Termination: The Clandestine Saga Book 9

He was getting close. He could feel it in his bones. Every step was taking him further in the right direction, and despite the alarms going off inside of his head, he felt compelled to carry on with this self-assigned task, not to let the fear creep into his conscious mind and slow him.

Tree branches reached out to obscure his view, so he often switched to the mode that allowed him to see right through them, ignoring those who would scratch his face or trip him up. The forest was dense and desolate, and in all the hours he’d been here, he hadn’t seen another person—human or otherwise. There was a time when he would’ve counted himself more of the former, but as this journey continued, the harder he prayed he was actually more of the latter than he’d ever cared to admit to anyone. As well as some of his colleagues professed to know him, none of them knew the truth, not even the ones he’d known the longest. The secret he carried had died along with the man who’d saved him, well over a century ago.

Battling uphill against evergreens and loose rocks, stumbling near jutted cliffs, and fighting his own inner demons, he pressed on until the electricity in the air confirmed this had to be the correct location at last. It was time to prove himself, once and for all, to let the others know just how severely they’d underestimated him.

He stepped through a clearing and felt a tremor in the ground beneath his boots. The moon hung in the distance, a satisfying ally reminding him that the monster could not strike him down. With every ounce of courage he had within him, he roared, “Daunator! Where are you? Come forth and show yourself!”

The ground went still. Nothing so strong as the flap of a nightingale’s wings stirred the air as he awaited a response. Seconds turned to minutes, and still he was all alone. Confused, he looked around, wondering if perhaps the creature might try to overcome him from behind. Nothing there but the trees. He exhaled sharply through his nose, irritated at a lack of response.

Once again, he dug deep within himself, calling on the rage that had fueled his mission so far. “Daunator! I’ve come a great distance to face you! Show yourself!”

He held his breath, waiting for the ground to shake again, for the loose rocks atop the mountain to come tumbling in his direction. All he heard was the hooting of an owl in a tree far away.

Being ignored was almost as infuriating as the treatment that had sent him here to begin with. Rejection, condescension, minimization, and now this. He had not come all of this way to fail. With everything he had inside of him, he balled up his fists and shouted again. “Daunator! Are you frightened of me? Will you not come out and meet your match?”

Not even a small hint of a breeze stirred the pine needles behind him. Frustrated, he decided perhaps he was mistaken, and this wasn’t the right location after all. Determined to continue on his quest, he turned to go.

Tremors peeled out from beneath his boots in every direction, the roar from the earth greater than any locomotive he’d ever witnessed as rocks and boulders cascaded down the hillside, bouncing and careening off of each other. A wicked laugh seemed to emanate from deep within the ground, its rumbling reverberations even more unsettling than the landslide that swept his feet from beneath him, sending him sprawling. He scurried to his feet, bringing his Beretta around, still not seeing the face of his assailant. But he could not keep his feet, and a split second later, he found himself falling into nothingness. The world went black, still, void. Silent.

Ten days earlier...

Dr. Elliott Sanderson sat in the conference room, tipped so far back in his chair he might’ve fallen over at any second if he didn’t have superhuman balance and agility. Across the room, he watched his dear friend, and his son Brandon’s girlfriend, Cassidy Findley, plead her case, the stacks of papers in front of her not unlike her now brother-in-law Aaron’s notes which might’ve been convincing to the Guardian Leader, if he were here to witness a thing she was saying. Since Aaron and Cadence McReynolds were still away on their honeymoon, and would be for another week and a half, Cassidy was presenting her findings to those the two Leaders had left in charge, and while some of the others looked interested in what the teen had to say, none of it seemed compelling enough to make them jump out of their seats and fly to Europe.

“With the recent disappearances in Budapest, that brings the total number of missing persons cases in Europe over the past week to four hundred fifty-two. That’s significant,” Cassidy said, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder. “Even when Holland was attacking us in DC and England, she didn’t turn that many people.”

“She didn’t have time to,” Hannah Roberts, the Guardian in charge of the planet while Aaron was on vacation, noted.

“I agree.” Cassidy’s head bobbed up and down so vehemently, Elliott wondered if she’d end up with a neck sprain. “So why are we giving Daunator all of the time in the world?”

Dr. Jamie Joplin, who was an actual doctor, not the fake kind Elliott only pretended to be, kept his hands folded in front of him as he spoke in his gentle, clinical tone. “Cass, while I agree the numbers are staggering, there isn’t much we can do that we aren’t already doing. We’ve sent reinforcements to the area. Mila is doing her best to follow up with each case. So far, many of the people who’ve gone missing are not of the sort it would be illegal to change.”

“Maybe not illegal but problematic,” Cassidy pointed out. “Even if they are members of the underbelly and perfectly legal to consume, changing them without having them come in for proper tagging and instruction is still against the rules.”

“True. But they have up to a month to come in, and by your own numbers, it hasn’t been long enough.” Jamie shrugged and gave her a sympathetic smile, as if he wanted to help but didn’t know what else could be done.

“I’m sure Cadence and Aaron will be right on it when they get back,” Aurora Howe began. Elliott didn’t turn his head to look at her while she was speaking—or at all. Ever, if he could help it. “But I’m reluctant to do anything more than what I already have without Cadence’s blessing. I’ve strengthened the Hunters in the area. They’re making nightly searches in several cities. Until we have more to go off of, our hands are tied.”