Enemy Invasion by A. G. Taylor Page A

front of Good, who looked him up and down with contempt. “And I thought the Triad were meant to be tough.”
    “What do you want?” Hui begged.
    Marlon Good grinned. “I just want to know one thing: can you fly?”
    He gave the nod to the soldiers, who pushed him to the edge of the ramp and then threw him off the side of the plane. Hui’s final scream was lost in the roar of the wind and the engines.
Hack looked away.
    Marlon Good walked over and prodded the semi-conscious merc with the tip of his shoe. “This one doesn’t look so good either. Toss him as well.”
    The two soldiers by the ramp exchanged a look.
    “Well?” Good demanded. “Am I paying you to stand around?”
    The soldiers grabbed the bearded merc by the ankles and dragged him to the ramp. As they threw him off, Good came to sit beside Hack once more. One of the soldiers flicked the lever and the
cargo bay became relatively quiet again as the ramp closed.
    “I just had one of my own men thrown into the Pacific,” Good said, leaning close to Hack with his voice almost a whisper. “What do you think I’m going to have done to you
if you annoy me? Or your friend Jonesey? Or your grandfather in Tai-O?”
    Hack looked round at him with wide eyes. “Leave them alone!”
    Good reached for the laptop and flipped up the screen showing the HIDRA portal. Hack nodded in defeat.
    “I need my hands free.”

 
    9
    “Sarah, are you listening?”
    She kept her eyes on the view of the endless Pacific Ocean out the narrow window of the consultation room.
    “Sarah?”
    Dr. Lesley Smith’s voice became more insistent. With a sigh, Sarah looked round at the blonde, thirty-something psychologist sitting across the table from her.
    Lesley pointed a manicured fingernail at the half-hour timer ticking away on her desk. “I thought we agreed that during our sessions we would be completely honest and not be mentally
reticent.”
    Sarah had to smile. Mentally reticent. She probed just a little with her mind.
    “You haven’t called your boyfriend this week, Lesley,” she said. “Is that because of the Skype argument you had last Thursday?”
    The psychologist’s eyes narrowed just a little and she sat back in her leather chair. She fiddled with a pen between the index and middle finger of her left hand.
    “I know you’re dying for a cigarette right now,” Sarah went on, unable to help herself. “But you did make a promise to Paul, remember?”
    “Stop that!” Lesley slapped the pen down on the desk with a little more force than she probably intended. Taking a breath, she tilted her head to one side and assumed a mask-like
expression of calm once more. “Sarah.”
    “Lesley.” Sarah mimicked the woman’s delivery.
    “You know the rule we agreed for our sessions. No using your psychic ability as a weapon against me or others. You know all I want to do is support you. Help you come to terms with your
gift.”
    Sarah looked out the window again. The weekly sessions with Lesley were part of the price of being with HIDRA. They were supposed to make sure she and the other kids weren’t becoming a
danger to themselves. Or going insane. Or something. She knew from experience that annoying Lesley just led to an increase in the number of meetings per week, so she decided to rein it in a
little.
    “I’m sorry, Lesley,” she said. “It was wrong to read your mind. Do you forgive me?”
    “It would mean more if you’d look at me when you said that.”
    Sarah turned to face the psychologist. If she wanted to, she could use her power to make Lesley forget everything that had happened in the previous five minutes. Or even that they had a meeting
full stop. Unfortunately, the woman had a hidden camera installed somewhere in the office and she always reviewed the tapes of their sessions. Sarah had found this out after she’d made Lesley
dance around the office like a chicken one afternoon and then wiped her memory of the event.
    “Sorry, Lesley,” she