part was too bad, honestly. From
that point on, until one of them was dead, she was going to be dreaming of
killing Darryl Lancaster. He even seemed like a decent guy. Too bad he needed
to stop being like that.

Her blue staring pal, Dave, had
moved in to the right distance and was physically keeping the red blood inside
the armored form. Perfectly, allowing it to clot at the surface, and start to
heal over a bit, or so it seemed. When Kerry got there, fresh from her room,
where she'd been told to stay for the time being, she just looked at the whole
thing for a bit, and then shrugged.

"I can't reattach it, I
don't think. I can close off the wound, but that's really all. I'm not a
surgeon or anything." The story inside told all about that part of things.

The woman was a very capable
telekinetic. So much so that she
could
have fixed all the damage, even
rebuilding the armor, if she'd known how to do it in the first place. The thing
there was that she just
didn't
. Not on the level that it made sense to
her right then. Her power was really impressive, but she didn't have the kind
of understanding that would be needed to get it done in time. That would leave
Lauren without an arm, however, since even if it might grow back otherwise, it
wouldn't be able to, if the hole was filled in with chitinous armor.

Worse, the construction of the
body inside was different, it was clear. Just having a doctor there wouldn't
have helped, since Lauren really wasn't human. That said, it was also clear
from Kerry's internal story that there were about five ways for her to still
get the arm fixed. She was kind of awesome that way, but high in self-doubt. On
the good side, they didn't have to take care of that in the moment. Bridget
knew that one. It was prescient, but solidly there anyway.

Director Turner made a hard,
somewhat disgusted, face and nodded.

"Do it. We need her alive,
for questioning. Chambers, with me." Then she stopped and looked around at
the rest of them, and noticed that they were all still in shock, more or less.
Not Cindy, and not Bridget. For some reason the curly haired woman took a deep
breath and waved at Cin. "You too. This is a cluster of monumental
proportions. Proxy, stay here and guard Lauren."

Then she turned and walked away,
like she actually expected Bridget to just follow along with her. That worked,
so Cindy ended up following the other two, feeling a bit like a third wheel.

No one spoke for a long time,
until they went inside the main admin building, and entered the large office
that Marcia kept for herself there. It was nice inside, being tan and gold in
color, with a lot of visible wood. At the very front there was a young woman
with blue feathers on her head and a yellow beak, who stood talking to a tan
lady with raven black hair. It was a dye job, obviously, since at the roots the
color vanished.

Cindy read up on that, skimming,
and got that the pretty young woman was invisible, most of the time, if not for
her dye jobs. Everything that could be seen was clothing or something like
that. Penny Cooper was the name. Cellophane.

She also wasn't stupid, and got
that something was going on. She'd heard the commotion, but that kind of thing
did happen there, often enough that no one ran to see what it was all the time
any more.

So her voice, which was a bit
soft and shy seeming, was also questioning.

"What's up?" Her look
went, accurately enough, to Bridget, who just looked back, a bit coldly.

It was the girl who answered,
after a few seconds, her voice firm on the topic.

"We found out that Lauren is
a traitor, and working against us to take down the IPB. When I confronted her
with the information, she attacked me. In the fight that ensued I managed to
disarm her. Her right arm, in this case. Unfortunately it looks like she might
live." She sighed and looked at Cindy, who was clearly to blame for that
one. "We
can't
control her, or keep her prisoner for long. You know
that right? Even with an arm down, no facility on the planet can do that. She's
too great a threat to play with."

There was a soft glare, and then
a head shake, for Turner. Bridget didn't keep going on about it, but it was
pretty clear that she meant it, even if she'd also wanted the woman dead for a
long time. The Director of the whole mess took a breath and blew it out, then
nodded.

"I know. I just can't believe
it. It looks like Burkes, too. The bastard. After I put him in as the head
Agent.
That
makes me look good, doesn't it? Anyway, Lancaster went
silent, to try and locate Burkes and anyone else helping him. Hush here sent
him out for it."

Cindy winced, seeing that
"Hush" was supposed to be her new nickname. The code that meant her,
when it was used in the field. That was pretty bad. It didn't even really fit
her powers that well. She got it, having been a librarian, but it could have
been a lot better. Librarian came to mind as a name, for instance. Even calling
her
Reader
kind of worked.

There was a hard look from the
invisible secretary, and then a nod.

"I should go too. They won't
see me coming. This is... Why? I mean, why would our own people turn against
us? I know that Burkes had that thing with Tobin about a year ago, but they
kind of made up. Tobin didn't seem to be holding a grudge. If Burkes was...
Well, then he would have shot Tobin in the back of the head, not done
this
..."
She seemed pretty certain of that one. Like it was the only way that things
could have gone between the people. They either made up and meant it, or fought
to the death.

Turner cleared her throat, but it
was Bridget that broke in, her face pissed seeming suddenly. Angry on a level
that wasn't very clear headed.

"It's me. After everything I
did to help them, people are scared of me. They think that I'll hurt people. So
they want to kill off all of you here in the head office and take over. At
least that's what Trivia hinted at. I guess the idea would be to... I don't
know, get control over me that way? It doesn't really make sense, does
it?" She looked at all of them, stopping on her boss, who tilted her head,
then shook it a bit.

"Doesn't it? There
are
ways to control you, Bridget. If they can manage to brainwash you, or get some
kind of psychic control in place, it might work. The government has suggested
it, but so far I've told them no, since if it backfires we end up with a half
insane Impulse running around killing us all. That I was doing it to protect
the fools in the military, and not
me
, didn't really get through the
extra thick brain casings they use in place of skulls." Inside it was
clear there was more than just that going on for the Director.

For instance, she knew, for a
fact, that if they tried to displace her at the moment, that the entire body of
Infected Operatives would go with her. Nearly. She'd thought it was
all
of them, but before that day she would have figured that Kerry and Lauren would
have been with her, too. Now her own first mode was kicking into high gear and
she couldn't trust anyone.

Even the people with her at the
moment could be spies, or saboteurs. She looked boldly at Cindy then, since
she, more than almost anyone in the world, had a good reason to be in on taking
Marcia down. Their first modes practically made them natural enemies.

Marcia wanted to stop the woman
from killing, and couldn't help but be suspicious that the new woman would
resist that as hard as she could.

Which was pretty close to true,
Cin realized.

"I
do
really want to
kill Lancaster." She said it lightly, which got a troubled look from
Penny, in particular. Her face screwed up and everything.

"Why? Did he say
something?" Penny couldn't imagine her honey, Lancaster, doing or saying
anything to a new person that would cause her to even tease about that kind of
thing really. The tone had come out making it seem playful too, so the
invisible woman started to imagine something about butt slapping, which seemed
out of character for Darryl on a level that would make it silly to think about.

Cindy waved and short handed the
whole thing.

"Nothing like that. He seems
nice, really. My first mode, I guess, makes me a serial killer. He triggered
that part of me, hard. Not that I could really get the job done, given his
abilities, but I
want
to kill him so bad. That's why I asked if he could
go away, which he took to mean head for the hills and move out in secret. Which
might work pretty well, as far as that goes. I should look up this Burkes guy."
She waited, wondering if Penny was going to shoot her, in order to save Darryl,
because she had a gun on her, in the small of her back. The secretary knew how
to use it too.