Manipulating Mikey (First Wave Book 8) Read online

  Manipulating Mikey

  By Mikayla Lane

  Editor Beth Braden

  [email protected]

  Cover art by: humblenations.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, affiliations and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Wave Series in Reading Order

  Hunting Cari

  Finding Jess

  Chasing Dare

  Grai’s Game

  Taming Jax

  Grounding Gracus

  True Traitor

  Manipulating Mikey

  Saving Koda (Coming in February 2016)

  Second Wave Series in Reading Order

  Viper

  Drago

  Mikal

  Chris (Coming in April 2016)

  Find me on Facebook at:

  facebook.com/author.mikaylalane

  To my Readers:

  Thanks so much for all of the awesome reviews, suggestions and comments.

  As always, feel free to email me.

  [email protected]

  Mikayla Lane

  468 Word Document Pages

  100,824 Words

  Chapter One

  Private first class Mikey Davis stared at the ceiling above the bed. He jerked on the bonds at his wrists and ankles one more time before giving up—for the moment. In the weeks since he’d been hit by the flaming aircraft in the mountains, he’d been able to break out of several different restraints.

  Each time the guards came in, he would fight until he was again subdued with drugs and restrained in stronger bonds. This time, Mikey wasn’t too sure he’d be able to break out, but he wasn’t giving up. He couldn’t. If he did, they were going to kill him. His own government was going to kill him.

  Mikey heard the door open and tensed when he smelled who came in. Why he could tell who came in by their smell, he didn’t know. But when he’d first awakened, there had been a lot of changes in him that he couldn’t explain.

  “Mikey, I told you, you have to stop fighting. You’re just going to hurt yourself,” Donald Macon said.

  He smiled as he adjusted the IV, forcing more drugs into Mikey’s system before he stood nonchalantly beside the bed.

  “Get me the hell out of here,” Mikey ground out from between gritted teeth.

  Donald laughed, his blue eyes crinkling in glee at Mikey’s spoken discomfort.

  “Oh, you know that’s not going to happen until you begin cooperating with us,” he said as he ran a small blade down Mikey’s arm.

  He added more pressure, digging the sharp tip into Mikey’s skin, and smiled as he left a trail of blood and torn flesh behind.

  Mikey didn’t even bother to react to the slight pain. He’d learned over the last few weeks that whatever the alien craft had done to him when it crashed had jacked up his body, and he healed much faster now. The pain was already gone.

  He didn’t want to think about the other changes, hoping to avoid the worst side effect. As if on cue, Mikey heard the now-familiar voice whisper through his mind.

  “Don’t let him break you. We are stronger than this, my host.”

  Mikey didn’t even blink, forcing himself to concentrate on the biggest threat he faced right then—the evil bastard pacing around the bed he was strapped into.

  “Mikey, I keep telling you: we can’t help you until you tell us what you know about them,” Donald said with a smirk as he ran a finger along the bottom of the bed near Mikey’s his bare foot.

  Mikey stared at the ceiling above him, refusing to give the bastard the satisfaction of getting to him. After he’d awakened, he learned very quickly that they didn’t want to hear the truth, and telling it only made things worse for him.

  “Come on, Mikey. Tell me where they are. What loyalty do you have to them now? They left you with me. They haven’t come to save you,” Donald said, the smirk on his face reflecting how much he was enjoying the interrogation.

  Mikey had figured out after a week that they thought he was one of the aliens who was in the forest the day the UFO crashed into him. The fact that he was one of their own, a current member of the military, didn’t matter to them. They accused him of infiltrating the armed forces to collect intelligence. He had no defense against the crazy accusations and was convinced they didn’t want to hear the truth.

  “Tsk, tsk, Mikey. If you don’t start playing nice, I’m going to have to . . . not be nice,” Donald said, unable to hide his smile at the thought of inflicting more pain on the young soldier.

  Mikey barely held back his snort of disbelief. If there was one thing he’d learned since he’d awakened into this nightmare, it was that this man was truly evil. He not only enjoyed the pain he inflicted physically and mentally, he received a sick pleasure from it.

  The one satisfaction Mikey had gotten during his captivity was embarrassing Donald in front of his colleagues because he couldn’t break Mikey. Even now, he could hear them laughing at Donald from behind the two-way mirror in the room.

  Mikey turned to him and grinned.

  “What’s the matter? Are the big boy games too much for you? Don’t they teach you not to play out of your league? Now run along, I’m sure there’s some poor bastard out there in your mental midget category just waiting for a prized intelligence officer like you to come along,” Mikey said with a sneer.

  Donald turned an unattractive blotchy color and gripped Mikey’s ankle until his short nails drew blood. Mikey held his gaze the whole time and didn’t even flinch. Donald was looking for something to hit him with when a voice came over the speakers in the room.

  “I think that’s enough, Donald.”

  Mikey watched the man grit his teeth as he dug his fingers deeper into his ankle before he finally let go and pasted a fake smile on his face.

  “Don’t worry, tough guy. We’ll spend some quality time together later,” he said as he left the room.

  Mikey heard the click of the door as the laughter continued on the other side of the mirror.

  “Anyone figured out how the hell we missed this guy’s DNA?” someone asked.

  Mikey knew they were talking about the Department of Defense’s program to collect DNA samples from all military personnel. The DNA was intended to help identify the remains of those killed in active duty. He’d never thought much about the requirement for them to store his DNA—until now.

  They’d asked him many times how he’d been able to bypass detection and enter the military. It was then that Mikey realized that there was more to the DNA collection than the government was telling its citizens and soldiers. Much more.

  From what he could gather from the conversations they didn’t think he could hear, the government been secretly looking for this alien species for a long time. For years, the government had been using everything at its disposal to gather the DNA of its citizens, all for the purpose of looking for those among them that were not quite human.

  That was what convinced Mikey that he’d been infected by the craft that had crashed damn near on top of him in the mountains of Colorado. If the government—with all its resources—hadn’t detected his infection when he enlisted, then he must have contracted the alien virus from the crash. It was the only thing he could think of that made sense.

  No matter how much he tried to tell them they were making a mistake in the first week of his captivity, they refused to believe him.

  When he first met Donald, Mikey had thought he would help him—even though the new voice in his head kept warning him Donald wasn’t a go
od person and Mikey shouldn’t trust him. For days, Donald tried to befriend him, and when Mikey couldn’t answer his questions the way he wanted them answered, Donald turned on him.

  It was then that Mikey found out how right the voice in his head was. Donald begun cutting on him while he was strapped down. The shallow cuts burned and bled, but it was nothing Mikey couldn’t handle. What had shocked him was that the cuts would heal within hours, and the evil bastard called it proof of his lies.

  After days of abuse alternating between cutting, beatings, and even waterboarding, the bastard tried to change tactics. They brought in a female private who tried to seduce him. No matter how attractive she was, Mikey just couldn’t help but feel his skin crawl when she was near him. Something about her smell and touch repelled him.

  After a half hour of putting up with her pawing at him, Mikey finally had enough.

  “Maybe if you didn’t look like a guy in drag, I might be able to get it up. I’m just not into . . . that kind of thing myself. Maybe Donald is available, you look more like his type,” he said as he spit at her.

  The woman’s rage had left him with a bloody nose and busted lip before the men laughing behind the mirror had her dragged out of the room.

  Finally alone again, Mikey stared up at the ceiling as the voice in his head spoke.

  “You must bond with me if we are to escape this. It is the only way you can use my strength to free yourself. I can override your free will in order to keep us alive, but I can’t force you to bond,” the voice whispered through his mind.

  “What are you?” Mikey asked in his head for the hundredth time.

  “I am beast, and I have been with you from birth. I have protected you and nurtured you until you were ready to bond,” the beast whispered gently.

  Mikey barely held back his snort.

  “If this is your idea of protection and nurturing, then you can go screw yourself,” Mikey said in his head, unwilling to let those watching him know that he was losing his mind.

  Mikey felt a buzz of electricity run through his body, and he strained at the bonds holding him to the bed. He held his surprise when he felt and heard the shackle on his right wrist give a little.

  “I can help you,” the voice whispered as the buzz of energy dissipated.

  “Yeah, you helped me right into this situation. Tell me how you infected me,” Mikey demanded.

  Mikey was a little creeped out when he heard and felt the sigh in his mind.

  “I have been with you since birth. I am the son of the beast of your father, as you are the son of your father. We are meant to be bonded the way our fathers were,” the voice said in his mind.

  Mikey gave himself a mental shake to try and quiet the voice, but he knew that it was only a temporary measure. The voice always came back. The only thing worse than captivity and torture was the fact he was beginning to welcome the voice and its whispered words of friendship.

  Every day he came closer and closer to accepting the madness that had become his life.

  *****

  Grai looked at his comm, saw the number, and immediately answered it.

  “What do you know?” he asked.

  “I found him. He’s at Fort Huachuca, in Arizona. There’s an underground tunnel that leads from the intelligence building under Miller Peak. Grai, this is going to be damn near impossible. If there’s a training center for shadow government groups, they’re all based here,” the caller responded.

  “What are we looking at?” Grai asked.

  He’d already known they’d be keeping Koda in a secure location, and he didn’t care. He was going to get his brother back.

  “We got NETCOM, the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade, an electronic proving ground, the Joint Intelligence Combat Training Center . . . Grai, if there’s a group that studies torture, information extraction, or mind fucking, they do it here. This is where they brainwash their own into being soulless bastards. You can imagine how hard it’s going to be to get in there. Or out,” the caller replied.

  Grai sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Are you damn sure he’s there?” Grai asked.

  “I have absolutely confirmed that they recovered a hybrid from the debris field in Colorado, and he’s being housed here. They are calling him ‘Mikey’ and claiming he’s a private in the Army. But I expected them to give him an alias to explain his presence there,” the caller said.

  Grai had expected the same thing and assumed it was why all their inside contacts hadn’t found Koda before.

  “Have you been able to see him?” Grai asked, holding his breath as he waited for a response.

  “All I saw was a guy with dark hair. I haven’t been able to get closer than that. He’s well-guarded. I’ve heard they have their best intelligence officer on him to try and break him. They call him the nutcracker, but his real name is Donald Macon. I’ll send you his information so you can do what you do. He hardly ever leaves the tunnels since Koda was brought in,” the informant said.

  “Brandon, are you OK? Do you need extraction?” Grai asked, concerned for the man.

  Grai heard the man laugh heartily on the other end.

  “No, I’m good. After almost dying at Plum Island, this is a cake walk,” Brandon Thomas replied.

  The mercenary remembered very clearly when he first met Grai. He’d made the mistake of signing up for a one way ticket working for the US shadow operations. It had only been the fact that he’d not allowed Mikal to be harmed that had saved his life. When Mikal and the others had left the basement where Mikal had been held at Plum Island, Grai hadn’t killed Brandon like he did the other mercenaries who had kidnapped his son.

  Instead, Grai had convinced Brandon that he was on the wrong side in an unknown war. Brandon had allowed Grai to shoot him in the shoulder, and after Grai left and backup arrived at the island, Brandon convinced his employers the only reason he was alive is because he’d played dead.

  With the knowledge they thought he had of Grai and his team, Brandon had been brought deeper into the shadow organization and ended up in the same place Koda was being held.

  “I didn’t save your life only for you to die there. Don’t take any chances; if you need extraction, you call immediately. I’m going to get our guys on the schematics and security protocols and see if we can find a loophole to get in,” Grai said, calling Traze and David through the Shengari’.

  “Let me know the where and when,” Brandon said, confident that Grai didn’t let him live just to screw him over during the end game.

  “I want you nowhere near that place when this goes down. I’ll keep you updated. If anything changes, call me immediately,” Grai said.

  “OK,” Brandon said before the call ended.

  Grai stood and paced his office at the headquarters in Dillon, Texas, as he waited for David and Traze to arrive. He tried hard to tamp down on the desire to burn Fort Huachuca to the ground to get to Koda.

  Traze was the first in the door, David not far behind him. They sat down in the chairs across from Grai’s desk and waited for Grai to speak. They didn’t have to wait long.

  “Fort Huachuca. He’s in a facility that can only be reached through a tunnel that extends under Miller Peak,” Grai said as he entered the information into his comm and displayed an aerial view on the wall behind him.

  David whistled and stood to get a closer look at the image on the wall.

  “Son of a bitch. Do you know what that place is?” he asked, looking worriedly at Grai.

  Grai nodded his head and began put up other information on the wall around the office.

  “I heard. We can’t just blow this place up, and getting in is going to be really damn hard to do. Anyone have suggestions?” Grai asked, determined to get his brother.

  David ran a hand down his face and stared at the image.

  “Let me contact a few friends who can get on the base and do some reconnaissance for us,” David suggested, reaching for his comm.

  “What
kind of friends?” Grai asked.

  David laughed.

  “The kind that have helped us before. These guys are some of the best. The only damn reason they aren’t still out there fighting is because the government believes that after giving their limbs for this country, they are no longer useful,” David said.

  He trusted the men with his life, and he loved giving them things to do to help. It not only made them feel useful, but their minds sure as hell weren’t affected by the loss of a limb, and intelligence was what they needed.

  Grai snorted and nodded at David.

  “Their stupidity will be our gain then. If you have friends that you think could be trusted with the truth and you’re willing to let Blade make sure of that, I have no problem bringing them in and allowing Amun to make them whole again. But they would have to give up the life they know and disappear,” Grai offered.

  Too many good men and women are abandoned after they serve their government and society, Grai thought.

  David swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded his head. It was an amazing opportunity for some of the warriors that he knew, but he also knew that he would have to think about it very carefully. The wrong choice could do irreparable damage to more than just the aliens.

  “Thank you, it is something I will consider. Until then, we’ll get some guys on this,” David said, sending an urgent text.

  David stopped and looked up at Grai.

  “They won’t help if they think one of their own is going to get hurt. So we have to agree that we’re not going in there with the intent of killing anyone. These men are warriors, not traitors, and they are dedicated to their country, so we walk a fine line here,” David said, seeing the tic in Grai’s jaw.

  “We’ll use stun and disabling weapons only. You know as well as I do that any information we get from that place will never fall into any hands but our own. I have no desire to take down any country,” Grai said with a nod.

  *****

  Several hours later, four men drove a large RV into the security line at the checkpoint at Fort Huachuca. The men waited patiently for their turn at the entrance, and when the driver pulled up next to the Military Police guard at the gate, all four men handed their military IDs to him.