Title: Legacy Strain
Series: Isolation, Book Three
Author: Taylor Brooke
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Release Date: October 15, 2018
Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex
Pairing: Male/Female, Male/Male, Female/Female
Length: 61100
Genre: Science Fiction, New adult, sci-fi, romance, menage, polyamory, captivity, super-soldiers, dystopia, PTSD, trauma, medical experimentation
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Synopsis
War is on the horizon.
After fleeing the white-walled labyrinth
where Brooklyn and her friends were caged, trained, tortured, and studied, the
group of renegade Omens prepare for the fight of their lives. But an unexpected
arrival from Kirin—the dangerous, secret project Juneau has kept locked away in
Isolation’s main facility—complicates things.
Despite the rumors surrounding Kirin’s
loyalties and capabilities, Brooklyn decides to make an alliance. Together they
form a plan to rescue their friends and take down Isolation once and for all.
Julian Matsumoto is strung between two
sides of his heart.
Desperate times call for desperate
measures, and freedom always has a cost. Julian doesn’t know if he has what it
takes to pay the price, especially if that price is Kirin’s life. But the
Legacy Strain is being weaponized and they don’t have time to waste.
This is their only chance to escape
Juneau Malloy for good, and Brooklyn Harper has been fighting for too long to
back down now. Armed with deadly skills and a hunger for vengeance, the Omen
Operatives set out on a risky mission to eradicate Isolation, contain the
volatile Legacy Strain, and earn the freedom they’ve been chasing since Camp
Eleven.
Excerpt
Legacy Strain
Taylor Brooke © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
They buried Plum in the garden.
Rain had softened the ground. Nicoli
threw seeds into the dirt with her and said a prayer. Brooklyn couldn’t
concentrate on anything. Not the shovel she held or the blood on her hands or
the pile of soldiers drenched in gasoline on the other side of the house.
Cambria had stopped crying a few minutes ago. They put a bundle of flowers on
the mossy mound that served as Plum’s grave. Nicoli didn’t ask for help burying
Michelle, but Brooklyn shoveled with him anyway.
Smoke rose from the pile of soldiers
they’d killed and Isolation had abandoned, scented like rubber and skin and
hair. They had no identification. No phones or pictures or wallets. One wore a
rosary, but that was all. Brooklyn and the others waited for a few hours, wondering
if the sirens wailing in the distance would grow closer. They didn’t. No
police. No other soldiers. No Surrogates. No one came.
Isolation had left them behind.
Brooklyn had no idea what the next move
would be—Isolation’s or her own.
“I’m sorry,” Nicoli said. He sprinkled
flower petals over Michelle’s grave. “You know that, right?”
Brooklyn didn’t say anything until he
looked at her. “Are you talking to your sister or me?”
“You.”
She listened for chatter. There was
none. She listened for doors slamming, plates shattering—for Dawson’s anger.
But it was quiet. “Was it true what Kirin said? She would’ve killed us?”
“She would’ve tried to.” He didn’t have
much left to lose, but his audacity still surprised her. “Michelle was as right
as she was wrong a lot of the time. She didn’t think any of you were capable of
having normal lives, doing normal things.”
“We did have normal lives,” she said,
tempering the heat in her voice. “We did do normal things.”
“Yeah, you did. Then they took you, and
they trained you, and now we’re burying my sister and my best friend, and we’re
burning bodies in the backyard.” His gray eyes fixed on her. “What’s next,
Brooklyn? How does this end?”
Would knowing make the situation easier?
Probably not. She didn’t know if they would make it out of this alive, if they
would get Porter back in one piece, if they would get him back at all. She
didn’t know if they had what it took to take down Isolation. She didn’t know if
Kirin was on their side or his own. Brooklyn didn’t know a damn thing.
“It ends when Juneau’s dead and we’re
free,” Brooklyn said. She didn’t know if that was the truth, but she thought it
had to be. “You should find somewhere safe for Cambria and Lance. They’ll keep
hunting us, and people will probably die. I’d rather it not be you.”
“That’s not an option,” Nicoli said.
“It is now.”
Brooklyn walked away before Nicoli could
argue with her. She couldn’t force him to go, but she wouldn’t be happy if he
stayed. They had targets on their backs. Blood on their hands. There was no
good way out of this, no peaceful resolution.
She found Dawson in the kitchen. He
leaned against the counter with a bottle of bourbon tipped against his lips.
“You won’t find him at the bottom of
that bottle, D,” she said.
His cobalt eyes met hers as he took
another swig. He sucked in a sharp breath after he swallowed. His voice was
liquor-rasped, low and scathing. “Won’t know ’til I get there, right?”
A heartbroken Dawson was the worst
Dawson.
Brooklyn rolled her eyes. She hung her
head back and stared at the ceiling. Blood speckled the walls. Remnants of the
smoke bombs still lingered. She smelled burning skin, sour bodies, and the hard
bite of the liquor on Dawson’s mouth.
Porter was gone.
Porter was gone.
Amber sat cross-legged on the couch beside
Cambria. Rayce was outside with Gabriel and Lance, making sure the gasoline and
the flames did their job. She had no idea where Julian had gone with Kirin—she
didn’t care. Dawson kept drinking. Brooklyn kept breathing. Everything around
her continued to fall apart, bit by bit.
She didn’t think they would ever be the
hunters. Despite how powerful they were—because of how powerful they were—they
would always be the hunted.
“Dawson,” Brooklyn said, barking his
name. He didn’t bother looking at her this time, just tipped the bottle against
his lips and walked away. His boots made hard sounds on the tile then the
stairs. A bedroom door slammed seconds later.
“You should let him be, Bambi.” Amber
sighed from the couch. Her leg was messed up, cut by debris and caked in dried
blood. Cambria tended to her with a wet washcloth and a thick bandage. “We all
know Dawson’s the cold and quiet type. Pushing him might not be the best idea
right now.”
“If he doesn’t keep it together, who
will?” The question was low under her breath. If Amber had heard her, she
pretended not to. Brooklyn appreciated that. “Rest for a while, okay? We’ll
figure out a plan tomorrow morning. We need to eat, sleep… Just… I don’t know,
we need to breathe for a minute.”
Cambria cleared her throat. “I don’t
know what we’ve got left in the pantry. The smoke probably contaminated the
fresh stuff. I think there’s bread in the fridge, maybe some fruit. We’ve got
canned veggies too.”
“Good,” Brooklyn said. “We’ll make do.”
She listened for sirens. For gunshots.
For helicopter wings.
The property was quiet and forgotten.
They’d buried their dead. Brooklyn glanced out of the shattered window over the
sink. Gabriel stood in the middle of the backyard, staring at the sky. They’d
come this far, and they now they had to go back. Brooklyn watched fractured
light bounce off Gabriel’s shoulders and nose and chin and saw the dark
remnants of blood on her knuckles.
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Meet the Author
Taylor Brooke (she/they) worked as a special effects makeup artist for many years before she wrote her first book. When she’s not writing, she’s exploring the Pacific Northwest, backpacking, or reading. She is the author of The Camellia Clock Cycle and writes #ownvoices Queer books about love, secrets and magic.Website | Twitter
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