Relic - Jaid Black
Chapter One
Glasgow Concentration Centre
Twenty-first century Scotland, Three years from now
She landed on the pavement with the quiet stealth of a panther, a gun palmed in each blood-stained hand. She wore head-to-toe black, blending in with the night, her senses in tune with her surroundings.
There are so many of them, but I can’t retreat…
She hesitated. The enemy’s numbers were unfavorable to a quick defeat, yet she’d made it too far to turn back now. This could be the last chance fate gave her to escape from Hell—her final opportunity to kill or be killed. Her stomach revolted, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in days. She ignored the painful memento from her encampment and concentrated instead on the men she needed to take out if she was to live—human men. Human collaborators.
Human traitors.
You can do this. Remember your training.
One of the U.S. Navy’s first, if classified, female SEALs, giving up simply wasn’t in Octavia Benatti’s DNA. She had fought like a wildcat to not only compete with the male candidates, but to excel beyond their skill levels. She’d had to run circles around them just to gain their begrudging acceptance and so run she had. Being a blackbelt in two different forms of martial arts still hadn’t prepared her for the rigorous, intense, often dehumanizing SEAL training, but it had instilled within her the tenacity and quickness she was known for.
Squatting low behind a row of tall potted plants, guns still palmed, Octavia made a quick, calculated assessment of what she was up against. Her green eyes narrowed as she counted ten human collaborators guarding the portal she sought. Again, she hesitated, uncertainty rippling through her, though this time for a different reason.
“Go to the portal,” Admiral McAdams had commanded as he lay dying in her arms.
“But—”
“Go!” He ground his teeth against the pain. “There’s nothing left here. No hope. No future.”
“There is only death on the other side of the gateway.” Octavia considered that the rapid hemorrhaging might be causing the admiral to hallucinate. “That’s how the Xenocanns pass back and forth to and from their planet,” she reminded him.
“When it’s violet,” McAdams murmured, his eyes closing. “Go through on violet.”
“What’s violet? What are you talking about, sir?”
But no explanation would be forthcoming. His final words, forever seared into her brain, brought her to where she now watched and waited. “Twenty-four hundred hours,” he said as firmly as a dying man could. “That’s an order, Commander Benatti.”
She glanced at her watch. One minute to midnight. Octavia eyed the large, circular portal as it glowed a menacing red. In the two years she’d spent in internment camps never once had she seen any of the alien portals display a color other than crimson. But she’d been given an order—even if it was under duress. She would simply have to trust that, by virtue of his rank, the now deceased admiral had known something she didn’t.
Forty-five seconds.
Her nostrils flared. Whether or not McAdams had been hallucinating, she would still take out those ten human traitors. It was the least she could do to avenge her superior. If she died in the process, so be it. She was slated for execution tomorrow anyway.
Execution. An ironic word for being the morning meal.
Thirty seconds.
A loud, whirring sound emitted from the middle of the circular portal. A shiver worked down her spine. Octavia palmed the handguns tighter, though the gateway remained a glowing red.
“This is the last departure!” one of the human traitors shouted to his comrades. “Where’s Dr. Fancy Pants?”
His accent was distinctly American, making her eyes narrow in disgust. For some reason or another it burned her ass even more when a collaborator turned out to be one of her own. There were human traitors in every nation these days, though their numbers were sparse. Fewer still were military collaborators, yet she could see by the dog tags the men wore that she’d happened upon some.
“Right here, sir!” a traitor with an English accent answered. An unwilling man in his late forties to early fifties was shoved up onto the platform and brought to a halt in front of the apparent leader. “Here’s the doctor and here are the cloaks.”
Octavia watched uncomprehendingly as a black cloak was shoved over the captive man’s head. That accomplished, the ten military collaborators donned hooded cloaks of their own.
What the fuck?
Fifteen seconds.
The whirring sound grew louder. Octavia’s eyes widened as she watched the portal flicker back and forth with tangible ferocity. Red. Violet. Red. Violet. Red. Violet. The colors blinked