The Killer Frequency Chapter 2

Rough draft of course even though i have re written it a few times now

          The shadow was her guardian, Asher. He was to only watch and protect from a distance and only make contact if those that would do harm were onto them or a life and death situation. Seeing him, especially in her apartment, meant their cover was blown. His sudden, catastrophic presence was the soundless report of a gun pressed against her own skull.

          Kiera Miller, the cold operative carved from years of sheer, agonizing will, reacted with the surgical speed of a machine that had only one purpose, to survive the impossible. Her hand didn't move toward just any weapon, it moved toward a tool, a gun that was merely an extension of her own absolute certainty.

          The 9 mm compact, a Sig Sauer P229, was secured in the waistband. She snapped it into her grip with a muted metallic click of the safty that sounded, in the apartment’s sudden silence, like the final door slamming on hope.

          It was instantly leveled at the source of the bleeding man on the floor. Her operational mind ran a dozen diagnostics in the span of a breath, an invisible ticker-tape of dread. No broken glass on the balcony the main door seal intact, the biometric secondary lock is green. How did he get in?

          The silence of the apartment was suddenly laced with an alien, malevolent energy, a chill that seemed to seep from the floorboards.

          Then a sound, low and deeply wet, a noise of pure physical agony, ripped through the quiet. Asher stirred. He tried to shift his weight, succeeding only in dragging his arm further through the expanding pool of crimson.

          The trigger finger of Kiera Miller held steady. But beneath the steel-plated composure, the terrified shell of Sarah Collins had fractured. Asher. His sudden presence meant the complete failure of her system to stay hidden and stay alive.

          Kiera controlled the situation now. The man on the floor was either her most trusted asset or a weapon aimed directly at her head. She needed to know the truth.

          She dropped to a knee beside him, the hard ceramic floor jarring her joints, but did not lower the weapon. The 9 mm muzzle pressed hard against his temple, the cold metal a clear threat. She drew a sharp, shallow breath, tasting the scent of the blood that had soaked the rug.

          She needed a code that couldn't be cracked by an algorithm. She went to the memory of Jonas sitting on their bed, strumming his guitar, singing the song he wrote for her. It was a terrible song. The lyrics were clumsy and cheesy, but he sang them with such earnest love that it became her favorite thing in the world.

          “The signal is strong…” she hissed, her voice flat, inhumanly low.

          Asher gasped, his eyes struggling to focus on the cold steel at his head. He knew the protocol. He knew the song. He knew how much Kiera used to laugh at this specific line. He forced out the air, a ragged whisper stripped of feeling:

          “…even when the lyrics are wrong.”

          The response was perfect. It was stupid. It was Jonas.

          She holstered the weapon instantly. Her movements became a blur of controlled, purposeful speed—she moved too fast for panic, executing a dozen tasks at once.

          “The Collective,” Asher began, grabbing her wrist with a sudden, painful strength pulled from adrenaline. “They hit me after I cut the feed on the black sedan. They grabbed me, used an immobilizing dart—a succinylcholine analog. It’s designed to keep a target paralyzed for sixty minutes during transport.”

          He coughed, a wet, rattling sound. "It started wearing off at minute forty-five. I felt my fingers come back. But I didn't move. I laid there... dead weight. I let them think the dose was still holding. When the guard leaned in to check my pupils, I snapped his wrist."
He grimaced, rubbing his shoulder where the bullet had grazed him.

          "I fought my way out in Midtown traffic," Asher continued. "There were too many cameras, too many civilians... they aborted the chase. But the drug... it hasn't cleared. I'm lagging, Kiera. My brain sends the signal, but my limbs answer a second later."

          "The fire escape," he wheezed, pointing to the window. "I took the fire escape. The balcony door... I gambled that you never scrubbed my bio-signature from the lock. I used the subdermal NFC chip in my hand. I let myself in."

          He looked up at her, his eyes full of guilt. "I'm sorry, Kiera. I didn't have anywhere else to go. But the dart... it wasn't just a sedative. I can feel them, the buzzing in my head. I brought them here."

          Kiera didn't wait for him to finish. “Stop.”

          A sharp, rhythmic chirp cut through the room. It came from the laptop sitting on the kitchen island—the same machine she used for her morning network sweeps.

          Kiera lunged for the screen. The passive proximity sensor had spiked into the red.

          "How..." Asher stammered, clutching his shoulder. "I wasn't broadcasting."

          "You're bleeding, Asher," Kiera hissed, reading the data stream. "The nanobots are in your bloodstream. Every drop of blood you left on the fire escape is full of active tech."

          She pointed at the frequency spike on the screen. "They aren't tracking DNA. They are scanning for the nanobot signature in the spilled blood. You left them a digital map right to my window."

          She hauled him up, ignoring his pained grunt.

          "We have sixty seconds before those drones finish scanning the railing and tag this specific room. Stay away from the glass."

          She didn't pack clothes. She didn't check the drawers for cash. Everything in this apartment was disposable. "Sarah Collins" owned nothing that couldn't be burned.

          She grabbed only one thing: the small, lead-lined metallic container holding the multi-band signal emulator.

          Asher gripped her arm, his weight sagging as the paralytic lag hit his legs again. "Kiera... I can't run. My legs won't hold. The signal... if I move slow, they'll track the vector."

          "We aren't running," she hissed, dragging him toward the hallway wainscoting. "And we aren't walking out the front door."

          "Then how?"

          "I have a truck," she said, shoving the emulator into her pocket. "It's waiting in the basement. We just have to get down there."

          She pressed her hand against a seamless panel in the wall—the concealed access door.

          The door itself was the ultimate contingency. She had painstakingly re-opened an ancient, bricked-over service stairwell that ran the spine of the building, hidden behind the elevator shafts. It was how she moved between her two lives—the apartment above and the workshop below—without ever stepping outside.

          She helped him through the narrow opening. "Watch your step. It's steep."

          They descended the tight, concrete spiral in the dark, their footsteps echoing faintly against the raw brick. Kiera moved quickly, her muscle memory taking over. She had walked these stairs a thousand times, usually carrying engine parts or heavy tools for the vehicle waiting below.

          They reached the bottom landing—a heavy, reinforced fire door.

          Kiera punched a code into the keypad. The mag-locks disengaged with a heavy thunk, and she shoved the door open.

          They weren't in a high-tech bunker. They were standing in the middle of an abandoned mechanic’s shop.

          To the outside world, this place had been shuttered for years—a failed business with a "For Lease" sign rotting in the window. Inside, it was a frozen snapshot of a working garage. Dusty hydraulic lifts stood like iron skeletons. Stacks of old tires lined the back wall. The air smelled of ancient grease, rubber, and cold concrete.

          And parked in the center bay, looming like a sleeping beast, was the escape plan.

          A matte-black, armor-plated 1985 Chevy Suburban. It was massive, archaic, and terrifying—a relic from an era before GPS and remote kill-switches.

          "Beautiful," Asher wheezed, eyeing the steel brush guard on the front bumper. "Does it have a tape deck?"

          "Get on the table," Kiera commanded, dragging him past the truck toward the workbench.
She moved to a heavy, industrial control panel masked behind a bank of circuit breakers. She pulled a large, oxidized metal switch, exposing a deep red access plate beneath.

          She inserted a specific, custom-keyed fob—not for locking, but for terminal sealing—and twisted it hard.

          There was no explosion. Instead, a blinding white light flared around the seams of the heavy blast door they had just come through, followed by a deep, aggressive hiss.

          "Thermite," Kiera whispered, shielding her eyes. "The bottom door is fused. It's now a solid wall of steel."

          She checked the gauge. "The Collective can bring a battering ram. They can bring a torch. That door is never opening again."

          She then flipped a secondary, smaller toggle. A red light blinked to life next to a pressure gauge labeled TERMINAL BARRIER.

          "System armed," she muttered. "If they breach the stairwell upstairs, the sensors will trip. Phosgene G. It will flood the tunnel instantly."

          Asher stared at the red light. "So we're sitting under a loaded gun."

          "We're sitting in the magazine," Kiera corrected. "Now stay still. I need to dig that bullet out before they find the panel.”

          She pulled her emergency field trauma kit from the Pelican case. The light in the office was a harsh, sterile LED, perfect for the work she had to do.

          Kiera focused with the absolute, terrifying detachment of a surgeon. She worked with the mechanical focus of a medic under fire, irrigating and suturing the deep, messy flesh wound with practiced, ruthless efficiency.

          “The Collective is perfecting the Glitch,” Asher spoke, his voice weak. “It’s a cascade of cognitive dissonance that rewires the limbic system. The nanobots are both the sinister receiver and the obedient amplifier.”

          “I know,” Kiera whispered, her voice tight. She finished the final knot of the suture.

          She uncapped a small vial of milky fluid. “I only have one dose of the neutralizing agent. You need it now.”

          She didn't count to three. She didn't warn him. She jammed the injection deep into his thigh muscle with the force of a dagger.

          Asher’s back arched off the table. He gasped, the agony overriding the dull ache of his wound. He stared down at the needle buried to the hilt in his leg, then looked up at Kiera with wide, watery eyes.

          "Jesus, woman!" Asher wheezed, a hysterical grin cutting through the pain.
"Safe word! What is the safe word?! Pineapple?! Omelet?!"

          Kiera didn't pull the needle out. Instead, she gripped his thigh harder, her fingers digging into the muscle to stabilize the injection. She leaned in close, her face inches from his, her voice dropping to a sultry, dangerous whisper.

          "You don't get a safe word, Liam," she purred. "You just get to take it.”

          She shifted her weight, deliberately twisting the needle hub to grind the tip deeper into the muscle fibers.

          Asher let out a sound that was half-groan, half-laugh. "God... you always did have terrible bedside manner. Usually, people buy me a drink before they violate me like this. Or at least some light foreplay."

          "I prefer skipping the small talk," Kiera countered, her eyes locking onto his. The air between them crackled—a mix of old adrenaline and older attraction. "I like going straight for the nerve."

          She pushed the plunger home, flooding his system with the burning liquid. Asher’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the table, his body shaking.

          Kiera held the needle steady, enjoying the control a little too much. She brushed a lock of sweaty hair off his forehead with her free hand.

          "That’s it," she whispered, her voice soft now, almost intimate. "Take it all. Good boy."

          Asher slumped back as she finally ripped the needle out. He was panting, sweat dripping down his nose, but he managed to shoot her a crooked, breathless smile.

          "I missed you, Miller," he choked out. "But remind me to never let you near my sensitive areas again.”

          "Keep complaining," she said, tossing the syringe into the bio-hazard bin, "and next time I use the big needle."

          She retrieved two thin, black, powered-down burner phones from her go-bag.

          "The digital footprint," she muttered. "We need a ghost trail that moves."

          She grabbed the phones. She wrapped the first in a torn dollar bill and a handful of loose coins. The second she left loose.

          She opened the garage door and moved toward a dark, disused maintenance corridor leading to a public sidewalk.

          Kiera stepped into the dank service corridor. She tossed the first phone (the weighted one) onto the edge of the public sidewalk. The second phone, she dropped directly into a wire mesh trash receptacle at the corner bus stop.

          Kiera returned quickly. "Digital signature neutralized via civilian chaos," she reported.
She checked the time on her array. The ambient noise level suddenly rose on the delicate instruments. A rapid spike occurred on the low-frequency acoustic monitor.

          Kiera's eyes narrowed. "They're inside."

          Asher flinched. "Now?"

          "They waited until air support confirmed the lock alert," Kiera stated. "They bypassed the security override. They're doing a silent sweep of the apartment right now."

          The air in the garage was quiet, but her trained ears picked up the low, rhythmic thrumming of VTOL platforms filtering down through the concrete ceiling.

          Suddenly, the acoustic monitor spiked violent red. A loud, metallic CLANG echoed through the concrete ceiling—the sound of the apartment panel being kicked in upstairs.

          "They found the stairwell," Kiera hissed.

          On the monitor, thermal signatures dropped rapidly down the vertical shaft. One. Two. Three heat signatures sprinting down the concrete stairs, tactical lights cutting through the dark, expecting to breach the garage.
THUD. THUD.

          Heavy impacts shook the fused door at the bottom. They had hit the end of the line. They were trapped against the Thermite seal, clustered on the small landing.

          Then, the red light on the console turned solid. The hissing started.

          "Terminal Barrier triggered," Kiera shouted over the noise.

          Muffled screaming echoed through the steel door as the stairwell flooded with high-pressure gas. The confined concrete tube turned into a gas chamber in seconds. The screams stopped abruptly.

          "The gas is active!" Kiera grabbed the ignition key from the workbench. "If that seal cracks, this room fills next. We can't wait!"

          "They now know exactly where we are. We need to go NOW!"

          The Suburban exploded out from beneath the concrete bridge, shaking off the dirt and debris it had collected from the median strip. Kiera drove harder, steering the massive machine through the dark labyrinth of light industrial warehouses. The V8 engine roared no challenge to the high-pitched shriek of the drones, which were now locked into a frustrating, wide thermal search pattern over the area where the chaff had been scattered.

          The sheer, archaic presence of the 1985 Suburban was their salvation. It was too dense for thermal scanning to easily penetrate, too physically robust for quick maneuverability, and too digitally primitive to exist on the modern network. It was, in its own glorious, mechanical way, a ghost.

          Kiera kept the speed high, tearing through a long-abandoned rail yard. She could hear the screaming whisper of the VTOLs receding now. Finally, she saw the narrow, hidden on-ramp—a broken concrete spur she had plotted months ago.

          She hit it hard, the truck launching onto the surface of an older, secondary state road that ran parallel to the main Atlanta interstate. The shift was immediate: they were no longer fighting the maze; they were fleeing it.