He came to as she pocketed his things.

Good.

She stuck the barrel of the gun in his face, inches from his eyes.

“Who are you? Where did they take those kids?”

He clenched his jaw, shook his head from side to side. He’d die before he told her.

She couldn’t feel his mind at all, but she knew it was there, knew he was running Nexus. She pushed against him the way Kade had taught her – the way Shu had done it to Kade – forced his Nexus nodes to respond. His eyes went wild but she could feel him now. She threw her mind against his, tried to force him to open to her, to tell her where those children had gone.

He resisted, fought back with pure willpower and terror. He could see the gun in her hand but it wasn’t enough.

She wished she had Kade’s back door, so she could force this man’s mind open, take what she needed to know. Some part of her was sick at that thought, but the rest of her didn’t care. Her anger, her loss, her fear for the children overruled all else.

She had to break this man’s will so she could take what she needed to know. Fear wasn’t enough. Pain would have to do.

She rose to her feet, gun still trained on the man’s head, and kicked him in the side. Pain burst from his mind, a groan escaped from between his clenched teeth, and she pressed against him, pressed her thoughts against his and willed him to open up.

He resisted.

She kicked him again and again, pushing at his mind with hers as she did. He feebly tried to block and she broke his wrist for his trouble, pressed again with her thoughts.

Still he fought.

She spread his legs with her foot, and his eyes went wide and he tried weakly to turn away, to stop her, and then she rammed her foot home into his testicles and a scream burst out of his mouth as he curled up around himself into a fetal ball. The backwash of his pain struck her, muted by his stubborn clenching of his thoughts, but bad enough. She held her ground. His mind was teetering on the edge, his defenses letting go.

Sam dropped to her knees, grabbed the man’s head by his short hair, yanked it back, then drove the barrel of the gun into his mouth. She heard teeth break as she jammed it into his throat. She pushed against him with all her mental strength, and finally he cracked.

Then what he knew streamed into her. And she saw. An island. A research base. These children, molded into something else, into something monstrous, something posthuman. A new species that would rule them all. And behind them, one man, using them as his tools…