The Cyclops Initiative (49 page)

Julia nodded.

Angel got up from the table. She started to turn away, but then she stopped herself. She took a piece of paper from her purse and wrote a phone number on it. “The next time Chapel wakes up, just call that number. It won't pick up no matter how many times you let it ring, but that doesn't matter. I'll see the call came in.”

Julia took the scrap of paper. “When he wakes up—­”

“Sugar,” Angel said, “I'll come running.”

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 31, 07:42

“I know you need to get to work, and it wasn't my, ah, intention to detain you. Mostly I just came to thank you, of course. After all that you”—­Hollingshead waved his hands in the air—­“after all you did. Quite frankly, you saved my life. But that's not the only reason I came. I did wish to speak with you quickly about, well. About this house.”

Top's hand lay on the table, the fingers flexing as he gripped it hard enough to damage the veneer. He said nothing. He didn't even blink. He just nodded.

“It's a fascinating arrangement here. All the veterans, all your—­your boys—­living under one roof. Struggling through their PTSD and their physical rehabilitation together. A brilliant stroke, that. I remember how terribly alone I felt after I came back from my first tour overseas. How a situation like this might have helped! And you manage on such a shoestring budget. I know that in the past you've managed to get by with donations from certain of your boys. Myself, of course, included.”

Top nodded again. Hollingshead had needed physical rehabilitation after a hip replacement a few years back. Top had been his therapist. The fact that Hollingshead outranked Top by several orders of magnitude hadn't mattered in the slightest—­from that day forward, Rupert Hollingshead had been one of Top's boys. He was rather proud of the affiliation.

“You may have heard—­that is, I don't know if you've heard but my, well, my job title has recently changed. To be blunt I've moved up in the world a bit.”

Top finally spoke. “Are you saying you want to give us more money?” he asked. “Admiral, sir?”

Hollingshead smiled and took off his glasses. He began to polish them with a silk handkerchief as if he needed time to think of how to frame his reply. “About that, well, certainly. I mean, if you think you could use more of, ah, a stipend. But what I was really thinking was, we could set you up as a pilot study. Get some data, crunch some numbers, as it were.”

“A pilot study?”

“Well, yes,” Hollingshead said. “The government does prefer hard data when it can come by it, you see. I think we can prove that a house like this does our veterans more good than—­well, than the programs we have in place now. Ah, I know that look on your face. I remember it from our days together when you taught me how to walk again. You're wishing that I would get to the point.”

“With all due respect, sir.”

Hollingshead nodded. “What I'm suggesting is simple: that we start up houses like this all over the country. Hundreds of them—­as many as necessary. Places for our returning veterans to stay, to get back on their feet. To make sure that every one of your, well, metaphorically let's call them your boys, has a chance like this. Now, of course, you and Dolores would be the directors of this program, which would mean a substantial yearly salary and—­”

“You know I would do it for free,” Top interjected.

Hollingshead smiled.

“Damn,” Top said. “Maybe I shouldn't have said that.”

Hollingshead tilted his head to one side. “Said what?” he asked. “At my age, of course, one's hearing is the first thing to go.”

BETHESDA, MD: APRIL 2, 21:13

It was very quiet and very dark in the hospital room. They'd turned the lights out so that Chapel's roommate could get some sleep.

Julia didn't mind. She climbed into the bed with Jim and curled up against his side, careful not to disturb any of the tubes or sensors attached to him. It wasn't the first night she'd done this, and she knew how to get comfortable.

It helped that they'd removed his artificial arm. That made some room for her on the bed. They'd stored it in a cupboard nearby, out of sight—­apparently it creeped out some of the nurses.

Julia kissed Jim's cold cheek. Laid her hand on his chest.

He stirred. He did that sometimes, in his sleep. But this time his eyes opened, just a crack, and he whispered her name.

“I'm here,” she said.

He nodded. Licked his chapped lips.

“Angel came by earlier,” she said. “She wants me to call her when you can actually talk to her—­”

“Not . . . now,” he told her. The effort of talking visibly drained him. But he shifted a little in the bed, turned so he could face her better. “Now.” He took a long, deep breath. “Want to talk . . . to you.”

“Sure,” she said.

The words came out slowly, each one costing him a little strength. It was all right, though. This was the most he'd said since he first regained consciousness. Weak as he seemed, he was getting stronger. All the time.

He was going to make it.

“When you . . . broke up with me,” he said. “I had a little box. I put it on the . . . on the table by the door.”

“I remember,” she said. There'd been a diamond ring in that box. She'd already broken things off, and she was walking out the door for what she thought was the last time. She'd seen it sitting there and it had destroyed her. She'd spent that whole night crying and drinking and trying to not think about what the box meant.

“I want . . .” he said.

Then he stopped. His eyes closed, and she thought maybe he'd fallen asleep again. She knew she shouldn't wake him up, that he needed his rest. She desperately wanted to know what he had been trying to say, though.

Fortunately for her sense of medical ethics, he opened his eyes again on his own. “Director. The director said . . . he said he wanted to give me a new job.”

“You're not exactly ready to go on another mission,” Julia pointed out.

He smiled. “A desk job.”

“You know you couldn't work at a desk again if—­”

“
His
job. His old job,” Jim said.

“Oh,” Julia said, so surprised she had no idea how to react.

“You'd know where I was. All the time. And not as many ­people would . . . try to shoot me. Virtually none.”

She laughed.

“You should . . . go home,” he told her. “Get some sleep. You look tired.”

“You're not one to judge,” she told him.

“I have an excuse. Go home.” He grasped her arm, ran his fingers up her biceps. It sent shivers down her spine, like it always had. “Go home. Get that box and bring it back here,” he told her. “I have a question I want to ask you.”

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID WELLINGTON lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of the Monster Island trilogy of zombie novels; the Thirteen Bullets vampire series; the epic post-apocalyptic novel
Positive
; and the Jim Chapel missions, including the digital shorts “Minotaur” and “Myrmidon,” and the novels
Chimera
and
The Hydra Protocol
.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

 

ALSO BY DAVID WELLINGTON

Positive

J
IM
C
HAPEL
M
ISSIONS

Chimera

“Minotaur”

“Myrmidon”

The Hydra Protocol

T
HE
M
ONSTER
I
SLA
ND
T
RILOGY

Monster Island

Monster Nation

Monster Planet

T
HE
L
AUR
A
C
AXTON
V
AMPIRE
N
OVELS

13 Bullets

99 Coffins

Vampire Zero

23 Hours

32 Fangs

T
HE
F
ROSTBITE
W
EREW
OLF
N
OVELS

Frostbite

Overwinter

A
S
D
AVID
C
HANDLER

Den of Thieves

A Thief in the Night

Honor Among Thieves

CREDITS

Cover design and photo illustration by Tony Mauro.

 

COPYRIGHT

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE CYCLOPS INITIATI
VE.
Copyright © 2016 by David Wellington. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-224883-1

EPub Edition January 2016 ISBN: 9780062248855

16 17 18 19 20
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

www.harpercollins.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

Rosedale 0632

Auckland, New Zealand

www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF, UK

www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

195 Broadway

New York, NY 10007

www.harpercollins.com