Stealth Power Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1: Survival

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part 2: Stealth Power

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Postscript

  Stealth Retribution

  Other Books by Vikki Kestell

  A Prairie Heritage

  Girls from the Mountain

  About the Author

  Stealth Power

  Nanostealth | Book 2

  Vikki Kestell

  Also Available in Print Format

  I must survive. For Dr. Bickel’s sake, I must survive.

  But how does a hunted woman—an invisible woman with no identity—outrun and outwit the enemies of a visible world?

  Weakened by the nanomites’ drain, Gemma flees from General Cushing’s pursuit. She seeks refuge in Dr. Bickel’s vacant safe house—and finds a temporary haven while her body recovers from the nanomites’ damage.

  While the mites search for Dr. Bickel (intent upon facilitating his rescue), Gemma appropriates a new identity and, piece by painstaking piece, secures a foothold in the real world, one that allows her to move about unnoticed.

  Having forged a shaky ceasefire between the nanomites and herself, Gemma begins to rethink her attitude toward the unwanted pests and begins to doubt her decisions: Is she taking the wrong approach? Is her greatest resource right under her nose?

  With reluctance, Gemma admits that she may be discounting her best defense.

  “Nano, I wish we could find a means to function better. Together. More efficiently. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m interested in improved relations and faster and more effective communication. Enhanced communication could lead to, um, greater exchanges of information and understanding, maybe even, um, consensus (*gag*) and cooperation. An enriched relationship could result in, um, superior decisions—perhaps collaboration and mutual support—especially when we are in tight spots.”

  To Gemma’s amazement and grave misgivings, the nanomites, who had previously withstood her every overture, show themselves to be her allies.

  Or are they?

  The struggle for control is on.

  Nanostealth

  Book 1: Stealthy Steps

  Book 2: Stealth Power

  Book 3: Stealth Retribution

  Stealth Power

  © 2017 Vikki Kestell

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  In honor of the

  139 police officers

  and 89 firefighters

  who fell in the line of duty

  during 2016 while I was

  writing Stealth Power.

  Thank you

  for your service and your sacrifice.

  Lord, please bless and comfort

  the families they left behind.

  Acknowledgements

  Many more thanks

  to my wonderful team,

  Cheryl Adkins

  and Greg McCann.

  You give more of yourself

  with every book—even through

  life’s difficulties and pain.

  I love and appreciate you.

  Our gestalt is a continual blessing.

  Special Thanks

  to James Rutske

  for his technical expertise.

  Cover Design

  Vikki Kestell

  Prologue

  As the boot completed, my laptop pinged a new email. I hadn’t received many emails of late, but I didn’t much care. Tonight, I was divesting myself of all that remained of Gemma Keyes. As soon as I was finished here, she would be gone.

  I almost ignored the ping. Shrugging, I opened my email for the last time. My Inbox read one new email. I didn’t recognize the sender but the subject line gripped me. Ice water poured over me in waves, scrambling my skin.

  Sorry about the spam.

  I couldn’t move.

  “No, no, no, no, no. Not possible! Not!” The mites stirred, uneasy at my dismay and the panic that held me in a constricting vise.

  Frantic, I clicked into my spam folder and sorted through the junk mail. Nothing of note.

  I started at the top and did it again. Nothing.

  My hands were wet with perspiration but I was freezing. I scrubbed my hands on my jeans and then hugged myself. I stared again at the new email: Sorry about the spam.

  It’s how he contacted me the first time, I told myself. Who else could have sent it?

  “But it’s not how we communicated after that,” I whispered. We’d used a message in my Draft folder with the subject line Position Description to communicate.

  But I purged that file not long after I realized Cushing would, eventually, be looking at me, snooping in my life.

  Hands shaking, I opened the draft folder. There, in a folder I had emptied, was a lone draft message with subject line Position Description.

  The date stamp read today.

  I clicked on the email and scanned the hasty, garbled message.

  G,

  Yes, alive. Top S. mil installation don’t no where Purge draft folder after.

  1 guard @night; 3 rotate nights. Taught all Samba.

  I was dizzy, light-headed. “Why in the world? But . . .”

  Guard lax. Left smart phone on card table; went to answer phone at desk. Enuf time 4me to get to anon email account.

  He put more care into the next lines, signaling their importance.

  Told you I uploaded research to secure place in cloud. No such place. “Cloud” still real server with actual hard drives. Vulnerable. Uploaded all—every part of life’s work—to only place could never be hacked. You know. Safe

  The message ended there.

  He ran out of time to write more. My finger traced the words on the screen, rereading and reading between the lines. It had been enough.

  . . . as I said, Gemma, five tribes. Alpha Tribe holds the nanocloud’s collective memories and learning. Think of them as being the library—the historians—of the nanocloud.

  I knew, then. I knew why the nanocloud clung to me and refused all my commands to leave. I understood what I carried and the great, the awesome responsibility thrust upon me.

  I finished reading, purged the folder, and closed my email. I sat in front of my laptop, considering, for the second time, news of Dr. Bickel’s return from death to life.

  For a while I let my thoughts roam over happier days spent in the lab under the mountain, his pride in the nanomites, his struggle to hold his cards right, his shy pleasure when he brought out one of his fantastical desserts.

  “Oh, Nano,” I whispered. “We need to find him. We need to find Dr. Bickel and get him out. We need—”

  I covered my eyes with my hands, overcome that my dear friend was still alive, overwhelmed by the futility of such a task.

  The room behind my closed eyes brightened. I lowered my hands and stared at the laptop’s screen. On a bright silver background, in bold, glowing blue words, it read,

  WE CONCUR GEMMA KEYES
/>
  STAND BY

  SEARCHING

  MESSAGE ORIGINATION

  ~~**~~

  Part 1:

  Survival

  Chapter 1

  Late October

  My overwhelmed brain fixed on the blue letters glowing in my dark living room, but I had trouble translating them, understanding what they implied.

  WE CONCUR GEMMA KEYES

  STAND BY

  SEARCHING

  MESSAGE ORIGINATION

  Then, like a line of falling dominoes, bits and pieces of evidence and observation fell into place and began to gel, to make sense. What had Dr. Bickel said?

  “Alpha Tribe holds the nanocloud’s collective memories and learning,” he’d bragged.

  While I stared at the screen, the truth synced. It clicked into place.

  I understood.

  The nanomites carried Dr. Bickel’s research! They were the “safe” place to which he’d uploaded his data!

  My eyes returned to the nanomites’ three lines of text. The statements were simple; the inferences were huge. Immense! My hands remained frozen on the keyboard as I fumbled my way through the significance of the nanomites’ message: They were aware of what went on around them.

  When I’d uttered the words, “We need to find Dr. Bickel and get him out,” they had heard me. More than that, they agreed with me—and they were already tracing Dr. Bickel’s email, attempting to pinpoint his location.

  Dr. Bickel’s email!

  Oh, Dr. Bickel! You are alive? Where are you, my sweet old friend? Can the nanomites uncover your location? Is there any way—any hope—that the nanomites and I could find you and help you escape?

  I shifted my eyes away from the screen as additional realizations disturbed and clogged my thinking: The nanomites were communicating with me? After these many weeks of frustration, after all my efforts and many attempts to reach them, to reason with them, to get them off me and out of me—NOW they were speaking?

  And, apparently, they did know my name and actually “heard” and paid attention to what I said?

  Grrr!

  The bright message superimposed upon my laptop’s screen began to fade, disclosing the body of Dr. Bickel’s email behind it. I shook myself, set aside my anger—however justified—and copied the email text into a new file, deleted the email, then purged the folder and the trash.

  The screen glowed silver again, interrupting my tasks. More blue words appeared.

  INTRUSION DETECTED

  NETWORK COMPROMISED

  WIRELESS ACCESS

  TERMINATED FROM

  REMOTE TERMINAL

  I sucked in a breath. Cushing! She didn’t leave—she’s here and monitoring me in real time! And I still needed to upload the file containing Dr. Bickel’s email and the all-important file that documented my experiences with the nanomites.

  As I groped for the flash drive, I reproached myself for my stupidity. Why, oh, why did I write everything down? For what purpose? How could I have been so foolish? So stupid!

  I didn’t need to answer my own censure. I had been a different person “back then,” before the nanomites had invaded me. My trials since then had made me wiser.

  New words flashed onto the screen.

  GO NOW

  GEMMA KEYES

  Cold sweat prickled my skin, but I couldn’t leave my journal for Cushing to find—Abe, Zander, and Emilio were named in it! And if I deleted the file but did not trash the hard drive, her IT people would recover the deleted file.

  Again, the screen flashed.

  GEMMA KEYES

  GO NOW

  NOW

  NOW

  NOW

  The mites stung my hand to spur me into action. I was out of time—but was I out of options? No—because the nanomites could hear me.

  Fine. Then let them do the work.

  “Nano!” My voice was harsh. Ragged. “Upload files, ‘Gemma’s Log’ and ‘Email Text.’ Then burn the hard disk!”

  I resigned myself to whatever happened next: The mites would either listen and do what I commanded or they would ignore me—as they had for the most part so far.

  If the mites refused to follow my directions, then I was done for. I was determined to deny Cushing my firsthand testimonial—that ill-conceived record of my experiences with Dr. Bickel’s nanomites. With that file in her possession, Cushing would know my current predicament and all my vulnerabilities. More than that, she would know who my friends were—the people I loved—and she would not hesitate to use them as leverage to bend me to her will.

  So, if the nanomites refused my instructions, I would stay and delete the files and try to trash the hard drive. Even if it meant capture.

  I would let Cushing take me before I placed my friends in harm’s way.

  While those thoughts flashed through my mind, I jammed the flash drive into the USB port and opened a command prompt—but before I could begin to type, two blue streaks jetted from my fingertips. My hands jerked and pulled away, yet the two streaks of light converged on the screen, unfurled as a blue aura that overspread the flash drive and body of the laptop, retracted, returned to me, and vanished.

  The laptop’s screen dimmed and died. Wisps of smoke tried to follow the laser beams as they withdrew into my hands, but they could not.

  The smell of fried electronics wafted up to my nostrils.

  “Huh!”

  The background thrum in my head rose in volume and urgency.

  I raced for the back door, leaving my bug-out bags on the couch. I had my hand on the door handle when I heard the rush of booted feet upon the driveway.

  Too late. Cushing and her thugs hadn’t left after all. She’d used an age-old military ploy, a feigned withdrawal—and I’d fallen for it.

  The back door crashed open—almost flattening me against the wall behind it. I dropped into a crouch as a stacked line of armed men clad in black tactical garb and gear poured into my tiny house. They shouted, “Federal agents!” and “Gemma Keyes! Show yourself!”

  Not a chance.

  I pushed my backside into the crack between the fridge and the wall where I stored the broom and mop.

  As the first man charged by me—his head canted toward the dining room—I saw he was equipped with weird goggles that protruded forward, beyond his face.

  Night vision goggles? Thermal imaging? If the man wearing the goggles looked my way, would he see my heat signature?

  Or would the nanomites mask it?

  I had no idea—and right then was no time to find out. I curled into a ball and made myself as small a target as I could manage. My crouch sank into a deep squat; my thighs screamed in protest.

  The last man rushed by me and turned the corner into the dining room. From farther within the house I heard multiple shouts of “Clear!”

  I wasn’t going to wait around for them to come back. I bolted out the back door and swung left, heading around the garage. If more of Cushing’s goggle-geared goons were about, I needed to put distance and as many physical barriers as possible between them and me. Although I could still hear shouted commands and responses coming from inside my house, I rounded the back of the garage without anyone raising an alarm at my escape.

  In the rear corner of my lot, I shimmied up and over the rough cinder block wall into a neighbor’s yard. I landed on the other side and did not pause to consider the scrapes and bruises I’d sustained. I raced through the yard, tripped over a sprinkler, got up, stumbled past the neighbor’s confused dog and out their side gate. I hit the open street and headed toward the downtown area where, if Cushing’s men followed me, I hoped barhopping foot traffic would confuse their thermal-imaging readings and make pursuit difficult.

  Of course, I couldn’t make it all the way downtown in one effort. I ran until I could run no farther, then slumped down between two parked cars. My lungs were on fire. The huge adrenaline boost my body had produced was wearing off, and I shook all over.

  Out on the street, all was da
rk and quiet.

  No pursuit so far.

  After ten minutes, I made myself get up and get moving.

  Good thing I had a place to hide.

  Because I could never go back home.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 2

  I arrived at Dr. Bickel’s safe house midmorning. I was beyond exhausted; I was teetering on the ragged edge of a breakdown, physically and emotionally.

  After evading Cushing and her soldiers the night before, I had pushed on until I reached the downtown area and mingled with crowds of partiers and bar hoppers. I wandered down Central until I was beyond the nightclubs and foot traffic. Once I was the lone heat signature on the street and no longer felt safe, I ducked into a twenty-four-hour pancake place, found a corner to collapse into, and slept.

  I awoke, stiff, bleary-eyed, and lightheaded. It was very early morning, and the breakfast rush was just starting. A kink throbbed in my neck.

  The clock on the restaurant wall told me I’d slept a solid six hours, but the fatigue reaching its fingers deep into my bones persisted. Had it been only yesterday when the nanomites drained me in their attempt to keep me quiet about them? Had it been only yesterday when I defied them and told Zander and Abe everything? When I begged Abe to take Emilio in? When Cushing and her swat team stormed the cul-de-sac and my house? Not once but twice?

  I struggled to my feet and slumped against the wall. After the dizziness passed, I helped myself to a large coffee in a to-go cup, left two crumpled dollar bills next to the cash register, and jostled by a couple of high school students as they came in.

  No one saw me sitting outside against the restaurant’s east-facing wall, sipping my coffee while warming myself and massaging the knot out of my neck. The coffee helped wake me up a little, but the caffeine did nothing for the black depression swimming around in my gut.

  Here I sat, no better than a vagrant on the street. Pursued. Hunted like a criminal.

  Alone.

  I’d never felt so . . . forsaken.

  My fingers picked at the chain around my neck, and I pulled the cross hanging from it into my hand. Its smooth, polished surface comforted me—and reminded me of Emilio and the hours he must have spent carving it, rubbing it until the wood glowed.

  All while perched on the curb outside his uncle’s house.

  Just a child.

  Alone and neglected.