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  Armstrong’s fists swung past Nia’s head with a whoosh, cutting the air as she ducked. Nia rolled behind him, narrowly avoiding a double-arm strike that left a crater in the ground and an echo in the air. She emptied her chamber into his back, blood splattering everywhere. He wheeled around like a top, his left fist smashing into Nia’s head like a wrecking ball. Nia whirled away from him headfirst and crashed into the ground again.

  Nia slowly hefted herself by her arms, groaning, breathing hard. She was dazed. Blood dribbled from her mouth. She saw stars and clawed the earth; her head throbbing in pain as Armstrong’s roaring shook the air.

  She’d never felt this way before…so overpowered, so inferior.

  He’d only struck her twice, but the force of his blows left her feeling like she’d been fighting for hours…and losing.

  The blood-coated man-beast slowly turned and lumbered toward her as Nia lifted her pistol again…and with a pull of the trigger and the strident click that followed, she realized in horror that her chances went from slim to none.

  No more bullets.

  Armstrong took another step toward Nia. Then another.

  He wrapped his hand around Nia’s belly, gripping her entire torso with only his right hand; snatching her from the ground like a toy, and started to squeeze.

  Nia felt unbelievable pressure squeezing the life out of her like a wrench tightening around her body.

  She couldn’t even summon the breath to scream in agony. She felt her body weakening, her heart rate slowing, her consciousness waning.

  Blood rushed to her skull, her fingertips, her toes, as if being forced out like toothpaste. She felt dizzy. She opened her mouth; an incoherent, barely audible moan squeaked.

  She was blacking out.

  Armstrong raised his left fist, easily five times the size of Nia’s head, preparing to smash her face in with all his might.

  He roared like a conquering lion, as his muscles tensed and tightened. He held Nia high in the air, silhouetted against the moonlight, readying his final punch.

  Then something happened.

  Nia’s pupils dilated. As if a switch turned off in her mind, her expression changed from fearful, to blank. Her face tightened. Her eyes glazed over with the hue of the night.

  Armstrong squeezed with all his might, but he felt his grip slipping. His fingers lurched apart, a trembling in his palm weakening his hold.

  Nia found immeasurable strength and resisted his grip, forcing his hand apart.

  She outstretched her arms, blasting Armstrong’s hand wide open! His fingers broke away from Nia’s outstretched body, his bones snapping.

  Nia landed on the ground, her weight making an impact crater in the earth. Armstrong stumbled back, holding his hand, stroking his fractured fingers. Her muscles tensed and bulged, her teeth clenched and her fists closed, she stared at Armstrong, breathing hard.

  Armstrong rushed toward her, his fists high in the air. Nia stood still and watched him grow larger and larger in front of her, watched as the earth shook under him from every thunderous step, watched as he barreled his fists upon her small frame like toppling pillars.

  Nia instantly outstretched her palms high above her—

  And caught his fists.

  The impact passed through Nia like a shockwave, sending a plume of dust rising from the earth around them in a ring, but she didn’t even quiver.

  Armstrong stood thunderstruck, gazing at Nia in total disbelief.

  She just glared back with eerily calm eyes.

  Nia grasped Armstrong’s massive fingers like rungs on a ladder and pulled him down, his fists impacting the earth with a deafening boom.

  Armstrong could only watch helplessly as Nia clawed his fingers with her own, her fingernails digging into his flesh like talons. She vaulted forward from his hands and shot toward his head like a magnum load, her knees crashing into his face. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell on his back, blood pouring out of his ears and nose.

  Nia landed behind her enemy in a roll, collected herself and took a breath.

  She blinked rapidly. Life returned to her eyes, and her muscles settled.

  She turned and spotted at the body of Armstrong, his blank eyes staring at her upside down.

  She trembled.

  Did I do that?

  Then Nia looked up at the warehouse and saw the man known as Alvarez in the doorway, staring at her.

  “Found your punk-ass…” she muttered.

  Alvarez quickly raised his pistol. Nia looked around on the ground and saw her guns, remembering that the chambers empty. Her heart started pounding.

  Then she felt the air grow dense behind her.

  A gunshot rang out.

  Nia scrambled around and saw a bloody eruption in the chest of Jackson as he tumbled backward, a hole in his heart putting him down for good.

  Alvarez lowered his gun and sheathed it, turned around and walked into the warehouse.

  “What the…” Nia began. He…he saved me. He saved my life.

  Nia took heavy breaths, ingesting as much oxygen as her lungs would allow. Her body would eventually feel normal again, but she had no time to waste recovering.

  No more soldiers.

  Bobby and Charlene were long gone, safe.

  There were no more distractions left.

  And Alvarez was finally there.

  Nia Black ran into the warehouse, with gray walls and grimy floors littered with wooden crates blackened by age and dust. Illuminated only by the dull yellow lights hanging from the ceiling, the derelict building’s atmosphere was heavy with the smell of gun smoke. Nia looked up and saw the man known as Alvarez standing with his legs parted and his hands clasped behind his back on a catwalk that lined the upper region of the building.

  Nia stopped running and walked slowly, sliding fresh magazines into her Baby Eagle pistols. Nia glared at her enemy. Their eyes met at that moment, the air dead quiet.

  “Tell me!” Nia growled. “Why are you doing this?! Why are you messing with me?!”

  “I know more about you than you could possibly imagine, Miss Black. I have the answers you are looking for, the direction you seek.”

  Screw the answers, she thought.

  Nia raised her guns and opened fire.

  What happened next actually scared her.

  Alvarez became a blur. He zipped away in an instant, Nia’s shots cracking the wall.

  Nia glanced up and the glare of Alvarez’s spectacles glinted in her eyes as he somersaulted over her, as if frozen in time for an instant, their faces almost close enough to kiss.

  Nia stuck her gun skyward and shot through the air but hit nothing but the warehouse’s ceiling. Then she froze in place as a metal object touched the back of her head.

  Alvarez was behind her, the barrel of his black Desert Eagle burrowing into her pitch-black hair and pressing against her skull.

  She instantly spun around on her heel, knocking away Alvarez’s gun with her right hand and squeezing off with her left, an instant before Alvarez pulled his own trigger and sent a bullet screaming into the ground. The bangs of Nia’s gunfire played in the air like a thunderstorm. Alvarez swirled away, bullets slashing between his locks of hair and striking the walls.

  Alvarez stooped low, the sole of his boot squeaking against the stone floor. He stuck his gun out and pressed it between Nia’s breasts.

  His smile dropped though, as he glanced upward and saw Nia’s own pistol was pressing into his forehead.

  “Nicely done, Miss Black,” Alvarez muttered. “Your look says it all. You can see I am more than what I seem. But compared to what you’re truly capable of, I’m no better than those regular soldiers you killed. You got a taste of that when you broke free of Armstrong earlier.”

  “Huh?”

  “Regarding him, it’s rather sad that you went with such a simple attack strategy without thinking; you should have known he would burn through his enhancement eventually. Had you simply avoided him for a while
, he would have lost the ability to maintain his mutation, and you could have defeated him painlessly. But I suppose it isn’t your fault. Clearly, you were trained by someone who didn’t know how to compensate for your…unique gifts.”

  Alvarez withdrew his gun and sheathed it. He leveled his shoulders and smiled again.

  “What the hell are you talking about?!” growled Nia.

  “I’ve tested you enough. Now that all those bothersome soldiers are dead, we can get down to business.”

  Sixteen

  Nia was completely dumbfounded.

  “I understand your confusion, Miss Black,” said Jesús Alvarez. “Things are not quite as they seem. I tried to keep Corp Hudson out of it…tried to handle things my way, but apparently, they don’t trust me. Of course, that’s not without just cause.”

  Nia looked around, gazed at all the dead soldiers that she’d put down, and the hulking beast of a man known as Armstrong, the man Alvarez finished off with his own gun. She didn’t know what to think.

  “All right…so what’s your deal?”

  “In simple terms, I am not exactly a loyal associate of Corp Hudson. I work for someone else; someone who wants to keep you out of harm’s way. It’s my job to ensure your safety.”

  “Oh, you mean by sending your men after me in the Hallegan building? That’s what you mean by keeping me safe?”

  “That was…before,” Alvarez explained. “Initially, my plan was to capture you, then get you out of the city. Once we were far enough outside the city, I would have eliminated Armstrong and the soldiers guarding you, and we would have gone from there. However, you proved stronger and more tenacious than I expected; you recovered more quickly than I thought you would, and you escaped. This complicated things.”

  “So you needed to kidnap my friends to draw me back out,” Nia muttered. “Right?”

  “That was not my game,” Alvarez explained. “I would never stoop to such levels. But because of my failure to bring you in the first time, I suppose Vincent and the others decided to keep me out of the loop. By the time I realized what was going on, it was already too late. Your friends were kidnapped and I found myself playing catch-up.”

  “Whatever. That Jackson dude wasn’t smart enough to pull something like this off. He wasn’t no different than that other psycho y’all set loose outside the Jazz Hall the other night…just a trigger-happy killer who liked to see people suffer. Ain’t no way that guy was in any kind of leadership position.”

  “Those who choose to be weaponized by Corp Hudson’s R&D come from the top ranks of the Corp’s security detail, Miss Black,” Alvarez went on. “Carl Jenkins, the man we called ‘Gunner’, was no different. In fact, the reason I stand here before you today is because you defeated Gunner so effectively. He was…removed, and I was promoted to his position.”

  “So you’re just another one,” Nia said. “You’re the next in a long line of guinea pigs.”

  “Well, not exactly. What I can…what we can do has nothing to do with Corp Hudson’s current experiments. Gunner and Armstrong shared a common flaw. Once they gave into their desire for violence, they lost control over their emotions and only saw bloodlust. This is a common problem with those who volunteered for Hudson’s experiments. This is the reason Hudson wants you so badly.”

  “Huh?”

  “Corp Hudson has been trying to perfect the human condition for many years now. He approached a glimmer of success when he developed a formula called Hercules, a human performance enhancement additive that was intended to alter a human’s physiology at the base. It would redefine what the human body was capable of at the cellular level. Hudson contracted young soldiers, mercenaries and hired guns for trials, but the formula only worked on one percent of the test subjects, and even among them, only one person maintained self-control after receiving it. That person’s name was Alexander Black.”

  Nia gasped.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Alvarez nodded. “Your father, Alexander Black, was the sole test subject capable of enduring the effects of Hercules. All the other subjects either lost their minds or their bodies rejected it, resulting in painful symptoms that ultimately resulted in death. Only Alexander Black managed to survive, and thrive, with the power of Hercules coursing through his veins.”

  “Yeah, well, I figured my dad had something special going through him,” Nia said. “That’s why I was born the way I was. So what?”

  “Alexander Black reveled in the fact that he was ‘special’ this way. While Hudson kept experimenting, Alexander was not interested in seeing more people like him—he couldn’t bear the possibility that someone more compatible with the formula, someone better than him might come along. He recognized quickly that becoming the world’s finest physical specimen had its perks. He destroyed the facility in which Hercules was created because he wanted to remain the only one.”

  Nia rolled her eyes. “Get to the point. I ain’t come here for a lecture.”

  “The point, Miss Black,” Alvarez sighed, “Is that Hudson lost Alexander Black, and with him, any hope of resurrecting Hercules. All Hudson has left is the data and records. Black disappeared; went into hiding. That’s why he abandoned you as a child; did you know that?”

  Nia flinched.

  “Your father left his family to draw Hudson away,” Alvarez continued. “But you were conceived after Alexander Black was enhanced with Hercules…so you inherited his abilities—naturally. Hudson is after you because wants to know the extent of your abilities, and harness the results for his projects. It’s that simple.”

  “And you’re telling me all this because…?”

  “Because I’m a double agent,” Alvarez went on. “My job was to get inside of Corp Hudson and learn their secrets. I worked my way to the top of their security detail, learning everything I could about what goes on inside the organization. My superiors want to take control of Corp Hudson’s resources. We believe they’re engaging in illegal and unethical activities, but we can’t prove it. There’s something I need to get, and I need your help.”

  “My help?” Nia gasped. “You think I’m going to work with you?”

  “We both stand to gain,” Alvarez explained. “You will help bring down Corp Hudson, and I will complete my mission. You will never have to worry about them coming after you again. You’ll be free to live your life without having to watch your back, Miss Black. Think of it. This is why I went through all this trouble…I need you.”

  “You got some kind of…credentials or something? Like a badge?” Nia mumbled, circling her hands in wonder. “Because for all I know, you could just be trying to play me.”

  “Miss Black, there’s no time,” Alvarez said. “I need you to come with me, now.”

  “Oh, yeah right!” Nia squealed. “I guess since you couldn’t capture me or get your big, ugly-ass friend to beat me, you figured you’d ask me to be your prisoner?! Catch more flies with honey, huh? Well, hate to burst your bubble, but I ain’t no—”

  “It’s not like that at all. As I told you, it’s my job to get you out and keep you safe from harm.”

  “Prove it,” Nia said. “Prove to me that this just ain’t some game. You were there when I got the job from Darien Drakonis. You’re the one who cattle-prodded me. I’ve got no reason to trust you.”

  “Perhaps not…” Alvarez sighed.

  Then Nia looked at his spectacles, noticing a glare reflecting off their metallic frames. She spun around and saw several cars speeding toward the warehouse in the distance.

  “They arrived more swiftly than I anticipated,” Alvarez muttered. “It’s Hudson’s men. He must have tried to contact Armstrong. With him dead, Marks would most likely have sent the next agent in line… What will you do, Miss Black?”

  “What? What you mean ‘what will I do’? You know what I’m gonna do. I’m going to take my Babies and—”

  “And what?” Alvarez stopped her. “You’ll be hopelessly outnumbered. You’re tired from battle. And I doubt you have enough
ammunition left to deal with everyone who’s coming.”

  “Then you help me fight them. That’ll prove that you’re on my side.”

  “I can’t do that. I need to maintain my cover.”

  Nia rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Then I’ll get away like I always do.”

  “How? What do you plan to drive? Can you outrun a car?”

  Nia grimaced. She remembered that Bobby and Charlene were long gone on her bike. She didn’t think that part through.

  “What, you got a better idea?”

  “As a matter of fact…”

  Alvarez guided Nia’s glance to a blue coupe parked at the side of the warehouse.

  “How do you think I got here? Get in the car. They haven’t seen us yet. We can get away before they realize what’s happened.”

  Nia paused, looking back and forth. Had she not given her bike to Bobby, she wouldn’t have this problem. But Alvarez was right. There was no telling how many people were coming, and all she had left were her spare clips, some of which she already expended fighting Alvarez earlier. She hadn’t fully recovered from the fight with Armstrong, and she had no desire to do any more fighting that night.

  Nia exhaled sharply. “Let’s go.”

  The two rushed to his coupe and quickly drove away.

  Several SUVs pulled up to the warehouse, and men in full tactical gear climbed out. Afterward, one more man with brown hair tied into a ponytail appeared along with the rest, wearing a black suit.

  “Mr. Casey,” said one of the soldiers. “This is the place. We’ve got men down here… a lot of them.”

  Casey walked about and looked at the bodies.

  “So this is what happens when we leave Alvarez in charge…”

  “We don’t know if it was Alvarez’s fault, sir,” said the soldier.

  Casey chuckled. “It was Alvarez’s job to take down Nia Black, wasn’t it? We tracked her here, and this is where Armstrong’s detail went. She’s not here, he’s not here, and a bunch of our men are lying in the dirt. Something happened… something bad.”