“I can’t keep doing this.” She hadn’t struggled her way through med school to go down in history as another Mengele.
Tonight hadn’t even been her worst. She’d actually saved a life. That was what she told herself. But no matter how she painted it, the stark reality was, there was now one more soul resigned to the nightmare. Once the DOD finished extracting intel from him, he’d be transferred to the viral study, the real reason she was hired.
Stupid bastards! In forcing her to engineer a virus from the remains of the parasitic alien species, the government wasn’t just playing with fire, they were flirting with extinction on a cosmic scale.
There was a way out of this, though, one most people were too cowardly to take, so they kept on hurting others, claiming they were only following orders. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she glanced over at the supply cabinet that held enough drugs to end her miserable existence. All it would take was a single injection and she’d be one less tool they could use to commit their atrocities.
No! She clenched her fists, unwilling to give up and admit defeat quite yet. If she died they’d undoubtedly find the research she worked so hard to keep hidden. Just hang on.
“Still I rise…” Quietly she recited the poem written by her namesake and begged for strength.
2 In the Belly of the Beast
Vintor quo Fortis
His head was heavy. The thud of his heartbeat echoed in his ears, drowning out everything else. He shifted where he lay and acute pain ripped through his stomach. With it surfaced a hazy memory and the overriding need to get moving despite the pain. Vintor fought through the throbbing in his gut and the murkiness bogging down his mind, forcing himself to get up, only to discover his arms and legs refused to budge. His eyes struggled open. He blinked to clear the blurry image, but the sight didn’t improve. He didn’t recognize what he saw. A stark gray ceiling with a single artificial light was overhead. The pale stone walls were just as bland. The space was so small, if he extended his hands he could touch both surfaces. He tried to reach out to feel the walls then blinked in confusion when his hands didn’t move.
Not good. It wasn’t so much a conscious thought as it was instinct slapping at his lethargy.
Vintor tilted his head and focused on his right hand. Metal encircled his wrist leading to the bed.
Wake up! The insistent voice hammered at his mind. Fight!
He opened his eyes wider, attempting to heed the voice, shaking of the odd sensation trying to drag him back into oblivion.
You need to get free.
He tugged harder, the bed rattling violently, but couldn’t get free. It enraged him, and he struggled more, roaring out his frustration. His gaze swung toward the door he hadn’t noticed when it flew open. In stormed several short figures dressed in black.
Humans.
Humans were his friends, but these humans were a threat, that much he knew. They surrounded him, and he lashed out, bucking on the bed and gnashing his teeth. He fought as they strapped something over his chest, binding him tighter. He roared, and it echoed off the walls.
“Stop, please. You’re going to tear your sutures.”
Vintor stilled when he heard the gentle, concerned voice and stared at the dark-skinned human female pushing her way past the human warriors. Something about her scent and voice calmed him, pulling him out of the downward spiral of rage. He followed the little human as she approached the bed. Suddenly, she was jerked back by one of the males.
“He’s been trying to bite,” the male warned the female.
The way she grimaced and looked at the male’s hand, it was obvious the bastard was gripping her too tight. The rough gesture angered him.
“Release her.” Vintor stared the male in the eyes as he snarled the command. Still, the piece of shit refused to let her go. “Release her,” he repeated, trying not to slur his words.
“He hasn’t hurt me yet,” the female spoke sternly to the human warrior as she pulled free of his grasp.
“Not yet, but he’s been increasingly violent every time he rouses. Up the dose this time,” the human barked as the female neared the bed.
Vintor tried to process what the male was saying as he glared at the bastard. He didn’t like this human.
“I don’t hurt females,” Vintor attempted to assure the female, but his tongue felt heavy in his mouth.
“If I give him any more it could kill him.” The female stared at him, a crease furrowing her brow. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she leaned in.
Vintor barely felt the pinch in his arm. He blinked at the female as everything grew blurry again. She looked so sad, exotically beautiful, but sad. It pained him. He didn’t want her to be sad. As his lids grew heavy, an alarming thought struck.
“Danger,” he struggled to tell her. He couldn’t remember why, but she was in danger. They all were.
Maya
Maya shoved down her anger as she stalked out of Red’s cell.
“Maya, they’re insisting you up the dose and I agree.” Jim came chasing after her.
She spun around and scowled at the other physician.
“And I said no! We have no clue what that cocktail is doing to him. And since they assigned me as lead physician on this case, I’m declining the recommendation.”
It was a catch-22. Her superiors wanted her to keep the alien drugged and compliant till he healed, and they could conceive of a way to interrogate him. But if she killed him in the process, they would be equally pissed. Although fear of reprisal motivated her in the past, the threat was growing old and so was playing their mind games.
“So you’re willing to risk your life every time you walk in there to dose him again. He nearly broke the bed this time,” Jim practically yelled at her.
“What life?” Her shoulders slumped as her anger morphed into its counterpart, depression. “Look, Jim, I understand your concern. I realize he’s metabolizing the drugs faster than we expected. It was obvious when he came to the first time and managed to tear the IV out of his arm. But I took an oath to do no harm and I’ve trod all over that more than I care to admit.”
“I get it. We’re in the same boat. But if given the choice between accidently killing that creature or watching you get mauled, well, there’s really no choice.”
Maya closed her eyes. Jim might find the decision easy, but she didn’t.
Is my life really any more important than his?
She pictured the immense red-skinned alien shackled naked on the gurney. Red drew her in more than any of the subjects before him. Maybe it was because she was at the end of her rope or maybe it was something she saw in his dark eyes. His intelligent gaze followed her, even in his drugged stupor. She saw desperation there, but it wasn’t self-preservation, which shocked her. It also drove home the reminder that he wasn’t just some anonymous alien. He was a real person with emotions, a history, a name and a life. And that life mattered to her, perhaps more than her own.
“Thank you for your concern, Jim. Please, try not to worry. He hasn’t lashed out at me yet.” Maya smirked at Jim.
He could be incredibly callous with the way he treated their unfortunate patients, but he never failed to look out for his colleagues. She had no doubt there was a time when he was an awesome doctor. Too bad they’d been twisted into something else. Jim just shook his head in disappointment and walked away.
Maya headed to the small lounge, grabbed a cup of cold coffee, then pulled a cellophane-wrapped sandwich out of the fridge and groaned. She hadn’t had a decent meal in the last twenty-four hours and this certainly didn’t count. Hell, she hadn’t even been home. Her tenacious patient had seen to that.
Tenacious. That was one word for Red. The man was intense. He nearly broke the bed before she arrived. The way his corded arms flexed as he tugged at the manacles was quite a distracting memory. Maya shook her head and slammed the fridge. She shouldn’t be entertaining the thoughts running through her mind.
She’d just sat down and take
n a bite of her soggy ham and cheese when the door opened.
Ah, hell, what now? she groused when a soldier strolled in.
“Dr. Roberts, I’m here to escort you to the IT building.”
She’d never been summoned to the tech building, since she didn’t know the first thing about circuits and wiring. Where she was based out of the detention facility where they did biological research, the tech building was rumored to house the gadgets they gleaned from their extraterrestrial ‘guests and allies.’
“Why?”
Maya did a double-take, noting they hadn’t sent just any uniform, but General Offutt of all things. This had to be serious for them to send him as a frickin escort instead of just paging her.
Shit, they know what I’ve been doing. Suddenly, running wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Orders,” he replied.
“Well then, let’s go.” She pasted on a smile, trying not to look scared shitless.
The general gave her a curt nod and spun on his heels. Maya hauled her ass out of the chair and followed the general, dropping her sandwich in the garbage on the way out. She didn’t have the stomach for it before, she certainly didn’t now.
They exited the elevator and she stopped at the security checkpoint. General Offutt didn’t even have to flash his credentials, the uniforms at the main door just waved them on without even bothering to pat them down. She got into his SUV, closed her eyes and attempted to hold down the bile rising in her throat as they drove north toward Cape Canaveral.
Just relax and let the general lead the conversation. Except that was easier said than done when she felt like the noose was tightening around her neck.
Maya opened her eyes as they passed the rocket launch complexes and pulled into a nondescript garage.
“This way.” General Offutt opened her door and she got out.
They passed mostly IT personnel as they wound their way through the corridors. But the number of DOD guards increased as they found their way to the lower level. She stopped dead in her tracks when they entered a room that looked more like a surgical suite than a tech lab. Even the stoic general’s stride paused. Like everyone trapped in this circus, the dozen technicians surrounding the operating table did a good job keeping a straight face, but she could see the trepidation swimming in their eyes. She followed their gaze and was instantly riveted to the subject on the operating table. A section of his cranium was removed, his brain entirely exposed. There was so much dissected gray matter laying on the tray the man should be dead, yet he continued to murmur as the surgeon probed inside his skull.
Fuck! Maya gaped in horror.
“Neurosurgery isn’t my specialty,” she said past the lump in her throat.
The surgeon pulled the probe out of the man’s brain, turned and tugged down his mask. Her eyes widened seeing Dr. Emil Hayden, director of their program.
I should’ve known he was behind this.
While she sometimes questioned which way Jim’s moral compass swayed, with Emil she had no doubt he was a sociopath. The rumors the other doctors whispered painted a horrific picture. Emil Hayden was the thing that went bump in the night. He could keep someone alive infinitely though they might pray otherwise. When they whisper of government facilities that don’t exist, where enemies of the state aren’t being held, and abhorrent interrogations aren’t being committed, Emil’s the puppet master pulling those strings.
Rumors my ass! She stared at the ghastly sight of the vivisected man on the table. What the hell is going on here? This didn’t appear to have anything to do with her side project and the subject being mutilated was human not some alien. Though with Emil that line didn’t matter. It was probably the only thing they would ever agree on, treating people equally. Only she wasn’t so brutal.
“I’m well aware of your proficiencies, or the lack thereof, Dr. Roberts,” Emil replied in that stilted manner that creeped her out.
Maya didn’t bat an eye at the insult. If Emil wanted to think she was a fool—fine. And this wasn’t a man you crossed—you avoided him like the plague. Scratch that, she’d sooner walk naked with a thousand open wounds through a sea of plague rather than stand in the same room with the man.
“Come here,” Emil commanded, and General Offutt shoved her forward. “This is the Wernicke's area, responsible for language comprehension. And this is Broca’s area, responsible for speech.” He poked the temporal lobe and the doomed man muttered something incoherent.
“I am familiar with the basic structures of the brain.” Maya locked her knees as she stood by the gurney. She’d scrubbed in on brain surgery before but that had been with the intent to heal.
“Carl, ask our subject a question.”
“Yes, Dr. Hayden,” the tech said as he pulled down his mask. “Quand'è il tuo compleanno?”
“Febbraio secondo, diciannove e settantuno,” the patient answered.
“Okay,” Maya replied, confused by what she was supposed to glean from this macabre little demonstration.
Emil rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation. “The man didn’t speak or understand Italian before today.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened.
“You see this.” Emil pushed aside one of the many folds in the man’s brain and she saw a web of white silken tendrils spidering through the cortex.
Now she knew why Emil sent for her. But whatever this was didn’t look viral. If anything, it looked like mold.
“What is that?”
“This is what a language implant looks like in the human brain.” Emil was almost giddy, and that was truly fucking frightening.
“I see.” She attempted to smile. This might be fascinating if murdering a man wasn’t involved.
“This is a little gift courtesy of our new friend. He has proven very giving. Now we just need to learn why he’s here. And that brings me to why I called for you.” Emil nodded to the general.
General Offutt grabbed her arm, his fingers biting into her flesh, and led her past the operating table to a chair. Maya stared in trepidation at the restraints attached to the armrests.
Fuck! She knew the moment she was summoned this didn’t bode well. They think you fucked up one too many times and now you’re expendable.
There was no point struggling as the general shoved her into the chair and strapped her down, cinching a restraint across her forehead. She knew this day would come. Maya eyed Emil as he rolled his chair to her side. She took deep breaths to keep from screaming like a coward, but the voice in her head was deafening as he lifted a foreign wand.
“This apparatus is rather ingenious. From what we can tell, it injects the translator without the need for making an incision,” Emil explained. “Sadly, we’re not certain how long it will take to integrate with your synapsis since the fool over here accidently injected himself in the hand.” Emil pointed to the subject on the operating table. “I imagine it’s supposed to be placed a bit closer to its intended destination. He tried to hide what he’d done, but when someone falls ill after being exposed to alien technology, we perform an inquiry and review surveillance,” Emil scoffed. “But I can’t be too mad at the man. It was a happy accident really, otherwise we might not have known for a while what this was.”
Maya stared in trepidation at the wand as Emil brought it closer. She refused to look at the man with his head cracked open. There was no sense torturing herself with what was to become of her. Maya clenched her jaw and gripped the armrests as Emil tugged back her ear and pressed the wand to her skin. She braced herself but suddenly he lifted the wand. Her gaze flew to him.
“I nearly forgot. It’s best if I give you your instructions now since I doubt you’ll be in a position to listen after I inject you.”
“What?” Maya demanded, her patience at an end. Emil needed to stop drawing this out and just get on with it.
“It has come to my attention that our new guest calms when you’re near. If this implant works, you’ll regain your usefulness, since you certainly haven’t made
progress with what we hired you for. And if you do well, I just might make you a member of my personal team. To have not only surgical skills but the ability to translate any language will be quite valuable to your country.”
Maya nearly broke hearing what Dr. Hayden had planned. It was worse than being vivisected to see how the alien implant worked. It had been a living hell staying one step ahead of them with her research, attempting to remain relevant enough they didn’t deem her redundant. But she’d rather die than become Emil’s favorite new interrogator.
The cold metal met her skin again and without so much as a warning click, warmth spread across her skin followed by immense paralyzing pain. Her vision blurred as every muscle in her body seized. She would’ve screamed but it was frozen in her throat. Maya tried to concentrate on the murmurs of the doctors and technicians observing her to get her mind off the pain, but every rational thought was scrambled. This couldn’t be right. The alien implant had to be frying her brain. Death was welcome. At least it would end her pain and years of suffering.
Let it come. She closed her eyes and gave into the darkness.
-----
Maya startled awake and frantically looked around the lab.
Not dead. She wanted to weep in misery. Why didn’t you take me? Why? She prayed to a god who’d long grown deaf to her pleas.
“Shhh, Dr. Roberts. You are all right,” a young blonde in a lab coat crooned.
Maya realized her wrists were no longer tied down as she reached up and touched one of the sensors stuck to her forehead. She glanced at the EEG and was relieved to see everything was okay with her brain. She didn’t feel any different, which was shocking since her head had felt like it was going to split in two. Maybe her body rejected the alien technology.
“I guess it didn’t fry my brain after all,” Maya mumbled.
“No.” The tech smiled then her expression returned to its nervous state. “I have a few questions for you, but would you like a glass of water first?”
Warrior's Plight (Cadi Warriors Book 6) Page 2