Chapter Eighteen

With quick fingers on his comp-pad Shido began making arrangements for their team to pull out of the party. It wasn’t difficult. All it took was him saying they may have a lead on the Genie case. He didn’t doubt that Natalia’s boyfriend had been tampered with, Natalia’s instincts where too good and those instincts were why she was the Major and he was a Lieutenant. Takada, Noriko, and Haru, all dressed as servers met him in the back, and Lucas, Osamu, and Miyako followed as soon as they where out of their ‘play clothing.”

The other half of the team, still working the Genie case, was going to meet them at the Tube repair depot. Saki, much to her annoyance was told to stay at Central. Her ribs had still not fully recovered. Shido knew she wasn’t going to stay put, the sixteen year old Kitsune girl looked up to Natalia like a big sister and if her big sister was in trouble she was going to be there.

The question is, is the Siren after her boy toy or after Talia? He thought as he monitored the tracking device in her comm.

Indeed it is. Commented Takada, worry flavoring his mind voice.

Shido didn’t have to be a Siren to sense the worry in the team. Natalia was more than their boss, she was their sister. They had been raised together since they were babies, and the idea that anything would happen to their practical, loving foster sibling was anathema.

He set the comm to record her progress and switched his view. He saw Allison’s team had already gotten to the depot, and he noted a single dot far away moving towards them. Saki, he mentally groaned.

“You didn’t really expect her to stay at the tower?” Noriko asked sarcastically.

“No, but Talia would have yelled at me if I hadn’t given the order. She’s pretty protective of Saki.”

“True.”

“It’ll take her at least three hours this time of day to get through all the tubes, if she doesn’t miss any of the interchanges.”

“That’s family.”

“Yup.” Shido flipped back to monitoring Natalia. This guy had better be worth the trouble, if he gets her hurt I am going to make him wish he’d been born female. Shido squawked angrily as suddenly Talia’s signal dropped off the map.

“What the Hell!” cursed Shido as he franticly tapped on his pad.

“What is it?” Miyako said leaning over.

“He just lost Talia’s tracer.” Noriko replied for the distracted Kitsune.

Shido pounded a full alert into the pad alerting the whole team to the fact Natalie’s beacon had gone off network. Dammit Natalia, you better not be walking into a trap!

Natalia screamed, as the Siren tore into her mind, she felt his icy hatred, and the cool sense of triumph that filled him as he psionicly raped her, as he prepared to kill her. However she had been raised with psychics, she had been probed before. The woman fell back on training that had been pounded into her mind and body. She gathered all the physical and emotional agony of her life and forged it into a blade, shoving it into the Siren’s brain. Torture, rape, and death, she poured it all into the male, without hesitation or mercy.

She felt him scream as she fell to the ground, the whole exchange taking less than three heartbeats. Her body jerked and twitched from sensory overload that also left her blind and deaf. Rei, run. Please Gaia, see him to safety. Her consciousness faded; her body too weak from the attack and counter attack to keep her out of slumber’s embrace.

Rei, his mind still whirling with the return of conscious thought, didn’t react instantly to Natalia’s scream or her falling to the ground. Instead his sister reached out and caught her. Though Kay’s mind was also reeling, both from the dawning look of betrayal on her twin’s face, and by the richness and completeness of the scent of joining between him and the Kitsune woman now in her arms.

A bond that Alexander hadn’t realized was there. He never had a chance to discover it, as Natalia’s attack caused him to scream and stumble back.

That scream was a wakeup call for Rei, who cried out his own rag, and dove towards the reeling Siren, not even bothering to draw his blades. The first punch took Alexander in the jaw, while the second took him in the gut. The older man went tumbling to the ground, rolling several meters down the sloped path and Rei began to follow.

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“Rei! Stop!” Marigold yelled, realizing that there were several other Sirens with Alexander when the attack had started. Without thinking she shoved one of the albinos into the two next to him, adrenaline giving her more strength than she knew, causing the three men to fall upon the gravel path.

Rei, realizing he was outnumbered, turned back towards the women and ran straight for Natalia. He scooped her up into his arms, out of his sisters. “Tell Alexander to go fuck himself and his little hole in the ground!” He growled and began running to the elevator.

One of the albinos recovered. Both Kay and Marigold felt the mind-numbing ripple of a psi bolt blow past them towards the Kitsune couple. Rei stumbled, but his mind was still jumbled from the breaking of Alexander’s compulsion, which ironically provided him with some protection from the mental blow. The Siren growled and began to concentrate on forming a stronger spear of negative emotion and pain.

Instead, he went to the land of Nod as Kay’s fist drove into the back of his skull. A clumsy spinning crescent kick that Rei would have teased her for removed a second one from the fight as he tried to rise up off the ground. The third psychic looked up at her and froze. “Do it. I want you to.” Kay said with a snarl on her pretty face.

Meanwhile Rei reached the elevator, thanking whatever force it was that seemed to like him at that moment that the car was still open. He dove in, kicking the button that would return them to the surface.

In his arms Natalia stirred. Groaning she blinked up at him, unsure for a moment of who he was. When her mind caught up with her eyes she whispered, “Did we get away?”

“Yeah. If we’re lucky my sister’s killing that albino freak as we speak.”

“That… That was really your sister?” Natalia asked, trying weakly to get out of his arms, and failing. With a sigh she relaxed into them, feeling strangely safe for as intimate a pose as they were in.

Rei nodded. “Yeah. The place we were in is called the Deep. It was supposed to just be a community for people who wanted to avoid the Australasian Council’s edicts and hide from baby killers, but apparently it has become Alexander’s personal kingdom.”

Natalia blinked, trying to reconcile what he was saying with her own world view. “Wait… what do you mean baby killers? And why was that terrorist down there?”

“What terrorist?”

“The blond… Marigold Sullivan… she stole a biological waste container from Sydney Central.”

“A biological waste… is that what the news is claiming she did?” Rei laughed a harsh bark of irony.

“The reports…. Yes…” Natalia struggled to remind herself that Rei didn’t know what she was, at least not yet. “She killed three InSec agents and stole a dangerous biological agent.”

Rei shook his head. “I hate to burst your bubble, but she didn’t steal any contaminants, although the hospital sure thought he was waste. She found a baby, sitting in the incinerator room waiting to be burned alive, and stole him to save his life. From what she said there were several Siren bodies, all infants, lying around. The InSec agents, and there were two of them, were chasing her through the streets trying to kill her… probably to get the baby back or to prevent her from reporting what she’d seen to someone who might actually have been able to make the Council care.”

“What?” Natalia asked, struggling with him so she could regain her feet. “Wait… You’re the Rei who was reported as being with her!”

“Ye… wait, no news report mentioned me.” Rei paused, looking at her confused.

Natalia sighed. “Rei… I have something to tell you, and I want you to know I had no idea you were in any way connected to Marigold Sullivan when we met. We had actually thought she was killed by Ferals several days ago.”

“We? Who, exactly, is we?” Rei demanded

The door to the elevator opened, and he helped her to her feet, and to the door of the hotel room.

“I’m…” Natalia half groaned. “Rei, I’m with ISF, Special Investigations division.” She looked up into his shocked eyes, wincing at the betrayal she saw forming there. “Tell me the truth. Was it really a baby she stole? Did she really find it in a pile of murdered infants?”

Rei considered lying, or running, but something told him to trust her. “I can’t be certain about the infants, but the look on her face, the horror as she spoke about it… it was clear as if she’d written it on her own forehead. She saw what she described, and when I found her she was carrying the infant in her arms with two InSec black ops guys shooting at her with Sonic Pistols set to lethal.”

“The hospital reported to us that she killed the guard over the incinerator, and stole a potential bio-weapon. We knew nothing about babies.”

Rei scoffed. “Alexander seemed pretty sure that the government has been killing off Siren kids for years, right out of the womb. Why should I believe you?”

Natalia grabbed him by his cheeks, and forced him to look at her. “Look at me Rei. Do I look like I’m lying to you?”

Rei looked at her, really looked at her. He opened and closed his mouth, then sighed. “No, but Marigold wasn’t lying either.”

“Then someone at that Hospital is committing murder on a scale I can’t believe. There’s been an upswing on anti-Siren sentiment among the Uppercity population in recent years… Don’t you think that it’s more likely a few wackos got an evil idea in their head than a government cover up over what… thousands of dead babies?” Natalia looked him in the eye. “Which is most likely the truth? That one small group of people at one hospital is committing an unspeakable act and managing to cover it up, or that the government as a whole has gotten literally thousands of people to keep quiet about a program of genocide?”

Rei sighed, and slumped. “I guess you’re right.” He admitted all be it reluctantly. “But still… what was Marigold supposed to do? Leave the baby there?”

“I’ll get the arrest and execution order rescinded. I just need to contact my superiors, and you can come with us to bust up the baby murdering bastards Marigold found. She’s invited too!”

“Sounds good.” Rei smiled wanly, and helped her out of the hotel room, to the stairs. They hit the street and managed to walk about five meters down the road when four Kitsune surrounded them and pointed sonic pistols at Rei’s head.

“Please tell me these are friends of yours.” Rei said, freezing and raising the arm and hand that wasn’t busy holding Natalia up.