Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

ashamed and ducked their heads, pained expressions on their faces. Others were callously indifferent or even bored. A few were smiling, as if it were all a great joke.
    He hoped those last were the ones who tried to get in his way when they left.
    Tiernan’s hand, still resting underneath his on his leg, tightened until her fingers were digging into his skin. She was near to the breaking point, and he needed to get her out of there whether she wanted to go or not.
    Litton, apparently completely unaware of the effect his video was having on them, turned back toward the screen, and the image changed again.
    “Ah, now we get to the interesting studies,” Litton said. “The shifters. We’ve had mixed results Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    with them because of the variances in brain structure from humans.”
    “Shifters are human,” Brennan said. “Surely you know that?”
    Litton spun around and stared at Brennan. “They’re animals. Mutants. Very little human about them. They make good lab rats, but that’s about it.”
    Tiernan’s breath changed, and she made a low sound of anguish deep in her throat. “They’re human, you—you—”
    Litton ignored her and turned back to the screen, where a woman wearing a hospital gown and cap, shown from the back, was being helped across a room. She was stumbling, obviously ill or injured. “Watch this and I’m sure you’ll change your mind on that. This is fox shifter subject 12A, originally located in Boston. She was one of the subjects most resistant to the activation, of any we’ve ever found, and we were forced to repeat the procedure on multiple occasions, over more than a week. Finally, however, she succumbed. Unfortunately, her brain rejected the activation when she was out in the world again on a practice run, and I believe she was killed by police.”
    He said this in a completely calm and indifferent voice, as if he were discussing the weather.
    “Boston,” Tiernan repeated. “Did you say Boston?”
    Brennan’s anxiety for Tiernan soared to all new levels. He never should have allowed her to come here. Litton was completely, dangerously insane.
    The men on the video moved out of the camera angle and the woman’s face was visible for the first time. Tiernan gasped and dug her fingers into Brennan’s leg.
    “That’s Susannah,” she whispered. “That’s Susannah. This is all the proof we need, we need to get that video and get the hell out of here.”
    On the screen, a scientist—Brennan looked at him closely and then at one of the men down at the other end of the room; yes it was him—put the helmet on Susannah. Before he’d even fully fastened the wires to her body, she began to scream.
    Tiernan shot up out of her chair so fast that she knocked it over. “Oh, you evil son of a bitch.
    You are going to pay for hurting her.”
    Brennan shot up to stand next to her, pulling his daggers out of their concealed sheaths as he did. “I believe that is my cue.”

Chapter 24
    “We’re calling the police,” Tiernan said. “You’re all going to jail for a very long time.”
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    Most of the scientists jumped up and started running for the door in varying levels of panic, except for Litton and the ones Brennan had marked as zealots. Litton smiled that nasty little smile of his and signaled the man over by the computers. “Security. Now.”
    “This is a new definition of undercover,” Brennan told Tiernan as she yanked her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’d thought we would gather the evidence, leave this place, and then contact the authorities.”
    “Stash me someplace safe, you mean.”
    “Ideally, yes.”
    She started pressing numbers on her phone. “I don’t need safe. I need justice.”
    “What you need is to put that phone down. Now.” Litton’s voice slashed across the room like the crack of a whip. “Or I will have my security team shoot first you, and then Mr. Brennan, in the head.”
    The scientists blocking the door parted like water, and four thugs with guns entered the room, all of them pointing their weapons at Brennan and Tiernan.
    “Right now, I need for you to shut up and sit down and watch the rest of our film, Mr. Brennan.
    You surely want to know what we’re going to do with all of that lovely money of yours after we take control of your mind, don’t you?”
    “Was this the plan all along?” Brennan asked,