Claimed by Cipher - Lolita Lopez Page 0,39
before gesturing to the table. “We have a problem.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” Keen interjected in his gravelly voice.
“When your mate sent her intel and recon,” Savage addressed Cipher, “we focused mostly on the information that would help us rescue Terror. We set aside everything else until we had him in our hands.”
“And?” Ciphered stepped up to the table where the image of a canister had been amplified and digitally enhanced.
“She captured these images and video of Splinter forces moving crates filled with these canisters. They aren’t marked, but she said something in her report that caught my attention,” Savage continued.
Torment swiped his fingers through the air over the table and tossed a video file to the screen on the opposite wall. Brook’s face appeared, her skin smudged with grime from the mine and her hair still damp from the filthy water in the broken pipes. The file began to play, and Cipher smiled at the sound of her voice.
“There was something strange about that room with the canisters. It smelled wrong—like a barn, like hay—and I felt woozy going over the grate there.”
Cipher’s gaze instantly snapped to Torment. “Nerve gas?”
Torment nodded. “A shipment of canisters from the Factory that were on their way to incineration were hijacked.”
“Splinters?” Raze asked.
“An independent outfit of arms dealers,” Keen clarified.
“They’ve been on Shadow Force’s wider radar for a while now,” Savage added. “They don’t operate in this sector so they aren’t a running concern for us. When they arranged to sell their cargo to a cell here, that changed.”
“When?” Cipher asked.
“7 weeks ago,” Keen answered and inclined his head toward Grim.
The assassin was rarely seen aboard the Valiant even though it was his home base. When he was seen, Grim was usually staring stonily from some shadowy corner. There were rumors that he was born mute or had lost his tongue in an early mission gone bad. Cipher didn’t believe either one. He thought Grim just didn’t have much to say.
Without uncrossing his arms or moving away from the wall, Grim growled, “Our man on the inside alerted us to the deal. We were able to intercept the two ships outside the Gamma-6 moon base. We recovered most of the stolen cargo, but the Splinters managed to offload seven crates before we arrived.” His gaze settled on Cipher. “Your mate found them down in that mine.”
“If she smelled hay, that’s got to be NA-4,” Cipher reasoned. “It’s deadly, but we have antidotes.”
“Not enough,” Risk stated as he rubbed his jaw. “Not nearly enough.”
“How fast can we get the amount we need?” Orion asked.
“I don’t know that we can,” Risk admitted. “After the public campaigns against bio weapons, they phased out those older gases. Whatever antidote we have in central stockpile is all we have. Gathering up the antidote in circulation will be a logistical nightmare.”
“The antidote isn’t our problem,” Grim insisted. “There was a mistake at the factory when they were loading up the old gas to be destroyed. A canister of NA-9X made it into the crates. It wasn’t in the recovered canisters.”
Fear rippled down Cipher’s spine. He met Risk’s shocked gaze. The doc looked ready to puke as he exclaimed, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He glanced around the room. “You guys didn’t think to lead with that part of the story? The part where our enemies have a canister of the deadliest gas our scientists ever created? A colorless, odorless killing machine with no antidote?”
From the grave looks on Vicious and Orion’s faces, they hadn’t been apprised of that fact either. Vicious finally asked, “How deadly is it?”
“A drop would kill everyone in this room,” Risk explained. “Worse than that, it sticks around. Literally. The residue clings to anything it touches. It’s just as deadly administered through the skin as through the nose.”
“So anyone who touches a victim or tries to render aid will also die,” Vicious muttered.
“Not just die,” Risk said insistently. “They will suffer a horrible, agonizing death. You come in contact with NA-9X? You choke. You bleed out of your eyes and mouth. You lose control of your bowels and bladder. Your stomach will violently erupt. You seize and drown in your own blood and mucus and vomit.”
The room went silent as every man imagined such an end.
“That’s why they never made the gas in any useable quantity,” Savage said. “The scientist who discovered it did so on accident and killed his entire lab. The war council had the R&D sector try to replicate the discovery.