Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(18)

He couldn’t wait.

He found the flash drive inside the vault that Lydia had described, and plugged it into his laptop. The control freq wands that generated the signal codes were there, too. He entered the general’s hacked passwords. Found a folder entitled Control Codes.

But there were only six files in it. There should be files for twelve hundred slave soldiers in there. He already had the names and location of the six prototypes. He’d extracted them from Lydia under extended torture after she failed to open her safe. He knew who and where they were, but hadn’t been able to activate them without the freq wand.

Now he owned them. But he wanted the other one thousand nine hundred and ninety-four.

Mark walked out, and nudged the general with his toe. “Where are the activation codes for the rest of the soldiers?” he asked.

The older man’s drooping head came up. “Uh—in Lydia’s safe,” he said dully. “The rest of us only held codes for the six prototypes. Lydia kept the rest. That was our security strategy. We agreed on scattering all the various pieces of the puzzle so that no single one of us could ever—”

“Like I give a f*ck.” Mark vaulted back up into the cargo bed of his truck, and hoisted the colossal safe he’d taken from Lydia Bachmann. He put it down in front of the general. “Recognize this? Open it for me. Or you get to watch your grandson die real slow.”

Kitteridge’s horror and despair were clear in his sig. The man was beaten.

“I can’t.” His voice shook. “I never knew Lydia’s image sequence. Kill me if you want, but please let Joey go. He never hurt you.”

“If you can’t open it, who can?” Mark demanded.

“Lydia’s GodsEye coach could,” the general said eagerly. “Caroline Bishop. When you can work the interface, you’re supposed to re-key with a new sequence of images. But Lydia was so bad with the interface, she tripped security and burned a safe! I doubt she re-keyed the training sequence, just for fear of never getting back in.”

“Did you know Caroline Bishop personally, General?”

“Ah . . . ah, no, not personally. Dex Boyd, the GodsEye biometrics designer, sent her to us because she was the best coach—”

“Tell me about her,” Mark directed. “What else do you know?”

“Well, ah, only that she’s an artist. She gave me an invitation once to a gallery opening. Masks, I think. Dragons, griffins. Not my thing. I didn’t go.” Kitteridge turned to look at his grandson, who was groaning. “Joey? Are you OK?”

Mark’s AVP rage blazed up, hot and maddening. Caroline Bishop, the GodsEye coach who had taught Lydia to use her f*cking safe. The only other person on earth who could open it.

He’d been hunting her ever since he’d first heard her name. Now that he thought about it, Caroline Bishop’s name had been the last coherent words that Lydia had ever spoken.

So he hired GodsEye himself. Requested Caroline Bishop as his coach. His intention had been to force her to open Lydia’s safe and then dispose of her.

Then he saw her with his own eyes, at their first training session.

Her sig made his mouth water. And he, with his visual mods, was the only man on earth who could truly appreciate it. She was meant for him.

He’d changed his original plan. Organized a scenario that would explain away Bishop’s disappearance. Framing people was an art form, and he excelled at it.

He’d done all four of the training sessions. He’d asked her out, called her, emailed her, texted her. Dreamed of wallowing in that luxurious haze of shifting colors as he f*cked her. Drinking them up.

And after a few drinks and a few coffee dates, the dumb bitch had run away. It must have been seeing that f*cking sapphire brooch along with all the other jewel-encrusted crap he’d intended to shove into his new GodsEye safe and forget about. The damn thing had gotten too much press. She’d recognized the piece, and panicked.

She had dared to judge him. She had no f*cking idea.

“Joey is innocent. Let him live.” Kitteridge was pleading again.

The man’s quivering voice spiked Mark’s rage. He had to release it or he’d explode.

Over the years, he’d developed tricks that were unique to him, as far as he knew. Siphoning was his favorite. It left no trace. Just a dead body with no outward signs of violence. And it was intensely pleasurable to him. He hadn’t had a really good one since Dex Boyd. It had been a long time since then.

The teenager was obviously preferable to his grandfather. Mark kneeled and pressed his mouth to the younger man’s throat, pinning him to the ground. Joseph arched, bucking under Mark’s weight.

He’d synced to Joseph’s vital energy and started to suck the boy’s light greedily into his own body. Joseph writhed but there was no escape. Mark didn’t break the skin or rupture a single capillary, but on some level the boy knew he was doomed.

Mark faintly heard the general trying to bargain, offering himself, then at the end, hoarsely screaming. He paid no attention. Once Mark started siphoning he never stopped until he was done.

When he lifted his head, Joseph’s light was out. Mark had taken it all.

A glance at the general showed him slumped forward, still tied to the stool, no longer breathing. The shock and horror of what he’d witnessed had stopped his heart.