Break Me (Corrupted Hearts Book 2) Read online

  The ship rolled and I moaned. If I could have killed myself, I happily would have. I didn’t think I’d been more miserable in my entire life. I didn’t know how long I’d been on this transport from hell, but it felt like an eternity. I hadn’t realized I was prone to seasickness, and I could have gone my whole life blissfully in ignorance.

  The door to my cabin opened and the woman who’d been the only face I’d seen walked in. Petite and Asian, she either didn’t understand English, or pretended she didn’t. All my attempts at conversation had been met with a smile and silence. This time she held a tray with water and a little bowl of something.

  Setting the tray down, she brought the bowl to me. She said something I didn’t understand, and motioned for me to eat.

  “Oh, God, no, I can’t possibly eat anything.” The very thought made my stomach clench.

  She was insistent, motioning again to the tin bowl I was using to be sick in, then back to the bowl of pinkish stuff. Finally, I got it.

  “Oh, this will help me feel better?” Now that was a different story. I took a little bit of the cold stuff, put it on my tongue, and chewed. Ginger. Pickled ginger, by the taste of it. “That’s right,” I said, even though I knew she wouldn’t understand me. “Ginger was used by Chinese sailors to alleviate the symptoms of seasickness.”

  I managed to get a few mouthfuls of it down and only by focusing hard, kept it down. The woman smiled and nodded, saying a few more things I couldn’t understand. My stomach did feel a little better. Not normal, but the ginger had taken the edge off so I could at least function.

  “Thank you,” I told her. She probably didn’t understand the words, but my sincerity seemed to get my message through. She nodded again and left the room.

  I got up from the small bed and tried the door again—which I had after every time she’d left—and it was locked, just as it had been every other time.

  My body was weak, and even just that small trip across the room made me lightheaded. I knew I was dehydrated so I started sipping some of the water, alternating it with more ginger, until I’d drunk the entire glass. When I was finished, I felt better—not could-run-a-marathon better, but could-stand-up-without-falling-over better.

  I had no way to tell what time of day or even what day it was. They’d taken my phone from me and I didn’t have a watch. The only thing in the room was a bed, an overhead light, and a tiny cubicle bathroom that made a plane’s lavatory seem spacious.

  There was a small porthole above the bed and I’d avoided looking out since it had only made me sicker to see alternate views of the water and sky, depending on the waves. Now I felt I could glance out for a moment, at least to see whether it was night or day.

  Standing, I poked my head up. I saw water, and sky, and guessed the time to be about midday. I could distinguish nothing else, so sank down onto the bed again.

  If I let them, panic and terror were just there waiting at the edge of my mind. I had very vague memories of what had happened after I’d been ambushed in my car. I must’ve been drugged because there were needle marks on my arm and only hazy images of people and dark places and being moved.

  That the president had betrayed me nearly made me ill all over again. That he’d be so cold as to have me kidnapped and thrown onto some kind of transport was nearly incomprehensible, so incongruous was it with the man I’d met with on Air Force One. The man who’d held his son and kissed his wife and shook my hand. I was at his mercy now and I could only pray that even if he didn’t keep his word with me, that perhaps he had for Jackson’s sake.

  Now that I wasn’t throwing up my left lung, I was exhausted. I could do nothing to help myself at the moment, so I might as well get some rest so when the time came, I would be able to escape.

  Pulling the blanket up over me, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about Jackson, or Clark, or Mia, or Granny, or anyone I loved, or how lost and alone I felt. Sleep and blissful unawareness came quickly.

  When I woke, the first thing I realized was that we were no longer moving. The second was that I heard voices outside my door.

  I sat straight up, blinking away the sleep from my eyes. The panic I’d been trying not to think about earlier smashed its way to the front of my brain and set up a tent.

  The door opened and I jumped to my feet to be ready. Ready for what . . . I had no idea. It was instinctual. What I didn’t expect was who walked in.

  “Lu.”

  He smiled. “I did say that you would hear from me soon,” he said. “I must admit, I favored air transport here rather than this.” He glanced around the room, his lip curled slightly in disdain. “But I hoped you would use the time to think about your situation.”

  I swallowed, my throat as dry as sandpaper. “And what exactly is that?”

  “We’ll discuss it. But first, let’s go somewhere more comfortable, shall we?”

  He walked out the door and I took it I was to follow, which was fine with me. I never wanted to see that room of misery again.

  Two men fell in behind me as I followed Lu. They both towered over me and were wider than two of me. I doubted Lu had hired them for their brainpower.

  It seemed to take forever to get off the boat and I had to walk slower than I wanted to because my leg started to ache. When I finally reached open air, I sucked in a deep breath. Fresh air had never tasted so good.

  The “boat” was really a cargo ship and its size made my jaw drop. I’d never been on anything like it, though now that I had, I wasn’t anxious to repeat the experience. Cranes were already lifting containers that were stacked ten high on the deck.

  Lu paid none of this any mind as we walked the gangplank to the docks. A limousine was waiting, but Lu stopped outside it and turned. “Take her in the next car,” he told the men behind me. “She . . . smells.” He slipped inside the limo.

  I clenched my hands into fists, feeling my face flush. Washing facilities in my “room” had been limited to just a sink, so it wasn’t as though I’d been able to bathe properly, which was entirely Lu’s fault. If he’d wanted to embarrass me and make me feel uncivilized, he’d accomplished it.

  I was acutely aware of being dirty when they shoved me into the back seat of a sedan and crowded in front. My clothes were grungy and I’d scrubbed a couple of vomit stains out of my shirt the best I could. My hair was lank and greasy and I’d pay a fortune for a stick of deodorant.

  We drove and I was able to see where we were. Sort of. At first, I thought it was mainland, but then I realized it was an island. And not a very large one at that. After about a fifteen-minute drive, we entered a gated tunnel and began heading down.

  I quickly realized this was an advanced military establishment. Guards with weapons were everywhere, as were technicians in red jumpsuits and wearing hats. We stopped when the limousine did and I got out without being asked. The guards glanced at me, but didn’t try to stop me. After all, if I ran, where the hell would I go?

  That thought sent another stab of fear and panic through me and my knees weakened. I grabbed on to the car to steady myself. Everyone around me was Chinese and speaking what I assumed was Chinese or Mandarin or whatever dialect they spoke. Which meant there was about a 99 percent likelihood that I was no longer on US soil.

  Lu stepped up next to me. “What do you think?” he asked, gesturing to the cavernous space in front of us. Metal stairs went up at least four levels from where we were, and the tunnel kept going so far, I couldn’t see the end of it.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Vigilance, of course. Our version. All it needs . . . is you.”

  I was shown to a much better room than on the ship, that had a real shower and even a change of clothes, though I didn’t appreciate the new wardrobe. It was all dresses, and not even typical dresses, but the silk Oriental kind with the high neck, tight cap sleeves, fitted bodice to either a flared skirt or fitted skirt with a slit up the leg. The embroidery was gorgeous, though, and after the longest shower of my life, I fina
lly chose a blue one.

  My still-damp hair went up into its usual ponytail, and my glasses didn’t do the dress justice, but I didn’t particularly care. I’d been told to dress for dinner and found some comfortable satin slippers with a low heel to wear. Everything was in my size, even with my lack of stature. The dress was the perfect length and didn’t touch the floor.

  The door was locked, of course, so I took the opportunity to go over every inch of the room. There was nothing remotely electronic, not even a digital clock. MacGyver couldn’t have fashioned a communication device out of what I had. Lu wasn’t stupid. Without anything better to do, I arranged the dresses in the closet by color, which made me miss Mia. Would I ever see her again?

  I was so hungry, I thought I could eat anything. But when I was finally led to where Lu was already seated at a table inside a room decorated much more lavishly than the rest of the compound, I found I was mistaken.

  “What’s this?” I asked, eyeing the small bowl of soup in front of me.

  “Bird’s nest soup,” he said, taking a sip from his spoon.

  I picked up my spoon. “Like egg drop soup?” I liked that, and it kinda looked the same.

  “No, it’s the nest of swiftlets. A bird that builds its nest with its own saliva. The saliva hardens, forming the nest. It’s a delicacy, and a wonderful source of iron, potassium, calcium, and magnesium.”

  So were Flintstones Vitamins. I dropped my spoon. “Bird spit? No, thanks. And here I didn’t think I could get sick again so soon.” I didn’t feel the need to be polite. Lu had already taken me away from my home, my country. Though he was being nice now, when he found out I wasn’t going to cooperate, I fully expected that nice guy to turn. “Is there a cheeseburger somewhere around? Maybe a McDonald’s? I could really go for a Big Mac.”

  Lu raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment, merely raising his hand slightly. Instantly, a woman was there in a formal Chinese dress even more traditional than mine. She took away my bowl, then Lu’s. I waited, taking in our surroundings.

  The lack of technology in my room didn’t apply to this one. Everything was run by computer and there were touchpads on the walls, automatic sliding doors, and sensor lighting. I had no doubt voice control was enabled as well and that I was probably being watched and recorded.

  A domed plate was put in front of me simultaneously with one in front of Lu. The women lifted the domes and the familiar smell of grilled beef hit my nostrils. A burger dripping in cheese and piled high with bacon and tomatoes sat on my plate, complete with a mountain of shoestring fries.

  Lu had some kind of fish on his plate, but I didn’t pay much attention, attacking the burger as if it might jump up and run away at any moment. Half of it was gone before Lu spoke.

  “Are you enjoying your meal?” he asked.

  I nodded, still chewing.

  “You know, you’re not what I expected,” he said. “A genius intellect in the body of a tiny female. Who would have thought?”

  “Since when did sex or size have anything to do with intellect?” I asked. Judge me by my size, do you? Yoda asked inside my head.

  “My point is that not everything is what it seems. Such as that burger you’re devouring.” He nodded toward my plate. I stopped chewing. “Almost anything can be dressed up in a pretty package and presented as one thing, when in reality, it’s another entirely.”

  “What do you mean?” I had a bad feeling about this.

  “Why it’s rat, of course. Have you never eaten rodent before?”

  Oh. My. God. My stomach rebelled almost immediately and I turned to the side to see that apparently my reaction wasn’t unexpected. One of the women was there with a trash can and yet again I emptied the contents of my stomach. Horror tinged my mind and the tears stinging my eyes weren’t just from vomiting. I’d just been fed rat meat. I’d blindly eaten it without question.

  I wiped my mouth with my napkin, my hands shaking like a leaf. I didn’t look at my plate, couldn’t think any more about what was on it or what I’d eaten or I’d get sick again.

  “What do you want?”

  “Your life is very simple from now on,” Lu said. “As I’ve just shown you, I can make your life pleasant . . . or unpleasant. All you have to do is enter the coding for the Vigilance algorithm into our system and customize it for our needs.”

  “And what are those needs exactly?”

  “We have built a database consisting of every government employee in the United States. Every soldier, secretary, bureaucrat, and politician. With the help of Vigilance, we’ll be able to most accurately predict those who are in positions of power, those who possess intelligence access, and those who are close to those same individuals. Vigilance will tell us their weaknesses and secrets. Those who can be exploited.”

  It was exactly as Jackson and I had feared when creating Vigilance. A tool used to keep the population “safe” largely depended on that government’s definition of the word, and China’s definition was much different than America’s.

  “We also want to expand to include other nation states, hence the size of the facility.”

  “Such as?”

  “Japan would be extremely helpful. As would Russia.” He smiled benignly. “We spend a great deal of time and resources on recruiting foreign assets. This will make it ever so much easier.”

  Every secret anyone was trying to hide would be vulnerable to blackmail. I could already see inside my head how to tweak Vigilance to give people a score on their likelihood of being susceptible to threat or enticement from China. Someone needs money and they also are a congressional aide to the Speaker of the House? And that was just one example.

  “And you expect me to help put this in place for you?”

  “You sound as though my expectations are unreasonable.”

  “They are. There is no way I’m going to do that. You want to kill me, fine, go ahead. My life isn’t worth putting the security of my country at risk. Chinese cyber-espionage is bad enough without making it easier for you. Social engineering hacking augmented with cyber-espionage would put China number one on the nation-state power structure.”

  “We already own much of your software,” he said. “So many lax businessmen come to this country, using our networks, and are surprised when we infiltrate their companies and take from them. This is just one more way we can and will take from you.”

  “You steal because you can’t create it on your own,” I retorted. “If you want Vigilance so badly, write the code yourself.”

  “Why wait for that when it’s sitting right here in front of me?” His smile was chilling. “You seem eager to embrace the role of martyr, the curse of your age and idealism. Fortunately, I had foreseen such a response.” He patted his mouth with his napkin and rose from his chair. “Come with me.”

  Refusing would be pointless so I stood on unsteady legs and followed him out of the room.

  We were in the part of the facility that reminded me of a luxury hotel. On the ground floor, we passed an ornate fountain adorned with fresh flowers, their scent perfuming the air. Various seating alcoves were placed strategically and the lighting was warm and muted. Music floated from hidden speakers, calm and soothing.

  Stepping into an elevator, I saw there were three floors above and an additional four beneath us. He pressed the button for the second sublevel. When we stepped out, I stumbled to a halt, my mouth falling open.

  Stretched out in front of me were racks and racks of servers, more than I’d ever seen in my life. Lu hadn’t been exaggerating. They were indeed set up and prepared to house billions of terabytes of data. There had to be thousands of servers and data drives—hundreds of thousands. It was cold, too, obviously, because the kind of heat all those machines were putting out had to be incredible. Their cooling system was up to the task, which also explained why it was underground.

  “As you can see, we’ve been preparing for some time,” he said. “On this island, we are far enough from the mainland to avoid inte
rference or prying eyes. And we’re underground, which hides us from satellites. Not to mention that thousands of tons of rock stand between us and any missiles launched our way.”

  “Island? What island?”

  “An artificial one we built,” he said. “We’re in the South China Sea, near the Spratly Islands.” At my blank look, he sighed. “I take it geopolitics isn’t part of your genius?”

  “No one’s an expert on everything.”

  “The South China Sea is very important. More than a third of the entire world’s maritime traffic goes through it. More than sixty percent of Japan and Taiwan’s oil imports travel these waters, and eighty percent of China’s. In short, whoever controls the South China Sea has a stranglehold on those nations and can affect the entire world economy.”

  I was quickly following where he was leading. “So by making your own islands, you’re creating a footprint and presence. You get to spread your military here and it’s left to the treaties Taiwan and the Philippines made with the US to stop you, which would draw China and the US into direct conflict. Essentially . . . World War Three.”

  “I knew you’d catch on,” he said. “As you can imagine, this facility cost a great deal of money and the PRC is most interested in its preservation. They will throw the might of their military to defend it, should it come to that.”

  “If the US finds out what you have here, we will destroy it.”

  “They are welcome to try. America’s military is spread thin and focused on religious jihadists whose fondest desire is to blow themselves up.” He rolled his eyes. “They’ve been a convenient distraction while we’ve been building up and expanding our military capabilities.”

  “Why are you involved?” I asked. “You’re a businessman, not a politician or military.”

  “Yes, but I had access to what was needed. Foreign intellectual property. The networks I built and control handle eighty percent of the Internet traffic going into and out of China. Not much gets by me.”