Page 14 of High Stakes

My communicator pinged. A message from Victor appeared on the screen: I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me again.

I bit my lower lip. Hard. I shouldn’t write back. Maru would tell me not to even dare. The pads of my fingers were still stiff from the adhesive he’d used. They itched to hit the button to bring up the keyboard and tell him to go to hell.

But I wanted something more important than Victor. I wanted revenge on Enoch.

Grabbing my remote, I turned on my wall screen.

A list of the broadcasts I’d missed over the past day filled the option board. I selected the first, but it wouldn’t load. I pressed the button again. And again. The screen was frozen. Or so I thought. Black and white static flickered across the screen before he appeared, and I realized I was seeing a live transmission… of Enoch.

He smiled into the camera, straightening his tie and then the silky lapels of his dark jacket. His green eyes twinkled. It almost looked like he was staring directly at me. “I’ve obtained some new information about a program the humans are developing.”

Shit. Was Victor seeing this?

“I have a warning for Victor Dantone: my vampires have been instructed to target your precious Assets. And just as they are coming for them, I am coming for you.”

The broadcast ended as quickly as it began, static flurrying across the screen.

My heart thundered.

The vampire in the bay came to mind, with his message that Enoch was coming for me. Why did he send a vampire into the compound, knowing what his fate would be, just to send me a message, a message he planned to later broadcast to Victor?

I pushed a button and pulled up the file on my target. A still photograph of him filled the screen. I walked over to the wall and let my fingers trail alongside him.

Enoch was deadly. There was no other way to describe him. Maru didn’t have to tell me that if I tried to kill him and couldn’t, I wouldn’t get another chance. He would end me in a heartbeat. The anger frothing in his cool, green eyes promised as much, and his full lips hid the deadliest pair of fangs in existence.

He was a beautiful symphony of perfect destruction; a dark melody I knew by heart.

* * *

I was up before Maru showed up to escort me. Mostly because I hadn’t slept. When I questioned him about Enoch’s message, he told me to keep my mouth shut. Apparently, Victor was on the warpath, and I was already on his list.

“Keep your head down, and for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut today, Eve. Go through the testing. Do what you have to. We’ll talk about the rest later.”

As Maru sagely predicted, the tech embedded in the backs of our right hands functioned flawlessly. It was the first time we’d activated it for any length of time, and it passed all of Kael’s tests with flying colors. There was no delay, no glitches. All the diagnostic tests reported perfect results.

Kael’s team received data from our tech. We’d spent the morning running sprints and jumping from scissor-lifts into nets that were too close to the ground for my liking. Apparently, there was a proper way to jump. We had to swan dive, arms extended, hands together in a v. It made us more aerodynamic, but it was hard to think of proper form when hurtling head-first to the ground. Everything worked. They knew our blood pressures, maximum heartrates, and that I hated heights before it was all over.

Jumping didn’t bother Abram at all, though Titus seemed as scared as I did. And because Abram was a complete asshole and Titus a ball of nerves, our morning was spent in relative silence.

Since all had gone as expected this morning, we were moving forward this afternoon, which meant the discs to fuel our trip would be installed. In preparation, I tied the hospital gown as best as I could, making sure to close the gaps in the back.

The tech in our right hands would house the mechanics that would fuel our trip into the past. At its most basic function, our tech held the device to measure height, distance, and velocity. When we flew, it would connect with our suits, which would amplify our speed, accelerating us fast enough that our bodies could punch through space and time. In the center of the sensors was a small, round radiation chamber the size of a nickel.

The chamber would house a single fuel cell, a disc of plutonium.

Kael had explained how they worked at least a dozen times, but the concept seemed almost alien. I still had a thousand questions, questions that would go unanswered because time was running out. Victor was speeding us through at this point, when for years, he’d held back and bided his time.

It made me wonder if he was more concerned about Enoch’s threats than he let on in the broadcast he sent out in response to Enoch’s warning. He did little more than smile and say how ridiculous the vampire was for assuming humans were weak, for thinking we couldn’t defend ourselves. He confirmed the existence of the Asset program and taunted Enoch, telling him we were more than ready for him and his kind. That he’d find out how deadly we were soon enough.

Kael stared at us from behind the observation mirror. Something behind his thick, dark frames was unsettling. Victor was calculating. He analyzed, assessed, made a move and reassessed. But Kael, Kael saw twenty moves ahead. His white jacket pulled tight over his upper arms as he folded his arms over his chest and watched his staff buzz around the room, following his orders and protocol.

In years past, the brightest scientific minds had theorized that time warps could be generated, but they erringly assumed one would have to be in outer space to create them. Kael found a way to not only create them on earth, but to create them in midair. He also determined how to ensure that the fabricated wormhole led to the exact moment we needed them to, and in the precise location. It was a lot to wrap my mind around, and in the end, I just had to trust that he knew what he was doing.

I sat on a gurney as a nurse sterilized the back of my hand with a cool, wet alcohol wipe. “Your name, please?” she asked perfunctorily.

“Asset Eve.”

She asked for my birthdate, the date of my last upgrade, and how my vision was now that it had been further enhanced. I rattled off the requested information as Abram glowered at me from the waiting area across the room, elbows on his knees.

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