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“Assholes!” Kale yelled, rolling back to his feet. His hands glowed, and he slammed his palms in the direction of the fighting men, a blur of energy flooding toward the four men still in the fray. They fell like bowling pins hit with a steamroller.
“Ow,” Biter complained from where he’d hit the floor. “What the fuck, man? I’m on your side.”
“You also didn’t have my six. Turk!” he demanded. “Explain.”
“Just sparring. It…got out of hand.”
“You think?” Wrecker growled.
“Hey, Vale. Welcome back to the jungle,” Planny called from where he lounged across the room with Prick and Glare, who both offered chin lifts.
“You knew about this?” Day asked me.
“No.” I turned toward Kale and echoed his words. “What the fuck?”
He shrugged. “You’re bringing Dayton into the fold—at least, I assume you are.” He narrowed his eyes at Day in some warning I didn’t understand. “This wasn’t exactly how we planned to break things to him.” He looked back at the four still on the ground amidst knocked over furniture. “Clean this up. Vale and Dayton and I are going to talk. And Prick’s gonna get a blood sample.”
“Break it to Dayton?” I exclaimed, stepping from behind the man in question. “How about telling me?”
Kale shrugged again. “Thought you knew. We’re not exactly covert around you.”
The hundreds of times I’d thought my eyes were fooling me all piled in one on top of the other.
“You never did that.” I weakly gestured toward the main room where they’d fought.
“They were just showing off.”
“What? And what do you mean blood sample?” I asked.
“Let’s go to my office.”
“That’s it?” I asked incredulously. “You put X-Man crap on display then act like it’s nothing?”
“Vale. My office.” Without giving me room to argue, he pivoted on his heel and walked away.
“Baby girl, we can leave if you want,” Day told me quietly.
“No, I don’t think we can,” I replied, feeling as if we’d accidentally walked into Hotel California.
“You’re right,” Biter said, coming up beside us. “He won’t let you just run off. Let’s go.” He jerked his head in the direction Kale had gone. As we followed that way, I noticed Prick had indeed, fallen in with us, a small caddy in his hand.
Kale was seated behind his desk when we entered, and he motioned toward the chairs across from him.
“We were part of an experimental program in the military. Elite,” he started without preamble or niceties.
“Like SEALs?” I asked.
“Not SEALs. Fuck,” Prick grunted, setting his caddy on Kale’s desk.
“No, not SEALs,” Kale answered, ignoring his cohort. “When they came to me about a secret team, I thought that’s what it would be—some sort of new special force that other countries didn’t know about. I was right, but I was very wrong, too. They wanted super soldiers.”
“Okay…” I said, drawing out the word and hoping he’d explain.
“It’s ironic, really, that you’d call us X-Men out there.” He jerked his head toward the main room. “The program is called X-24. Only people with certain gene signatures are eligible—mostly because it’s our genes that are compatible with the X-24 serum.” He looked over at Day. “That’s why Prick’s going to take a blood and tissue sample, if you’ll let him. To see if you can be one of us.”
“One of you? I don’t have any special abilities,” Day denied.
“Brennan does,” I said before I thought better of it.
