Hush (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 1) (39 page)

Then she hid the knives on her,
and wondered about how they were going to get to Rockton. Plane came to mind,
but she realized that Yi had a different plan totally.

They jogged to the motor pool,
and he grinned at the car, ready to explain the whole thing to her.

"We'll need to drive around
once we're there, and this is cheaper than renting. I'll teleport the whole
thing. Buckle up, though?" He waited for her to ask questions, since
people didn't generally know he had that kind of ability yet. She did however.
Taking him at his word, she got into the passenger's seat, and waited for the
world to change around them.

When it happened, with him
sitting behind the wheel with his eyes closed, it was remarkably soft and
gentle seeming. The world turned blue, and when she could see again they were
in a bank parking lot.

Grinning she smiled at him. The uppers
were starting to work a bit, she realized.

"So, we're vacationing in
Fiji later this year? Good to know. I need to work on my tan."

He laughed, even though it wasn't
funny, and then shook his head.

"Like we get vacations?
Besides, we aren't going anywhere if the genetic treatment doesn't work on you.
Do you know when you get that started?"

She nodded, as the vehicle was
started, pulling out onto the main street. It was clear they needed to go to
the left, since that was the direction the main part of town was.

"Earlier today. It will be a
few months, if it works. If not..." Well, the plan was still to kill her
if she couldn't be helped. Turner had flat out told her that, more than once.
Even while knowing that it was beyond Cin's ability to control.

Since Brian was probably the one
that would have to kill her, he nodded. That he knew the whole plan was clear
to him, inside his head. Which left him feeling a little sad. She really had
done her part so far, and more. It would be hard for him to execute her like
that, if it came to it. Not that he wouldn't do it. A small part of him also
wondered if he should hold off on sleeping with her, since that was clearly a
ploy on her part to prevent him from doing that.

That he was so untrusting of her
made her smile a bit and shake her head to clear it.

"Is that the place? The
first one?" It was a chain style building, but not a place she'd ever
heard of. Groceries and other things seemed to be sold there, but after they
parked and went in, it didn't take long to find out that the place didn't offer
deliveries. The manager seemed annoyed with them too, as if asking was some
kind of a big problem.

Then his own story tattled on
him. He wasn't lying about the lack of deliveries or anything, but he totally
recognized Proxy, even out of uniform. Not in a warm and fuzzy way, either. As
soon as they left he was planning on calling the police and claiming that
they'd come in and threatened him. That way the cops would have to go after the
man, and that would, at least in potential, lead to someone dying. It would at
least be bad press for the IPB, and might end up with Proxy, the monster, being
killed.

Looking around Cin smiled at the
man, who didn't recognize her as anyone in particular, and waved toward the
back area. There was a break room that way. She picked it up from his head.

"We need to talk, in
private." The man followed along, feeling uneasy about the whole thing.
Brian did too, but some part of him understood that there was a problem at
least.

Once in the back area, which was
empty, she turned, locked the door, and pulled the gun from under her arm.

"He's planning to make
problems for us. Calling in the cops to hassle us, which we can't afford right
now." She was thinking that a bit of judicious killing might be in order,
but Brian just sighed and shook his head.

Then he waved at the man.

"Seriously? I know that this
is pretty much the world's center of Infected hate, but... That's a bit last
year, isn't it? The trend now is to just get along. Besides, I'm a government
agent, and right now getting in my way might just cost lives. For real."
He waited, not going for a weapon of his own. Cin knew that she still had the
safety on, but didn't want to shoot there anyway. It would be too obvious and
get the police out for real.

So she put the weapon back under
her arm, a little clumsily, having never done it before, and fastened it into
place.

Then the manager, who was pushing
fifty, and had a pretty normal looking face that fit his job, sneered at them.

"I don't owe you, or your
kind, anything. You're all evil and it's my duty as an American to stop you by
any means possible." He was ready to die for his skewed beliefs, which was
interesting to note. It was written in yellow and white.

The man was also incredibly
scared that he was really about to die just then. Cindy loved that plan,
herself, and was about to go for a knife when Brian shrugged, lifted his right
hand, and vanished with the man. That left her alone, but not for long.

Two minutes later he was back,
smiling.

"He's back at the base in
the cell next to Lauren's. Under arrest for trying to impede us in our duty. We
can get him out later, once we get back. Technically I sort of claimed he was a
terrorist, so we don't even have to tell anyone about what happened."

What they did do then was sneak
out to their car, so that they could check the only other grocery store in the
area. The people there
did
deliver, and Tony, the thirty odd year old
man that did that work for them, when he wasn't stocking shelves or being a clerk,
didn't even make them work for the data too hard.

He stood off to the side,
thinking for a bit, then nodded.

"That
has
to be the
Branson delivery. I never see anyone out there. The food gets placed in a shed.
That's all. Enough for ten, maybe fifteen people every two weeks. There's
nothing out there though. Just that shed, and an old barn. I just do the
deliveries, and they always pay, so I never really thought about it too
much." Except that he had, and figured it was some kind of cult thing.

Possibly with girls being kept in
underground pens for sex. The man had a good imagination on him, but no proof,
so he hadn't mentioned it to anyone. Which was the right thing to do, in
general, since no one would have ever believed him anyway. Not until that moment.

Cindy nodded, and patted the man,
who was a little heavy set, on the arm.

"Good work. If it turns out
to be anything, we'll make sure you get a commendation. If not, well, no harm
done." The man gave them pretty exacting directions, even though she could
use his mind to draw a map for her anyway. He was kind of pleased with the idea
that he might be helping people. That meant he was a hero after all.

They did head out to the
location, with Brian stopping the vehicle a good mile away, so they could walk
in, in case of cameras or traps.

There didn't seem to be anything
like that however, and sure enough, as soon as they had a visual on the place,
and she focused enough, she was able to see floating text inside the ground.
Including some familiar people to her. Others as well.

She waved at it, not certain how
to really explain it all.

"Fuck. Okay, there are at
least fifteen people here. Most of them not moving. It looks like there are
five of them that are employees, or whatever you want to call them. There seem
to be different sections. Like, the people in them don't really know that the
others are there?" She focused for a bit, and found the man that did the
food. He knew, since it was his job to portion things out for everyone.

It wasn't until she bothered to
get the floor plan from him that it hit her who it was. She checked, then did
it several more times, since she didn't want to be wrong about it.

"Um... Brian? I can draw a
map, but... The man in charge here? I..." She shook her head then. It
wasn't like they were friends, or that she hadn't heard of any other supposedly
dead people being around. "It's Wally's brother. Clark?" She was
about to clarify even more when Brian looked at her sharply.

"You're certain of
that?"

She really was. Holding up her right
hand, she delved into the nervous man's tale again, making sure it was really
him, and not a mimic.

"
Yeeesss
. It's him,
not a copy. He isn't a prisoner or anything. Not that he knows any more than
the others really. Where all the doors are, and the lock codes, but that's
about it. I'll do up that map." It didn't take too long for her to draw
out, and she did it sitting there, while Proxy went and got some of their
friends.

That she had those was a little
odd, but she kind of did, she realized. Bridget was there, as well as Scott,
her father. For some reason Lauren was too, even if she was still supposed to
be sitting in a cell, being punished. Kerry and Denis were in the back, near
Mark Steinberg from the cooking show, who was standing next to Tobin Peterson,
the singer.

It was an odd group, but she
understood it after a moment. These people were all ones that could be trusted
totally. Either too powerful for anyone to fake their abilities, or too
distinctive, like Tobin was. She waved at them all, her face hitched up into a
small smile. It wasn't real, but then it was clear that Brian hadn't told them
all about the mission yet. She help up the hand drawn map, and started
speaking, getting that Brian didn't really want to, at the moment. He would
have, but the whole thing was actually going to be a lot simpler for her to
pull off, not really caring about it all.

"This is an underground
facility, where people that have been copied are being kept. Alive, but
drugged. Agent Burkes is down there, along with Mary Lawrence." She
stopped as that one sunk in. It was unexpected enough that Bridget actually
jumped, her eyes going wide.

The tiny redhead smiled though.

"She's dead! You're saying
she really isn't?"

Cindy nodded, "that seems to
be the case. The people working here are pretty much just people hired for the
job. Illegal workers from Mexico mainly. We probably want to go easy on them,
since they were paid a lot and then put here with no way out. Except the man in
charge. He came in knowing about the whole thing, more or less." She
paused then and shrugged. It was hard to know how that one would go over, and
while she could have run it past people, in their stories, she just jumped in.
"Clark Clarkson. Wallace Clarkson's brother. He's not really in on things
either, but it would be best to take them all alive. I don't think they'll
fight much, but if they get scared..."

Then anyone might fight. The
response to the new information was a lot different than she would have
expected. Prime was about to
accidently
kill the man in the raid, if he
could. Oddly Lauren was of a similar mindset. Bridget was excited, and scared
about what the others would do to the man, as well as concerned about Maggie
Laurence, since her mother was about to come back from the dead. That she knew
the President's daughter, and was her friend was news, but not that big of a
deal.

Her words were high pitched and
piping, but not like a child would have been.

"I was told that he'd be
killed. By the bad guys, but... Yes. Is this fallout from Braid's plan?"
She spoke to Brian directly, who shrugged.

It was a relaxed thing however.

"Probably. The woman had her
hands in
all
the pies, for a while there. That she'd have been involved
in something like this too... Well, that sounds like her, doesn't it? Can you
handle going in? I know this could be stressful for you."

Bridget nodded, then looked at
her grandfather, who looked young enough to be her slightly too old boyfriend.

"I'm fine."

Cindy nodded at that, then waved
at Mark and Tobin.

"
She
really is. We
can't let Lauren or Scott get at Clarkson until we question him. They both plan
to kill him." She smiled at the tall armored form, who was shocked inside,
and at Prime, who was trying to look innocent about it all. "Which
I
have no problem with, since his own brother wants him dead. Still, I don't know
if I can get information from corpses yet. It's never come up."

It really hadn't yet, but the
idea wasn't that strange to her. She'd sort of seen that kind of thing once
before, but hadn't gone into the idea. Books could be written by people that
later died. If she was picking up data from their brains, then it might well
fade as they died. The truth was that she'd never bothered to look and see if
the dead had tales still.

If so, then there might be several
corpses in boxes down below. For a second that left her feeling annoyed and a
bit scared, but if the President's wife was dead, no one would have fed her and
given her drugs, which was clearly happening.

Mark, who had some kind of time
stopping ability, nodded at her.

"Right. Tobin and I will
clear the place. The rest of you can run backup on this. The main entrance is
in that barn?" He pointed to the right place since it wasn't hard to find,
being the one old red building, a tiny shed that looked to be made of metal,
and a whole lot of nothing else for as far as the eye could see. Well, there
were some trees, in the distance, but that was all.