Page 12 of Black Bay Defender
Mako let out a scoffing sound. “Maybeyou’rebetter than her.”
“But you’re right. Things are a bit too comfortable.” She shot Mako a speaking glance. “Maybe once I’m done questioning her, her air conditioner will have to be shut down for repairs.”
“It’ll be like an oven in there by tomorrow night.” Those black eyes of his glinted with pleasure. “Perfect.”
Lark may not believe in torture but she also wasn’t a saint. They’d been children and that woman hadhurtthem. Doctor Dietrich could sweat for a bit.
With a nod at Troy, the guard unlocked the door and Lark strode in, Mako tight on her heels.
Anne Dietrich hadn’t changed much in the seventeen years Lark had been free of the lab. Her dark hair had more gray and she now had visible frown lines marking her once smooth skin but other than that, she was the same. Just looking at her sent Lark spiraling back in time to the helpless girl she’d once been, and she had to forcefully push the barrage of memories away before they compromised her.
Doctor Dietrich wastheirprisoner now. Her view of the world had been reduced to four windowless walls. Gone were the sharply tailored suits and the white lab coat they’d all come to associate with pain. In their place, she’d been given gray ill-fitting sweats that swamped her petite frame, giving her an almost woebegone look.
Not so threatening now…
The doctor’s face brightened as she sat up on her cot only to turn positively rapturous when she spotted Mako. It was the same every time someone new accompanied Lark into this cell. It was as if the woman hadmissedthem and was happy to see them. Like this was some grand reunion. After the way Doctor Dietrich had treated them for so long, the reaction didn’t make sense to Lark. But whatever. She wasn’t here to do a deep dive into a psychopath’s mind.
Before the woman could greet Mako with one of the serial numbers they’d all been tagged with at birth instead of a name – keeping them specimens rather than sentient beings – Lark offered, “You remember Mako?”
“Of course I do. I remember all my children.”
Lark’s lip curled with revulsion that the woman would dare call them that. The noise Mako made suggested he also felt disgusted. Not quite a growl, but close.
Quickly getting to the point before Mako changed his mind about making the woman suffer and went for blood instead, Lark snagged the woman’s gaze with her own and constricted her pupils to slits. “Tell me about the aggression in the Resurrection soldiers.”
“Ah, you found that in the files, did you?”
So, it was in the files. Good. Lark would be sure to find that information as soon as she left.
“It was a stroke of brilliance,” Doctor Dietrich continued, “to send electrical impulses from the neural implant directly to the amygdala. Fight overriding flight every time. I suggested it to Doctor Blackmore myself.”
Christ. The woman just couldn’t resist bragging at every opportunity. But more important was the name she’d just dropped. Doctor Blackmore. Lark would be looking him up as well.
“It’s quite clever,” Lark offered. If stroking the woman’s enormous ego got them the information Grady needed more easily, Lark would play the game, even if it did turn her stomach. “But why the additional effort? The soldiers’ programming forced them to follow orders.”
“While I’ve learned programming has some merit, I’m a geneticist. The coding in the DNA will always trump anything artificially created and the instinct to survive is a powerful one. It’s coded into every living creature on this planet. And in some creatures, so is the instinct to protect. What happened with The Commander and his sister was proof of that.”
Grady hadn’t recognized Paige and yet, he couldn’t pull the trigger despite the kill order he’d been given.
“Something had to be done to make sure the instinct to survive wouldn’t override their instinct to fight. Or their instinct to protect what they might perceive as innocents in a war zone. It was imperative a mission wasn’t compromised by a soldier questioning an order and doing what they thought was right over what they were told.”
So innocents in a war zone should be ignored if not the main objective? She’d already known the people behind Resurrection were heartless bastards but this took the prize. Only more proof that human life meant nothing to them.
“We made sure they’d stay angry; battle-ready,” Doctor Dietrich was saying. “The memory wipe was supposed to help with that. Pity it didn’t hold up as intended. But, then again, the soldiers were never meant to be put in a scenario where they’d come face to face with family. That was Doctor Jerome’s stupidity.” She let out a sigh and shook her head. “Such a shame.”
If Grady’s subconscious need to protect his sister hadn’t fought him for control and won, thus overriding his programming, Paige Carter, an innocent woman, would be dead and this woman thought that outcome was a shame.Monster.
Lark’s venom glands practically pulsed with the need to expel their toxin and destroy this woman, this blight on humanity.
As if he could sense the desire to kill nearly overwhelming her, Mako clamped a hand on her arm. “Did you get everything you needed?”
With a blink, Lark released the doctor from her gaze and nodded. Now that she knew the information was somewhere in those files, she could get out of there. Sheneededto get out of there.
“Wait!” Doctor Dietrich protested, stretching out her arm. “You could stay. We could talk about what you’ve learned about yourselves these last years.”
Mako shot the woman a chilling smile that was all sharp teeth. “At some point, you and I are going to have a long talk, Doc. But not tonight.”
With that, he hustled Lark out of the room before her control snapped.
