Chapter Forty-One

Zella Mills - São Paulo, Brazil

Zella's cheeks were damp, tears streaming down her face, as she sat handcuffed at the back of a jeep. The roads leading to Calloway’s fortress brought back distant memories of her youth. She’d shed many silent tears as her captors transported her to the property. No doubt Quinn had something wicked planned for her. Perhaps she wouldn’t make it past the day alive. All she could do was hope that Marina was still alive and well.

Right now, her mind was overwhelmed with a multitude of concerns. She had gone from dealing with an attack on Naguela to a kidnapping of Marina by her biggest enemy. She’d had no news about what was happening in Naguela since they forced her to leave the country. All she knew was that Quinn and COG by extension had some major pull to fly her out of the country when all flights had been canceled following the Estrean attack.

She gazed down at her handcuffs, pulling her wrists apart as far as she could. She angled her arms sideways into the shape of an X, measuring how much movement she had while cuffed.

“Stop fidgeting back there,” an armed guard called out from the passenger’s seat.

“These cuffs are tight,” she replied. The man did not speak again.

It wasn’t long after this exchange that the jeep pulled up across from the familiar iron gates. Rust had done a number on them, transforming them from the shiny wrought-iron exterior that she once knew. Both the driver and the passenger exited their seats. The driver stepped around to the vehicle until he was standing at the side of her door. The passenger, who had told her to stop fidgeting, moved directly in front of her door, clasping at the handle. He held a Baretta in his other hand, ready to threaten her with it.

The gunman opened her door. “Out,” he said, keeping the gun pointed at the door. She shuffled a leg out of the car, taking her sweet time. “Faster,” he yelled.

“I-I need water,” she stammered. Angered by her antics, the gunman leaned into her space, grabbing at her with the same hand he’d opened the door with.

With split-second timing, Zella pushed herself out of the jeep, using her cuffed hands to grab him by the wrist of his gun hand, aiming the nozzle at his partner. The gunman fired out of pure panic, shooting through his comrade’s neck. She wasted no time in snatching a semi-automatic weapon from the gunman’s leg holster. She dashed behind him and aimed the pistol before he could catch his bearings.

“Bad luck,” she said. She shot the man through the chest and watched him slump against the jeep. Both men were down. She exhaled harshly, wishing it didn’t have to be this way. All the killing was getting to her. Senseless killings were what Solace aimed to stop. Unfortunately, some kills were necessary to make actual change. This was survival.

Wasting no time, she knelt over the man’s body, searching for the handcuff keys. She recovered them from his pant pockets and tried desperately to guide the key into the lock using her fingers. The process wasn’t easy, especially with her adrenaline pumping. It took a short break and some deep breaths to calm down enough to unlock the cuffs. After which, she slid the Baretta into the small of her back, before stuffing a few magazines into her pockets. Cargo pants were a godsend.

In her mind, she debated dragging the bodies inside the confines of the gates to spare passersby a horrific sight. She decided to leave them exactly where they were. One, because as far as she knew, people barely passed this property anymore; and two, because should someone decide to pass by, their inquisitiveness could be the saving grace for whatever Quinn had planned here.

Zella took a deep breath and pushed her way through the rusted gate.

*

On the phone, Quinn had referred to her as his sis. Not because they were genetically related, but because he had discovered something in her foster father’s lab that revealed the secrets of her resurrection. Looking at the mess of items scattered across the property, it wasn’t hard to tell that Quinn had searched through every inch of the house. How much do you really know? Zella asked in her head.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Daylight beamed from the large windows, giving Zella clear sight of the house’s ground level. She came across a set of chargeable mini LED lamps, which Quinn must have used recently. With no power on the upper floors of the property, he would have needed alternate light sources.

The place had seen better days. Dust sprinkled through the air and mold lined the corners of the walls. Balls of dust, shards of glass, and crumbs littered the floors. She came across a framed photo lying face down on the ground and picked it up. It was a picture of Dr. Calloway receiving some award for his work in augmentations. Way before Calloway had created the star serum, he’d assisted in the development of technological prosthetics that would help sick and disabled people live like common, healthy beings.

In the portrait, Calloway was younger and slimmer than the man she knew. He appeared happier. Tears streamed down her cheeks again as she remembered her foster father’s dedication to his experiments. Every day he worked like it would be his last day, like there was some discovery lurking that he’d yet to find. He’d treated her like an experiment, too. Not only would he test the limits of her abilities by forcing her through intense challenges, but he used her as a reference point when researching the immortals. Once in a while, he would shock her with a touch of affection, like when she broke down crying during a crash course, and instead of giving her the usual thirty-minute break to recover, he canceled all of their challenges for the day and treated her to the theater. After the theater, they went to her favorite sushi restaurant and had ice cream. That day, he’d treated her like a child.

Zella placed the picture down on a round oak coffee table nearby. Defending Calloway around other people was tough. The man wasn’t your conventional idea of a good guy. But to Zella, he had been her father. She owed him her life and her upbringing. Her biological parents had given her up as a baby, allowing her to die in Calloway’s Starlight Program. It was through a pure miracle that he could bring her back to life. Without him, she wouldn’t have experienced life. And despite her sheltered, and often painful, life with Calloway, she could never view him as the mad scientist that the world loved to paint him as.

Below the staircase leading upstairs, an antique chest sat on an adjustable standing desk. Zella recognized it immediately as the trunk she kept her padwork gear in. She took up two polaroids laying scattered on the desk, holding them between her fingers. One was of herself throwing a hook at her foster father. The other was of Marina. She flipped the pictures over to find thickly marked scribbles in Dr. Calloway’s handwriting. He’d written them in Portuguese. On the back of Zella’s photo, he’d written Reflexes improving. Marina’s photo had her name written with calligraphic letters.

“Bastard,” Zella mouthed. Though sentimental, these polaroids were dangerous to a mind like Quinn’s. She had to assume now that he knew her strengths and weaknesses, and that he’d be prepared for them. Quinn had placed her padwork set on the other side of the table. She threw her hands into the open chest and prodded at the corners of the hidden latch that released its false bottom. Pulling out the false bottom revealed two items that she’d hidden there herself. One was a key with a distinct spiked cut at the end, the other was a workable flip phone. It had been an old gift from Raul; something to offer a younger version of herself some security.

She placed the key in her boot and the flip phone in her pocket. She walked over to the lab entrance. The sight of the door gave her chills. She stepped forward to allow the control panel to do its biometric scans on her, but before she could place her palm down, she heard the pressure release. The solid, engraved door slowly slid open before her. Quinn had taken control of the lab, and the thought alone was terrifying. Zella couldn’t help her nervous shakes as she stepped down into Calloway’s lab, ready to meet her fate.

*

Hubert Quinn - Calloway’s Lab, São Paulo, Brazil

Quinn watched the security displays with his chin resting on his fist. The confines of sleep hadn’t reached him in days. Too many thoughts and possibilities ran through his mind.

He smirked, watching Zella pick up the cracked photo frame that displayed her beloved father, Dr. Calloway. Pathetic. The concept of someone with so much power being interested in ordinary human emotions eluded him.

He watched as she found the two portraits by the trunk, flipping them between her fingers. Yes, I know all about your remarkable reflexes now. He sneered.

And then something caught his attention. Zella dipped her hand into the trunk and pulled out a false bottom. Quinn sat up straight and tapped the zoom button. He watched her retrieve a strangely shaped key and a flip phone. As she made for the laboratory door, he chortled, his eyes fixed on her like a predator. That won’t help you.

Quinn stood and pressed the green button to open the lab door. “It’s showtime,” he said.