Live Free or Die Complete Series Boxed Set: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series Hayley Lawson (ebook reader play store .TXT) 📖

“Leandro… Son, what’s going on?” Massimo asked.

Leandro frowned and looked away. “Nothing.”

Massimo grabbed his son’s shoulder and turned him toward him. “Don’t lie to me.”

Leandro sighed. “I’m not,” he told him.

Massimo knew his son was lying. “Leandro Wilfred Osbottom, don’t lie to me!”

“Pops,” Leandro said through gritted teeth, “Carter will hear. Fluffy is bad enough, he doesn’t need more ammunition.”

“So what if Carter hears? What’s wrong with your name?”

Leandro sighed. “Nothing, Pops.”

“Good,” Massimo said. The two of them butting heads was not how Massimo had planned this father/son chat. He needed to turn it around quickly.

“She’s pretty.”

Leandro looked over Massimo’s shoulder at Ryder, who was chatting with Carter, and sighed again. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to ask her out? I know you’ve not had much experience with the ladies. Your old Pops could help you out.”

Leandro shook his head. “Pops, really? I don’t want to have this conversation with you.”

Damn, this boy is stubborn. I don’t know who he gets it from. Massimo smiled.

Massimo pushed. “So, if I can’t talk about your name or about girls, then how about you tell me why you won’t turn into a wolf?” When Leandro’s shoulders tensed, Massimo knew he’d worked out what the actual problem was.

“Pops, can we please drop it?” Leandro sighed. “It’s not really the time for this conversation.”

Massimo pushed his head forward like he was trying to nudge Leandro to talk. “My dear boy, there may never be a right time.”

Leandro was quiet for a long time.

Massimo resisted the urge to break the silence.

Finally, Leandro spoke. “Pops, something’s happening to me. At first, it was just little things…my fur would take longer to disappear, then my fangs. But then, the other day, I tried to change…and nothing happened.” He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Pops. I’m scared that one day I won’t be able to change back.”

Massimo hid the stab of pain the thought of losing his son sent through him and focused on being the father Leandro needed right now. “Would that be a bad thing?” he asked. “You know you love being a wolf. You’re so alive when you come back from a run. You know how moody you get on the days you don’t go for a run.”

Leandro nodded. “I do love to run. The feeling is like nothing else,” he admitted. He became somber again. “But if I was a wolf all the time, I couldn’t talk to you, and you’d be on your own.”

Massimo shook his head at Leandro. “My dear son, don’t you think we’ve spent enough time talking and pottering around our home? I fixed up Pinewood for something to do, and I enjoyed it. But in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve learned a lesson no book could have taught me. It’s time to live—to get out of our comfort zone and have an adventure. Soon you’ll be a stuffy old man like me, and then we’ll be two grumpy old codgers on the porch.” Massimo believed everything he said, but he was still sad, even though he hid it. He’d hoped the two would grow old together, but that had been selfish of him.

Leandro smiled at his dad and placed his arm around him. “‘Two grumpy old men on the porch.’ I don’t like the sound of that. But you would miss talking to me, wouldn’t you?”

Massimo smiled. “Not really. Your voice is quite annoying,”

“Pops!”

Massimo placed his arm around Leandro’s waist, since his shoulders were too high. “Leandro, you’ll always be my son, wolf or man. I’m proud of you, and I’ll love you no matter what happens.”

Chapter Six

Knuckles’ eyes bulged as Afana closed in. His screams were lost, muffled by the gag and the opera music coming from the speakers.

Afana didn’t care. His only interest was discovering everything he could about the disease. He needed to know how the disease was transmitted and how quickly it would infect a host, what stages the host would go through, and finally how the host could be killed. He would infect these specimens since Ivan’s head wouldn’t be a viable source of samples for long, and they needed more blood to run tests in the hope of finding a cure.

Afana hoped that Ivan would be a one-off case, but he knew he wasn’t going to be that lucky. He also hadn’t taken any chances since the Ebola outbreak. It would be a nightmare to monitor the new people living in the bunker. The ones who had lived here the longest were easier to keep tabs on, since they had routines. They’d go to sleep and wake at the same time. Their friends and enemies were the same. When new people came into the bunker Afana had to learn their routines, and it always took a few weeks for his “cattle” to fall in line.

Robert came over to stand beside Afana. “Would you like to see their blood results?” he asked.

Advisor Robert had worked for Afana for many years, and most of the time he knew what would interest Afana. Robert was one of the few people who got to see the other side of Afana—the scientific side. Afana was a genius with anger issues, which was a deadly combination—especially for Knuckles and Tank.

Afana rubbed his hands together, eyeing the subjects with “Yes.”

“Neither man has the disease present in his blood,” Robert began. “This is one of the samples I took. If you look, you will see it’s clear before we add in the infected blood.” He pointed a camera onto the sample dish which projected onto the white screen.

“Now watch what happens when we add a drop of infected blood,” Robert told Afana, as he did just that. “The infected blood cells assimilate the surrounding blood cells then they duplicate. I can only surmise that they would repeat the process until they have assimilated every blood cell in a host body.”

“Now watch specimen two’s