DARC Ops: The Complete Series

by Jamie Garrett

  “So does that happen often?” she asked, moving out of his way. “The power going out?”

  “Oh. Not that I’m aware of. Although your little attack sure knocked our system out of whack. This place can withstand a nuclear detonation and its EMP blast, but not the wrath of Cscape.”

  “Sorry,” she said, laughing.

  “No, don’t be. It was exciting.” After fixing up her sleeping arrangements, he sat back in a chair with a sigh. “They flew me out from across the country, and I finally get down here and start working and right away I get my ass kicked.”

  She laughed again. She was so sexy when she laughed. The sound made him smile.

  “And that’s how I knew it was you,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, I had no idea it was you.”

  “That’s what happens when you drop out of contact.” He was only half-joking this time. “I mean, you don’t know if I’m suddenly an FBI agent, or an assassin, or. . . .” He trailed off after seeing a flash of discomfort cross Carly’s face. “What’s wrong?” he asked, this time definitely not joking. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, but her tone had changed, the laughter gone. “I’m okay. Why?”

  Even to Tansy’s defective ears, she did not sound okay. But why? It had been her choice to drop out of contact.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Of course.” She tried to smile, but it was forced. “What could you have meant?”

  Tansy looked around the room, hoping to come across something off-topic to talk about. When nothing jumped out at him, he simply slapped his thighs a few times and casually asked, “So is everything okay? Are you comfortable?

  “You already asked me that.”

  He couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tansy. “I need to address the elephant in the room right now, but I know you’re tired. I don’t want to stress you out or argue or anything.”

  Right on cue, there was a quick knock at the room’s door. Tansy didn’t have a chance to open it, or even call out a response before the door swung open and Jasper poked his head around the frame. A former Army Special Forces Medical Sergeant, he’d gotten Tansy through multiple high-risk DARC Ops missions with him and the rest of the team all still alive. If he couldn’t take Carly to a hospital right now . . . well, Tansy trusted Jasper with his life and by extension, now Carly’s, too.

  “So,” Jasper said with a singsong casualness. “Head trauma. Blunt force.”

  “Yep,” Carly sighed like it was just another medical checkup.

  “Vision problems?”

  “Yep.”

  Tansy sat back in his chair, biting his lip. It was bad timing, Jasper and Tansy’s question. The poor girl hadn’t had a chance to decompress from almost being killed. She needed medical attention, and perhaps psychological therapy, not some stupid question about unimportant events that happened years ago.

  “Carly? After you were hit, did you lose concessions?”

  “No.”

  Jasper glanced over at Tansy, who shook his head in response. Jasper nodded sharply at him before returning his attentions to Carly.

  “Okay, good. And what state are you in?”

  “You mean, geographically?”

  Jasper chuckled. “Yes, like on a map.”

  “Nevada.”

  Jasper then asked her to count backward from ten. She had no problems doing so.

  “Can you see me at all?” he asked, standing directly in front of her.

  “No.”

  He fished a little penlight from his pocket and shone it into each of her eyes, asking, “Can you see that?”

  “The light? Yes.”

  “That’s good,” he said, clicking off the light. “Well, there’s definitely some bleeding.”

  “Whenever I see anything, a bright light, it’s always sort of reddish.”

  “Exactly,” Jasper said while he looked at something on his phone. “Ideally, we’d get you in for a CT scan. Check out that brain of yours. That would be ideal. But, apparently the current situation dictates that you’re only safe in a bomb shelter.”

  “Are there some tests you can do here?” Tansy asked.

  “Yeah, if getting her to a scan is impossible, but I’d like to if I can.” Jasper turned back to Carly. “I’m wondering if we can get you in at Elko, at the university hospital. I know a friend there. Maybe sneak you in later this week. It wouldn’t be on the records or anything. You can tag along, Tansy. Actually, you’ll have to tag along. You’ll be her seeing-eye dog for awhile.”

  “How long?” Carly asked. Jasper’s presence seemed to be making her nervous.

  “Hard to say. Your vision could return tomorrow, or next week. There’s also a small chance that it may never return. That’s what the scan could tell us.”

  Carly’s face dropped, any hint of cheerfulness gone.

  “What can you tell us?” he pressed Jasper.

  “She needs the swelling along the optic nerve to come down. We’ll get her on some ibuprofen for that. Maybe some corticosteroids. The main thing is, that as long there’s no brain damage, she’ll be fine.”

  “Can I sleep?” Carly asked.

  “You can sleep.”

  “Thank God,” she said.

  “Yep,” said Jasper, patting her shoulder. “Go ahead and get some rest. One of us will check on you a couple of times through the night.”

  “She’s a tough cookie,” Tansy said.

  “That she is. Real tough.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” she said, stretching out across the bed. “But this tough cookie needs some sleep.”

  “Let me see what I can do about those pills,” said Jasper, already on his way out the door. “They’re pretty standard. I should have them in my kit.”

  “Thank you,” Carly said, her face half hidden by the pillow.

  “You’re not hungry or anything?” Tansy stood from his chair. “You’re all good?”

  “Yeah. I just need some sleep. Thank you.”

  Tansy looked at her one last time after saying goodnight, watching as she slipped under a blanket and rolled to the side, her knees tucked up to her chest. He switched off the light. She didn’t say anything. He turned and shut the door.

  17

  Tansy

  It felt like hours, lying awake in the room next to Carly’s. The cot was stiff and uncomfortable. The room was too quiet, too dark. The air, stuffy. His mind was racing with thoughts. He kept replaying the rescue, the split-second decision to end another man’s life. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a life—not by a long shot—but that didn’t mean it got any easier. The decision was helped along by the gun pointing at him.

  It usually came back to disturb him in some way. Not the fact that he’d just ended someone’s life, but that he felt nothing about it. A sad testament to how jaded a soldier can become. What was all the fuss about robots killing robots? But this time, killing this man, an American, an assassin. . . .Tansy was almost glad he’d felt nothing. It wasn’t just a necessary act of war. It was personal. And it wasn’t out of self-preservation so much as it was out of the preservation of Carly. If something had happened to her. . . .

  He slammed his eyes shut, squeezing them tightly to dispel the thought. Was she having trouble sleeping, lying just feet away? After all these years, he may as well be a stranger, and this was a strange place. Was she lying in bed awake, also replaying the events of the night over and over in her mind? Unlike him, Carly wasn’t a jaded soldier. She didn’t have years of combat experience to fortify her against the traumatic horrors of the battlefield, or of some lonely mountain ridge in Nevada.

  He had to remind himself that she had grown up in the last ten years. Not that he forgot the minute he laid eyes on her, but in his mind, she was still an innocent college girl. A hacker nerd from Colorado. That was the person he’d last known, before the excommunication. How had she changed over the last decade, and what the hell had happened to bring
her to where he’d found her tonight? He’d thought of her often through the years of silence. Where was she? Did she have a family? Was she loved?

  Tansy groaned out loud and rolled over to grab his phone from the small table next to the bed. 4:12 a.m. Fuck. Maybe he could be more useful in the operations level, helping the hack team on whatever task they were currently occupied with. So far, he’d been relatively useless to Jackson’s team. Sure, he helped fuck up their systems by stepping into Carly’s trap. And then he’d run off for the night to see a punk show in Wells. Maybe now it was time to actually get down to business.

  Getting dressed in the dark, Tansy heard a muffled voice through the wall. It was coming from Carly’s room, a soft murmuring. He moved quickly into the hall and listened again. The sound was louder, and definitely Carly—and she sounded distressed.

  He pushed her door open and switched on the light, rushing forward at the sight that greeted him.

  Shit!

  Carly was lying in a clump on the ground. She was crying and she had no reaction to Tansy entering or turning on the light. She just lay there, a look of anguish on her face and tears tracking down her cheeks. Even after he called her name, she did nothing.

  Tansy approached her carefully, slowly placing one hand on her shoulder. No reaction. She was babbling now, her voice filling the room with the babbling incoherent flow of sleeptalk. Tansy shook her gently, rocking her body back and forth until she suddenly flinched away from him. She batted his arm away and recoiled in fear, sliding on the floor toward her bed.

  “Carly? It’s me.” The last time he’d said those words to her, he’d been half sliding down a mountain slope, her lying on the ground in a crumpled, crying mess. The words had the same effect this time. Absolutely none. Carly buried her head in her arms, still hiding herself away.

  “Are you awake?” He hoped all this was just a bad dream. Sleepwalking, sleepcrying.

  “Where am I?” she mumbled. She bit at her bottom lip, her voice quiet.

  “You’re in . . . The Silo.”

  She reached out a hand, feeling along the floor for the bed. Wrapping her hand around one of its legs, then holding on to the mattress, she propped herself up and climbed on top of it with a quiet groan. In bed, her eyes darted around the room, almost as if she was taking inventory. She blinked hard and then shook her head, brushing a stray piece of hair from her eyes again. Could she see? “Sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

  Tansy cleared his throat. “Were you sleepwalking?”

  “Yeah, I must have been. I don’t know.” She sounded far away. Confused. Small. “I woke up on the ground and it was dark, and. . . .”

  “You didn’t know where you were.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s totally okay,” he said. “It’s not every day you get whisked off to a missile silo at one in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, running a hand through her hair. “I still can’t see.”

  Tansy walked up to her bed and asked if he could sit. She nodded solemnly. The mattress sagged slightly under his weight, pushing their bodies together until the outsides of their thighs touched. He started to move, but she didn’t seem to mind. There was none of the flinches and recoils from before. Instead, his presence—his body so close to hers—seemed to have a calming effect on Carly. After stretching her arms and sighing, she leaned her shoulder against Tansy’s, followed quickly by slumping to rest her head there instead. She felt soft and warm, and oh-so-good up against his body. Should he wrap an arm around her, would she be okay with that? He took in a breath and then just did it, silently holding her close in the little bomb-shelter sleeping quarters. No recoil. Just Carly leaning her head softly on his shoulder.

  “Did I wake you up?” she asked. “Was I being loud?”

  “No. I woke myself up. Tossing and turning. I keep . . . worrying about stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . you, I guess.”

  “Well, don’t.” She lifted her head off his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “It’s not just worry. It’s . . . I guess I . . . I feel bad for you.”

  “Oh, God. . . . That’s even worse.”

  He better shut up while she was still sitting next to him willingly. It was clear that she didn’t want any sympathy. “You’re right. You don’t need any pity. You’re too strong for that.”

  “There you go,” she chuckled. “I’ll take flattery before I take pity.”

  He smiled. “Then let me just mention how, um. . . .”

  “Uh-oh,” she said, wincing in anticipation.

  “How pretty you look when you’re sleepcrying.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she teased, lying down away from Tansy.

  “You really are beautiful, though, even more than I imagined.”

  “You imagined?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you still trying to compliment me? Sounds like you thought I was some—”

  “No, no,” he interrupted, chuckling again. He hadn’t laughed this much in months. Carly brought out the best in him. “I mean, well, you know how the public thinks most hackers look. Then again, you’re not most hackers.”

  “What is it that differentiates me? Boobs?”

  Tansy laughed again and stood from the bed. “That’s one.” He walked over to the doorway and flicked off the lights. “Can you see that?”

  “I can tell you turned off the lights. Is that what you’re asking?”

  He started toward the bed. “Yeah. They’re really harsh. Way too bright for four in the morning.” He’d come to detest fluorescents, especially those of bomb shelters and army barracks.

  “I feel like my eyes are getting a little better,” she said, her tone hopeful. “I can almost make out shapes.”

  Finally, some good news.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.” He sat back down on the bed. No way was he telling her how worried—no how scared shitless—he’d been that her sight had been damaged for good.

  “I could sort of see you walking toward the doorway.”

  “Do you remember what I looked like at the bar?”

  “Yeah. Creepy.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “You don’t stare at every woman like that, right?”

  “No,” said Tansy, leaning back against the wall. “Just anarcho-feminist punk singers.”

  Her lips twisted into a grin. “And how many of those have you stared at?”

  “Not many.”

  Carly laughed softly.

  “What?” asked Tansy.

  “You know, this kinda reminds me of something.”

  “Me too,” said Tansy.

  “You first,” she said.

  “Our late-night chats.”

  “Exactly. Bringing the phone into bed, staying up to some ungodly hour.”

  Tansy smiled, remembering it fondly, the long pointless conversations that for some reason were always difficult to end. The comfortable silences. Her breathing softly down the line when she finally nodded off mid sentence. “Yep,” he said. “Gossiping like a couple of girls.”

  “I remember listening to you fall asleep a few times. Remember that? Waking up to me pressing the buttons?”

  He chuckled at the memory. “I never thought we’d be doing it again.”

  “Yeah,” she said, falling quiet again.

  He hadn’t meant to bring it back. The radio silence. “But here we are. In bed again.” He waited for her to say something, but she stayed silent. “Does it feel weird?”

  He was expecting her to say yes. He was preparing for it. And for what he would say after. . . .

  “No,” she said. “How about you?”

  “No.” Tansy was relieved to hear not only her answer, but the sincerity behind it. “Not at all.” The mattress dipped and rocked slightly as Carly moved into a more comfortable position on her side. She sighed deeply. Satisfied. Tansy was glad to hear it, though he feared it also
meant she’d want him out of the room. “Are you tired?” he asked.

  “Yeah. A little.”

  Maybe she was sick of his company, just wanted to go to sleep? Had he been taking her on a trip down memory lane she’d rather avoid, forcing vague memories, nostalgia she might want no part of?

  “But . . .” she said into her pillow, “you don’t have to go.”

  He didn’t want to go.

  “Aren’t you tired, too?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, gently patting the mattress with his hand, finding an empty space between Carly’s back and the wall. In the darkness, he could hear her moving again, shuffling over to make room. He was a big guy, and well, the beds in The Silo weren’t exactly built for two. Without saying anything more, he moved his body to fill the remaining space, lying on his side behind her. He folded his right arm under his head next to her pillow. His other arm was at his side, lying still. He didn’t dare reach out, touch her, drape his arm over her hip or along her thigh. Even though it felt like the most natural thing in the world to do, second only to breathing. Wrapping his arm over her body. Holding her in. Feeling her.

  There was another urge. Something deeper and more primal. A want from deep inside him, a need to press his hips against hers, to spoon her tightly. And to fall asleep like that. Maybe if he just closed his eyes. . . .

  He woke up to her breath on his face. He was still in her bed, still next to her. The lights were still off, but even in the dark, he could sense her, lying only inches away from him.

  She was awake, too. Or was she?

  Her small hand moved slowly, stroking up his arm.

  She must have been awake.

  Her face got closer, her breath hot on his cheek, and then her lips. Kissing him.

  It was short, polite, perhaps the most G-rated kiss he’d ever had. But at the same time, it was the most exciting.

  Her lips on his.

  Tansy wanted more, but then her head backed away. Her hand left his arm. The room was quiet. Dark.

  Damn. Was he awake?

  18