Love Me Or Let Me Go

by Kelly Lucille

  She did not say that to Mac. Not when it could be his paranoia affecting her thoughts. Not when he needed all the concentration he could get to find his father and deal with the threat he was facing. But she could not stop herself from looking around constantly, seeking some feeling in the emotions around her that would warn her she was right to worry. So far, all she had was a headache for her efforts.

  Are you still feeling your father?

  Yes, I know he is alive and here somewhere, but I expected we would face some kind of trap long before now.

  Keep looking and be careful. We know he wants you there. So maybe he is waiting for you to find your father before whatever trap he has is sprung.

  Maybe, but this place is a maze. And from what I have felt of his mind, I would not have expected him to have the patience for this long of a cat and mouse game.

  The lights went out in the lab. Miranda suddenly sat in total darkness. There was just enough time for some murmuring and a few yipped screams before the emergency lights flashed on and they could see in the red glare of the few exit signs.

  What is it? Mac asked reading her sudden shift of focus.

  "Alright,” Nevada’s stern voice called out before she could respond. "You all know the drill in case of a black out. Put away anything hazardous and step away from your work. We take the stairs and meet on the front lawn. Do not stop to grab your personal items or anything else. Everything stays put except for us."

  Everyone started murmuring and moving towards the stairs as Nevada looked around the lab until he found her. Mira stood slowly watching as people headed for the hallway. Something about it felt so wrong, she wondered that her skin was not twitching from the sensation. She did not want to go into the stairway, but she did not think staying alone in the lab was the answer either. She met Nevada’s narrowed eyes. His attention said plainly he would carry her down the stairs if he had to. She cursed quietly, trying to remember the protocols that they had discussed with her the first day of her new hire briefing.

  Mira stood and started moving toward the stairs. It was too much of a coincidence that they would have a power outage today, of all days. She passed Nevada with a nod while he went back into the lab to check for more stragglers.

  Mac, she finally said into her mind, looking around the stair well warily, and keeping to the back of the departing lab techs. I think you were right. I think I am the target.

  She felt his attention swing fully to their connection, as he said not a word, but read, not only what was happening, but her unease about the situation.

  His loud curses were not helping her headache, but she could feel him changing direction even as she knew he was too far away to be of any help to her.

  Your father, she started. He spoke in her mind, stopping her arguments.

  Franks will find my father. I'm coming for you. He wants to know if you can get to the panic room.

  She blew out a breath and looked around her for the floor number on the wall as they went down the stairs. There were three rooms that she was aware of. One by the lab, One nearer to the personal quarters, and one close to the security room on the second floor. I can try. But what about everyone else heading outside? I might be safer with the rest of them. And I don’t think Nevada will let me go off on my own.

  Fuck Nevada. This bastard wants you outside, he has a plan. Get to the panic room. Not even my father could get in there once it closes. And if he cut the power, chances are it is someone who as access to the security room. He did not have to tell her she should trust no one.

  Mira stopped and let the crowd go as she looked from the down stairs to the up. Logically I would either stay with everyone else or head for the panic room closest to the lab, or in the direction we are all headed and the one near security. she mused out loud. Do the security cameras work if the power is down?

  Silence, and then. No.

  She turned and as quiet as she could be she headed back up the stairs, slipping into the floor above the lab as quickly and as quietly as she could, she waited for the sounds of the lab opening below her and then peaked out to see Nevada making his way hurriedly down after the departing scientists. She breathed a sigh of relief when the stairs were finally silent. I'm going for the panic room on the top floor.

  ***

  Mac cursed a blue streak as he ran. But he did not argue. It was the last thing she should do in this situation. Here's to hoping whoever was after her did not consider it. While he drove, he went through everyone he knew who had access and had shown his wife or himself any undue attention. Only one man came to mind.

  It took Mac nearly twenty minutes to get back across town to the lab. He had not waited for Franks to send back-up with him, he had left his father in the old major and his commando’s hands and he had gone after Mira. Twenty minutes disregarding every traffic law in existence. And still, if he had not been in her mind as she made her cautious way to the last place anyone would expect her, he would have lost his mind within the first five minutes.

  He bypassed the front parking lot where all the white lab coats were milling about and came to a screeching halt so close to the back stairs he had to jump over the hood of his car to get up them. All the while he kept a tight grip on Mira with his mind. At the same time he continued to go through all the possibilities of who it could be that was even now stalking her. He did not need to feel Miranda's emotions to know she felt it as much as he did.

  I'm coming, he growled into her mind as he slammed through the first layers of security on the doors and headed for the emergency stairs.

  Be careful. Even her thoughts were a whisper at this point. The power just came back on.

  I see it. Which meant either someone else had finally realized the problem and switched it back on, or the hunter could not find her and was now using the cameras to look. Where are you?

  I'm almost to the panic room. I'm just worried about stepping out into the hallway when the cameras are back on. If he is with security can he get into the room if he knows I am there?

  No. I could do it, but it would take me awhile. The room is set up to close and not open again once the lock is engaged. Even security can’t be used to get it open.

  I'm going to run for it, she said finally, and then he felt her tension rise. The elevator is moving.

  Run, now! He barked out the order and felt her lunge down the hall. Felt her adrenaline spike as she slammed into the door, and finally got it open. Felt the rush of her surprise and then he felt...nothing.

  Miranda?! Answer me right now.

  But nothing answered, as he took the stairs as fast as he could to get to her. And hoped like hell whatever had happened to her she was only unconscious and not dead.

  He made the top floor and rushed through looking for what he needed to find. His wife still alive but unable to answer him. What he found was an empty hall. Mac closed his eyes and felt for his true north. Even unconscious he could find her. If it was more than that... he refused to even contemplate that. A moment later he found the small spark that was Miranda. And nearly lost his knees with the relief of it. Until he realized that she was in the panic room, and if she was in there unconscious then she was probably not alone. As soon as the thought occurred every electronic circuit in the place blew under a tidal wave of his rage.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Miranda woke up slowly, a nagging ringing in her head. Something had struck her mind, not her head she slowly came to realize, but her mind. She had nearly reached the panic room. With that slowly formed thought she came to another realization, wherever she was now, she was laying prone on the floor, and she was not alone. Since all her normal senses seemed to be dulled in some way by the massive migraine trying to crush her skull, she could not even say how she knew there was a he, and he was watching her. She just knew she did not want to open her eyes.

  Stop being a coward Miranda, she chided herself. That was when she realized she couldn't open her eyes. Even when she tried.

  "How is it,"
a voice said almost musingly. And something nagged her about that voice. It felt like it was coming from far away, as if through a tunnel, but it was familiar all the same. "I can feel your awareness, even though there is no way you can wake up with the drugs I administered pumping through your system. You would make a truly intriguing test subject Doctor Weer."

  Miranda got the distant impression that he was touching her, but she could not feel it, and that, more than anything, scared her nearly into a panic.

  "Such soft lovely hair," he murmured. "I have to say Doctor Weer, I have wondered from the first time I saw you, if your skin is really as touchable as it seems. Very happy to see you live up to the visual. I wonder..." Then he sighed when a loud thump and crash seemed to shake the room. "No, I suppose your husband will not give us time to play. A pity. My plan was to take you from the chaos of the parking lot, and he should have never left the search for his father to others. I really hate unpredictable people, and I have to say your husband never does what I expect him to do. I thought you, at least would be sensible."

  The thumping and shaking continued while he talked, and Miranda let him drone on as she struggled to shift the fog of her mind into some semblance of order. If she was awake enough to understand what was happening, and could hear, why could she not feel as well? Then she realized she was not hearing his monologue with her ears, but with her senses, and that crashing and shaking was not a physical sensation, but a mental barrage. Someone was trying to get through the walls the drugs had erected in her mind. The question was, this creepy not stranger, or Mac?

  If the banging was in her mind, how was the creepy not stranger reacting to it?

  "He is persistent," he muttered when another crash and shake nearly split her head open. "But while I may not have his or his father’s gifts, I am an expert in pharmaceuticals. You will not be waking up until I want you to."

  He sounded all kinds of smug, or felt all kinds of smug? She wondered, and then had to wonder again at her own distraction. Who cared at the moment how she was aware of what was happening?

  Stop thinking about it and use it, she berated herself. That nagging feeling that she would recognize who this man was if only she could think pulled at her, one more useless distraction among many.

  Miranda felt another bang and crash, then the shaking that made her feel like her head was under mortar attack. She needed to lower her walls, she decided completely illogically. She knew that whatever was pounding against them was going to break through eventually, but there was a worry that if she lowered her shields her mind would take the full brunt of that pounding when whoever it was tried again. Her problem was that she did not see where she had much of a choice but to chance it. She could feel time running out as if the sand in her head was sifting away and she kept questioning what she knew and how she knew it, making her choices even more precarious.

  A hazy wave of cold settled over her senses and even the difficult thinking process she was experiencing slowed to a trickle. Resolutely she pushed that cold peace away. Right now the last thing she needed was to succumb completely to whatever drug the not stranger had pushed into her system. Mira had a bad feeling that if she did not do something soon, the next wave of that cold would take her under, and then she really would be helpless in the hands of a man who liked the feel of her hair and dreamed of slitting her throat.

  She focused, as much as she could and forced her shields, not to strengthen, but to give way. It was the hardest thing she had ever done.

  The next bombardment came nearly on the heels of her work, and like she had feared, her mind took the full brunt of it.

  Nearly as soon as the attack started, it was over.

  Miranda?!

  Mac. She nearly passed out at the cessation of pain, and the relief that she was no longer alone in the strange darkness that surrounded her. That cold returned, but before it could smother her will and send her under for the last time, Mac did something to it, so that it was pressed back and away from the heat of his presence. He drugged me...

  Who drugged you? He wrapped her close in the heat and protection of his mind and she nearly sighed at the relief of it. She could no longer hear that other voice in her head, but the pain was nearly manageable with Mac helping her.

  I know who it is, she tried to explain the unexplainable. But I don't know who it is. Before when you were pounding at my mind, I could hear him, and there was something familiar, but I can't figure out...

  With her thoughts and the effort behind them, instead of getting clearer, it was as if a veil was falling.

  It doesn't matter, Mac said quickly. I'm almost through the fire wall. I’ll get these doors open. I'm going to get you out of there. Whoever he is, he won’t have time to hurt you.

  His words were a promise and a threat. One was for her, and she understood the rage in his thoughts was for the other. I don't think this was the plan. He meant to take me in the parking lot, just like we thought. He planned on taking his time with me somewhere you could not find me.

  The rage flashing through her mind was nearly incandescent before he was able to dial it back enough to contain it. She winced but it made her very aware of just how much he was holding back from her. And this time she was grateful for his protection. She didn’t think she could take more than a flash of that overwhelming emotion in her current state.

  Then like a black oil another consciousness oozed into her mind, and she was forced to cling to her connection to Mac as that other tried to yank her away from him.

  “There you are.” That smug voice whispered, as if farther than he had been before. She could feel that oily substance coating her mind now that her shields were down, and she wondered if she would ever get clean again. But this time she felt more. It was as if she could feel the mind piggybacking on the back of that ick.

  Almost as soon as she became aware of it, that presence knew it, and was both shocked and curious enough at her knowledge to come further into the light. If she had been alone with the not stranger and the...creature that rode him, she would have already panicked, but she was not alone.

  She need not have worried. As soon as that alien thing got close enough to really see her, it was close enough for Mac to see it.

  The being sensed Mac and attempted to back away, but it was too late. That tsunami of rage crashed down on all of them. Mira felt the screech of pain from the alien mind, acting on some instinct she could not name she did something she had never before attempted. Like the way she was able to suppress some of the bad emotions and enhance the good, this time she used that same instinct to heighten all the emotions the creature was reacting so strongly to. And that inhuman being faltered under the wave of pure human emotion it had no defense against. A flash of something dark and malevolent came striking like a bullet toward her and even before it hit, she felt the wrongness of it. At the last second most of that foreign power was deflected away from her by Mac, but enough of it reached her that even in the warm protection of Macs presence she could not keep the cold from taking her. Finally and irrevocably, her mind followed where her body had long since gone and there was nothing but blackness

  ***

  Mac felt Mira fall and finally slammed his way past the firewall, and then he unlocked the panic room doors with the same lack of finesse he had used to punish the creature for thinking he could touch Miranda. He would think on what had happened in the darkness of his wife’s mind when he had the luxury of time. Right now, all that mattered was the creature was gone, hurt, and the man who had been piloted by him was alone with an unconscious Mira.

  He roared his rage at the sight of her so limp and turned his eyes to the man who had been trying to take her from him.

  I was really hoping it was Nevada, was his irreverent thought as he looked over the dead man. The frozen shock and agony on that slack face not nearly as obvious as the glassy eyed death staring at him from some strangers’ grey eyes. Dressed in the usual attire of a lab tech Mac had not noticed him enough in the
past to make note of his name, but the name on the lab coat said Dr. Hun. He might have seen him more than once in passing but had never actually met the man. Just a body the alien had used, abused and then discarded like so much trash. It was…anticlimactic.

  He gave him not a single further thought as he turned back to his unmoving wife. "Miranda?" he called out loud as well as into the black void of her mind. He fell to his knees beside her on the floor and lifted her unresponsive body into his lap. Her head lolled and the sight of her lying so lifeless in his arms was almost more than he could bear. "Wake up baby. I need to know you are alright."

  But try as he might to get her to wake up, if only just her subconscious mind, she did not respond. He pressed her hair back from her face and cuddled her closer, trying to think of something, anything he could do to wake her up. When nothing worked and he was out of ideas he rooted around for his phone and called Franks.

  The Major answered with a gruff. "I have your father. He's unconscious but he is alive. Looks like he was drugged up..."

  "You can tell me the rest later," Mac interrupted. "I need medical at the top floor panic room. Mira is hurt."

  Franks cursed, but quickly. “We're almost there, in the mean time I will send someone over to you as soon as you hang up."

  Without another word, that's exactly what Mac did. Focusing back on Miranda as if he could will her to open her eyes, or her mind which was a black hole to him now. He could tell himself all he wanted that it was because she had been dealt a blow and she had shut down completely to heal, but until he saw for himself that the last strike that alien bastard had sent at her had not permanently damaged her mind, he would not be easy.