Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier

Chapter One

Mac

Five years ago…

I sat at a tiny table in the back of the bar with my back against the wall observing the room as I did in any room that I entered. I trusted no one. Well, that’s partially true, but even Colonel Colton Ragnarson wouldn’t expect me to trust him completely. It would be an insult to all we had learned in combat and the many years before that and since. So, let me amend that to say that Colt and his brother, Justin Ragnarson, are the only men I trusted somewhat. They are the only men I called friends in this lifetime. That is to say the only men I called friends in the past fifty years. And so far, I’ve yet to meet a woman I trust even a little bit.

A serious indictment on the worthiness of people. Yeah, I know.

So, I sit with my back to the wall for protection and my eyes facing the room to ensure sight of everyone present and everyone coming or leaving. In addition to the strategic positioning of my body, I was taking the extra precaution of keeping my gun and knife in easy reach. It was because of the phone call I received about two hours ago.

One of the bastards that had destroyed who I was born to be and instead tried to play God. Dr. Dean Reiner. Not him, obviously, but his great-grandfather, Dr. Dean Reiner I, was one of three doctors who had done the experiments on me. Sins of the father and all. Now Dr. Dean Reiner IV had contacted me. How had he found out about me? Known that I existed? I had to find out, silence him and anyone else who was a threat to my life now. After all, I had hastened his great-grandfather’s and the other scientists’ deaths to stop the carnage, so why not his?

His great-grandfather and two other doctors, all now dead, had cared nothing for the young soldiers whose lives they had ended prematurely. I thought I had stopped being shocked a lifetime ago, but getting a call from Dr. Reiner IV, panicked and desperate, begging for my help, gave me pause. So, here I was in a darkened corner of an off-the-beaten-path noisy bar meeting with a man whose throat I was prepared to slit at the slightest provocation.

I sat calmly and waited for the bastard to get to the point of this meeting.

Dr. Reiner IV wiped his sweating forehead for what seemed like the tenth time in the five minutes he’d been sitting in front of me looking like a dead man walking and sweating profusely to boot. His handkerchief was soaked from his useless swiping. “I have something to tell you, and you have to promise to not freak out.”

A raised eyebrow was my only response to such a provocative statement. So far, I had yet to utter a word since he sat down before me. I couldn’t afford to let anyone know my inner thoughts. I’d learned long ago to not trust anyone with them. I’ve found that the less I spoke or moved, the more people tended to overcompensate and tell me all I needed to know about themselves and their motives, telling me shit that they never intended to.

“Mac… I hope you don’t mind me calling you that.” He paused as if waiting for a response.

It was a wasted effort. I didn’t respond and simply stared at the fucker coolly.

“I don’t have much time. I know you could care less, but I will be killed for sharing this information with you.” Not might be killed but will be killed. The certainty in the doctor’s voice could not be mistaken. He was terrified.

Again, I said nothing. Really, what could I say? Dr. Reiner and I were not friends or even colleagues. Dr. Reiner was just the great-grandson of the doctor that had been part of the team that had injected me with the experimental steroids or whatever the hell it was that they had concocted. The other soldiers and I had been told that the injections were some sort of vaccine and muscle growth enhancer, sort of a steroid. Little did I know that they were injecting us with a serum that was not only supposed to enhance our muscle mass but also was supposed to enhance our brain function, heighten our senses, and give us unusual strength, machine strength. One hundred men had been experimented on, and as far as I knew, I had been the sole survivor.

At first, I’d felt no change in my body or mind. Sure, I was stronger and faster, but that could have easily come about because of the rigorous combat, strength and agility training that was so much a part of my military life. However, I couldn’t ignore the heightened hearing and sight. Both kept getting better. Heck, all of my sensory capabilities were beyond human within a few months. Suddenly one day I could hear conversations that were miles away, I could smell a man’s fear in his sweat blocks away, and I could see objects as though my eyes were fucking binoculars with night vision! I could have ignored everything else, but then I got shot.

I stared coldly at the doctor as if to say, “Say what you have to say, Doc.” I continued my nonchalant sprawl, relaxed into the hard chair, wondering when this fucker would get to the point of this conversation.

“We reproduced the drug cocktail that my great-grandfather and his colleagues gave to your great-grand relative and tested on a few subjects.”

That got my attention, but I was still not showing my hand. The doctor’s heart rate was exceedingly high, and he was struggling to breathe in an obvious near panic. He kept looking around the bar as though expecting gunfire at any moment. The doctor was terrified and jumpy as hell.

“We experimented time and time again. And failed with every subject. Many good people, young people, died, Mac. So many.” Dr. Reiner eyes moistened with a show of remorse and emotion that didn’t move me in the least. I learned the hard way that dedication and fanaticism were too closely aligned with these so-called scientists. Besides, he said it all. The formula came from his family of scientists.

I wasn’t impressed. Besides, years of watching the fuckers before him, who were just like him, take in innocent unsuspecting recruits and initiate them in the experiments that inevitably ended their lives, negated any hope that these scientists ever had any conscience. And it was clear that Dr. Reiner and his colleagues were of the same ilk and clearly had no conscience as well. His remorse now was wasted. People had needlessly died. They were sadists and didn’t deserve any consideration.

“The experiments went in a different direction a few years ago.” Dr. Reiner swallowed and suddenly became even more pale despite his almost translucent skin. I could almost see blood flowing through his agitated veins, thick red and rushed.

I thought nothing those bastards did could shock me anymore. I’ve lived long enough to witness people using any manner of words, feelings, or institutions to justify their acts. Love, hatred, jealousy, religion, country, and money. When it’s all said and done, man can and will use whatever justification necessary to do unspeakable things to each other. Nothing surprises me anymore.

“We used the sperm my great-grandfather and his colleagues had extracted from your great-grand relative to impregnant a few women.”

Clearly, I was wrong about being surprised. “You did what?” I didn’t bother correcting him that it was me, not my great-grand relative, or whatever the hell that meant, who’d been experimented on. However, I was now glad that Dr. Reiner had no idea of who I really was. I didn’t trust the fucker.

His eyes widened at the sound of my voice. Over the years my voice had grown even more baritone.

“The team didn’t know about your existence; otherwise, I’m sure the team would have tried acquiring you. I only found out about you by accident,” he said casually.

Even I couldn’t have anticipated the level of anger that bombarded me right then. It was beyond anything I’d ever felt before. Acquire me?! Not the deaths of my friends, my captivity until I escaped by an unintended death, or the subsequent threats to my family had garnered this level of rage. Rage that had led to my leveling everything and everyone that had been within reach.

The scientist swallowed and licked his lips in nervous agitation. “We ran out of ideas and too many people had died from the cocktails. We had no choice.”

“Yeah, you did,” I all but growled. “You could have stopped playing God.”

“I admit it went too far.”

“Now you admit that? How many deaths in did you realize that, you sonofabitch?”

“After the first, but Dr. Forbes and Dr. Everette—”

“No. Don’t feed me that bullshit.” I didn’t raise my voice or move an inch, but still the fucker looked at me with terror in his eyes. The doc didn’t know what I was capable of. He couldn’t have. No one knew what I was capable of, and those that did are long dead. Any notes his grandfather kept were as outdated as the science of hundreds of years ago. Even his great-grandfather hadn’t known what I had become. All they knew was that I survived the serum and gained a little muscle. I had disappeared before my powers had developed. I had trusted no one with that knowledge.

“I didn’t know at first, Mac,” he pleaded.

I wanted to tell the bastard that only my friends call me Mac. To him, I was Andrew McAllister, FBI agent. One of the names that I created after laying to rest the identity I was born with. No one would believe that he still existed anyway. McAllister is my mother’s maiden name, not very original, but then I wasn’t trying to hide my relationship with the McKennas. I need that family connection to justify some of the other shit in my life. “Why have you contacted me? What do I care if scientists are experimenting, killing?”

“You have to believe me. I have children of my own,” Dr. Reiner muttered as though I hadn’t spoken. “Do you think I would willingly bring a child into this world like that? I have done plenty that I would never be proud of, but I wouldn’t do what they are asking now.”

I stared down the fucker for endless minutes, steadily, my contempt radiating from every pore in my body. I nodded to let him know to continue.

Dr. Reiner let out a harsh breath before continuing his story. “Woman after woman, some voluntary, some not so much, were impregnated with your relative’s sperm.”

“What? Wait, none of that makes sense. How could my so-called relative’s sperm last that long? Even cryopreserved sperm can’t last over fifty years. Cut the bullshit, Doctor.”

Dr. Reiner stilled as though he wasn’t sure how much to tell me.

I stood to leave.

“Okay, okay. You’re right. We were able to store the sperm, or so we thought. We had created a synthesis that we thought could work with periodic dosing of the serum. We didn’t realize our deadly mistake until several women became pregnant and the almost three-month fetuses tore their mother’s wombs from the inside out. The women died along with the fetus. And like the drug mixture, none of the fetuses lasted longer than four weeks before expelling themselves violently from the women’s wombs.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many women have you tried this shit on?”

“I don’t know, perhaps more than a hundred, close to 150.” Again, the doctor looked nervous and ready to bolt. “But that’s not what the issue is.”

“Why have you come to me? How did you even find me?”

Again, the doctor became eerily uncomfortable.

I got an instant icy chill over my skin. I was certain that I didn’t want to hear what he said next.

“You have to understand that, according to my great-grandfather’s records, your relative was the only one to survive the serum, even with all the adjustments done over the years to the formula. The scientists back then were convinced that, following their many experiments, there is something in your ancestor’s DNA that morphs the serum, changes it into something else, something that not everyone can survive.”

I didn’t respond to his provocative statement. I simply stared at him coldly.

“We have a successful pregnancy,” he finally puffed out. “The pregnant mother was being given steady doses of the original serum without any alterations. This will ensure these babies are born with the chemicals already part of their DNA.”

“Why are you here, Doctor? And how the fuck did you find me?” I asked again. This time I didn’t even try to hide to the blue fire in my eyes. I tried not to react to the possibility that I may have a child somewhere out there.

“I will answer the only one that matters at this moment, because the how of my finding you isn’t relevant right now. I can assure you that I haven’t told anyone of your existence. I didn’t know of your existence until your friend Colonel Ragnarson and his wife survived the plane crash a few years ago.”

“Why would Colt and Imani surviving a plane crush assure you of who I was?”

Dr. Reiner sighed as though I was missing a key point. “Everyone involved with the Ragnarsons was investigated. Your military records intrigued me, and then I saw a picture of you. Compared with the picture of your Irish relative, you look like his twin. Anyway, like I said, that’s not important now.”

“You have a photo of my Irish relative? How do you know that we’re related?”

The doctor waved his hand as if to dismiss my statement. “The McKenna in that photo was married to a McAllister. Not a far stretch to realize that you’re related. In any event, that’s not important now. What’s important and urgent is that one woman is now eight months pregnant. They are going to extract the babies.”

I swore long and hard. “Wait, you said babies. Are there more than one?” I swear my heart was beating so fast it felt as though it was going to jump out of my chest.

“Katia conceived twins. Two boys. Fraternal.”

“I have two male relatives?”

Dr. Reiner looked away from me and seemed to be struggling to speak.

“Where are they?”

He looked back at me then. “Katia was in a near fatal car accident about three years ago. She has been in a coma ever since. When she was wheeled into us, she was already under the ‘do not resuscitate’ order. We had been using those type of victims by then as well. When they died, there was no one to question it. However, she survived.”

The bastard’s eyes glistened under my hard stare. If he thought that a few crocodile tears would save him from my wrath, he should save the theatrics. “Where?” My lips barely moved around the word ripped harshly from my throat.

“I will get to that. But first you have to understand what you’re up against. She hasn’t woken once from the coma, not even after we fed her the serum repeatedly. The improvement in her muscle tone was almost immediate, her skin and even her breathing. She didn’t need the machines to breathe anymore. She was doing that on her own. However, her comatose state remained, and her pregnancy progressed.” Dr. Reiner took a deep shaky breath. “I found out yesterday that they intend to take the babies in a few days and euthanize her after.”

He looked up at me as though expecting my shock, as if that shit would shock me. Of course, they would kill her. That’s what these fuckers do.

“I know the risk to you. The risk that they may realize that you exist. But you have to understand that I was desperate. The serum had not done what we wanted it to. Despite it not killing Katia immediately, it didn’t seem to be having the effect on her we expected. We expected her to come out of the coma, not simply mend. The serum was supposed to make super soldiers, a weapon against terror, not just mend someone. I thought that if I could keep her alive long enough to give us the babies…” He swallowed audibly. “You were right that your relative’s sperm was no longer viable. It wasn’t easy, but I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire yours.”

“What did you say?” Yeah, that was me losing my shit finally. “Who?! How?!”

“That’s not important, Mac. Don’t you understand? Those babies are your sons. And if you don’t want them to spend the rest of their lives as lab rats, you need to get them out. You’re an FBI agent, you know people, right?” He then slid a large envelope over to me. “This should help.”

“Don’t think you’re not going to tell me how you got my damn sperm!” I growled.

He shook his head sadly and stood.

I was seething, reeling, and basically feeling as though I had just been mind-fucked. I watched in a daze as Dr. Reiner pulled his cap low over his face, pulled his jacket collar up, and shove his hands into his pants pockets.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” the doctor murmured before ducking out of the bar, his eyes glued to the exit. Knowing that he’d signed his death warrant by getting this information to me shouldn’t have impressed me, but it did.

I followed the good doctor. I never wasted a good asset. And Dr. Reiner was a critical asset in my acquiring my sons.