Manipulating Mikey (First Wave Book 8)

Manipulating
Mikey

By Mikayla
Lane

Editor Beth
Braden

[email protected]

Cover art by: humblenations.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, organizations, affiliations and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First Wave
Series in Reading Order

Hunting Cari

Finding Jess

Chasing Dare

Grai’s Game

Taming Jax

Grounding Gracus

True Traitor

Manipulating Mikey

Saving Koda (Coming in February 2016)

Second Wave
Series in Reading Order

Viper

Drago

Mikal

Chris (Coming in April 2016)

Find me on Facebook at:

facebook.com/author.mikaylalane

To my Readers:

Thanks so much for all of the
awesome reviews, suggestions and comments.

As always, feel free to email me.

[email protected]

Mikayla Lane

468 Word Document Pages

100,824 Words

Chapter One

Private first class Mikey Davis
stared at the ceiling above the bed. He jerked on the bonds at his wrists and
ankles one more time before giving up—for the moment. In the weeks since he’d
been hit by the flaming aircraft in the mountains, he’d been able to break out
of several different restraints.

Each time the guards came in, he would
fight until he was again subdued with drugs and restrained in stronger bonds.
This time, Mikey wasn’t too sure he’d be able to break out, but he wasn’t
giving up. He couldn’t. If he did, they were going to kill him. His own
government was going to kill him.

Mikey heard the door open and
tensed when he smelled who came in. Why he could tell who came in by their
smell, he didn’t know. But when he’d first awakened, there had been a lot of
changes in him that he couldn’t explain.

“Mikey, I told you, you have to
stop fighting. You’re just going to hurt yourself,” Donald Macon said.

He smiled as he adjusted the IV,
forcing more drugs into Mikey’s system before he stood nonchalantly beside the
bed. 

“Get me the hell out of here,”
Mikey ground out from between gritted teeth.

Donald laughed, his blue eyes
crinkling in glee at Mikey’s spoken discomfort.

“Oh, you know that’s not going to
happen until you begin cooperating with us,” he said as he ran a small blade
down Mikey’s arm.

He added more pressure, digging the
sharp tip into Mikey’s skin, and smiled as he left a trail of blood and torn
flesh behind.

Mikey didn’t even bother to react
to the slight pain. He’d learned over the last few weeks that whatever the
alien craft had done to him when it crashed had jacked up his body, and he
healed much faster now. The pain was already gone.

He didn’t want to think about the
other changes, hoping to avoid the worst side effect. As if on cue, Mikey heard
the now-familiar voice whisper through his mind.

“Don’t let him break you. We are
stronger than this, my host.”

Mikey didn’t even blink, forcing
himself to concentrate on the biggest threat he faced right then—the evil
bastard pacing around the bed he was strapped into.

“Mikey, I keep telling you: we
can’t help you until you tell us what you know about them,” Donald said with a
smirk as he ran a finger along the bottom of the bed near Mikey’s his bare
foot.

Mikey stared at the ceiling above
him, refusing to give the bastard the satisfaction of getting to him. After
he’d awakened, he learned very quickly that they didn’t want to hear the truth,
and telling it only made things worse for him.

“Come on, Mikey. Tell me where they
are. What loyalty do you have to them now? They left you with me. They haven’t
come to save you,” Donald said, the smirk on his face reflecting how much he
was enjoying the interrogation.

Mikey had figured out after a week
that they thought he was one of the aliens who was in the forest the day the
UFO crashed into him. The fact that he was one of their own, a current member
of the military, didn’t matter to them. They accused him of infiltrating the
armed forces to collect intelligence. He had no defense against the crazy
accusations and was convinced they didn’t want to hear the truth.

“Tsk, tsk, Mikey. If you don’t
start playing nice, I’m going to have to . . . not be nice,” Donald said,
unable to hide his smile at the thought of inflicting more pain on the young
soldier.

Mikey barely held back his snort of
disbelief. If there was one thing he’d learned since he’d awakened into this
nightmare, it was that this man was truly evil. He not only enjoyed the pain he
inflicted physically and mentally, he received a sick pleasure from it.

The one satisfaction Mikey had
gotten during his captivity was embarrassing Donald in front of his colleagues
because he couldn’t break Mikey. Even now, he could hear them laughing at
Donald from behind the two-way mirror in the room.

Mikey turned to him and grinned.

“What’s the matter? Are the big boy
games too much for you? Don’t they teach you not to play out of your league?
Now run along, I’m sure there’s some poor bastard out there in your mental
midget category just waiting for a prized intelligence officer like you to come
along,” Mikey said with a sneer.

Donald turned an unattractive
blotchy color and gripped Mikey’s ankle until his short nails drew blood. Mikey
held his gaze the whole time and didn’t even flinch. Donald was looking for
something to hit him with when a voice came over the speakers in the room.

“I think that’s enough, Donald.”

Mikey watched the man grit his
teeth as he dug his fingers deeper into his ankle before he finally let go and
pasted a fake smile on his face.

“Don’t worry, tough guy. We’ll
spend some quality time together later,” he said as he left the room.

Mikey heard the click of the door
as the laughter continued on the other side of the mirror.

“Anyone figured out how the hell we
missed this guy’s DNA?” someone asked.

Mikey knew they were talking about
the Department of Defense’s program to collect DNA samples from all military
personnel. The DNA was intended to help identify the remains of those killed in
active duty. He’d never thought much about the requirement for them to store
his DNA—until now.

They’d asked him many times how
he’d been able to bypass detection and enter the military. It was then that
Mikey realized that there was more to the DNA collection than the government
was telling its citizens and soldiers. Much more.

From what he could gather from the
conversations they didn’t think he could hear, the government been secretly
looking for this alien species for a long time. For years, the government had
been using everything at its disposal to gather the DNA of its citizens, all
for the purpose of looking for those among them that were not quite human.

That was what convinced Mikey that
he’d been infected by the craft that had crashed damn near on top of him in the
mountains of Colorado. If the government—with all its resources—hadn’t detected
his infection when he enlisted, then he must have contracted the alien virus
from the crash. It was the only thing he could think of that made sense.

No matter how much he tried to tell
them they were making a mistake in the first week of his captivity, they
refused to believe him.

When he first met Donald, Mikey had
thought he would help him—even though the new voice in his head kept warning
him Donald wasn’t a good person and Mikey shouldn’t trust him. For days, Donald
tried to befriend him, and when Mikey couldn’t answer his questions the way he
wanted them answered, Donald turned on him.

It was then that Mikey found out
how right the voice in his head was. Donald begun cutting on him while he was
strapped down. The shallow cuts burned and bled, but it was nothing Mikey
couldn’t handle. What had shocked him was that the cuts would heal within
hours, and the evil bastard called it proof of his lies.

After days of abuse alternating
between cutting, beatings, and even waterboarding, the bastard tried to change
tactics. They brought in a female private who tried to seduce him. No matter
how attractive she was, Mikey just couldn’t help but feel his skin crawl when
she was near him. Something about her smell and touch repelled him.

After a half hour of putting up
with her pawing at him, Mikey finally had enough.

“Maybe if you didn’t look like a
guy in drag, I might be able to get it up. I’m just not into . . . that kind of
thing myself. Maybe Donald is available, you look more like his type,” he said
as he spit at her.

The woman’s rage had left him with
a bloody nose and busted lip before the men laughing behind the mirror had her
dragged out of the room.

Finally alone again, Mikey stared
up at the ceiling as the voice in his head spoke.

“You must bond with me if we are to
escape this. It is the only way you can use my strength to free yourself. I can
override your free will in order to keep us alive, but I can’t force you to
bond,”
the voice whispered through his mind.

“What are you?”
Mikey
asked in his head for the hundredth time.

“I am beast, and I have been with
you from birth. I have protected you and nurtured you until you were ready to
bond,”
the beast whispered gently.

Mikey barely held back his snort.

“If this is your idea of protection
and nurturing, then you can go screw yourself,”
Mikey said
in his head, unwilling to let those watching him know that he was losing his
mind.

Mikey felt a buzz of electricity
run through his body, and he strained at the bonds holding him to the bed. He
held his surprise when he felt and heard the shackle on his right wrist give a
little.

“I can help you,”
the voice
whispered as the buzz of energy dissipated.

“Yeah, you helped me right into
this situation. Tell me how you infected me,”
Mikey demanded.

Mikey was a little creeped out when
he heard and felt the sigh in his mind.

“I have been with you since birth.
I am the son of the beast of your father, as you are the son of your father. We
are meant to be bonded the way our fathers were,”
the voice
said in his mind.

Mikey gave himself a mental shake
to try and quiet the voice, but he knew that it was only a temporary measure.
The voice always came back. The only thing worse than captivity and torture was
the fact he was beginning to welcome the voice and its whispered words of
friendship.

Every day he came closer and closer
to accepting the madness that had become his life.

*****

Grai looked at his comm, saw the
number, and immediately answered it.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“I found him. He’s at Fort Huachuca,
in Arizona. There’s an underground tunnel that leads from the intelligence
building under Miller Peak. Grai, this is going to be damn near impossible. If
there’s a training center for shadow government groups, they’re all based
here,” the caller responded.

“What are we looking at?” Grai
asked.

He’d already known they’d be
keeping Koda in a secure location, and he didn’t care. He was going to get his
brother back.  

“We got NETCOM, the 111th Military
Intelligence Brigade, an electronic proving ground, the Joint Intelligence
Combat Training Center . . . Grai, if there’s a group that studies torture,
information extraction, or mind fucking, they do it here. This is where they
brainwash their own into being soulless bastards. You can imagine how hard it’s
going to be to get in there. Or out,” the caller replied.

Grai sighed and ran a hand through
his hair.

“Are you damn sure he’s there?”
Grai asked.

“I have absolutely confirmed that
they recovered a hybrid from the debris field in Colorado, and he’s being
housed here. They are calling him ‘Mikey’ and claiming he’s a private in the
Army. But I expected them to give him an alias to explain his presence there,”
the caller said.

Grai had expected the same thing
and assumed it was why all their inside contacts hadn’t found Koda before.

“Have you been able to see him?”
Grai asked, holding his breath as he waited for a response.

“All I saw was a guy with dark
hair. I haven’t been able to get closer than that. He’s well-guarded. I’ve
heard they have their best intelligence officer on him to try and break him.
They call him the nutcracker, but his real name is Donald Macon. I’ll send you
his information so you can do what you do. He hardly ever leaves the tunnels
since Koda was brought in,” the informant said.

“Brandon, are you OK? Do you need
extraction?” Grai asked, concerned for the man.

Grai heard the man laugh heartily
on the other end.

“No, I’m good. After almost dying
at Plum Island, this is a cake walk,” Brandon Thomas replied.

The mercenary remembered very
clearly when he first met Grai. He’d made the mistake of signing up for a one
way ticket working for the US shadow operations. It had only been the fact that
he’d not allowed Mikal to be harmed that had saved his life. When Mikal and the
others had left the basement where Mikal had been held at Plum Island, Grai
hadn’t killed Brandon like he did the other mercenaries who had kidnapped his
son.

Instead, Grai had convinced Brandon
that he was on the wrong side in an unknown war. Brandon had allowed Grai to
shoot him in the shoulder, and after Grai left and backup arrived at the
island, Brandon convinced his employers the only reason he was alive is because
he’d played dead.

With the knowledge they thought he
had of Grai and his team, Brandon had been brought deeper into the shadow
organization and ended up in the same place Koda was being held.