Mikal (Second Wave Book 3) Read online

  Grai didn’t realize that he’d taken an angry step towards the doctor until he felt Chris’s hand on his chest.

  “Dad . . . don’t. He only knows where the one lab is that Chance came from, but he’s communicated with other labs. When we get in there, Siggy and Nick are going to go through their computers and find out who they’ve been talking to and where they are,” Chris said, hoping his dad wouldn’t kill the doctor before they could get answers.

  Dr. Mussberger looked up, saw the fury on Grai’s face, and immediately began speaking.

  “The lab is at the base of Maplewood Mountain, northwest of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The physical entrance is on the northeast corner. There are 22 security personnel on site at all times that work in 12-hour shifts. I swear I don’t know where the other labs are . . .” he said, his words coming out so fast he was a little hard to understand.

  Grai held up a hand.

  “Shut the fuck up if you want to remain alive,” he said before he turned to Chris and Lara.

  “Get your answers from him. When he begins to speak of the origins of Mikal and his people, I want Dr. Amun Nassur, Dr. Lauren Campbell from Fiorn’s Folly, and Dr. Sergei Rostovic watching it live so they can ask questions. Someone other than him,” Grai said pointing to the doctor. “Needs to know about them and how they tick.”

  Chris nodded his head, understanding why his dad would want Dr. Sergei Rostovic to be involved. Grai had initially befriended the doctor decades ago and grew to trust him enough to allow him to be the exclusive doctor of his children.

  The doctor had been taking care of all of the Dranovian children for about 30 years and would be ecstatic to learn more of Mikal so that he could treat him better if he was ever seriously injured.

  Grai looked around at his children and gave them a stern stare.

  “You will all keep me updated in 30 minute intervals. No exceptions, no excuses. If I have to come back here,” Grai paused and looked directly at his manipulative daughter, Angel.

  “Or anywhere else because you didn’t keep me updated, there will be hell to pay, and every single one of you,” he paused again and looked pointedly at Lara. “Will spend some quality time helping dig out tunnels at Base Beta.”

  Grai looked around the room, and when all of his children—including Lara and the Tezarians—nodded and looked away from him, he turned to Chance.

  “Welcome to the Earth Alliance. You and your family, all that we can find, are more than welcome with us for as long as you would like to stay,” Grai said, opening his energy to her the same way he did with Mikal.

  He wasn’t very surprised when moments later, she spoke in his mind.

  “Thank you,” Chance said.

  She followed the maelstrom of Grai’s energy to the path in his mind, feeling the truth of his words and his incredible love for his children and his people. And darkness. There was a darkness inside of him as well that she couldn’t penetrate, but it wasn’t directed at her sisters or his people.

  Grai nodded his head and turned back towards the door; Traze followed him wordlessly. Grai stopped and said, “Every half hour! No exceptions,” he said, then left with Traze.

  Cole whistled low.

  “What the heck was that?” he asked in surprise and concern.

  “What the hell happened to Traze? No joking, not even a smile! I don’t like this,” Reign said, shaking his head.

  The others all agreed and were commenting on how cold and distant Traze appeared when Chris interrupted.

  “Enough guys. We all know why Dad and Traze are acting this way. The best way to fix it is to find Koda and bring him home where he belongs,” Chris said, turning to Amun.

  “Amun, is he stable enough to talk?” Chris asked looking over the still soaked but now-calm doctor.

  Dr. Amun Nassur quickly finished his scans and stood, turning to Grai’s children.

  “I gave him a calming agent. Since he’s human, it’s already taken affect, and his heart is no longer in danger of exploding in his chest. But if you plan on keeping him while we get information, there is a heart problem that needs to be corrected or you can kill him the next time you frighten him like this,” Amun said, knowing they wouldn’t like hearing it. He was right.

  “Figures he’s such a pussy,” Nick muttered while a few of his brothers made similar comments.

  Chris sighed and looked over at Mikal, leaving the decision up to his brother. It was Mikal’s people and his chance to learn of who he was and where he came from, and Chris thought Mikal should make the call.

  Mikal already knew the answer that Chris was seeking.

  “Amun, can you heal him enough to have him lucid in the next few hours?” Mikal asked.

  Amun entered the parameters into the comm and studied the data.

  “If we move right now, yes,” Amun said, studying the comm.

  Mikal didn’t hesitate.

  “Then do it.”

  “Help me get him to your medlab,” Amun said and five of the brothers stood immediately and helped Amun move the doctor out of the room.

  Mikal moved to the table in the center of the room and entered the lab’s location into the computer. He waited while their satellite systems zeroed in on the location. When it did, he magnified it enough to see the mountains more clearly before picking it up from the table and making it 3D.

  Chance watched in open-mouthed wonder until she saw the mountains pop up on the table, and then she gasped.

  “That is amazing,” she whispered with a grin as she stepped closer to the table.

  Chance put her hand out to touch the mountains and grinned in wonder as the image shimmered.

  “Do you recognize any of the mountains?” Mikal asked with a smile.

  He didn’t trust the doctor at all and wanted to see if Chance recognized anything before he narrowed down the location further.

  Chance shook her head sadly.

  “I wouldn’t. When they let me out for missions, they would drug me and drop me off near the hotel they wanted me to use. I had three days to complete the mission and meet my handler at a predetermined location, or they would detonate the charge in my neck. Once I met my handler, I was drugged and returned to the lab. I’ve never seen the outside of it,” she admitted, feeling helpless.

  “You were never let outside?” Angel asked in disbelief.

  Chance shook her head.

  “Not outside the lab, no. We were taken out for human interaction training periodically, but we were always drugged and put in a van with no windows in the back so we could never see where we were,” Chance explained.

  Alex snorted.

  “Bastards were smart enough to be afraid of you ever coming back for them,” he said.

  Mikal magnified the northeast corner of the mountain and they all stepped closer to the table, looking for a sign of where the regular entrance to the lab would be.

  Declan pointed to a small hump in the earth and began magnifying the area with his fingers.

  “Yeah . . . this isn’t right. Remember back in the fifties and all the underground bomb shelters? That’s what this is,” he said with a grin as the doorway of the facility became clearer on the image.

  Siggy dropped into a chair and slid to the control center on the other side of the conference room.

  “I may be able to hack some old construction plans,” he said as he began typing on the keypad.

  Dante followed Siggy and joined him at the control center.

  “I’ll look for anything in the local papers around the time it would have been built,” Dante added.

  They spent the next two hours studying the maps and building plans they’d hacked from government databases when Amun walked in with a dry and well-groomed Dr. Mussberger in tow.

  Everyone grew silent as they stared at the younger, more energetic looking doctor standing nervously beside Amun.

  “Damn, Amun, he said to save him not give him the fountain of fucking youth,” Haruki muttered in irritation, v
oicing what the other siblings were thinking.

  Amun chuckled.

  “I healed the heart, but it was the shower, shave, and some food that did the rest,” he admitted as he gently pushed the human doctor further into the room.

  “Bastard hasn’t pissed himself, so you must be keeping him on the calming agent,” Luca spat.

  Amun sighed, pulled the human doctor to the conference room table, and gently pushed him into a chair before turning to Grai’s children.

  “Since I was able to speak to him throughout his treatment, I assumed you would want to hear what he was telling me,” Amun said as he sat next to the human doctor and waited for Grai’s kids to do the same.

  That revelation had everyone taking seats around the room so they could listen to what the doctor had to say. Mikal took Chance’s hand, led her to a chair across from the doctor, and helped her sit before taking the seat next to her.

  Chance looked up at Mikal with a smile. No one had ever treated her with such care before, and it made her stomach flip flop. She didn’t know why, but she enjoyed having him beside her, helping her. When he took her hand in his own and gave her a gentle squeeze, she clutched his in return, grateful that he was there.

  Dr. Mussberger drew in a shaky breath and looked over at Amun. At Amun’s nod, the doctor cleared his throat.

  “We were given two different types of DNA and told to try and see what it would create. It created Alph—” Dr. Mussberger stopped at the dark look Mikal gave him when he started to call her Alpha Two.

  “Her name is Chance,” Mikal said between gritted teeth.

  Dr. Mussberger nodded his head quickly and rushed on.

  “It created the first one. The male called Alpha One. Of the two types of DNA we were given, there was only one kind of one, but multiple different ones of the other. Because of this, we were able to create different . . . people who weren’t all from the same genes.” Dr. Mussberger said nervously.

  “Go on,” Mikal said calmly.

  “We discovered that their bodies are saturated with copper, iron, and other trace elements more than 10 times that of humans. We found that it’s the levels in their bodies that allow them to utilize energy. The drug we created to subdue them indcues a super chelation,” Dr. Mussberger explained.

  “It destroys all of the elements in the bloodstream, which completely disrupts their energy balance and neutralizes their abilities—but only for a short time. Even with multiple doses, it only lasts for about an hour before their bodies rapidly reproduce the elements they need.”

  Mikal wasn’t as surprised as his siblings about the heavy levels of elements in his body. Dr. Rostovic discovered the same a long time ago and had come to the same conclusion. What had surprised him was that there was a drug that could disrupt his ability to use energy.

  “How did you discover the drug?” Amun asked curiously.

  Dr. Mussberger turned to the alien doctor. He’d already begun to consider Amun as more of a colleague because they could speak on the same level.

  “It was an accident, really. The Canadians created a new drug for chelating patients with heavy metal toxicity. It didn’t have the side effects or dangers of the traditionally-used medicines. I was reading about it in a medical journal when I began to wonder if it would work on them,” he admitted to Amun with a thread of excitement.

  Using his hands, Dr. Mussberger began to talk animatedly to Amun, as if looking for him to approve of his thought process and accomplishments.

  “It only took a few attempts to vary the dose enough to make it work, but no matter how high the dose, the body doesn’t seem to recognize it. Once the drug destroys the metals in the bloodstream, the drug is rendered ineffective, and their metabolisms rapidly excrete it through the pores. Then their bodies replicate the missing elements from the bloodstream so quickly that within an hour they are back at full power,” Dr. Mussberger said with excitement.

  “What DNA did you use to create them?” Mikal asked, angry at the doctor’s enthusiasm.

  Dr. Mussberger turned to Mikal.

  “We were told that one was from core samples taken in the Antarctic. Somehow, they hit upon a body with DNA like we’d never seen before. The other DNA was multiple samples from another hybrid species that another government division found after World War II,” he admitted, swallowing hard when he heard muttered curses from around him.

  The siblings knew those hybrids were Fiorn’s people who had been held captive and tortured by the Nazi scientists before being transferred to labs controlled by the US government. So Chance was definitely one of their hybrids, like Mikal himself. It was the other DNA that they weren’t sure of.

  “Did they know anything about the DNA retrieved from the core sample?” Mikal asked in frustration.

  They’d only kept the idiot alive because he was supposed to help them, and so far he wasn’t doing anything but telling Mikal what he already knew.

  Dr. Mussberger nodded his head.

  “The archeologists knew a lot . . . but I don’t remember too much about it. I was more interested in the medical aspects. Archeology was a little beyond me. I remember something about Hyperboreans and the possibility that they’ve been on the planet for a very long time, but called by other names,” he explained, hoping that Mikal would be satisfied with his answers.

  Chris sighed and slammed his hands down on the table startling Dr. Mussberger.

  “Your usefulness is rapidly declining. You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know,” Chris accused the doctor.

  Mikal looked at his brother in surprise.

  “How did you know all that?” Mikal asked.

  Several of his siblings snorted.

  “Like we wouldn’t find out what we could from Sergei,” Vladimir said.

  “We had to know how to help you if you were ever injured,” Liam said softly.

  “Hell, one of us was always there with you when you and the doc were doing all those tests and stuff when you were little. You’re our brother; we paid attention,” Chris admitted as his other siblings nodded their head.

  “Damn right we did,” Declan said.

  “We have special vials for you in the field med kits. They have extra elements in them to help you heal and replace anything you may lose through injury,” Trevor added.

  Angel walked over to Mikal and hugged him tight.

  “You’re our brother. We’d never let anything happen to you,” she said before she gave him a loud smacking kiss on his cheek and went back to her chair.

  Mikal was a little overcome with emotion for a moment. He knew that they loved and cared for him, but he didn’t realize just how much until now. When he regained control, he nodded his head.

  “Chris is right, we’re getting nowhere on this. Let’s talk about the lab so we can get the females out of there,” Mikal said.

  Dr. Mussberger, seeing it as a sign that his death was imminent, began to hyperventilate.

  “Oh for the love of . . . Argh!” Declan muttered in frustration.

  Amun immediately programmed the mediband on Dr. Mussberger’s wrist to inject another dose of the calming agent, and the doctor started to calm down.

  Mikal leaned forward and glared at the doctor, his patience nearing an end, but he knew that they needed the man for a while longer.

  “We have no intention of killing you. Yet. There is much that you know that you may not realize. When the other doctors arrive, you can speak with them in your medical lingo and explain everything you know to them. Now, when do the guards go on their shift change?” Mikal asked evenly.

  Dr. Mussberger nodded his head slowly, much calmer.

  “They change at midnight. Each one of them is armed with darts of the drug. All it takes is for the drug to pierce the skin even slightly, and it’s enough to render you powerless,” the doctor admitted to Mikal, hoping if he cooperated they wouldn’t kill him.

  Everyone looked at the clock on the wall in the room.

  “See, y
ou were just useful. You may live yet,” Chris told the doctor before turning to his other siblings.

  “We have 18 hours before shift change. I want six people out there now watching to make sure they don’t try to move those girls,” Chris said.

  Declan, Liam, Dree, Trick, Haruki, and Vladimir all stood and headed towards the door.

  “You better get full gear, including food and water, and I want updates every 30!” Chris called after them.

  “Yes, Mom!” Haruki said, waving his hand behind him as he left and followed the others to get their gear.

  When they left, the others moved closer to the conference room table.

  Chris leaned on the table and looked at his siblings.

  “The rest of us are going to hit them when they have shift change while Mikal and Chance go in through the air system. Hopefully, with us keeping them occupied in the front, they’ll never notice them going in the back. Did you get building plans?” Chris asked Siggy and Dante.

  “Yeah, we did. We have three different options of plans for similar buildings made at the time. We were hoping that Chance or the doctor could show us which is the one for that facility,” Siggy said as he used his comm to project the first plan on the wall behind the table.

  Chapter Seven

  Mikal watched from a distance as the rest of his siblings dropped into the forest around the secured bunker where Chance’s sisters were being held. They’d spent hours going over the plan to get inside and free them, and he was feeling pretty confident that they would succeed.

  Haruki and Liam had made sure they had been updated every 30 minutes, and they hadn’t noted anyone arriving or leaving the facility until the new guards had begun to show up for the shift change.

  His siblings had already subdued the guards in the parking lot and thrown the bodies in the trunks of their cars to await the remaining guard who hadn’t arrived for his shift yet.

  They learned from Dr. Mussberger that the security personnel would park in the camouflaged underground parking area not far from the entrance, and the six siblings who came earlier had gained access to the inside of the parking area and secured it for them.