Page 73 of I Dream of Danger
Since he was a small child torn from his homeland, China, and dragged to the country he detested, the United States, Lee had dreamed of coming back to his homeland a conqueror. It was clear to anyone who had eyes in their head that China was the world’s foremost superpower now, and Lee intended it to remain so for the next thousand years. It was the oldest civilization on earth and had been dormant far too long. But its long sleep was over, and now it would take its place as the leader of mankind.
It would manufacture not only superior products, but superior humans. Starting with him.
Three months ago, he’d gone down to the secret underground labs at Millon Laboratories, a small high-tech company Arka had purchased. He’d found it best to carry out the research Flynn was paying for in scattered small-scale labs of companies he held a majority share in. No one knew about this research. Certainly not the board at Arka. It pleased him no end that he was beating American capitalism at its own game. Preparing for its future destruction under its own nose.
And yet, Lee’s contacts in Beijing had told him that his time was running out. When Lee had first contacted his childhood friend, Chao Yu, who’d risen high in the ranks of the Ministry of Science and Technology, his friend had been enthusiastic, and had taken the Warrior Project directly to the minister himself, Zhang Wei.
Everyone in the Ministry had been hugely excited, but the excitement waned as Lee kept coming up against problems. The science was impeccable. There had been sporadic successes, but not replicable enough to bring to Beijing. All he needed was the money to institute testing on a larger scale in order to speed the process up. He needed Flynn’s money.
Lee hadn’t planned on showing Flynn the paranormals, but he’d had his hand forced. Flynn had been impressed and doubled the funding, but it was almost too late. The window of opportunity back home was closing.
And that was when it occurred to Lee that he would be landing in the Fatherland with a terabyte of encrypted data, a case full of vials and some video footage, nothing more. Chao Yu was a scientist and could be trusted to break the data down and explain it, but that could take time. Days, weeks, even months. He didn’t have weeks and months. Time was tight, and he needed to arrive with a visibly functioning program, ready to be up and running as fast as doses could be manufactured.
Manufacturing, distributing, and injecting the doses to the military would already take six months. They needed to start right away and he needed to be credible right away. He himself had to be a walking advertisement for the Warrior Protocol.
So he’d started experimenting on himself, in minute doses, and the results were overwhelming. He felt stronger, faster. He was stronger, faster. The other day he had clocked himself at under a three-minute mile run. He’d never been a runner, never been an athlete, and he’d casually broken an Olympic record.
He’d never felt better, stronger, more clear-headed. But it had taken months for the dosage to take effect. Speed was an issue, both in the lab and in the field. The effects had to be immediate. So he’d been experimenting with a fast-acting virus as a vector. It had worked wonders on animal trials.
Lee missed his soldiers fiercely. He needed Special Forces soldiers for the trials, but though he’d broached the subject several times with Flynn, who would have access to plenty of specimens as an ex-general, the cretin had refused. The theory was that any Special Forces soldiers, either on active duty or retired, would be missed.
He’d made an exception for the Ghost Ops soldiers who’d been captured because they were not on any official lists. Were, in fact, officially nonexistent. On the subject of more soldiers to experiment on, Flynn had been unyielding.
A sudden rush of rage shook Lee, a hot course of hatred pulsing through him. It felt good, it felt right. Flynn had blocked him every step of the way. The original plan had been to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Beijing, as a newly minted senior official of the Ministry. The Chinese New Year had come and gone. He’d stood in the dark in his penthouse apartment on Market Street listening to the sounds of the annual Chinese New Year parade. And now with the new deadlines it was entirely possible that Flynn’s hesitations and penny-pinching would cost Lee his chance.
The hatred felt right, felt good. He clenched his fist and imagined it curled around Flynn’s fat neck, crushing the windpipe, watching with glee as that already-purple face turned blue, anticipating the tiny snap as the hyoid bone broke.
Lee could do it now, too. One-handed. He’d surreptitiously tested his grip on a dynamometer and he’d hit 200 lbs., the most the machine could measure, halfway through the test. In all likelihood, he could tear Flynn’s throat out with one hand.
The thought pleased him enormously.
Oh yes. He was going to be a walking advertisement for the Warrior Protocol.
He broke the final seal on the container and watched as curls of smoke from the dry ice rose together with the central cylinder. It stopped with an audible click, gyrated 90°, and the three vials automatically emptied into a single syringe that had been pushed up from the side.
Beautiful piece of equipment. America still did this kind of thing so well, so elegantly.
Lee picked the syringe up with his right hand and turned it until the hair-fine needle pointed at the ceiling. He rolled up the shirt sleeve and placed his left arm on the desktop, admiring it. His suits hid the fact that he’d developed superb muscle definition over the past month. His arm now was lean and hard, with veins carrying oxygen to the newly-forged muscles.
He smiled as the needle painlessly slid into the vein. Lean, mean fighting machine. With a double PhD.
The new dosage with the viral component—SL-62—spread warmth throughout his system like a healing balm. He felt good, more than good. He felt great.
A few more tweaks and they’d be ready to roll. They would have been ready six weeks ago if that fucker Flynn hadn’t been so pissy.
Lee recoiled for a second. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used the word fucker, or even thought it. It wasn’t him. Or at least it wasn’t the old him. The new Lee could use whatever word he wanted. Fuck them.
He stood up, strength infusing his system. His vision was blurred, though when he took off his glasses, he could see perfectly. It was raining outside and dark, even though it was still early afternoon. But light bloomed in his eyes and he could make out figures in front of the Ferry Building, almost half a mile away.
He stretched and smiled. He felt great. Just great.
Mount Blue
They filed into the lab one by one. Mac first, then Jon, then Nick. And there she was, sitting in the lab in a white coat, looking so beautiful she took his breath away. But more than beautiful, she looked…right. As if she were born to be sitting in their lab in Haven.
She and Catherine had been conferring, heads together, serious but clearly in tune with each other. Two beautiful women—though however pretty Catherine was, she couldn’t hold a candle to Elle—one dark-haired, one fair. The smartest women he’d ever met, dealing with some very nasty shit without breaking a sweat.
Nick went over immediately to Elle and sat down next to her. He picked her hand up, kissed the back of it, then leaned over and kissed her cheek.
