first time.”
Bob growled low and jumped up to the end of the couch. Plopping himself down on his favorite blanket, Bob glared at the strange woman sharing his sofa with him. The cat was obviously unhappy and wanted Cin to know it.
Cin ignored the angry cat, finished programming the nanites, and sent them into the woman through a nasty gash on her right cheek. Figuring he’d make her well then send her on her way, Cin went into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee while he waited for her face to heal well enough to perform facial recognition on it.
While he waited, Cin decided to determine who her attacker was, based on the images his nanites had taken during their brief encounter. By the time Cin had poured the coffee and walked back to the couch, the swelling and bruising were already disappearing from the battered woman’s face, and he had the identification of her abuser.
“Oh, hell,” Cin whispered as he went through the available information on the woman’s assailant. “Imagine finding one of you in my neck of the woods.”
Cin was going through the news articles, police reports, and society pages of the newspaper when he found the woman's identity. Lanie Fulbright. Long-time girlfriend of Jason McMaster, the nephew of the traitorous Senator Lilly Patrosi.
That bitch senator was in the middle of everything going wrong in the country of America and was deeply involved with the elites. The woman wasn’t part of the founding members but had quickly worked herself up in the ranks of their lower minions while growing her bank account.
Cindrac smiled at the thought of the woman feeling all smug and confident in her place among the overlords. Senator Patrosi had no idea that the elite had a week-long celebration planned for the useful idiots just like her, not far in the future.
A week when the Senator and all the lower minion fools who’d helped the elite were rounded up and turned over to an angry populace to mete out justice. It was a trick of the elite to convince the people that they were on their side. The moment the people trusted them, the elite starting enforcing ever increasing draconian laws.
After several generations, forced vaccines, compulsory medication, and increasingly strict control, the entire world was enslaved, and none could stop them until Cindrac. With each move he made against the elite, their control over the future of Earth was slipping.
Cin sighed at the hopelessness he could feel as he read Lanie’s emails and looked down at the now beautiful woman. Lanie Fulbright had been trying to flee from Jason McMaster for more than eleven years.
In that time, Jason had systematically terrorized the poor woman until she was left friendless, jobless, and destitute. All to force Lanie to go back to him. She’d spent more than a decade running from the bastard.
Jason had inflicted the kind of psychological torture on the innocent girl that Cin would generally appreciate if Lanie were one of the elite. But an innocent like Lanie didn’t deserve what Jason and his family had put her through.
All it did was invoke rage in Cindrac because Jason had taken advantage of the woman then punished her for seeing through his façade of respectability. Cin found dozens of police reports for assault and battery that had been swept under the rug by Jason’s aunt and her dirty money.
For eleven years, Lanie had tried to break free of Jason, and each time he hunted her down like an animal, forcing her to flee yet again. Cin read dozens of emails Lanie had sent to anyone who would listen for help, yet Senator Patrosi squashed any investigations each time.
Cin was stunned that Lanie was still alive considering the list of people killed in strange accidents or disappeared when crossing the Senator or her corrupt family. It was apparent to anyone with working brain cells that the Senator was nothing more than a low-life criminal.
Looking over at the brave woman on his couch, Cin could see the dark circles under her eyes and the tired lines etching her face. The physical toll of years of abuse, running for her life and scraping by on dead-end jobs while waiting for Jason McMaster to find her again.
From what Cin had read, Lanie had cost Jason and his family a lot of money trying to track her down the last eleven years and even more aggravation. He had a ton of respect for Lanie’s ability to stay strong