ONE

DANGEROUS JOB

“Slacking off again, are we?” A sneering voice behind her caused Carla Mainston to jump. She felt the test tube wobble in her hands before tightly gripping it in her fist as she recognized the voice. She glanced down at her purple hands to see her knuckles whitening around the glass tube.

She clutched the test tube, refusing to turn to face him. Even the sound of his voice made her skin crawl.

Great, it’s my sadistic boss.

Godfrey Hanns had recently been hired as her superior, in place of her best friend, who had been promoted to bigger and better things.

With a sigh, she turned to face Godfrey. He was a lanky, green-skinned, thirtyish go-getter with the attitude of a used car salesman and about as much honesty. All he ever did was misuse his power and make snide comments about everyone else.

She fought to remain civil as he sneered at her. She despised him, perhaps more than she had ever despised anyone. It wasn’t that he was the worst person she had ever met, although he wasn’t far off the mark. It was more that she was unable to do anything about him that drove her to hate him more than anyone else she’d ever met.

She gritted her teeth for a moment before unclenching her jaw and replying. “I’m just cleaning up the lab,” she said, offering him a false smile.

His flinty eyes scanned the lab. “Have you only just started? It looks like a bomb’s hit it.” He flicked his bangs out of his eyes in a mildly camp manner before peering at the sparkling countertop with distaste. “There are marks all over this.”

Admittedly, the countertop did have scratches on it from age and use, but it was cleaned to perfection.

She narrowed her eyes. “Would you prefer me to sand it down and re-varnish it?” As the words left her mouth, she mentally kicked herself for speaking her mind. Speaking out always led to more crap from Godfrey in the long run.

He had a talent for taking everything she said and turning it around to suit him, and she knew today wasn’t going to be any different.

“There’s no need to be snide. It’s unprofessional.” The condescension in his voice grated on her nerves. “You use any excuse to get out of doing your job properly. I’m not your best friend, and I won’t be giving you a free pass just because of your past glories. Clean it again, and this time, I want every inch of this place to be sparkling!”

She turned around to face the windows, placing the test tube in the sink.

She ignored Godfrey, hoping he’d go away. Rather than respond to his idiocy, she stared out across the muddy fields of the Derobmi landscape. Rain dribbled slowly down the windowpane, like a tangle of crystal snakes racing to the bottom. The landscape had once seemed so bright and green, and the sun had shone more often, she was sure it had.

She sighed at her reflection in the window. A pretty purple girl with wild black hair sighed back at her.

What’s wrong with me?

She was so maudlin and sad all the time. It made no sense. She was never unhappy, or at least, she never used to be.

She had everything she wanted—freedom, a happy home, good friends and a good job. But somewhere in all those wonderful things lurked a big black cloud of disappointment.

She felt a moment of sadness. Her best friend wasn’t here anymore. Parklon had been promoted and sent to Zoola on a research project. She missed him every day since he’d gone home and left her here.

“Did you hear me?” Godfrey asked.

She scowled at his reflection in the glass, ignoring any thoughts of trying to reason with him. He took great pleasure in upsetting her and pointing out that she was nobody important.

Don’t bite back. It’s not worth it.

She knew he’d report her for something else today, thus damaging her reputation even more. She silently nodded, hoping he’d leave her alone, but he wasn’t quite done with her yet.

“You might think you’re special after your involvement with that criminal Lord Foamy last year, but most of us know what you really are,” he said, staring down his long thin nose at her. “You’re an illegitimate troublemaker.”

Anger burned up in the back of her throat. The reasonable voice in her head faded away when his last comment hit the nerve it was aiming for.

She spun around and faced him, waving a dirty test tube in his direction. “I did more for this colony than you’ll ever know, you horrid, lanky freak!” She knew as the words spewed from her lips that she was probably going to regret them.

A nasty smile appeared on his face. Clearly, his whole purpose had been to get a reaction out of her, and he had.

“Throwing another tantrum, are you? Convinced you’re some kind of superhero,” he jeered. “They must have recruited you from an asylum.”

She groaned, wishing she’d never confided in him about her special powers when he’d started working with her. He’d seemed okay in the beginning. She hadn’t known it was all an act until a few weeks later.

Her mind-reading powers had just disappeared one day, and there had been no one to talk to about it, so she’d confided in Godfrey.

What a mistake!

She felt the irrational burn of anger bubbling up inside her. “You haven’t even seen me angry yet,” she muttered, shooting him a warning glance.

He smiled at her. “Threatening behavior is against company policy. I’ll be issuing you with a warning for that.”

Screw this.

She lost all control of her temper. She’d had enough of him. She’d had enough of everything. “I’ve been dealing with your crap for months now, taking every scornful remark and nasty lie you’ve thrown at me.”

She began speaking calmly. But as her anger burned, the volume of her words increased to a shout. “I’ve saved more people than you’ll ever know and been through hell and back along the way.”

The windows in the room began to shimmer and shake as she continued. “Everyone I care about has been taken away from me, and my powers—which were very real, by the way—seem to have abandoned me too!”

His eyes widened with worry, and he took a step back as she continued.

She could hear the windows violently shaking behind her, but ignored the noise. “Because this job is the only bloody thing I have left, I’ve taken all your crap to keep it.”

She heard glass splintering behind her, and glanced back to see cracks appeared in the windows. Turning back to face Godfrey, she noted fear in his eyes.

Good. I don’t care.

She wanted him to be scared.

Her voice continued to rise in volume and hatred. “And NOW, you’re going to take my job too! SCREW YOU AND THIS JOB. YOU CAN GO TO HELL!”

The windows exploded, and glass shot out across the fields as a blast of something powerful hit them full force.

He dropped to the floor and cowered there, pale with shock and shaking with uncontrolled fear of her.

She stepped over him, walking calmly out of the lab. She paused to glance down at him before she left.

A puddle of liquid spread on the floor in front of him, and there was a wet patch on his trousers.

Either something got spilt, or he just peed his pants.

“Don’t forget to clean that mess up.” She pointedly stared at the puddle. “Oh, and I quit!” She turned and walked out of the Derobmi Scientific Institute for the last time with a big smile on her face.

Best day ever!

Parklon Eldemf tried to relax as he hung upside down from a fifty-foot grappling line, suspended over the main server at DalsonCorp’s main headquarters.

He nervously glanced back, looking up to the ceiling of the vault, which was similar to an elevator shaft in shape and size. High above him, the hydraulic pulley that was suspending him over a web of infrared beams trembled under his weight. The thin wire didn’t look as if it could hold him for long, but so far, it had.

He closed his eyes, trying to gather his nerves before lowering his head to study the vault below him. The room was dark except for the red beams across the floor and the illuminated podium directly beneath him, which had the DalsonCorp root server on it.

He studied the server. It was a metallic oval pod with no wires or visible attachments on it. There were four sockets on the top of it. Other than that, it could have been mistaken for a silver egg.

He blinked through the night vision goggles he wore, trying to focus while hanging upside down. He gritted his teeth and locked his eyes onto the podium beneath him.

Don’t screw this up.

He slowly exhaled, trying to calm himself down before studying the silver egg.

Very slowly—to ensure he didn’t cause vibrations of any kind—he reached into his jacket pocket and slowly unzipped it. He was thankful for the thick band of material surrounding his goggles because it soaked up the beads of sweat on his forehead and stopped the moisture dropping through the infrared beams and triggering the alarms.

Breaking in via the adjacent elevator shaft to get in through the ventilation systems had been the easy part. The last thing he wanted was to set off the alarms while he was stuck in the vault.

He pulled a small silver USB drive from his pocket. With a slow, controlled movement, he stretched his arm down through one of the many small gaps in the web of infrared lights to reach the silver server.

His hand trembled inside his black leather gloves when the sleeve of his jacket came close to one of the red beams, but he reached the top of the silver egg without triggering the alarms.

He plugged the USB into one of the sockets on the server. A tiny screen on the USB lit up, showing it was downloading everything in the system.

Holding his breath, he nervously waited for the device to copy the files. He watched the tiny figures on the USB drive slowly increase as it downloaded everything in DalsonCorp’s private server.

So far, so good.

He held his position until the numbers on the USB reached one-hundred percent.

Expelling a soft sigh when the download had finished, he pulled the USB out of the top of the server. Then he slowly raised his arm out of the web of beams, and put the now full USB drive back in his jacket pocket before zipping it back up.

He reached up for the button on the pulley to raise himself out of the vault.

His blue-skinned hand slipped off the button as he jerked when the cell phone in his back pocket began vibrating against his ass, and he felt it slide out. He reached back—too late. The phone slipped through his fingers, and it fell through the infrared beams before hitting the floor with a loud clunk.

“Crap!” He swore as the phone continued to vibrate on the vault floor.

Alarms blared around him as the security system was triggered. There were shouts outside the room before the doors of the vault burst open.

I’m a dead man.

He glanced down at the floor. The phone was still ringing with a picture of a pretty purple-skinned girl lighting up on the screen.

Carla.

Ignoring the danger of the situation, he tried to reach the phone, but it was too far from his grasp. Several armed guards rushed into the room, pausing for a second when they noticed him hanging upside down from the ceiling.

After a split-second of silence, they aimed their guns at him, shouting for him to put his hands in the air.

The irony of hanging upside down and being told to put your hands in the air was not lost on Parklon as he slammed his finger on the raise button of the pulley, shaking his head at the phone he’d left behind on the vault floor.

The grappling line made a whirring sound as the pulley jerked him up. He zoomed up the fifty-foot shaft. On the way up, he pulled a gun out of his jacket and shot down at the guards below. They scattered for cover out of the path of his bullets.

He took aim carefully and shot at the cell phone on the floor. It shattered into several pieces when he hit it dead center. Sighing, he checked his gun. He only had two bullets left, so he held back on firing any more, saving them for when the guards ventured back out into his line of sight.

About halfway up the shaft, he fired a warning shot to keep the guards back, and then he swung his legs back, creating enough momentum to spin his body around on the rope. He used his abs and his free hand to pull himself upright so he was facing the right way up. The fast-moving rope left burn marks on his black leather gloves when he touched it.

A bullet whirred past his ear. He spun back and shot the last bullet down to scatter the guards, crying out when one of the guard’s bullets hit its mark and sliced across his left buttock.

He gritted his teeth. The bullet wound stung like hell, and he could feel blood rolling down his left leg. Angrily, he threw the empty gun down at the guard who’d shot him, feeling a moment of satisfaction when it hit the guard on the head and knocked him on his ass.

The remaining guards below shot directly upwards at him, but stopped when some of the bullets came back down towards them with the force of gravity behind them.

Parklon reached the top of the vault and pulled himself up into the air vent. He scrambled into the small tunnel and checked his legs for damage. He had a few holes in the legs of his combat trousers, and he’d definitely been shot in the ass, but other than that appeared to have escaped unscathed.

He stared at the blood on his hand before tenderly feeling his backside. It was bleeding, but since it wasn’t gushing with blood, he suspected he’d live.

He peered down the shaft at the shattered phone on the floor.

Crap, crap, crap.

The phone looked pretty messed up. He just hoped no one could access the data on it. He knew it had been stupid to bring the phone, but he hadn’t wanted to miss a call from Carla.

Great plan, dumbass!

He glanced down at the guards below, who were racing from the vault, probably to try to catch him on the upper levels instead.

He turned to face the way out, scurrying through the small stretch of ventilation shaft and kicking off the grate over it. The grate dropped away to reveal a long elevator shaft.

He climbed out of the tunnel onto a small ledge just under the opening, wincing at the hot pain streaking across his buttock. He pulled off his goggles and blinked sweat out of his eyes, taking a moment to slow down his racing heart as he dropped the goggles down the shaft.

That was too close.

The elevator was stationary, just a few feet ahead of him. He inhaled before jumping across the shaft, landing squarely on the top of the lift.

After opening the panel in the roof of the elevator, he dropped through it and landed clumsily inside. He groaned as streaks of pain shot up his back, from the wound on his backside.

If I get out of this alive, it’ll be a miracle.

The lift was empty except for a large black holdall. He knelt over the bag and hurriedly pulled out a black suit and black briefcase.

Quickly stripping off his clothes, he threw them into the bag. Then he carefully pulled the suit trousers over his wounded ass cheek and fastened them.

At least they’re dark. It’ll hide any bleeding.

He shrugged into the white shirt, leaving the shirt unbuttoned as he reached across the compartment to unhook a device from the lift’s control panel that had blocked the call signal, keeping it stationary for him. He pressed the G button for the ground floor.

Once the elevator began moving, he fastened up his shirt across his blue-skinned chest and put on his tie. His hands shook while he tightened his tie. He gritted his teeth.

Pull yourself together!

He grabbed the USB from inside his shredded combat jacket, which was now in the holdall and put it into the black leather briefcase.

The lift dropped down towards the ground floor as he zipped up the bag. He swung it up and threw it through the opening in the top of the lift, wincing as more pain shot up his back.

Gritting his teeth, he jumped up and pulled the grate shut, expelling a whimper of pain as the wound on his backside stretched when he jumped.

He watched the numbers of the level ding by as he shrugged into the suit jacket and fastened the buttons.

After tugging on the suit to smooth it out, he picked up the briefcase. He ran his fingers through his dark hair to style it less erratically before the elevator doors opened onto a large foyer with a ding.

Shooting a wary glance at the large group of people waiting for the lift, he smiled politely as he stepped out of the elevator and crossed the reception area.

He slipped by as a team of security guards raced past him towards the lift, rudely pushing people out of their way.

When he walked to the reception desk, he saw security staff speaking urgently to the receptionist.

He hurried his pace, knowing that they’d be initiating a lockdown of the building soon. He walked towards the exit, stepping out of the building and into the street. He inhaled a deep breath of fresh air before he climbed into his sleek silver car and drove away.

Mission accomplished.