Kraken Rising

CHAPTER 4

The floorboards felt cool and smooth under Aimee Weir’s bare feet. She knew just where to place her toes so the boards wouldn’t creak.

This was a habit now, waking at midnight, usually jolted alert by fleeing nightmares about her past, or chasing the specter of a love long gone. Perhaps it was her young son, Joshua, who kept the ghost of Alex Hunter alive. Joshua’s features and his unique abilities reminded her every minute of every day of the Special Forces soldier who changed her world. His presence lingered in the dark corners of her mind, refusing to dissipate. I’m right here, Alex seemed to say, every time Joshua smiled up at her.

She stopped in front of her bedroom, deciding. Her partner, Peter, slept soundly, and only a small part of her wanted to return to share the bed with him. She had wanted a father for Joshua, and Peter had played that role. But as much as he loved her, and maybe she even loved him, there would always be a ghost between them that refused to be exorcised.

She passed by the room, and placed her hand on Joshua’s door handle. She smiled and shook her head; she checked on him too much — every night when she woke — worried that if people knew about Joshua, knew he was Alex Hunter’s son, they may try and take him from her. Or perhaps even worse, she would wake up one time and find that he had been nothing but a mirage. He was the only good thing she had from those strange times.

Last look, she thought and quietly opened the door. It was cold — strangely so — the curtain billowed from a slight breeze. The window was open, and it shouldn’t have been. She frowned and her head snapped around to look to the bed. It was empty.

Movement drew her attention back to the other corner of the room, and her breath caught as a large shape loomed. There was a single red dot where two eyes should have been. Aimee screamed.

“Sir, extreme intrusion — Buchanan Road.”

“What the fuck?” First Lieutenant Sam Reid leapt to his feet, the huge HAWC towering over the soldier leaning in at the doorway.

At thirty-nine, Sam was the oldest HAWC in the ranks, but he was the strongest, and the best military tactician on the team. He was also crippled from the waist down, as he had suffered the brutal shattering of his L1 and L2 spinal plates, and worse, had had his cord severed.

But advancements in experimental bionics and battlefield armor had meant test pilots were needed — Sam had enthusiastically volunteered to try out the new MECH suit, or part of it. The Military Exoskeleton Combat Harness was the next generation heavy combat armor. On Sam, the half body synaptic electronics were a molded framework that was built on, and into, his body — light, flexible, and a hundred times tougher than steel. Sam was as good as new, except now the big man could run faster than a horse, and kick a hole in a steel door.

“Buchanan Road…” There was a near imperceptible whine of electronics as the mountainous HAWC spun back. “Goddamnit, that’s Aimee Weir’s place. Shit.”

He punched a button on his desk’s comm., breaking through to his superior officer.

“Boss, Aimee Weir’s house, trouble. I’m patching it, and coming through.” He turned back to the soldier at the door, as he placed a small plug into his ear. “Switch it through, Shorty… and link in the team.”

“You got it.”

The young soldier sprinted away, and Sam jogged down the hallway to the Hammer’s office. He pushed at the door and went straight in. Even as he got there, the wall was opening, revealing a huge screen.

Colonel Jack “Hammer” Hammerson, commander of the secretive HAWCs division within the US Special Forces, was already in front of the screen. He half turned, the granite-hard expression telling Sam the man was already pissed off.

“Talk to me, Reid.”

Sam listened to the comm. plug for a second or two and then pointed. “Data link coming through now. We’ve got two intruders in the house, got past our surveillance. They’re good.”

Hammerson’s screen split to show multiple darkened rooms. There was a single adult male, flat on his back in a doorway, a spreading bloom of red on his chest. Two large men, in blackout clothing and cyclopian night vision gear, were in the child’s bedroom. One of the men held Aimee by the hair and shook her as he shouted into her face.

Hammerson’s jaws clenched, and Sam heard something deep in the man’s chest. He could have sworn it was a growl. Sam stepped closer to the screen, enlarging the child’s bedroom view. “They’re looking for Joshua; they can’t find him.”

Hammerson didn’t blink. “Take ’em down.”

“Do we want to find out who sent them?” Sam asked.

“They can talk to me via an autopsy.” Hammerson turned, his eyes merciless. “Proceed with the order.”

Sam nodded, and touched the button in his ear. “Alpha team, go on insertion. No warm bodies.”

The man on the screen punched Aimee in the face, and then lifted her again by the hair. He continued to shout at her.

Sam’s teeth ground in his cheeks. Personally, he wanted them alive. Not from compassion, mercy, or because he really wanted to talk to them. Instead he wanted five minutes alone with them. Sam’s huge hands crushed into fists.

Joshua Weir curled up small. He barely breathed on the top shelf of his closet as he peeked from behind the wall of soft toys, Star Wars Lego, and boxes of broken Transformers. The room was near pitch dark, but he saw the men as clearly as he saw in daylight.

Mommy was in trouble and he watched as the men shouted questions at her, and shook her by the hair. While one man shouted, another man was flipping over the bed, and pulling out drawers — they would find him soon. Joshua eased back, but clutched a swimming trophy in his hand. The small silver figure on top, standing with raised hands, was now a sharp spike. The man hit Mommy, and Joshua’s hand tightened on the trophy.

Uncle Peter came into the room, fast, and seemed at first confused, and then frightened. One of the men in black struck him across the throat and he went to his knees clutching his neck. Then another pointed a gun at his chest that barely made a noise, and Uncle Peter fell backwards.

“Peter!’ Mommy screamed as her potential protector first went down and then went to sleep.

Joshua turned his head to the dark doorway. He heard the other people coming, silent as ghosts, too silent for the men in the room to hear. He listened as they came up the stairs, and also crept on the roof. He knew they came to help. He didn’t know how… he just… knew. He also knew something else, and he urgently leapt from his hiding place.

Joshua landed on Aimee, causing the man holding her to leap back momentarily. The small boy immediately wrapped his arms around her eyes and ears, shielding her. He squeezed his own eyes shut, just as the window frame exploded inwards, and a small stun grenade detonated on his bed.

“It’s okay, Mommy,” he whispered, but knowing she couldn’t hear as he lay across her, shielding her. Like magic, and before the flash had even dissipated, there were several more huge black-clad bodies in the room. There was a soft sound like someone spitting, and the two men who were hurting Mommy just fell down.

A blanket was thrown over Joshua and Aimee, and Uncle Peter was also lifted from the room.

Mommy started screaming then, and calling his name over and over. But Joshua reached out to her, talking softly, telling her they were safe now. She pulled him to her, hugging him tight.

Joshua looked back, just as they were being bundled from the room. He knew the bad men had no breath left in them and were dead.

Good, a tiny voice whispered to him. He smiled at that.