Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

“That’s not how I meant it. I saw you speak at a conference on lightning. It was brilliant. You were brilliant. I know you’re a hotshot doctor and all, and mostly you go to medical conferences, but you have an interest in lightning and you seem to have insights most so-called qualified people don’t.”

She talked so fast, her words tumbled over one another. Again, she started to turn.

“Don’t.” He reminded her sharply. “Diego will shoot you without hesitation.”

“Can’t you just tell him to put down his rifle for a minute so we can talk? If you don’t believe me, he can pick it back up again.”

He wanted to smile at the sheer exasperation in her voice. “No, I’m afraid we can’t do that just yet. Keep talking.”

He found it interesting that she wasn’t in the least impressed with his being a “hotshot” doctor. He had a profound interest in all things lightning. He had written papers on it. Talked theories. Discussed ways to harness it. Uses for it. He had come up with ways to redirect natural lightning bolts in order to reduce damage to personal property everywhere. It could prevent loss of life. Part of coming home was to test his ability to redirect lightning strikes. Up in the mountains, away from everyone, he would ensure no one was around to get hurt. No one knew about his intentions other than a very select few.

The uses for a potential military weapon didn’t sit right with him, but the potential use for good in so many other areas was huge. Already the military was looking at harnessing lightning in different forms for weapons. He couldn’t stop that, but he could continue with his experiments with the consent of Major General Tennessee Milton, the direct commander of GhostWalker Team Four. He knew he would have to cooperate with those looking to weaponize lightning as well, but he’d looked at those experiments and realized it was too late to ever go back from them.

“What makes you so interested in lightning?”

“I’m one of Whitney’s first experiments. One of his first orphans. I escaped from his compound and managed to get away on my own and stay hidden under the radar. He had a microchip on me, but it didn’t work. I have too much electrical current building up in me at times, and it short-circuited. I know you’re on his fourth team, the one he considers perfection. You get to be perfect because he started years ago with orphan girls. Infants. He experimented on us. He has laboratories all over and female orphans to experiment on. Once he believed he knew what he was doing, he transferred those experiments onto his first team of soldiers.”

Rubin was well aware of what she was telling him. It was the truth. Whitney had more than one laboratory. He had many backers, although most didn’t know—or didn’t care—about the young girls he’d experimented on before he psychically enhanced his first team of soldiers. He had also, without their consent, physically enhanced them using animal DNA. The first team of GhostWalkers had many problems. They were good at their jobs, but they still had problems.

“I’m one of those very flawed experiments,” Jonquille confessed. A little shiver went through her body. “It isn’t safe for anyone to be around me for very long. Not ever. I’ve read everything I can about lightning. No one seems to really know how it works. I started taking chances, sneaking into the conferences on lightning and the various uses. I stayed away from everyone until I could tell I was drawing too much energy and then I’d leave. I’m a trained Ghost-Walker soldier. That was one thing Whitney did do for us. We were very well trained and we all speak multiple languages. I also went to med school. He wanted us to be productive. It wasn’t difficult to get into the conferences.”

Rubin couldn’t help but be interested. Either she was the best liar in the world or she was telling the absolute truth. She also had an extremely interesting and well-rounded education for one of Whitney’s orphans.

“You stay right there. Don’t move. Diego has that rifle on you. I’m getting your clothes. I’m not taking chances you might have a weapon stashed. That would get you killed.”

“Fine, just hurry, please. Tank top and there’s a pair of leggings I wear in the evenings. Can you grab those for me? Top drawer. After hiking all day, I like to be comfortable.”

He resisted smiling. She still had that little bit of eagerness in her voice, as if she was so happy she’d finally connected with him, that she didn’t really care that his brother had a gun aimed directly between her eyes. If she had done any research on him—and being a GhostWalker, most likely she was able to find out what others couldn’t—she had to know Diego really didn’t miss.