I met Donahue along with several others from the platoon I was more and more starting to think of as my people in a tunnel leading off from the main cavern and stopped when I saw the large plastic bag on a gurney. “Where did you find him?”

“Hikers found him about twenty miles into the mountains.” Leon answered grimly. “Big cat or something mauled him pretty good and he’d been there long enough for the scavengers to have gotten started. It ain’t pretty Sarge.”

“Get him to the Med Center and put him in one of the closed off containment cells.” Make sure no one else gets a look until I get there or Dr. Somerville does.”

“You got it, Sarge.” The man nodded and waved the others along. “You heard the lady, boys and girls, get the lead out.”

I had to go through the central switchboard to reach Anna Somerville. I reminded myself to get her personal number on my speed dial as soon as I could.

“Dr. Somerville’s office.” A way too perky female voice answered on the second ring.

“This is Lucinda Xiang.” I interrupted the polite offer of doing something to help me. “Get the Doctor on the line now, please.”

“Of course.” The voice responded a bit nervously. “One moment Ma’am, she’s in conference and I’ll have to pull her out of it.”

“Fine. I’ll wait.”

I was already on my way when she picked up a minute later. “What can I do for you, Ma’am?”

Meet me at containment cell — “ I checked the map my phone was showing me then finished. “A-14 as soon as possible. We have a situation.”

“Another one?”

“Not what you think, Doctor.” I tersely replied. “Just get there if you aren’t saving someone’s life right now.”

“Five minutes.”

I closed the conversation and made another call. “Laramie, get the team together and down to containment cell A-14. Claire and Sam are probably still in my office, and try to pull Lulu away from my computer for at least a few minutes. I need all of us in one place where we can talk without being listened to.”

I increased my pace until I was beside Leon. “Leon, get the platoon together, quietly in the hanger bay, and have them ready to move. If someone asks just say that I have some exercises planned.”

“On it, Sarge.” He nodded and made a call on his own secure phone. In less than a minute, he closed the connection and told me. “Ten minutes.”

We reached the containment cell and I used my key card, yes I already had one, and a code to go with it, to open the door. I’d picked this one because it had no windows, being designed to hold photokinetics or the rare light sensitive emergent. Now I needed Lulu to make sure the surveillance cameras were rigged to show nothing but an empty room.

Doctor Somerville arrived, a little out of breath, and stared at the unusual gathering waiting at the open door to the cell. “Okay, what’s going on that made you call me out of a staff conference?”

“If anyone asks,” I answered, “we have a new emergence that didn’t go well and needed you for consultation.”

“That one, I take it?” She gave the body bag a look and sighed.

“Yes, that one.” I looked up to see my team, all of them hurrying down the hallway to join us. “Hang on a few, Doctor and I’ll get you filled in on the details.

Lulu.” I ordered without greeting the bunch of new arrivals. “I need the security cams and audio pickups disabled in this cell. If you can rig them to show and register an empty room that would be best. Otherwise, just shut them down.”

She nodded, grinned, and moved to a panel beside the door. “Dis be easy, girl.”

Ten seconds later she looked up from what she had been doing and nodded. “Cameras and microphones won’t be picking up nuttin but blank walls an empty room now.”

I ignored the still imperfect Caribbean lilt and nodded to the soldiers. “Get him inside. Then post an unobtrusive guard at the door to keep the curious out.”

Once the gurney was in the room I waved for everyone else to enter and closed the door. Anna was giving me worried looks and the others just gave me speculative ones until I moved over and unzipped the body bag. “My errant Chief of Security has finally gotten here.”

“Oh my…” Was all Somerville could say for a few seconds and the others just watched her and me. “What happened?”

“He was murdered.” I simply answered. “My guys found his body up in the mountains about an hour ago. He’d been there for awhile, but that isn’t where he was killed. I need for you to look at the body and see if you can find anything out for us.”

“I’m not a pathologist.” She protested. “You need…”

“I need for you to take a look just now.” I interrupted her. “Sorry, Doctor but as things are falling out right now, I don’t know who to trust with information so I’m keeping those in the know to a minimum. Please do what you can.”

Giving me a worried look she moved to the body. “So why are you trusting me?”

“I have to trust someone right now, Doctor.”

“Why me?”

“Because of your outrage at how the kids being brought here were treated, for one thing.” I told her, not bothering to mention that Jon-jon was reading her then and there. “That’s a good enough start for trustworthiness for me, and I have to start somewhere, don’t I?”

“True enough.” She nodded while opening a cabinet and pulling out a surgical gown, mask and gloves. “Let me get started then.”

“Laramie.” I waved the healer forward. “I know you can’t do much, but see if you can find anything useful, too.”

“Kelly, see if you can a read on some of the things that are still with the body.” I instructed our token reader.

While they worked, I pulled the rest off to the side. “Okay, we have multiple problems here right now. First, I have a dead Chief of Security who had a compromised laptop that we still haven’t located. Second, at least seven emerged have been here, but were taken somewhere else that no one seems to know anything about. Third, someone either gave or faked an order that made sure those kids were so traumatized they weren’t able to protest when they were taken away and we really need to find who that is and fast. It has to be someone on site here.

So all this,” I waved to the body. “is to remain Need to Know until I say otherwise.”

“Luce.” Laramie moved to join us. “I know one thing for sure right now about the guy.”

I gave her a questioning look and noted that she appeared a little queasy.

“His mind was tampered with.” She told us. “There is some physical brain damage that isn’t from a blow to the head, which is one of the things that killed him. It feels like someone just went in there and rearranged some things to suit them. He probably didn’t even realize he was going contrary to Center regs and betraying everything he was supposed to protect.”

“A dominator.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to stay calm.

“Yeah.” She answered with the same grim expression I knew I was wearing.

Shit, this day was just getting better and better. Not.

Worse, it was just getting started.

“It was a blow to the head initially.” Somerville confirmed once she had finished her own examination and cleaned up. “But whoever did this wanted to make sure and used a small caliber weapon, to finish the job. Forensics would give us a better idea of just what was used, but it’s obvious he wasn’t killed in the mountains. There is grit in the head wounds that isn’t something you usually find in an outside environment. I found a few metal filings in it and they aren’t from the weapon, they were machined. The rips and tears are post mortem, animals got to him once his body was dumped. I also found this in a crease in his clothing.”

It was a blue fiber about an eighth of an inch long. I looked at and wondered. “Looks like some cheap rugs I’ve seen.”

“Probably.” She agreed. “Can I have the forensics lab at least look at this? They don’t need to know where I got it, but should be able to tell us something about it regardless.”

“Do it.” I answered. “Wait, though. Kelly.”

The girl nodded even if she did look a bit pale, and held out her hand. I gestured for the Doctor to give it to her. Once that was done the Hispanic girl briefly closed her eyes, drew in a breath then handed the fiber back to the Doctor. “Nothing. I get vague impressions of an enclosed space, not small, but not huge either, somewhere east of here. That’s it.”

“It’s more than we had a minute ago.” I gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“If you don’t need anything else.” Even Lulu was subdued for a change as she quietly told me. “I should get back to what I was doing. The cams and mics in here are locked down and won’t show a thing normal observers don’t expect to see. They won’t until I unlock them, either.”

“Go.” I told her and couldn’t blame her for the slight relief betrayed by a lessening of the tension in her shoulders as she left.

Jon-jon looked at the Doctor, then glanced at me with a subtle sign to let me know he’d scanned and come up clean. I gave her a long look and nodded. “Okay, get that thing to forensics and let me know what they come up with the minute you find out.”

“You better believe I will.” She answered then stopped beside me for a few seconds. “Look, I don’t blame you for the paranoia just now, but did notice a change in your demeanor a while ago. If you have someone who can probe my mind, have them do it if you haven’t already. Far as I know I’ve got nothing to hide and if I do, I damned sure want to know about it, all right?”

“If it’s any help, you seem to be clean.” I answered with an apologetic look. “Keep me posted on what you find and if you have a forensic pathologist around you feel like you can trust, send them to me and I’ll get them vetted for this.”

“Just find who did this, Lucinda.” She told me, dropping the Ma’am but that didn’t bother me at all.

“It’s Luce. And I will, Doctor.”

“I know.” She gave my arm a little squeeze and sighed. “And my name is Anna, not Doctor.”

Once Doctor Somerville, Anna, had left I turned to my team. “Jon-jon, I want you to hang around the troops that were doing pickups before we got here. Scan them for anything that looks wrong no matter how minute it is. Then you’re going to a meeting with me later to scope out the former base commander. The ones you find something off on, I want to see in my office, but just let me know and I’ll issue an order to get them up there, don’t tell them yourself. Then we can dig, try to repair the damage and whatever. Laramie, I want you with me when I’m talking with them. You too, Jon-jon.”

Both nodded their understanding as I turned to Leon. “Find out who, and I mean everyone, who was on any of those pickup teams. Talk with them, sound them out, see if you can get something without being suspiciously fishing for something.”

“I’ll just ask them for advice.” My corporal grinned. “Soldiers just LOVE giving advice to another one on something they’ve done, and they like to talk out of duty-time about things too if they aren’t classified. Looks like I’ll be spending some time in the unlisted club for awhile, Sarge.”

“Have a beer for me, Leon.” I grinned and gave him a wink. “Until I get old enough that’s as close as I’ll be getting to having one.”

“Claire, I want you to suss out anything at all about anyone who tries getting into this cell or the one where ‘Gerald’ is being held. So that’s going to keep you down here a lot. Sorry. Try making friends with some of the medical personnel. It never hurts to have friends there, and you might get some useful information while you’re doing it.”

Clair, a really beautiful East Indian girl grinned in response and nodded. “Can I play with the ones I like?”

“Sure.” I sighed. Teenagers. If we aren’t focused on something else we all tend to have sex on the mind. Especially those of us who have emerged and transitioned. But I can’t fuss too much, because my own bedtime fantasies involved a certain, creepy but nice boy who was able to talk to dead people.

“Oh shit!” I would have slapped my forehead if I didn’t already have a headache.

The others looked at me and I shook my head in disappointment with myself. “I just thought of a resource I hadn’t called in for all this.”

“Keys.” Kris answered on the first ring.

“Kris, I need Sean out here as soon as you can get him here.” I told her, knowing she knew who was calling.

“Somebody you need to talk with is dead, I take it?”

“Yeah, my Chief of Security.” I answered. “And if the bastards behind this are cleaning up behind them and getting rid of loose ends I have the feeling that there are going to be more. We have a dominator involved in this mess over here.”

Her response isn’t something I’m going to repeat.

“My feelings exactly, Kris.” I broke into her cursing and added. “You haven’t said anything I didn’t so far either, and I really got inventive when I was cussing. I even impressed the lifers in my platoon.”

She actually laughed at that one. “Our Dragoness at work again. Okay, I’ll have Sean on a jet headed your way in about two hours tops. I’ll just need to check the stairwells is all.”

“Awww, he misses me.” I purred.

“I think that’s a pretty good assessment.” Kris giggled. Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to have your superior officer giggle? Never mind. You get the idea. “When he finds out where he’s going I’m just getting out of the way.”

“Tell him he’s going to work for his fun this time around.” I answered. “I don’t have time to play bedroom games until we figure this frigging mess out.”

“I’ll have him there by — Noon, your time.” She promised.

“Good enough.”

“Anything else?”

“I’m sending you all the info I have, and the speculations my team and I have come up with.” I told her. “That should give you a pretty clear idea of what I’m doing over here. Sorry I won’t be able to vet the paint jobs in the individual rooms just yet.”

“Just get this worked out.” She told me. “You can terrorize the building crews later.”

“Yup, business before fun.” I shot back. “Kris, this is really bad. We’ve been penetrated on a level we never considered.”

“You’re doing everything right, hon.” She answered. “Just keep at it, and if you need more big guns give me a shout. You have priority just now so you’ll get whatever you have to have to get this taken care of.”

“What I really need is someone who can build mental shields for people that would stand up to a dominator.”

“Wish we had one of those, Luce.” She said and I could hear the heavy sigh even if she didn’t do it into the phone. “We haven’t had to deal with one of those until now.”

“I know.” I grumbled. “I get to write the damned manual on this one.”

“Rank, privileges, obligations.”

“I know, I know, and even though I love you like a sister, fuck off.”

She laughed. “Good to see the situation hasn’t overwhelmed you. I’ll get Ray to help me with your last suggestion later.”

She would, too. In fact, I intended to do the same thing once Sean arrived. If things allowed it. Remember me talking about teenagers and their hormones?

“I had another nightmare, Auntie Luce.” Ariel told me over the phone.

My heart and gut twisted more than a bit at that. I’d always been there to hug and soothe her after one of those, but now I was a little over a thousand miles away. “I’m sorry, honey, want to talk about it?”

I saw HIM again, Auntie Luce.” She answered with real fear in her voice. “He told me I’d never get away from him.”

“Honey.” I softly answered, being sure to stroke her with at least my voice. “He’s dead and the only power he has over you is in your memories. I made sure he would never hurt you or anyone else again a long time ago.”

“But he said he’d never go away.” Her voice trembled and I almost threw everything I was doing out the window to go and comfort her.

“He’s gone, baby.” I firmly told her. “I made sure of that. He won’t ever be able to hurt you again if you don’t let him. And you aren’t going to do that, are you?”

“I don’t want to.” She answered with a quiver in her sweet little voice. “But I can’t make him go away.”

“Yes you can.” I told her, trying not to cry while I did. “Just look at him and tell him to go away, he doesn’t have any power over you now because you have someone who loves you very much ready to kick his sorry ass all the way to Hell and lock the gate once he’s there.”

“Can you do that?” She questioned with the innocent trust a twelve year old gives someone she cares for.

“Oh yeah, baby.” I answered. “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again to keep him from touching you at all. No matter how many times I have to do it, I’m going to keep you safe. I promise.”

“I love you Auntie Luce.” She answered and just about broke my heart. “I’ll do my best. Promise.”

“That’s all anyone could ask, sweetie.” I told her. “One of these days you’ll be able to look the bastard in the face and tell him to go to Hell. I know it. I love you, too, honey.”

God. I so wanted to kill that sonuvabitch again. And again, and again. Hell was way too good for him.

“Xiang.” I answered my phone before it had even finished the first ring.

“Got the lab results on that piece of fiber we got off the victim.” Anna Somerville’s voice informed me. “Not much help there, I’m afraid. Common carpet fiber used in about twelve different makes of vehicle. But it does prove that he was moved after he was killed.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess we have to take what we can get right now, thanks.”

“Wish I had more to tell you.”

“Me, too.” I shrugged then realized she couldn’t see that. “Thanks again, and tell your lab people I appreciate the effort.”

Another dead end. Whoever was doing this was working very hard to erase any trace of what they were doing, or barring that, muddy the trail so badly no one would be able to follow it.

“How did he die?” I asked while looking at the body of a med tech laid out in the morgue.

Sean, who arrived and was surprisingly business-like answered almost dreamily. “His handler had no more use for him and was afraid he would give too much away once he was questioned. He was killed in the private recreation area.”

In the sense-surround theater, that meant. The guy had gone in looking for a little virtual nookie and found a thin blade inserted between the vertebrae of his neck at the junction with his back bones. It had been painless, but he knew he was dying as it happened. And couldn’t even call for help given the paralysis the injury inflicted on him.

“Who was it?” I asked, pretty sure there would be no really useful information from the question but needing to ask regardless.

“He doesn’t know.” Sean told me in the stoned out voice he always had when talking with the dead. “The person always contacted him with paper notes that he destroyed once he’d read the instructions.”

“Okay, Sean. Come back now.” I told him.

“He didn’t really know anything.” Sean told me once he’d shaken himself back into the realm of the living. “The knowledge should be there but it’s all blank.”

“Dominator.” I told him in explanation. “It’s likely he never really knew what was going on at all, just did what he’d been programmed to do like some puppet in a show.”

“How are we going to beat that?” He questioned with real fear in his eyes. And it was for me, bless him.

“I don’t know yet.” I honestly told him. “But I’m working on it.”

I kept Jon-jon and Laramie extra busy for the next few days, checking all the pickup teams who had been bringing kids in, their commanders, and Major Shu not to mention others. To a man or woman, the pickup teams had been tampered with mentally. Fixing that damage took time and effort we could ill afford to spend given the situation, but it had to be done.

The conclusions that led to were more than disturbing. They were frigging terrifying.

“Well, now we know who was letting in whoever took the kids.” I let out a tired sigh and accepted the soft drink Anna passed me with a grateful nod. “I won’t put that in his records, though. Poor sap couldn’t help doing what he did, he wasn’t given a choice at all.”

“I appreciate that, Luce.” Dr. Somerville — Anna, nodded. “Richardson was one of the good ones except for that.”

“He probably didn’t even know what he was doing, Anna.” I softly told her. “A dominator can make people do things, then tell them to just forget or that it never happened. They will, or in the last case, far as they’re concerned, it didn’t happen. Hard to fight something like that even if you know it’s coming.”

“So how do you intend to fight it?” She questioned showing that she understood as well as I did that a confrontation with the still unknown dominator was in my future. My coming had upset a lot of carefully set up dupes and plans. He or she couldn’t allow that to continue given the situation. Whether the unknown bad guy stopped or not at this site, they knew we were tracking them and wouldn’t stop until one side or the other was neutralized. I’d become the prime target from the moment I’d stepped off that Cougar in the hanger bay and we both knew it.

“Truthfully?” I shrugged. “So far I haven’t got a clue. But I have a good team backing me up here and we’re working on some contingency plans for just that.”

“I hope you come up with something workable, Luce.” She answered levelly. “I’d hate to see you dead, or worse, on the other side.”

“Yeah, me too.” My expression was pretty grim for a few seconds then I forced myself to lighten up and grin. “Besides, I kind of like breathing, and definitely want to keep things the way they are with me and everyone else. I’d make one really nasty villain so one of the contingency plans is to take me out of the picture if I do get taken.”

“You make one helluva scary good guy, too.” She forced a chuckle. “Are you sure you’re really a teenager?”

“Well, I got drummed out the union awhile back because I refused to go gaga over boy bands and really girly stuff, but yeah, I’m definitely a teenager.”

“But you’re no kid.”

“No.” I answered a little sadly and shook my head. “I stopped being a kid one day that seems like it was a very long time ago.”

“I’ve tracked the backtrail to somewhere in Southwest Arizona.” Lulu told me while rubbing her face with one hand and massaging her neck with the other. “That’s as close as I’ve been able to get, but it’s the real location. Whoever is doing their net security and hacking is good. Really good. I’d say it’s another emerged with talents like mine and whoever it is has been at longer than me.”

“Well that gives us a smaller search area.” I let out a sigh and rubbed my own forehead. Jon-jon and Laramie had been working with me on ways to beat a dominator in a head to head face off. And our best bet was still to have a sniper ready to take one or both of us out. I felt as if my brain had been sandpapered and knew I looked like crap. “I’ll get some covert teams out there to start a grid search of the area but that’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

“Ma’am.” Lacy’s voice came through the intercom. “Major Shu is here.”

“Very good, Lacy, send him in.” I gestured for Jon-jon, Laramie and Lulu to retreat into the adjoining bath/bedroom area and settled myself back in my chair to wait for what would happen next. Something in the back of my mind was screaming that trouble was close, like sitting on my shoulder and making faces at me close.

Shu entered the office, gave me a salute that I returned, then greeted me. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, been a long week.” I nodded and waved him to a chair. “How goes the battle of the tunnels, caves, and whatever else?”

“We’re actually ahead of schedule on new construction and the refurbishing.” He told me with no little pride.

“Good.” I gave him a smile and accepted the reports he passed over the desk to me. “Coffee?”

“Don’t mind if I do, thanks.” He reached for the silver coffee service and froze for a moment then gave me a regretful look. “You know, I really hate doing this, but you’ve just been too good at your job, Ma’am.”

“Have I?” I questioned as he drew a sidearm he shouldn’t have been allowed to bring into my office and pointed it at me. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Yes, I’m afraid he does.” Lacy’s voice came from the door to the outer office that she had just come through. “I need you out of the way, permanently, and I need someone to take the fall for taking you out. So…”

“I always did think you looked to damned young to be a captain.” I told her while still staring down the business end of Shu’s weapon. “I had hoped I was wrong, but I see I wasn’t. I hate being right so often.”

“Well, look at it this way.” She shrugged, confident in her control of Shu and I felt prickly little fingers reaching into my own mind but with Jon-jon’s help was able to shake off most of the growing cobwebs. “You won't have to worry about things like that any longer. I would have loved to work with you, but you’re just too dangerous to leave running around loose and I couldn’t ever be fully certain that you would be under control. I’m truly sorry things had to work out this way, but some things are bigger than either one of us.”

“Justifications do help, don’t they?” I looked at her while willfully ignoring Shu and the weapon he had aimed at my head. “At least they make you feel a little less dirty, right?”

“You should talk.” She sneered. “You have more blood on your hands than I would in years and you’ve only been running around ‘doing good’ for a few months. Finish her, Shu.”

I sensed, as much as saw the man’s finger begin to squeeze the trigger even though he was trying to fight the compulsion. Regretfully, I closed my eyes for a moment and nodded. “That’s probably true.”

The gunshot was deafening within the confines of the office.

I carefully safed my weapon once I was sure she was dead, then popped the mag and set both carefully on my desk as Shu collapsed and the others charged out of the next room.

I managed to give Lacy’s body, and her ruined face a dispassionate look and tonelessly asked. “Somebody take out the trash, would you?”

“You should have gone with the sniper, honey.” Laramie, rubbing my tense shoulders, told me while Jon-jon and Lulu started dragging the corpse of my Chief of Staff out of the office.

“Never foist your dirty work off on someone else if you’re capable of doing it.” I answered, then closed my eyes and lowered my head into my hands. “See to the major, I’ll be all right in a minute.”

That was a lie. Laramie knew it, I knew it, but I couldn’t give in and fall apart yet. There were still things to do.