Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 125037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Their fourteenth winter was brutal. The snow fell every day, and they ran out of food. Rubin and Diego had no choice but to go hunting. When they returned to the cabin, their mother was dead. She had hanged herself, and Star, their last living sister, blamed herself for falling asleep. Star snuck out that night, leaving a note that said she’d gone to join the Catholic nuns in a convent. Alarmed, they tracked her and found her frozen body near the stream where Lucy had been murdered. It took days to bury their mother and sister in the frozen ground alongside the rest of their family.
After that, Diego decided that his sole purpose in life was to protect Rubin. He knew his brother was a good man. He didn’t have that dark place inside him that Diego did. Diego also knew he had to be very careful that Rubin didn’t realize his younger brother possessed the same gifts he had and was using them to protect Rubin, even after they joined the GhostWalker program.
Until Rubin and Diego discovered the truth about Luther Gunthrie and the government experiments done on him, they’d believed Whitney had been the man who conceived the GhostWalker program and psychically enhanced the soldiers who tested high in psychic ability. He’d also genetically altered them without their permission, making the GhostWalkers enhanced physically as well as psychically. They’d signed on for the psychic enhancements because they believed they would be a help to their country and fellow soldiers. The genetic enhancements, however, they hadn’t known about and had never agreed to. Still, they were soldiers who had joined a top secret military program, and they did their jobs, no matter how dangerous it was or how many times they were betrayed by factions of the government.
Each branch of the service had one GhostWalker team, consisting of ten members. The first team experimented on had a few major problems. Some needed anchors to drain away the psychic energy that adhered to them like magnets. Others had brain bleeds. Every subsequent team had fewer and fewer flaws until Whitney had achieved his goal and created his prize group, the Pararescue Team. They might have what Whitney considered fewer flaws, but they also had more genetic enhancements than any of them cared for. Most of their talents were hidden from Whitney and never documented.
Diego might have been ten months younger than Rubin, but they may as well have been twins. Each gift that should have been unique to one was shared. It was just that Diego never allowed anyone to see him use some of the stronger and more valued talents his brother was known for. Once those gifts had been enhanced by Whitney, both men’s abilities had continued to grow in strength, though Diego and even Rubin had kept the full extent of their power increase a closely guarded secret. As for hiding most of his psychic talents entirely, well, Diego had his reasons, and he would take those to his grave.
Diego turned away from the stream to take a shortcut through the denser forest. The trees were tall, and the canopy overhead cut out a great deal of light. This grove of trees was at the very bottom of the mountain as it began its climb upward. Although a long hike from their homestead, Diego had favored practicing calling birds and wildlife to him in the heart of that dense forest. He was protected there, and the animals were diverse. His mother’s friends or the other children couldn’t spy on him and tattle to her. She might think she knew what he was doing, and she often punished him for disappearing all day and sometimes overnight, but he felt the punishments were worth what he was gaining.
That proved to be true when Rubin came looking for him once in an effort to keep him from getting whipped with a switch. Their mother had been ranting and raving. Rubin wanted Diego to hunt food and bring it back so their mother would think that was what he’d been doing each time he disappeared. Diego no longer cared if he was beaten. His mother refused to love or want him no matter what he’d done to try to earn her affection, and he had given up. He went his own way unless Rubin asked him to do something. And he protected Rubin. Was his shadow, whether his brother wanted it or not.
His first huge success at commanding animals had taken place right there in that very section of the forest. Not only his first success, but the worst lesson possible in responsibility and the consequences of meddling with nature.
The memory washed over him, and for the first time he felt weak, so much so he had to stop and crouch down in the brush, breathing deeply, reliving that moment when he’d nearly lost his brother. When he’d been utterly responsible for the demise of a pack, animals that he loved.