Turncoat by Megan Derr (the false prince series txt) 📕

Two small black boxes appeared on the counter. One was about five-by-five-by-five, the other a little smaller. Dixie slipped the smaller one into his pocket and carried the larger one to the table he'd been at earlier. Reaching into the right-hand pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a key ring. Selecting a tiny silver key, he ran his fingers over the top of the box. A small keyhole appeared and Dixie quickly unlocked the box. Tucking the keys away again, he pulled down the sides of the box to reveal the contents: Four tiny horses, white, red, black, and a sickly, pale gray-green. "Release Four Horsemen. Permission granted by: Dixon Mountebank. Passcode: Drunk butterflies can't resist playful kittens."

A soft, tinkling chime filled the air and the four little horses vanished.

Dixie closed his eyes, fighting back the relief that the Mason System would soon be no more, and the agony that he was destroying the last bit of his father that remained. But needs must when the devil drives, as Daddy had always said.

That task complete, he finally headed for the red mailbox. Instead of a P.O. Box number, there was Specimen 12A-X001. They'd had to create a whole new designation for Ariadne, though not a new department—12 had always been Biological Research – Nonhuman Species. But X001 meant she was the first in a whole new category. At least they didn't have more aliens. One was bad enough.

Taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly, Dixie called up defense systems to have ready and then got to work. It took him two minutes and four different tries to finally crack the box, and the moment the door swung open, alarms went off and the statue-like security guards sprang into vivid, violent life.

Bullets came at him, but were deflected in sprays of rainbow light. He opened the box and pulled out a thick roll of papers, dropped in a marble and slammed the box shut, and did a duck and roll toward one of the tables as more bullets came flying at him, and the number of pounding feet increased.

He pulled out a small, blue-glowing square, rose to his feet, and slammed it on the table. The table flickered, flashed, went out entirely for a few heart-stopping seconds as the guards drew close enough to engage directly, then finally reappeared in glimmering blue. Dixie shoved the papers through the slot in the middle, then turned and touched his right thigh.

A gun appeared at his touch and he drew it, started firing at the guards, taking out three of them before the rest fell upon him. He screamed as they tasered him, beat him, and one of them even managed to stab him. Dixie reached for his arsenal, got a hand into one of the pockets of his jacket, and pulled out three small orbs.

He managed to twist free enough to kick one of the guards in the face, then slammed the orbs on the floor as he rolled forward to get out of their immediate path. The pepper bombs still stung, but all he got was the dregs, not the full throttle assault that put out the rest of the guards. Pulling out a small yellow tab, he slapped it on his wrist. Yellow light covered him, burst bright, then settled into a soft shimmer, negating the effects of the pepper bombs and restoring the shields the guards had destroyed.

The alarms were still blaring and he could hear more guards coming, so there was no time to waste. He pulled out another patch, this one green, to heal some of the damage the guards had done. Thankfully the guards were too low-level and therefore not remotely powerful enough to take down the most powerful user in the system. But they could slow him down, and that was enough to get him dead.

He bolted for the back exit, digging in another pocket for the special key to open it—and reeled back at the last minute as it swung open, touching his left thigh to draw one of the guns hidden there. His blood went ice cold and boiling hot by turns as he took in the figure who slunk through the door like a snake from its hole.

He'd been wearing a mask the day he'd shot Dixie's father, but Dixie had known all the same. He'd always been terrified of the bastard. Pale as a ghost, damn near as skinny as a skeleton, and he always had a ghoulish smile on his face. He was the kind of person the G.O.D. should be fighting against, and instead, he was part of the inner circle, one of the most powerful men in the organization: Harold Mark, alias Hades, Chief Information Officer of the G.O.D.

His super ability was one of the rarest, most terrifying, and least understood: he could bring the dead 'back to life' though only for a brief time, and in what basically amounted to a zombie state. It didn't come to much, in the end, but it could be some damned scary stuff. Dixie had expected him to do it to Daddy, to be that much more malicious, but for once Hades had been content with the killing.

He was often considered a hero because his ability meant he could bring dying mothers back long enough to deliver a baby, or coax out a crucial bit of information from a victim. The window to do it was limited to within four hours of death, but that was usually enough to make a difference.

And nobody knew how twisted and cruel and plain old fucking evil the bastard could be.

By day, Harold Mark looked like a skeleton in Generic Businessman getup. Within the Mason System, he was a skeleton, dressed in a fancy black suit, his eye sockets glowing with purple flames, and a hood draped over his skull. All in all, it should have looked stupid, but the man was terrifying enough even his dumb getup was scary.

Hades chuckled, the sound