The drone’s lens flickered, its infrared filter painting the chaos below in cold, clinical shades of gray and crimson.
Caleb watched from the shadows of a Traverse maintenance shaft, knuckles white around the drone’s control pad.
‘Too fucking soon.’ he thought.
He was trying to keep his emotions under control.
“Shit.” Caleb said.
He caught the weird look on one of the omega beside Cait, he was sniffing the air as if smelled something?
Like a rat looking for food.
What was he looking at?
It was impossible for him to smell anything, the chemicals were scent free.
His eyes narrowed and then looked to the distance.
He changed the feed and checked another drone.
His fingers flew quickly as their software processed the image, a clone to ABO software.
Finally the feed came up.
It was raw, the connection lagged on the throwaway comms that supported the feed.
Its companion trans cochlear bead was glued to the side of it, no longer pliant from the body heat from the body it was harvested from.
‘He spotted me doing the hack?
Impossible.’ Caleb thought.
He switched back to the feed at the stage.
Cait argued well, but he had brainwashed the boy well.
It would happen soon, she was arguing back.
She finally inherited her mother’s balls.
He snickered, ‘So what?
You found your real Daddy, you’re as good as dead.’ he thought looking at his little science experiment.
‘Now you just got to die.’
‘Boom.’ he thought as Henry released the gas in a pique of fury, blaming it all on her.
The looks on both Rose and his fucking junior were priceless.
His lips curled in a soft morbid smile.
Then his smile faded.
‘Fuck!’ he thought.
He stopped the video.
His eyes disbelieving what he saw.
Cait was taken out of her chair, the motion was blurred, other people in the crowd were behaving oddly as well.
‘It must be a glitch from the hack, nobody can move that fast.’ Caleb assured himself.
He switched to another feed and waited for the connection to come up.
Faces painted with their own sanguineous tears and spittle frothing at their mouth appeared.
It was the same as the others.
She had been quickly pulled off stage.
She was supposed to die here today.
The others were just supposed to be a bonus
“Omie lover, pissed his pants. Huh?” Brant smirked.
“Don’t worry, she will peek her head out of that hospital someday. We will camp and wait for Royal Guard transport.” he assured Caleb.
“Like the last time. You can finally end Rose.”
Onscreen, Henry Thwaites staggered, clawing at his throat as his weaponized vest misted the poison into the air, overwhelming his body system.
Failure.
The assassin did not even get close enough.
.
Caleb’s heart sank.
Finishing up Rose had distracted him.
Him and his damn ego.
He did not like the fact that Rose had touched ‘Yvette’, it tore them apart.
He did not recall Rose or Thorne being athletic.
‘If he was so damn quick and strong, why did he let her stab him?’
‘They made it inside?’ He only got a couple of guards and civilians?
That was a waste.’ Caleb felt his blood pressuring raise.
He rubbed his neck.
He could show weakness.
Not in front of everyone here.
His hands trembled with rage briefly.
“Should have just sent a drone in to do the job,” Chad grumbled.
What a waste of chemicals, and the job was incomplete.
He tossed a screw driver across their base.
“Yeah,” Caleb agreed.
He swallowed and had found out that his mouth and throat had dried out.
“That fucking vest took me three days, nervous little bitch was afraid to charge the stage.” Chad complained.
Two birds with one stone, had turned into a bird in the hand, was better than two in the bush.
Caleb realised how right he was.
A drone could have gotten close enough to deploy the gas.
They could have crashed it into the stage.
“Why’d it go off manually?” Caleb said.
He closed the feed.
Brant looked at Caleb nervously.
Caleb was about to lose his mind on his niece’s boyfriend and their bomb grunt.
Caleb was mentoring the guy himself.
It should have shown loyalty but Caleb had a weakness.
Fosse had warned them that the subject must be terminated and warned Caleb to not have a soft heart for ‘it’.
The others were already suspicious since he was good to ‘it’, while ‘she’ was growing up.
Let it call him, ‘Daddy’.
The freak weirded him out, Caleb would ‘hug’ it.
Brant had tolerated it.
He and Caleb had history, they entered the organization together.
Would he sacrifice the kid for him?
Had Caleb gone soft?
“Chad, you double checked the wiring?” Brant stepped forward.
His voice booming.
“What are you deaf now?”
Chad’s face turned red, “Yes, I checked the wiring.” He hissed.
He pulled a knife on him.
“Well it should have gone off when he pressed the manual trigger, or when Merri hit the button. But it went early. I need you to figure it out, before you say you can slap another one of these again.” Brant convinced the room of Chad’s fault.
Brian was not part of their fold.
He was a very recent addition.
He was from sector 49, had experience with the coalition and their patrols.
He was close to Fosse, Vachon, and Debarre who ran Girls, and stolen products.
Caleb had saved his ass.
Kept the ABO from taking his brother’s kids by deleting reports.
He’d fought beside him, killed with him.
He was not loyal to the French admirals.
The younger ones who had polluted the movement to originally make money, had turned it into something awful.
Some of the girls were Beta-Dominants, which was risky.
Even if their fathers did not care, the ABO did.
Command was not going to be happy with the results.
He had burned Sector 17’s base, a crucial spot, because of the reblowers in the tunnels.
If the ABO investigated and found the device, the plans would be ruined.
‘What a waste.’ Caleb’s jaw tightened.
He’d siphoned those very pheromones from Cait for years, vial by agonizing vial, while she slept.
Back then, her scent had been weaker, malleable.
A tool.
Now it repelled him with visceral, gut-churning terror whenever he neared it.
Something about it was like a biological alarm screaming ‘Stop it’.
It had happened twice.
Once when she woke up when she was very little.
He stood for almost two days, pissing and shitting his pants.
He could not move.
That is when he learned something special about omegas.
He was just collecting samples to test at the lab and remember Yvette’s weird little neck gland.
He experimented with it.
He remembered the last time he’d drained her, just after Yvette’s funeral.
Cait had been thirteen, trembling in her cot.
As the extractor needle pierced her neck, her unconscious mind lashed out.
Not with fear, but with ‘rage’.
It was so potent it felt like acid in his lungs.
It had choked him nearly to death.
He’d fled that night, coughing blood onto the damp concrete of their Beta sector flat.
The poison he’d slipped into her suppressants since, enough to scar her kidneys, weaken her heart, was supposed to be his vengeance.
Take out the trash.
She was already supposed to be dead, but she survived, month after month… somehow.
“Fucking shit, shit, shit!” Caleb swore and kicked the vent wall.
“Chad, seriously. What the fuck, man?” Caleb stomped towards him and grabbed his collar.
“Don’t know what to tell you, Caleb. Maybe that fuckhead, hit something or loosened a wire? Are you sure you and Brant broke him enough? Normally, it takes days, right?” Chad spoke up.
He would have prefaced the start of his sentence with some curse words for insinuating he was at fault.
“It was a rush job on the assassination. Next time think of a more fool proof way to deliver the poison. Drones weren’t a practical option either. You should have put more thought into it.” Brian grumbled
Chad swung for Caleb.
Caleb ducked and punched him in the stomach.
“Too slow, junior,” he said.
“Take your licks.” Caleb said and kicked him.
“Enough,” Brian said.
Now, staring at the drone feed on a holo-emitter.
He took out his comms to report the situation to command.
Caleb saw Yvette’s ghost in Cait’s silver blonde hair with Albert’s ignorant mercury eyes.
Both their faces had haunted the Traverse for years.
He had changed her pupils and hair.
Yvette was so beautiful that her face haunted propaganda posters plastered across Traverse hubs: ‘The Silver Rose’.
Proof of Albert Rose’s obsession.
Proof of Caleb’s failure.
Proof of his lack of virility when it came to her.
He had kids outside of their relationship.
He began to resent her, because of Cait and Albert Rose.
He couldn’t touch her now, not with Thorne’s security cordon, not with the sector on high alert.
Even breathing the same recycled air as her felt like swallowing glass.
He checked the cameras.
The dome was empty.
The ventilation was on high.
Next dome, he would buy some toxin scanners and see what the air quality was.
He flicked through the cameras.
Until he noticed something.
The drone’s network proximity alarm chimed softly, Thorne’s security net tightening.
Caleb severed the feed, plunging the shaft into darkness.
Only the drip of condensation echoed.
He smiled then, a thin, joyless stretch of lips.
Physical access was impossible.
But he didn’t need to touch her to break her.
He had done it already.
She would not have long.
Hopefully she kept her mouth shut, and did not tie it to him.
She might even call.
With her Her history.
Her fear.
Something interesting might also come along with the misery depending how it played out.
Either she died from her illness or she’d reach out ,and he’d end it himself.
‘Let them adore their Silver Rose.’ Caleb thought, he would bury her in thorns.
“Alright, ladies and gents,” Caleb rasped, voice echoing off the damp concrete walls.
“Looks like it’s time to pack up for Sector 18.” He didn’t look up, already dismantling the drone’s transmitter with practiced, economical movements.
“Leave no traces for the ABO. Wipe down ‘everything’.” The command hung, sharp as broken glass.
“You heard him everyone!” Chad said with a laugh.
“Leave no traces. This sector was never home to begin with.”
Brant and Brian moved instantly, bulky figures dissolving into the gloom to scrub console surfaces with enzyme-neutralizing foam.
The sharp tang of chemicals bit the stale air.
“I need all the Tech, emitters can go in pressed fibre, every non-burned comms goes into the shielded box. Everything goes into shielded cases.” Merri instructed the younger recruits.
Merri side eyed Chad as she meticulously swept loose cabling into its designated case, her gloved hands swift and silent.
“Chad looks like he’s either going to blow, or roll over on his belly again.” Pete said as he hauled the heavy battery packs onto a repulsor sled, his breathing labored in the confined space.
“Don’t let Chad hear you talk like that.” Merri warned Paul.
“Do you want to go and have a machine shove your teeth back in and fix your face?” she said.
“No.” Paul shook his head.
He was only fourteen.
Although a paid trip to a bot would fix his crooked teeth, the path there was at the end of a fist of a crazy dude like Chad.
He’d seen him pummel outsiders.
“The boss isn’t going to pack up the bench by himself.” Merri chided him.
“Won’t catch me with that shit.” Paul said.
He wanted to rise in the group, for benefits.
His family was poor, but needed him.
Chad was rumoured to be the fourth under Caleb’s wing.
The other three were dead.
“Smart. Don’t bite off more than you chew. Let your natural talents shine.” Merri said with a grunt.
She parted from Paul.
“Any equipment for me to handle?” Merri said and winked at Brian.
“I can pull cord pretty well. I’m pretty good with stuff that is spread out. Just tell me what I can do for you.” she finished.
She twirled her hair.
Brian looked at the girl, he didn’t make it a habit of rolling around with teenagers like others.
“You sure you aren’t busy with the others?” he asked.
His voice was husky.
What happened away from the cameras, did not always stay secret.
But this assignment was temporary.
Chad looked at Merri, grateful that she was up to her old habit of breaking in new meat.
He saw how weary the boss was of Brian.
Now was the perfect time.
Had his vest really gone off before it was supposed to, or was he being used?
He did not like it.
He had a future.
Secondly, he smelled her perfume on him.
He was not sure, Tessa was like a daughter to him.
She was his best friend’s niece and his girl.
For now.
Chad joined Caleb at the makeshift lab bench, his lean frame tense.
The young poison maker’s eyes, magnified behind thick goggles, flickered with nervous energy.
“I am sorry for being out of line. I just thought my work was perfect.” he whispered in a low voice.
“Did you need me to take a bullet for you on this one?” he asked/
“No.” Caleb said as he slid him a sealed vial, amber glass holding a viscous, faintly luminous liquid.
Cait’s stolen gland fluids, concentrated with pheromones and then spliced with Chad’s latest neurotoxin.
“Smell that?” he asked Chad.
“The delivery matrix?” Chad asked, his tone flat.
Chad’s fingers trembled slightly as he held up the palm-sized aerosolizer.
His spine went ramrod straight.
“Yeah.” Caleb asked gruffily.
He could feel the feeling in his heart.
He had been exposed to it a million times.
“No. It is a pressure-triggered dispersal. Releases on impact… or a timer.” Chad said.
He could help to shake and seize up.
It happened every time he pulled the liquid out with the injector.
The poison could not aerosolize or everyone in their base would die.
“You dropped some, not enough to hurt us. But enough for those freaks to scent. You know they have larger olfactory glands. They can taste the air as well.” Caleb explained.
Chad rubbed the back of his neck, his hand shaking.
“I swear the wiring was perfect.” Chad explained.
“Swearing, and what happened are different things. I will tell anyone that asks that Henry sabotaged the rig.” Caleb said and paused.
He drew closer.
“Never, never question me or Brant in front of another commander. You will get us hurt, and you will seem disloyal.” He leaned forward.
“You saw what happened to the last traitor.”
“I got it.” Chad responded.
“Good.” Caleb said and nodded once, approval cold and fleeting.
He slapped Chad on the back.
Chad was brilliant, unstable, and utterly expendable.
Like the other three, or anyone else he needed to keep him alive or keep his dick wet.
Chad practically had his tail between his legs, like a scared rat..
“Now pack up your station. Leave no traces.” Caleb ordered.
Chad quickly and carefully got to work.
Caleb watched, it was the first time that he had questioned him and talked back.
‘It might be time to dispose of him.’ he thought as he packed up his desk.
Hacked tech, medical equipment and stolen analysis tools from labs.
His project still had subjects, and the males had just started growing taller at age fourteen.
They were weaker than subject one.
Cait.
No matter what he threw at her she survived it.
Was that the difference between Beta-Dominant women like Yvette and the others?
Caleb sealed the last component into a shielded case.
The air vibrated with a tense air.
He inhaled it, letting the familiar discomfort anchor him.
His gaze drifted towards the sealed vent leading upwards, towards Normund’s sterile light.
‘Soon, ‘ he promised the ghost of Yvette in his mind.
Soon, the Silver Rose would choke on her own poisoned perfume.
And they would all watch their princess die.
Then they would all pay.
Brant watched as Caleb lugged equipment.
He pulled him aside.
“Cal, that went to shit. You know Lefebvre is in Fosse’s people. We aren’t a money making branch of the organization.”
“He said he was placed here to learn how to run his own Ops.” Caleb stopped briefly and whispered.
“He is not in it for pussy, and money.” he rasped.
They were added perks, but people in their division created the weapons and planned the sabotages.
“He has goals. I am watching him.”
“I don’t like this Cal.” Brant said, “It was good to keep Chad in line on questioning the dispersal using that…pawn. But Lefebvre’s expressions did not match up.”
“Got it,” Caleb rasped, he did not know just how much Brant was observing things.
“We’ll be careful. It’s just not my ass.” he said as he Brian approached.
He picked up the crate and stacked it on the others.
Brant looked to Caleb, something had changed over the past three months with him.
Ever since he was forced to end his first experiment with Cait.
He had been flustered that she had not died yet.
Then that shipment got held up.
Caleb thought she would simply just die in withdrawal like Yvette did when she lost her worth.
He picked up the last rag and tossed it into the recyclator shaft.
Next was the quick seal.
Caleb was waiting for him when he got out.
A whoosh off hot humid air breezed passed them.
“Hold the plate, I will weld it shut.” Brant said.
He had worked in a transport plant, it was always wet and breezy in the plant, something about the fumes.
Caleb grunted his disconstructed their makeshift door.
He grabbed a fragment of ferrocrete and handed it to Brant.
“Seal her up.” he said.
Sweat beaded on his face as Brant made quick work of sealing the former portal.
Brant had a professional touch.
As he worked, he was worried.
How much had Brant seen through him?
Was he pretending not to know?