Wade's War Read online

  At that, everybody jumped into action.

  Tasha immediately started a hunt to destroy, and she suggested to Sophia, “How about you try to track where the intruder is headed, and I’ll see how they got into our system.”

  “I’ll get Wade,” Terk said.

  What for? Sophia spun in surprise, but Terk was already gone. She glanced at Tasha, who was busy, her keystrokes fast and sure, as she tried to track down what was going on. “Maybe we could have a talk later,” Sophia noted, typing as madly as Tasha. “I’m feeling distinctly at a disadvantage.”

  “That’s okay,” Tasha replied. “You won’t get a ton more information anyway. These guys are something else.”

  Sophia nodded. “It’s hard to work with them if I can’t figure out what’s going on around me,” she explained. “I trust Terk and the team. I just wish I understood more.”

  “Oh, I know, and I get it,” Tasha agreed. “I’m feeling better about the whole deal now, but I admit that, a few days ago, I was in the same boat and not feeling very secure at all.”

  “And what’s this about you and Damon?” It was the mark of a good hacker who could talk on other matters while trying to catch an active hacker in her system.

  Tasha flushed and smiled. “Yeah, finally.” She shook her head. “I’ve been waiting since forever.”

  “Well, that gives me hope,” Sophia shared. “Are they all like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Dense,” she said bluntly.

  And even though Tasha was working hard on tracking down the intruder’s manner of ingress, she went off in peals of laughter. “Well, let’s just say they’re superprotective, and anytime we have any security issue, you’ll be the first one they shut out, for your own good.”

  “Yeah, that won’t go down well,” Sophia muttered. “Been there and done that. I’m definitely not going for round two.”

  “Nope, it never does work, so you fight back as much as you can. Just save your battles for the ones that will do you some good.”

  Sophia thought a word of warning might be in there somewhere. She just wasn’t sure and couldn’t reply now as Terk came in hot.

  “Both of you get off the system right now.”

  Tasha looked up at him in shock. “No! No … I’m almost there.”

  “Stop.” His voice was razor-sharp, which made Tasha lift her hands off her keyboard.

  Sophia frowned but followed suit.

  “Fine.” Tasha was irritated. “You know what? It would be nice to have some inkling as to what’s going on.”

  “Ha! I thought we weren’t allowed to ask questions like that,” Sophia muttered under her breath, noting a weird hum filling the air. She shook her head, as if trying to get rid of the ringing in her ears. She looked over at Tasha to see if she had noticed it, but she sat quietly at her computer, waiting.

  Sophia peered up and around to see what the hell Terk was doing, but it seemed he was waiting as well, his head cocked to one side, listening to something in the air. She took a slow deep breath. “Somebody will have to explain some shit to me at some point,” she announced.

  “If and when,” Terk replied, and the next moment he was out of the room.

  Sophia looked over at Tasha. “If and when what?”

  Chapter 2

  Tasha just smiled and gave her a lopsided grin. “Lots of things here don’t work the way you might expect them to.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Sophia muttered, “but I still don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  “It’s not my place to say anything,” Tasha stated. “All I can tell you right now is that it could take some time to understand this team, but you will know soon enough. Just remember. Trust is a two-way street.”

  “Oh, I get that.” She nodded. “I really do, but—”

  Wade walked in. He stared down at her soberly. “It would be better if you went home.”

  Pain stabbed at her. “Yeah, well, that’s not happening. Especially after seeing whatever the hell I just saw. What is going on here?”

  He hesitated. “Just think carefully. It is not too late, and you can go home right now, where you’ll be safer and where you can forget about all this shit, or else we’ll turn the corner, and we’ll be on yet another crazy job, and you’ll be embroiled in it and at risk, whether you like it or not.”

  “Then bring it on,” she snapped. “I’m not the kind to walk away.”

  “It would be better if you did,” he repeated in a harsh tone.

  “You can’t scare me away like that,” she snarled, almost growling. She was pissed off at herself and at him because he was being so damn stubborn. He did give a shit, and she knew it. She’d seen it—such depth of emotions and desires that she wasn’t prepared to let him go without a fight. This wasn’t a fight against her; he was fighting against himself. Against the two of them being together. And that just made her feel like she should hold on to him, at least for now. “So bring it on, McDuff,” she snapped.

  At that, Wade unexpectedly laughed. “Fine. Have it your way.” He turned around to Terk, who hovered near him, protecting him in some way.

  “Going to finish what you started?” Terk’s tone was playful.

  Wade looked at him. “I’ll need a hand back to the bed, if you want me to do that.”

  “You got it,” Terk replied, and, with that, he helped him into his bedroom while Sophia stared.

  She lowered her voice to speak to Tasha. “How will getting him back to bed help us out of this mess? Finish what?” she muttered in confusion.

  “That’s just a part of this,” Tasha answered. “I don’t know if Merk told you anything, or if Levi or Ice or their crew ever talked about Terk’s team, but the stuff that goes on here, it has an esoteric supernatural bent to it,” she explained. “The remote viewers, the transmitters, trackers, cyberguards, and some of the tech here is kind of weird and wonderful. All psychic phenomena. You’ll never find this shit anywhere else. Or at least we hope not. If you do find some of this anywhere else, then somebody found out about our guys’ special skills, and they’re using the same techniques on them again.”

  Just then yet another set of alarms went off, and, with a sigh, Sophia turned back to study the computers, only to find absolutely nothing flashing. She spun again to see Tasha bolting to her feet, yet going nowhere. She stared at her friend in shock, as Tasha just nodded slowly.

  “Wade was badly hurt in this last attack that brought down the team,” Tasha added quietly, “but right now he’s the one chasing the bad guys on the ethers.”

  Bad guys … ethers … supernatural? “Holy crap, how did I miss that?”

  “It’s one of the reasons Wade is determined to keep you out of it,” Tasha noted, “because so much can go wrong that is well beyond our physical abilities to fight.” She sighed with a one-arm shrug. “I didn’t understand it myself for the longest time. It took me quite a while to get into the actual swing of things, and even now it doesn’t feel right.”

  “You think?” Sophia was clearly shocked. “That’s all a bit hard to even grasp.” She wasn’t ready to accept any of it just yet.

  “Speak to Terk if you have any doubts,” Tasha suggested, “but you need to do it now because, once you commit, you cannot go back. Even now it might be too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “I’m sure you can understand how we can’t have anybody take off from here with this kind of knowledge.”

  “When they said, top secret, they didn’t mean this,” she replied with half a smile.

  “Nope,” Tasha replied.

  “On the other hand, if I were to tell anybody, they’d set me up for a psych eval immediately.”

  “Yeah, except for the ones who really want to hear exactly what you could tell them in that psych eval,” she whispered, “because this shit here is for real.”

  Bewildered, Sophia shook her head and didn’t know what to do or say. “I mean, obviously I want to know more. I want to know e
verything there is to know because this is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.”

  “Beyond everything, but it is everything,” Tasha noted. “That’s the thing to remember. Even though it feels like it’s beyond everything, this is the reality of where we’re at.”

  “And somebody found out, then came in and attacked everyone?”

  Tasha nodded. “And from there, it’s gone straight downhill. If you consider the fact that our own government might have been the reason for the attacks”—she paused—“you might understand a little more.”

  “Well, I could actually understand that,” Sophia replied, “because they’d be terrified of what your team could do.”

  “Hence the problem. We think the attack did come from our government, one way or another. But it’s also my life on the line. I’m not prepared to just walk away and let them decide if I get to live or die,” Tasha stated bluntly.

  “No, of course not,” Sophia muttered. “Jesus, what a mess.”

  “What a mess but also,” Tasha added, with a smile, “like, wow. It’s the wild part you need to hang on to because there’s a lot of wow here. Like some serious wow stuff, but it also takes a fair bit to get your mind wrapped around it. Plus, then you have to understand that, when we’re told to do something, we have to just do it—because we don’t understand the implications from the other side.”

  “Like what Terk just did. Ordering us to stop, letting the hacker just proceed.” Sophia shook her head at that. “And here we go down that whole Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole again.”

  “Exactly. He was letting Wade do his stuff in our system, so we had to stop. And it’s not easy to blindly trust, especially when it comes to the IT part, which is our domain of expertise. I get it,” Tasha agreed, “but you really do need blind obedience here because you don’t know the whole situation at any given moment.”

  Sophia winced at that. “Like any job, someone must be in charge, and I don’t have a problem with that, in theory.” She laughed. “Except that I’m damn good at what I do, and I don’t like people questioning my hacking.” She shrugged. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around just the thought of all the team’s cyberactivities and paranormal abilities. It really is a bit too much to take in, and, Jesus, if anybody got hold of this information—”

  “Which is also why it’s so damn important that they don’t,” Tasha replied. “And Terk and the guys are more vulnerable than ever, which is awful, especially since we’re very limited in what we can do right now.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Sophia questioned, looking at her friend. “It seems like these guys have an awful lot they can do.”

  “They can, sure, but we have team members injured—some may die—and we still don’t know anything about who attacked us. We’ve found one clue out of all this chaos,” she noted, “but he’s dead too.”

  “Of course he is,” Sophia muttered. “Everybody will be expendable in this scenario. Aren’t they?”

  “Absolutely.” Tasha was like Sophia, no BS whatsoever. “It’s good that you got that right off the bat.”

  “Oh, I got it all right,” Sophia agreed, “but, man, that’s a really shitty thing to have happen. So, what can I do to help?”

  At that, Tasha nodded slowly. “Right now, nothing for us to do. I’m just really glad you’re here, but what we would normally do? We’d get leads. We get data.” She reached over, the two women gripping hands.

  “I don’t know if you know,” Sophia shared, “but Wade and I have a bit of history.”

  Tasha laughed. “Well, I got that message.”

  “I really don’t want to see anything happen to him.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she agreed. “Then you’ll do your best to help me keep the rest of them alive too. And, hey, since Damon and I finally got ourselves clear of all our misunderstandings, I would like to think that maybe we could help you two get through it as well.”

  “That would be nice,” Sophia noted. “It’s been pretty damn shitty, knowing that Wade walked. But now? Finding out that he did it to keep me safe? It seems even shittier somehow.”

  “Maybe, but it’s how these men are built,” Tasha stated. “You better just accept it and move on.” She paused. “Remember. The best thing you can do is pick your battles, and, when they’re here, the battles are pretty—” She stopped, hesitating. “They’re pretty extreme, not always on our level. And that’s just something else to deal with. But it’s also fascinating in many ways, and they would say that we’re capable of doing the same things.”

  “It’s hard enough to believe any of this ether warfare even exists, without trying to take it to another level, thinking that we could do it too.”

  “Of course.” Tasha nodded, with a smile. “But not everything is as simple as that.”

  “No, it never is, unfortunately.” Sophia looked around. “And, since I’m staying on with the team, I presume we need to stay here, at headquarters, for a long time.”

  Tasha nodded. “Where’s your gear?”

  “Back at the hotel.”

  “We’ll bring it in later then,” Tasha replied.

  “Sounds good.” Sophia hesitated, then looked over at Tasha sheepishly. “You’re not kidding me, right? Wade really is in danger?”

  “He barely survived one horrific recent attack,” she stated, “and so have I. We lost the other two hackers—admins, like me. They were shot in their beds, while sleeping. It’s a miracle that I heard somebody coming for me and had time to hide, so my bedding got shot up, instead of me.”

  At that, Sophia’s eyes widened. “Jesus, and the rest of the guys on the team?”

  “They’re all still out of commission. Terk and Damon weren’t hurt as badly, so they were okay enough to get started and to get me out. Of the rest, Wade is the only one of the others who has recovered to the point of being conscious and able to help.”

  “Okay, done deal. I’ll get my stuff, and I’ll move into one of the rooms here.” She hesitated, then looked toward the bedroom where Wade was. “You know what? If I’m to start out the way I intend to go,” she thought out loud, “I might as well just move in his room.”

  “You might want to wait until you get an invite first,” Tasha suggested, with a smirk.

  At that, Sophia’s face broke into a broad smile. “Believe me. I don’t need a proper invite. We were hell on wheels together.”

  “But he’s fighting an awful lot of honor systems.” Tasha frowned. “He may not take it well.”

  “And, if I let him get away with that,” Sophia stated, “you and I both know he’ll continuously balk at it.”

  “So, what do you want to do?” Tasha asked.

  “Well, when I get my stuff,” she stated, “I’ll make my decision then.”

  “Good enough.” Tasha shrugged. “But I’m kind of with him on this one.”

  “That’s only because you don’t know how much he cares,” she suggested.

  “No, I don’t, and, maybe if I did know, it would change my mind.”

  Sophia nodded. “It’ll be a little hard to see it, when he keeps me at arm’s length.”

  At that, Tasha smiled and laughed. “This newest compound itself may be massive, but we are limited to just these few outfitted rooms—our operations room and the bedrooms and the kitchen-dining-conference room area. So where we actually live and work is a cramped and combined space, and it’ll get more and more cramped as more of the guys wake up,” she added. “Yet it’s very much a whole integrated team at play, so, if you guys as a couple have problems, it’ll affect all of us. And trust me. I found out the hard way. Terk won’t stand for it.”

  “Got it.” Sophia nodded. “That’s a really valid point, and I’ll think about it.”

  Terk silently entered the main room and gave a slight chin nod to Tasha. She returned the motion and waved Sophia back onto her keyboard.

  They went back to fine-tuning their system and tracking their unwanted visitors. Tasha moved th
rough the system and looked over at Sophia. “It feels different now.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  Tasha added, “I suspect Wade went through here and did a cleanup.”

  Sophia sat back and had to bite her tongue. What the hell does that even mean? she wondered. How could he have done it? But it seemed to be completely normal to Tasha, so Sophia kept her mouth shut, or tried to, then mumbled, “I just need to learn more.”

  “You’ll get there,” Tasha said gently. “Just don’t push it.”

  The trouble was, Sophia had never come up against something like this. And honestly? Pushing it was kind of her thing.

  *

  Wade woke up what seemed like hours later, exhausted from fending off the cyberattack. He opened his eyes to find Terk at his bedside, sitting there quietly. “What happened?” Wade asked.

  “You went after the cyberintruder.”

  At that, Wade winced. “Well, I tried to.”

  “Tell me. What happened?”

  Wade searched his recent memories bank to see if anything was there, and then he sighed. “I have no idea.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Pissed.”

  At that, Terk smiled. “And you know that I get that. I really do. It’s not helpful, but I get it.”

  Wade wanted to laugh, but, at the same time, he wanted to scream and to shout. “I’m useless if I can’t have my cybersenses fully back and if I can’t actually track anything …”

  “I wouldn’t say useless. You did something, even if you don’t remember.” Terk added, “As a matter of fact, I think something’s very valuable in all this.”

  “And what’s that?” Wade asked bitterly, “because I’m really not feeling it.”

  “No, you’re not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. After we had two DOS attacks, you went in after them. I presume you did something in the computer system.”

  He frowned. “I might have, but honestly I don’t remember.”