Separation Read Online Free Page B

more,
but they hadn’t arrested any, at least not for the moment.
    As for Spain, the government officials
professed to deal with them on a humanitarian basis, but with few
funds and the limited education most of the transgenic group had,
those in the enhanced group had gone underground—or so the reports
had said. All of these reports dated back to roughly three months
earlier. There’d been no reports since... until now.
     
    Finally, Harry stopped thinking about things
and came out with, “I know about the other hybrids from reading
about them online. But we haven’t been contacted by anyone.”
    “Okay, then we’ll wait.” Farrell’s cellphone
buzzed and he flipped it open to say, “Yeah, they’re here. Come
in.”
    “Who is...” Harry started to say, but the
door opened.
    As he turned around, Jason Parham and Tina
Mazerowski stood in the aperture. Jason, tall, skinny, and geeky
looking with long black hair and an angular face, held a small
paper bag as he stood next to his girlfriend. Tina, also tall and
slender although not quite as skinny as he, bobbed her head. “Hey
guys, welcome home,” she said.
    “We never left,” Anastasia commented in a dry
voice as she got up to give Tina a quick hug.
    Jason and Harry gave each other an awkward
fist bump. Formalities observed, Farrell asked for a rundown on the
latest developments. Tina walked over to the computer. “This isn’t
my regular laptop,” she said as she got seated, “but it’ll do.”
    Her fingers began to fly over the keyboard.
Midway through her typing, she stopped to pat her pockets. “I’m
out,” she said. “Jason, have you got my stash?”
    A confirmed chocoholic, she never seemed to
be without something dark, chocolaty and sweet, and it constantly
amazed Harry how she remained so slender. Jason proffered the bag.
“Got it here,” he proclaimed.
    “Gimme.”
    He handed it over. “There you go, Tina.”
    A sour look crossed her face. “We’ve been
going out for a long time and you still call me by my real name.
I’m Maze. I think I’m going to officially change it to that.”
    Stifling a laugh, Harry thought about her
nickname. She’d gotten it due to an almost preternatural ability to
hack into any mainframe or get into any site, including the FBI’s
database, the NSA’s, and the CIA’s. None of those organizations had
been amused in the least at her efforts. The latter two were even
less amused when she and Jason went to work for the FBI.
    Maze rooted around in the bag and came out
with five delicate slivers of something wrapped in elegant gold
foil. “Oh...” she said with delight. “Jason, you are so thoughtful! This is La Diva, the best chocolate around!”
    “Only the best for you,” he replied,
affection coating every word.
    Quickly, she took off the foil wrappers and
shoved all five pieces in her mouth. A satisfied “Ah” sound came
from her and she got back to typing. It seemed all was
forgiven.
    Soon a map appeared. It was of Rome, and she
pointed at it with a chocolate-stained forefinger. “This is what I
was searching for before you called us, sir,” she said to Farrell
and hastily licked the remaining chocolate from her fingertip. “You
asked for unusual heat emissions. We found them.”
    “And where would they be?”
    Jason walked over to tap a key. Maze got an
annoyed look on her face, as if perturbed someone had the temerity
to invade her personal space, but said nothing. “It’s here,” he
said, “right under the Vatican.”
    He had to be kidding. “What’s going on down
there?”
    Harry posed the question, but he felt he
shouldn’t have asked. The Vatican had their secrets, and they
weren’t about to give them up so easily.
    “Satellite imagery suggests people,” Jason
said. “That’s what the guys in Intelligence are saying.”
    Maze tapped another key. A sharper image
appeared, one of the Vatican, and then another of a thermographic
image. It showed twenty people in a chamber deep