Like they hadn’t asked for consent from Grady Carter.
With a groan, Lark rolled over onto her belly and laid her cheek against the stone. She hadn’t been able to get that soldier out of her head since he showed up at Black Bay. The Navy SEAL Commander had been targeted by his own government, purposely attacked – that attack made to look like it had been committed by the enemy – so that they could declare him killed in action, and experiment on him. If it hadn’t been for his sister, Paige, he’d still be held in a lab, kept in stasis, awaiting his next order with no memory of who he was.
Lark had read the files. That was some cutting-edge tech they’d used to manipulate the soldiers’ memories. It had originally been created to help trauma patients but the government had commandeered it for its own purposes. With it, they were able to leave the soldiers with their knowledge of weapons and explosives, strategies, tactics, and maneuvers, but they were able to strip out, with pinpoint accuracy, the memories that made them human. Love, family, friendships, acts of empathy, and compassion… the things that give a person a sense of self. Then they’d replaced it all with a processor that fed them orders they couldn’t question, couldn’t deviate from.
That technology had still been in testing though, still had potential kinks that needed to be worked out, and Grady Carter had proved that it didn’t hold up against powerful emotions. He’d been ordered to kill Paige Carter, a sister they’d removed from his memories and reduced to nothing more than a target, but some part of his former self had risen and broken through. He hadn’t been able to do it.
Paige Carter was alive because of a glitch. And that same glitch was, hopefully, going to help Lark and the other Beasts topple the government’s experiment before any more lives were lost.
As if thinking of Paige had conjured her, the woman was currently on her way over, doing some sort of odd, dancing, walk. She was dressed in light blue scrubs, her shoulder-length blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail so she was either about to start a shift in the infirmary where she worked as a nurse, or had just finished for the day.
“There you are!” she shouted as she picked up the pace.
Lark stood to greet her, and the woman surprised her by catapulting herself at Lark and squeezing her with an exuberant hug. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you!”
While Lark might be the one altered with serpent DNA, the other woman’s arms were like a boa constrictor she was holding Lark so tightly.
“It worked?”
The woman pulled back and tears were swimming in her hazel eyes, but her smile was brilliant as she nodded.
While Grady’s memory had glitched enough not to kill his sister as ordered, it had still been problematic when he’d shown up at Black Bay. Much of his past was a blank slate. Doctor Dietrich had said she’d be able to help him unlock them, but considering the man had followed the doctor here intending to kill her because of her involvement in the experiments performed on him, having them both in the same room hadn’t been a good idea.
Grady himself had confessed to Lark that even if he could put his vengeance aside long enough to allow Doctor Dietrich to help him, he didn’t trust her to be rooting around in his brain. That was something Lark completely understood. The woman was evil. She’d created and then tortured children over and over again for years in the name of scientific advancement. They hadn’t even been sentient beings to her. They’d been specimens. Lark didn’t even want to think about those who had been killed as babies because the geneticist had deemed them unfit for the program. Infanticide in horrifying numbers and not a single shred of remorse. So there was no telling what the woman might do to Grady if they let her tinker around in his head.
Paige had been trying to help her brother since they’d been reunited, telling him stories of their childhood to help nudge his memories along, but they’d all been nice, sweet memories. From Lark’s research of the technology used to manipulate the soldiers’ minds, that approach wouldn’t work. It needed to be something powerful, something potent. She’d told the woman as much, and it looked like it had done the trick. Good.
Lark had to tighten her major muscle groups to keep from rushing off and finding Grady to see for herself. Paige had shown her pictures of her brother from before. His hair had been a light brown heavily streaked with blond from spending so much time in the sun. His skin had been darkly tanned and made his smile a brilliant white in comparison. While the man was still handsome, despite his shaved head and currently pallid skin tone, the personality shining through in those images was night and day to what he’d become. Where his hazel eyes had once sparkled with good humor, his gaze was now flat and coldly assessing, and his smiles, which had once been full of warmth and amusement, had become something that chilled the blood.
“I’ve gotta run,” Paige announced, beginning to walk backward. “I have to get to work, but I couldn’t wait to tell you the good news. Thank you again.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you. You’ve given me back my brother.”
“There are no debts between us,” Lark told the woman. “I’m just happy I could help.”
As soon as Paige was out of sight, Lark tipped back her head and stared at the wheeling and diving gulls in the blue sky above as she focused on calming her rapidly beating heart. Her body was practically vibrating with need. Breathe in. With the briny scent of salt water in her nose, she listened to the crashing waves against the jagged rocks that surrounded the island just beyond the retaining walls. Breathe out. Yeah. Not working. Less than a minute passed before she gave in to temptation and went searching for Grady.
Her sun rock was tucked in a private, sunny little nook behind the security building, close to the admin building where Grady’s quarters were, so it didn’t take long to find him. Unfortunately, he was behind closed doors with the General. Five minutes, ten, she waited, pacing back and forth, making the General’s administrative staff nervous. They offered her a seat – she declined – then they offered her a beverage which she also declined. Finally, one of them got desperate enough to offer to buzz the General’s phone and interrupt. Lark smiled gently in appreciation but shook her head.
It had always been like this. People found her reptilian eyes unsettling, as well as the iridescent scales that marked both sides of her body and framed her face. Not to mention that her venom was so potent it could melt the flesh off of someone’s bones in seconds if she was provoked. Even some of the Beasts, her brothers and sisters, feared her. Not as much as the humans did, but she’d seen it, the wariness in their eyes when she sometimes got angry. They’d all felt the effects of her toxin at some point, wore the scars from it, and though she hadn’t been the one to wield it – that had been Doctor Dietrich when the geneticist had been testing it as a potential weapon – none of them wanted to ever feel it again.
She felt bad that she discomfited people, but there wasn’t much she could do about it short of staying out of sight – and that was something she refused to do. Black Bay was her home.
The General had weeded out the intolerant long ago, but he couldn’t do anything about his staff’s fear. Honestly, it was a logical response to keep your eye on the predator in the room, even if it did sometimes hurt her feelings.
The General’s door opened just then and all six feet two inches of muscular Grady Carter strode out followed by the security detail that kept an eye on him. When he’d first shown up at Black Bay and managed to take control of their security system so easily, the General had been leery about letting Grady stay. He’d given in, allowing that Lark had been right in her assessment that having one of the soldiers on their side could only benefit their mission to free the others, but he’d insisted on a team of armed guards to accompany Grady whenever he left his quarters. If there were any treacherous tendencies concealed in the soldier’s programming, General Davies didn’t want to be caught flat-footed.
Lark drank in the sight of Grady, looking for any changes in his demeanor. His hair had begun to grow out since he’d arrived at Black Bay. His scalp was no longer smoothly shaved but bristled with new growth that, once long enough, would cover the three-inch wide metal plate that curved over his left ear.
That piece of titanium alloy wasn’t the only visible upgrade. The most obvious one was his prosthetic left arm that had a grip that could crush bones in seconds but also contained delicate technological tools, that in conjunction with the processor planted in his brain, could override even the most advanced security systems. Systems like the ones they had at Black Bay.
Her eyes flicked down his body, wondering what other mysteries were hiding under his simple tan t-shirt and black cargo pants.
Raising her gaze back up to his face, Lark’s hopes took a nose-dive. His expression was set in determined lines and his eyes held the same flat coldness she’d come to expect from the soldier… until he saw her standing there.
A shiver raced down her spine as his gaze swept over her, and suddenly those hazel eyes were alive with not only warmth but an unmistakable interest that had her toes curling in her combat boots and her belly clenching with an unmistakable shot of lust.
“Lark.”
God, her name on his lips, spoken in that deep voice… If she’d been spliced with feline DNA she would have purred.
