Context: In Book 3 of A.T.X.D., we have been following a new character - Laney Davidson. She's a young former U.S. Marine with an implant of unknown extraterrestrial origin that seems to enhance her with super-senses and some partially enhanced reflexes. She has been recruited to the A.T.X.D. force and is unaware of her past as she joins a new team and works to stop an illegal colonization project. However, in the below scene, we suddenly learn something about Laney's implant...and it's a scary discovery.
>>>>>>>LOADING DOCK AREA<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>BACK OF THE FACILITY<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>11:40 PM<<<<<<<
“Such a lazy scrut,” Hannah cursed to herself about Kone as she hurried around the bend of the corridor leading to the receiving parking area and loading dock. The CEO’s panicked indecision and subsequent divergence when the operatives breached the facility had been enough to slow the SIGA henchwoman down to the point that she knew the ATXD team was closing on her position. If she didn’t make it to her vehicle soon, she’d find herself gunned down in a matter of seconds. All she had on her were a couple personal defense weapons for close quarters and some martial arts, while her pursuers had guns. Even with the advantage in her fighting skills perfected by SIGA, Hannah knew she couldn’t take out gun-wielding opponents in a large area like the femme fatales in the movies could. So as cowardly as it seemed, Hannah’s only real option for surviving this ordeal was to run.
With a desperate leap, Hannah thrust herself up and landed on an upper loading platform as she entered the main loading dock area. Then two things happened simultaneously: she felt a tingling in the brain and heard a rifle click behind her.
“Hannah Turner! Freeze!” a younger female voice ordered harshly. Almost instinctively, Hannah skidded to a stop and held her hands up as she turned to face her pursuer. But when she turned around to see who it was, Hannah was surprised. Laney Davidson, whose face mask was off and her visor lowered as well, so her coldly hostile face was clear enough.
“Well hello there, little Laney,” Hannah replied with intrigue as though the person pointing a rifle at her were a friend. “Long time no see.”
“What?” Laney growled with confusion, and her right eye twitched. Intrigued with relief, Hannah knew she had an advantage. That advantage seemed to briefly wane when another pounding of boots on the stone floor revealed an operative less than a foot taller than Laney running up alongside and training her rifle and a targeting laser on Hannah’s chest.
“It’s over, Ms. Turner,” Cassy insisted with her own cold wariness. “Get down on your knees, now!”
“Oh I would, but I’m a little pressed for time, ladies,” Hannah returned, keeping her hands up and her eyes locked onto Laney’s.
“That wasn’t a request, Ms. Turner,” Laney warned harshly. “Get on your knees or I will shoot.”
“Are you sure that’s the best option? Of all the secrets I could give you, you’d throw all of that away?”
“News flash, lady: we’ve got your ‘asset’,” Cassy dryly countered. “Jeffrey Kone’s in custody, and he’ll crack one way or the other.”
“Oh but I could give you something much more valuable,” Hannah insisted with a sly twinkle to her eyes and perk in her lips.
“Such as?” Laney drawled.
“Oh such as the passphrase Diridia Montecino,” Hannah replied casually, once again looking straight into Laney’s eyes.
Everything suddenly went blank for Laney. Involuntarily, her rifle arm dropped to the side and the weapon shortly clattered on the ground as Laney’s eyes began to flicker and her pupils rapidly pulsated before her eyeballs began darting back and forth. Her forehead then seemed to rip open on the inside with a splitting pain that traveled in two directions backwards and induced what felt like a sudden inflation of fluid in the temple on both sides of her head.
“Laney?” Cassy inquired with concern as soon as she heard her teammate’s rifle land on the ground. She had just fully lowered her own XT-5 when the trembling and disturbingly pale Laney suddenly flipped her eyeballs up towards the top of her head and she fell backward. Losing all vision as her eyelids quickly shut, Laney began struggling and crying out with terror: in her mind, she was running and stumbling through a blackened fog with no way out. But from Cassy’s view, the Corporal twisted and writhed on the ground, grabbing at her head and occasionally swinging her arms out as though trying to grab something.
“Oh my God, Laney! Laney!” Cassy cried out in panic herself. She had seen a friend or two back in high school have a seizure, but this appeared to be worse. Recalling first aid, the former Air Force pilot knew it was inappropriate or even dangerous to restrain somebody having an epileptic fit. The key tactic was to instead let the seizure pass and then deal with the fallout to help the person recover. But given Laney’s frantic struggling and her cries now turning into blood curdling wails, it seemed to Cassy as though this wasn’t going to pass any time soon.
“Mayday! Mayday! This is Harpy to Angel Leader! Member injured! Repeat, member injured!” Cassy called out frantically into her radio. “Vixen and I are in the rear loading dock, and the Corporal’s down. I say again, Vixen is down.”
“Copy that, Harpy,” Ashley’s voice crackled over the radio in response. “Turn on your Pulse Alerts. I’ll locate you there. Have you detained or neutralized the suspect?”
It was just then that Cassy noticed Hannah still standing on the loading platform ahead, but her hands were no longer raised.
“What the fuck did you do to her!?” Cassy angrily demanded towards Hannah.
“Like it would help to know,” Hannah replied plainly. “She’s beyond your saving.”
Another painful wail from Laney as the Corporal flexed her torso up and grabbed her head in agony helped to widen the hole punched in Cassy’s heart when she heard this. But she didn’t let that get the better of her.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Cassy snarled back, slapping her shoulder where the Spike Transmitter was to activate the Pulse Alert signal. As soon as she could safely get close to Laney, Cassy leaned in and quickly tapped two fingers hard on Laney’s shoulder to do the same before retrieving her rifle and pointing it at Hannah. She then heard footsteps behind her and, were it not for her tracker going off with a rapid danger beep, Cassy would have assumed it to be Ashley or one of her other fellow Stealth Angels coming to their aid. But instead, Cassy had just enough time to turn before a rock hard weight of some kind clubbed her in the helmet and flipped off the former pilot girl’s own lights as she grunted painfully and fell flat on her front.
“Have you started the detonation sequence?” Hannah inquired of her compatriot, a muscular-looking extraterrestrial in human disguise.
“Yes, Ms. Turner,” the henchman replied as he put away his phase pistol.
“Take her,” Hannah quickly ordered, pointing to the unconscious Cassy. “We need the leverage.”
“What about the other one?” The henchman pointed to Laney, who was still struggling and crying like a baby.
“She’s not worth it. Let’s go.”
Carefully, the henchman picked up Cassy by the shoulders and slung her unconscious body over one arm while supporting the back of her thighs. He then tossed Hannah a teleportation device and advised, “I’ll see you at the rendezvous, Ms. Turner,” before activating his own device and vanishing from the room.
It was just then that Hannah heard another round of boot soles battering the stonework down the hallway. But this time, the SIGA henchwoman didn’t want to risk another confrontation with the operatives; at least not without sufficient resources. Seeing as her window for escape was now much more limited, Hannah activated the device wrapped around her wrist and phased out of the room. Shortly, Ashley and Sophia pounded around the corner of the hallway with their rifles at the ready but also expecting to see a medical emergency scene.
“Holy shit!” Sophia gasped when she saw Laney writhing and moaning pitifully on the floor.
“What the hell is going on with her?” Ashley demanded.
“It’s….it’s some kind of seizure,” Sophia reported with a trace of panic. “I don’t see any bodily fluids, but I’m not taking any chances.”
Cracking open the pouch in her pack to retrieve her first aid kit, Sophia pulled out a sedation needle from a small plastic array. Biting off and spitting out the cap, Sophia carefully held the struggling Laney by the shoulder and gently poked the needle into a soft part of her shoulder that was unprotected by her armor vest. With a final pitiful moan, Laney calmly fell limp as the sedative went to work.
“I don’t know the extent of her condition, ma’am,” Sophia reported. “Psychological ailments are way out of my depth. I’ll need a better analysis back at HQ to determine what happened.”
“Fine, I’ll call for…,” Ashley began, but then felt the building vibrate in response to a muffled boom.
“Mayday! This is Angel 2 - Osprey! Evacuate the building NOW!” Melody shouted desperately on the radio. “Hostiles have rigged the facility with explosives and are collapsing the installation as we speak. All operatives and detained persons evacuate from the building immediately! Threat condition ALPHA!”
“Harpy! Do you copy!” Ashley demanded as she saw no sign of Cassy on the loading dock floor. “Harpy! Respond!” Nothing. “God dammit, Harpy, we need to go! Where are you!?”
“She may have found another evac point, ma’am,” Sophia commented. Before Ashley could argue the infeasibility of that notion, her team’s medic and sniper took charge as she hauled Laney over her back and ordered, “Now come on, Captain. If we don’t go now, we’re dead for certain!”
A louder blast as a wall on the opposite end of the loading dock blew inward reinforced Sophia’s hurriedly fierce, “MOVE!” In response, Ashley picked up both her rifle and Cassy’s before dashing inches behind her medic’s heels.
Another explosion from the ceiling several meters behind them collapsed the hallway at the back and knocked both girls down mid-running.
“Oh fuck!” Ashley spat with fright as she recovered and continued to flee to a point of safety with Sophia.