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Author's Note: Sorry for the long delay in posting this. I wrote this chapter, which is far shorter than the others. Then I wrote I wrote chapter 10 and ran into a typical situation of mine where I just can't figure out where to go from there. I think I might end up rewriting 10 so there might be a gap between the posting of this chapter and that one. Sorry about that. As far as this chapter is concerned, Cassie does not appear in it and as you'll soon see, its told from the 3rd person POV.I hope it doesn't confuse or throw people off.

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9.

Onboard The Mooring Gull

She followed the dark-suited gentleman along the deck, staring out at the calm ocean on the other side of the rail. She used to love the ocean as a girl. Things had been simpler back then. Her father used to own a sailboat. She and her brother used to take it out all day, sometimes into the night. That was before, though. Before the accident, before her father went to the bottle. Things were different after Jeremy was gone. Her father was different. She was different. Looking out at the grayish blue of the water, she couldn’t help but think where she might have been if there hadn’t been a storm that day.

Maybe she would be somewhere else.

Maybe she’d be someone else.

“Right this way, Miss Trent.”

She nodded and allowed the man to lead her into a room. It was dark inside and all she could make out was a single chair. He pointed to the chair, waiting for her to sit before he left her alone. She heard the door click as he closed it. So they were locking her in. She supposed it was meant to scare her, but if that’s what they thought, they had another thing coming. She didn’t scare easily. The boys in her unit had found that out the hard way. They didn’t much like a woman in the Corp with them, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about it. She learned to keep her head down and her mouth shut. She was patient.

Her patience paid off two years into her tour.

That’s when Onyx came-a-calling.

On paper, they didn’t exist.

A clandestine black ops arm of the military, so secret that only two people in the world knew they existed. The training was harsh. They broke her down, bled her raw and then built her back up. It was worth it though. Onyx was cutthroat. After the shit life she had, it was a breath of fresh air. She always felt the world was tailor-making her for a job like that. Most of what they did was classified. All she was ever told about her mission was she was doing it for the good of the country. That was enough for her.

She served in Onyx for three years before she decided to retire.

There was no future in killing for nothing.

She went into the private sector.

Ended up with a security firm called Frederickson.

It was a few years after that that she found herself here.

She still knew next to nothing about her employee. She was told it was better that way. Being a good soldier, she never once questioned things.

That was until this most recent assignment.

It was supposed to be simple.

Pair up with another agent, assume the identity of a suburbanite. She and her partner were meant to be married. Told if necessary they had to do everything in their power to make it real. She’d done it before. When she was given the full assignment, she never questioned it. Her orders were simple: acquire this kid by any means. He was sixteen years old, orphaned. His name was Cassidy. She and her partner were to pose as his aunt and uncle, make sure the kid had everything he needed. Until they called upon them. “Make him comfortable.” That was the assignment. She knew there was more to it. She was told the kid was dangerous. If necessary, they might have to subdue him. Everything was going perfectly until he was brought back by the cops.

The mission changed from there.

They got their orders.

Take him.

So they did.

After subduing him, they passed him off to the extraction team. Her job was over.

At least that was the plan.

The kid escaped.

That’s when they showed her how dangerous he was. They showed her a tape. It was over twenty years ago, a bit on the grainy side but she knew what she saw. That person had a tail. She pulled a man into the water and strangled him to death. It was so quick. They showed her other things too. Things dating back centuries. Whoever was paying for this new job had a pretty vivid imagination. She tried to humor the man. He was writing her her checks after all. She was very willing to play along. That is until she met the kid again. Except it was a girl this time. One that looked very similar to the one from that grainy video. They could be sisters. Or mother and daughter.

Things only weirder from there.

She absently rubbed her neck. It was still raw.

She was a believer now.

She was pissed too.

She couldn’t remember when someone had gotten the drop on her like that.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the door to the room opened. Light spilled in, framing a figure in the doorway for a moment. She squinted for a moment then the door shut.

“Good morning, Miss Trent, did you have a lovely sleep?”

That voice.

Dr. Chambers.

The woman who dropped the ball.

She grunted. “So this is why I’m here. You’re passing the blame.”

Sure, she had lost the girl, but it was Chambers’ people who screwed up in the first place. Amateurs. Now their screw up was her problem. A problem she was not properly briefed about.

“Blame? I’m not the one who let the girl slip through my fingers.”

Zoe scoffed. “It was bad intel.”

It was too.

None of the information she was given ever said anything about the kid having backup.

“An oversight on our part. One we hope you can take care of in the future.”

Zoe laughed. They couldn’t be serious.

“Me? Look, I’m done lady, pay me my money. Book me a flight out of this fucking freak show!”

Dr. Chambers didn’t laugh. She’d been walking around the room, probably around her. All Zoe could hear was the annoying tap of her heels on the polished floor. Now those had stopped. Being a smartass in a dark room with a psychopath like Chambers was a risk. The woman easily had the advantage here. For all Zoe knew, she could see everything. Pushing the wrong buttons wasn’t smart but she was done with this shit. She was a highly trained soldier, had years of combat training. That woman took her out with one punch. She saw the surveillance video from both the motel and the SUV dash cams. She saw what that woman did to their strike teams too.

She wasn’t human.

There was no way to stop that.

No, she was done.

This was WAY above her pay grade.

Dr. Chambers finally spoke: “You seem to forget our deal, Miss Trent. You bring us the girl, you get paid. I don’t see the girl here. So, no girl, no money.”

Bitch.

Zoe laughed. “You can take the money and stuff it.”

“We’ll double it.”

Zoe laughed. Yeah right.

“Triple it and we’ll talk."

Dr. Chambers didn’t even pause. “Deal. What do you need?”

Zoe was flabbergasted. She was also pissed that she didn’t renegotiate higher.

She licked her lips.

She didn’t even skip a beat when she told this crazy woman what she needed:

“More men and a big gun.”

“You’ll have it.”

Zoe smiled.

Now, this was going to be fun.

In The Room Next Door

“Damn Mercenaries.”

She opened the door and stepped into the stateroom. She didn’t even blink an eye at all the expensive décor. Her employer had a flair for the dramatic. Most of this stuff probably cost more than she made in a year. Everything was high end and untouched. The Mooring Gaul was not a pleasure yacht. It was bought and furnished for one purpose: housing their soon-to-be guest. Mr. Bishop had spared no expense. He wanted this place to be comfortable and feel like home.

She walked into the room.

Rich people disgusted her.

All her life she’d been dealing with them.

First as a waitress at the country club during her teen years, then the spoon-fed bastards at Harvard Medical. She came from humble beginnings and earned every cent of everything she ever achieved. They got it all handed to them on a silver platter. Under different circumstances, she might have even admired this Parker kid. He was a lot like her. She never knew her parents either. She was bounced around the System until she was eighteen. After that, the government spit her out and she struggled to stay afloat. Thankfully, she was able to land herself a scholarship. It paid for college and her side projects paid for medical school.

She managed to establish a small practice for herself in Manhattan. She figured if anyone knew how to deal with rich-people problems, it was her. They had a lot of problems too. She struck fame with a special patient though. A young man who believed himself to be descended from the Gods. He was an interesting case. The young man whom she referred to as “Patient H” had convinced himself that his father was Zeus and that Zeus had visited him in his dreams; told him things. The man’s delusions went so far that he thought he could fly. He eventually tried. Suffice to say, like most mortals, jumping off a building only led to a swift fall. The man’s tragedy had put her name out there though.

That’s how Bishop found her.

He approached her through a third party.

At first, she was skeptical of the whole thing until they sent her that video. From there, she was intrigued. She agreed to a meeting. More material was shared. A lot more in fact. She thought for sure she was there to evaluate the billionaire’s own mental health until she started to believe. He had an infinite amount of resources at his disposal and proved it to her. He had years of research as well. It was ultimately the research that had convinced her. The blood samples were the thing that sent it over the top for her. They weren’t human. When she saw them, she started to second-guess everything.

It was how this started.

It was also why she was needed.

Bishop told her about a boy. A boy who possessed this same blood. A boy whom he wished to meet. A boy he was convinced would solve all his problems. So they hired a pair of mercenaries to acquire the boy for them. He handled all the legal aspects. It was their job to pick him up. They succeeded too. There was a plan in place. A perfect plan she helped craft. Sadly, nothing ever goes to plan and when they had to improvise, things happened. They let the boy slip through their fingers, not once but twice now.

Heads were going to roll.

She was going to make sure one of them was not hers.

Confident she could handle what was to come, she walked over to the mini-bar to pour herself a drink. Mr. Bishop always kept it well stocked. Generally, she didn’t drink during the day, but she needed something to settle her nerves. She poured herself a glass of Scotch. She was just finishing when Mr. Bishop’s face appeared on the large flat screen in the room. She set down her glass and plastered on a fake smile. The man was in his seventies but didn’t look a day over sixty. His silver-gray hair was slicked back; the dark suit he wore cost more than her house. Charles Bishop was an aloof man. He never held any of his meetings in person anymore.

“That’s enough of that,” he said in a stern voice.

She cursed under her breath.

“Good morning sir, it's nice to...”

He cut her off. “Skip the false pleasantries, Doctor. Tell me what you know.”

She sighed. “Not much at the moment. Your crack-shot mercenaries dropped the ball and your security professionals got beaten by a mere boy...”

She had no problem speaking the truth to the man.

After all, if he wanted an Ass-Kisser, he would have hired one.

“The Mercenaries served their purpose, the security failure is on you.”

She expected that and didn’t argue.

After all, those men were under her watch at the time.

She wasn’t about to take the full blame for it though.

“It's hard to do my job when I’m not informed of all the details. You assured me that the boy was alone and had no friends. Then this woman appears out of nowhere, takes out your highly trained professionals without breaking a sweat.”

Mr. Bishop never showed any kind of anger.

He was an emotionless man.

“We were ill-informed. The situation will be handled. This opportunity is not without merit though.”

“How so?”

He smiled. It was the first time she saw him do so.

“We thought there was only one of them. There’s two now. This is wonderful news.”

She gave him a fake smile again.

His smile vanished quickly. “I have a team in the field narrowing down their location as we speak. These creatures might know how to hide but they can’t run from modern technology.”

That didn’t surprise her in the least. Bishop had his hands in several different things. His software and security devices were all over the country. All of it linked to one central network. This network could monitor most security threats around the world. It wouldn’t be long before they found them and brought them in.

They could run, but they can’t hide forever.

“There’s something else too,” he said, clasping his hands. “Something I want you to handle personally.”

“What kind of something?” she asked, concerned.

“Insurance.”

She smiled.

She knew exactly what he meant.

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Anything critical you have to say, PLEASE do so in a PM. Pointing out people's flaws or mistakes in a comment is hurtful and NOT appreciated.Thanks in advance...EOF