She hoped her face looked as bad as it felt. Her fingers shook as she punched in the code to the door. It beeped, the steel rods inside the door slid, and the door popped open as she desperately jerked on it. She stumbled out of the room, the door slammed automatically behind her, and the sharp buzz confirmed that it was locked. She collapsed to her knees in the hallway, turned her head to locate the security camera, and screamed.
“Help! Oh God! Help!”
Seconds passed and seemed to grow to a least a minute before the sound of running, booted feet reached her ears. Four security guards turned into the corridor, coming at a dead run. The men panted when they slowed and stared at her in confusion.
“I walked into the room to take a blood sample,” she sobbed. “Jacob was sexually assaulting the test subject. He attacked me.” Her hand rose to her face where it throbbed. “I think I passed out and when I came around I saw 416 break his arm chains free. Jacob stabbed him with a needle but whatever he gave him didn’t take effect fast enough. I think he’s dead! I think that thing killed him before it collapsed to the floor.”
“You’ll be fine.”
She nodded. “What will they do to 416? I can’t believe Jacob was doing that to him. It’s wrong.”
Anger tightened the redheaded doctor’s mouth when he frowned. “I know. We made these
Ellie had to lock her jaw and lower her gaze not to show him how disgusted, horrified, and enraged his cold assessment of living, breathing people made her.
“Now we’re making a bundle off them testing drugs we’ve cooked up to enhance the military and fitness freaks.” He turned away to tear off his gloves. “Have you seen how damn big we’ve made them? How strong? We trained them to fight just to show what is possible to do to humans and how much damage they can take with the new batch of rapid-healing medicines. Do you know how many billions of dollars in contracts we’re looking at? How much money we’ve already made so far? They are our prototypes. Showing what we can make them do, how fast, strong, and lethal they are is going to be the research for Mercile that blows our competitors out of the water. Every guy will want to buy what we’ve stirred up. That damn Jacob could have cost us a prime one. He’s too valuable to take risks with.”
Her eyes closed to hide her relieved tears. They wouldn’t kill 416. She’d made the right choice. He may hate her for framing him for murder but he’d live. Now she just needed to leave after her shift, hand over the evidence she’d stolen, and save him the only way she could. She would help bring Mercile Industries to justice.
“Hey,” Doctor Brennor sighed. “Sorry. I’m talking about money and you just survived a traumatic experience. Why don’t you go home? You should take the rest of the day off. Hell, call in sick tomorrow.”
She opened her eyes and met his gaze, hiding how desperately she hated him. “Thank you.” Her voice trembled. “I was scared.”
He gripped her arm, rubbed it, and smiled. “I could visit your home to check on you later.” His gaze lowered to her breasts. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I have a boyfriend,” she lied again.
He released her. “Fine. Go. I’ll tell security I’m sending you home early.”
He spun away, walked to the phone, and Ellie watched him. She hoped he got life in prison. It would serve him right.
Chapter One
Ellie sighed and adjusted her headphones to a more comfortable position. Heavy metal music poured out of the MP3 player she dropped into the front pocket of her cotton capri pants. The warm temperatures made her sweat even at eleven o’clock at night, despite the very slight breeze that fanned her skin. She glanced toward the open windows. The air-conditioning system of the dorm had gone out again. The maintenance teams were still fixing glitches on the newly constructed building.
She approached the balcony doors she tended to leave open and stepped outside to enjoy a nice breeze to help cool her overheated body. She sipped the cold water from the small plastic bottle she’d grabbed from the mini- fridge when she’d entered her apartment. She leaned against the railing to stare down at Homeland from her perch on the third floor. She’d just finished her nightly workout. The breeze felt heavenly on her skin. Her attention strayed to the security walls approximately fifty yards ahead.
They towered thirty feet high and guards patrolled the perimeter on the catwalks overhead. Below her stretched grass and a few trees that made a park-like setting between the dorm building and the outer wall. The new five-thousand-acre Homeland had just been completed and Ellie had spent her second day living there. No one strolled along the sidewalk that twisted through the grass and trees below.
The very quiet building disturbed her a bit but she’d been warned to expect it. Most of the women hadn’t been moved into the dorm yet but once they were, Ellie hoped everything would go smoothly. She really wanted to make sure Homeland worked according to plan. It would house the survivors from Mercile Industries, an oasis from the rest of the world where they could live, and adjust to freedom within a safe community. They needed a safe haven.
She’d only known about Mercile Industries running one illegal testing facility but once it had been raided, three more existing ones had been discovered. She closed her eyes, still sickened over the number of victims involved that had been reported on the news coverage over the past months. Those testing facilities had been raided by government and law enforcement agencies, the victims now released, but not all of them had survived long enough to be rescued. The numbers of dead subjects were in the hundreds and those losses had broken her heart.
Ellie forced her eyes open. Two years prior she’d worked at Mercile’s administrative building when she’d been approached by Officer Victor Helio. He had explained there were rumors about a secret research facility that forced
