Rectify Injustice
Exceptional S. Beaufont™ Book 6
Sarah Noffke
Michael Anderle
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2020 LMBPN Publishing
Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US Edition, June 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-952-9
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-953-6
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Sarah’s Author Notes
Michael’s Author Notes
Acknowledgments
Books By Sarah Noffke
Check out Sarah Noffke’s YA Sci-fi Fantasy Series
Books By Michael Anderle
Connect with The Authors
The Rectify Injustice Team
Thanks to the JIT Readers
Angel LaVey
Dave Hicks
Deb Mader
Debi Sateren
Diane L. Smith
Dorothy Lloyd
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
Jeff Eaton
Kelly O’Donnell
Kerry Mortimer
Larry Omans
Peter Manis
Veronica Stephan-Miller
If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
For Diane H, whose support has meant so much. And for all the stickers!
— Sarah
To Family, Friends and
Those Who Love
to Read.
May We All Enjoy Grace
to Live the Life We Are
Called.
— Michael
Chapter One
Death by a thousand cuts would be a kinder death than what Trin Currante had planned for the man who had “recreated” her.
As blood trickled down the face of the scientist currently bound in the chair before her, she smiled outwardly. The sight of blood had never bothered her. Staring down at her arms, which were covered in bolts and wires, she grimaced. No, blood didn’t bother her. She had a lot less of it than she should. Her body was made of metal, which grossed her out. It was unnatural and wrong, and the means by which it happened was far from ethical. Now Trin Currante was that much closer to finding the man behind what had been done to her.
Mika Lenna.
The light overhead created shadows on the prisoner’s face. The scientist Trin Currante had abducted spit out blood and a broken tooth that landed on the floor at her feet. She eyed it casually before bringing her chin up, the movement always marked by a motorized sound.
This was the man who had done this to her. She remembered looking up from the operating table and seeing his cold gray eyes over the mask after being abducted. On Mika Lenna’s orders, he’d taken out her perfectly functioning organs and replaced them with magitech, turning her into the cyborg that she was.
Alexander Drake,
one of the scientists Trin Currante had captured from the Saverus Corporation, for as worthless as he was had finally proven helpful. He had been the only scientist who didn’t get away when she stormed the place, looking for Mika Lenna and answers.
The other scientists, along with Mika Lenna, had taken underground tunnels to flee, their plan if they were ever invaded by one of their “creations.” Unluckily for him, Drake had been in the bathroom when the sirens sounded, marking Trin Currante’s invasion.
If she had known those sirens cued a protocol that erased all research data and procedures, Trin Currante wouldn’t have come into Saverus with guns blazing. Someone hit the alarm, and no one stayed to fight her. They all fled. All but Drake.
He hadn’t been on the cyborg projects entirely, only assisting, and therefore, he couldn’t help to fix her, although reluctantly, he had advised. It was easy to encourage him since she had broken most of the bones in his hand during their initial conversation. Now he worked for her, maybe out of fear, but she wanted to believe also out of guilt. It was because of him she knew when the dragon eggs hatched that she’d need the blood of a young good and evil dragon. Those were gone now, and she needed a new strategy.
Drake had come through, informing her after her hundredth time asking him to remember anything of use, that Samuel Jacobs ate a specific hot sauce manufactured and sold at a boutique store in Los Angeles. Samuel Jacobs was the man who had performed the surgery that ruined her life.
The cyborg knew she should do a stakeout at the hot sauce shop until she saw Samuel Jacobs, and follow him until he led her back to the new headquarters for the Saverus Corporation. Since the change, she hadn’t been good at controlling her temper.
When she saw the soulless gray-haired man enter the store to get his favorite hot sauce, her rage got the best of her. On his way out of the shop, she attacked him and abducted him the same way they’d taken her, gagged and bound.
Trin Currante had been so patient, biding her time as the librarian for the Great Library, waiting to secure the information she needed to reverse what had been done to her. She’d practiced delayed gratification every step of the way toward her recovery and retribution. When she saw the man who remade her, something took over. Something she couldn’t resist.
Now Samuel Jacobs was sitting in front of her, covered in his own blood, more dead than alive in a darkened room that often bobbed up and down, since they were on a ship.
Trin Currante knew how it felt. That was every day for her. The Saverus Corporation had made her into a machine when she had once been a perfectly functioning magician. And why?
According to Alexander Drake, Mika Lenna had an obsession with making monsters. The Finnish billionaire had a company before the Saverus Corporation that made genetically altered werewolves. The place, Olento Research, had abducted men and turned them into monsters, all because Mika Lenna wanted to see if he could do it, and because he had investors who wanted deadly assassins.
The project had gone to hell when the subjects escaped and rebelled. Mika Lenna, in an effort to become the alpha wolf and get his “projects” back, had dosed himself with the most powerful drug meant to make him a werewolf. It took him over and killed him. Or so they thought.
According to Alexander Drake, Mika Lenna wasn’t even close to dead, but since his heart wasn’t beating, he was issued a death certificate and buried. Bad men have a way of coming back from the dead. In Mika Lenna’s case, he clawed up from his grave and returned to the world he wasn’t happy in unless he was mutilating something.
Trin Currante had to give it to him. Mika Lenna was a survivor. He’d been able to come back from nothing and start the Saverus Corporation, again abducting innocent people, magicians this time, and turn them into cyborgs. He did it to hundreds of them.
Why wasn’t even the question for Trin Currante. She just wanted to know where this diabolical mad man was so she could destroy him and everything he valued. There was no way she was stopping until she brought Mika Lenna down.
The man had survived for this long because he knew how to hide, and was great at running. However, she had the one person who could lead her to him—his head scientist—Samuel Jacobs.
Lowering her face and pressing it into his, she narrowed her eyes, looking into his rimmed with blood. “Tell me where the new Saverus headquarters is.”
Samuel Jacobs shook his head, his face swelling from the beating he’s endured.
She grabbed his chin with her metal hand, gripping it so tightly she could feel the bones ready to give way. He didn’t even moan, although she knew the pain had to be excruciating. “You realize I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me, right?” she asked through gritted teeth.
Again, he shook his head but tried to move his jaw. She released him, but only so he could talk.
“There are things worse than death,” he said, bubbles of blood spilling from his mouth.
She laughed. “Like living your life looking like a freak no one can understand.” Trin Currante motioned to her body. She used to be beautiful, with high cheekbones and voluptuous hips. Now her black hair was mostly live wires that danced around her head and bits of metal peeking out from the skin on her face.
Samuel Jacobs narrowed his swollen eyes at her. “No, like your entire family being punished if you so much as breathe a word about where the Saverus Corporation or Mika Lenna is located.”
Trin Currante blew out a breath. So that’s how Mika Lenna was maintaining secrecy. Of course.
If threatened, most would talk. Life was the most precious thing in the world. Family for many trumped that. Hostages would talk if afraid their lives hung in the balance. The one thing that ensured compliance if they were captured by the enemy was not to kill them but threaten their families if they talked.
Trin Currante considered threatening to find Samuel Jacobs’ family. She’d beat Mika Lenna to it. Jacobs would have to pick Trin Currante if she was the one making the bold threats.
She couldn’t do it.
Innocent people shouldn’t have to die for her to take down an evil corporation. That’s the way she wanted it, anyway. She’d already had to do despicable things to the Dragon Elite, and they hadn’t even worked. Which was one reason she was here interrogating the man who’d made her. Alexander Drake had figured out that even if they had the freshly hatched dragon’s blood, he didn’t know the formula to fix her. Only Mika Lenna would know that, and the one person who could tell her where to find him wasn’t talking.
They’d been at this for hours, and Samuel Jacobs wasn’t any closer to telling her than he was in the beginning. Now Trin Currante realized why. He was going to take the beating, knowing it would probably result in his death.
Looking at his face covered in blood didn’t bring her satisfaction anymore. Deforming him with assaults hadn’t been as rewarding as she thought. Trin Currante reasoned that was because whatever they’d done to her at Saverus, she still had her soul.
Lowering her face, she looked into Samuel Jacobs’ eyes.
“You won’t tell me where Mika Lenna is or why he did what he did,” she began, turning off her olfactory senses, not wanting to smell his stink. “Tell me why you did it. Those might be the last words you ever speak, so make them good.”
He looked at her, a sadistic smile on his face. “That’s where you’re wrong. I will tell you why Mika did it. Simple. He’s sick like that. Me? Well, I did it for the money.”
The rage took over her. Trin Currante’s metal hand reached out without her permission. It wrapped around his neck, and with a force no human could survive, her hand jerked swiftly, breaking his neck with a horrible popping sound.
Samuel Jacobs’ chin fell forward as the scientist died instantly.
Trin Currante backed for the door, horrified by what she’d done and also surprised she hadn’t done it earlier.
She shook her head at the dead man before her. “You are sick too,” Trin Currante said, motioning to her body. “No amount of money wou
ld make a sane person do this to another.”