by Jolie Mason
She nodded her head, her ponytail bobbing.
He smiled a lopsided smile. "Then, just kiss me and give it to me quick. We need to get this over with. I have plans."
Eisley laughed a watery laugh. "You idiot," she said, then leaned forward to kiss him. She did her best to make it good, distracting him with one sensual glide of lips after another. She closed her eyes, and popped him with the injector in his arm. She felt him tense with her lips against his, and she whimpered into his mouth.
It would burn all the way through his veins. She dropped the injector on the tray and ran her hands over his head on either side. "Focus on my voice. It's going to be over soon. Just listen to me."
His body began to buck and fight the restraints. His eyes went wild as the serum set him on fire from the inside, but it was the only thing designed to destroy the remaining nanites.
She was still talking to him as he fought the pain. Thompson held his legs down to keep him from accidentally kicking off the restraints and hitting her. He yelled with the torture of it, and Eisley cried through the whole thing. Until his body finally relaxed, probably not at the cessation of pain, but not having the strength to keep fighting against it. When he finally passed out, she sobbed in relief. She’d wanted to knock him out. He’d said no.
The two hardened soldiers behind her just stood there waiting for orders she didn't have the presence of mind to give. She turned her head to speak over a shoulder. "He'll need to stay here a few hours to be monitored. He won't struggle anymore. The worst is over."
"He gonna come out of it?"
She looked up at Thompson's solemn, nearly black eyes. "Yeah, he will."
"We all have these nano things?"
Eisley told him no. "Some of you do and some of you did. Unfortunately, for those of you with nanites not active, it means the changes to your DNA are likely permanent."
Thompson opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. "No, I don't wanna know just yet. After seeing that, I don't know what I'm hoping for."
She gave a weak nod and watched them leave. She ran a finger over Samuel's face and whispered, "I'm sorry."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Samuel rolled his head on his shoulder. Yep, he thought, that still works. Eisley slumped in the armchair head lolled on her hand and eyes closed. She looked exhausted. Her long hair was coming undone around her face, and he knew that was from her worrying at it as she pulled the tail tighter.
She had a soft, rounded face, and her baggy shirt concealed a body that was just as soft and generous in its curves. He groaned lowly. He usually went hard just remembering the feel of her ample breast in his mouth or the way she felt beneath him. This moment in time, though, he didn’t. He felt like he’d been flattened by artillery.
The funniest part of it all was that she wasn't his type. Samuel had always gone for the knowing blondes, jaded with years of experience. Even Kirsty had been a worldly wise politician in almost every way.
Eisley wasn't like that at all. She was springtime and home. He laughed at himself waxing poetical. Must be the pain in his bones. His teeth ached. He tested his body by moving some of it, and he groaned loudly. He hurt everywhere. He couldn't help the noise he made.
She woke and said for the second time, "You're awake."
Eisley stood and began to examine him. He answered her questions, noting the hard line of her lips, the rigid way she held herself. She reached for her extractor, and, as she reached for his arm to draw blood, he said, "Happy to see me?"
She lowered the extractor, releasing the needle trigger. "Of course, I am. I just want to run these tests as soon as possible."
Samuel said nothing else, but handed her his arm, letting his gaze walk over the line of her jaw, the red, puffy skin around her eyes. Eisley was retreating into her researcher mode, becoming the solver of puzzles to take her mind off how much she felt for him. He hurt too badly to smile, but, inside, he was smiling.
She drew his blood and hurried out to do her magic. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes.
Without knowing her for very long at all, he felt like he understood her far better than he should. Almost from that first day, there was something. A connection, a fascination, an obsession. He wasn't sure what the hell to call it, but he knew she was a dream he wanted for himself.
The day his whole world had gone up in flames and smoke, he'd given up those kinds of dreams. The dreams of a military career and, his father’s hopes he would one day choose a political career, were a million years in the past, and had nothing to do with this woman who loved with her whole heart and out thought every person he knew. She was so much more than those little dreams allowed for.
He heard her enter the room and gather up a monitor for his vitals. He heard her approached with his eyes closed, and he felt her soft hands start to open his shirt to place the simple electrodes that he didn't really need. He was sore but stable. He knew that.
He wrapped an arm around her, tugging her down onto his chest. He grimaced when it hurt. "Stop," he whispered. "Stop taking everything on yourself."
"Do you remember how bad it was?"
"Vaguely," he answered, squeezing her tighter. "If this worked, I'll also remember who saved my life today."
She buried her face in his chest. "Don't be nice to me. Please."
Samuel kissed her temple and shifted to pull her onto the gurney. "Too bad. Now, how long till we know if the nanites are gone?"
"Very soon." He barely heard her voice muffled in his shirt. When she pulled away, he watched her face, registered stark fear in her eyes. "It has to work, Samuel."
"It will work," he said to her.
"We can't do it again. If the serum didn't get them all, we could kill you trying again. We may have already damaged you too much. I’ll need to monitor your liver and kidney function for the next few weeks."
He said nothing, but they would try again. There was no way he would live this way, unable to trust himself. Never knowing what he could become. They stayed there in silence for long enough that he almost drifted off.
When she left to check on the tests with her new assistant, he waited with a slight knot in his stomach at the thought that it might be over or it might not.
He closed his eyes again, trying to resign himself to whatever happened.
"It worked," he heard her say from the doorway. Opening his eyes, he met her gaze across the room. "It worked." She repeated the words as if she needed convincing. He swung his tired, aching legs off the gurney to sit up.
"We'll have to test again in a few days, but your blood appears clear of living nanites."
He nodded. "I knew you'd do it. Come here."
She shook her head, looking away.
"Come here," he insisted.
She sidled closer. When she got close enough, he tugged her firmly between his legs. With no preliminaries, no provisos and no hesitation, he kissed her forehead and said, "I love you. I would have loved you, even if it hadn't worked."
She shook her head. "I used to be so proud of my work, Samuel. So proud. After that, how can you help but blame me? I don’t know if I can forgive myself."
He brushed back her escaping tendrils of hair. "Maybe because you did help people. Your research will one day be the cornerstone of all genetic repair research." He smiled at the wrinkle between her eyes as she scowled. "I did some research of my own."
"Some things should never be done." She wanted him to understand it. "I knew it could lead to this. But, I trusted Heinlein anyway."
"We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Some things are worth a risk. Now, am I going to start growling at people again?"
"No more than usual," she told him. "The genetic changes should stop where they are, but we may never reverse what's been done."
He held her closer. "That's okay. I don't care if I go back. Everything is ahead now. Plus, I can see you in the dark, and that’s a big plus."
"Have you always been this ridiculously romantic?" Eis
ley curled her nose up.
He chuckled. "Probably not. I find you inspire me."
Eisley pulled back. "This treatment won't work on all your men. Some are unquestionably altered. We'll have to manage the results, and hope for the best."
"Where do we start?"
He tracked her sad eyes to the doorway. "The cyborg?" Sam asked her.
"He's the most pressing. He's been modified beyond what the human brain can absorb. We need a specialist."
"Most women want jewelry."
"Well, I need a specialist in cybernetic robotics or nanotechnology or both."
Samuel smiled. "Then, you shall have them. Any particular specialist or will any old scientist do?"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Eisley watched her assistant fall apart stoically at a computer console, while the cyborg paced an energy sealed cell like a caged animal. The whole lab was a mess of negative emotion and heartbreak. She walked over to the younger woman.
"Olivia, why don't you take a little time? Let Thompson here take you for some fresh air. You're going crazy cooped up in here."
She ran a hand over her bobbed black hair. "I need to be here. It's better if I work the problem."
Eisley let her gaze slide over to the cyborg. "Sweet, I think you being here may be part of the problem right now."
Livvy and John laced gazes across the room. Tension lit up the room like a spotlight, until the cyborg, jaw locked in place and scowl growing darker, tossed his chair at the wall to splinter it into pieces.
Eisley cleared her throat. "I really think you both need a break from all this."
Livvy nodded assent, and slid off her stool. "Thompson, come on. I'm in the way here." She picked up a bag from the floor to throw it over her shoulder. "And holster that sidearm, soldier. Metalhead is trying to make a point. He's not getting out."
When she was gone, Eisley watched the man slowly slump onto his cot in sad defeat. He was the one of this group she feared she was least capable of helping. Eisley approached the cell.
"She's not going to go away, you know," she said.
He ran his head back and forth against the wall. "I know." He sounded so sad about it. Eisley thought she could feel her heart chip a little herself.
"I suppose you're dealing with a lot of guilt from the attack yesterday."
The look he cut her with big, soulful eyes was supposed to be sarcastic, but ended up on the lonely side of that spectrum. She continued, "I get that it could have gone very badly. You could have killed her."
"Gee, Doc. You are the queen of pep talks. Don't let anyone tell you different."
"I know. My people skills are sub par. It’s why I’m a researcher, but my point is this. The people who are really responsible are dead now or too far away to strike at. Anything you do now is theirs to pay for, not yours, and they will pay one day.
But, that girl out there, your Livvy... She's the kind of thing that doesn't happen to anyone very often. Maybe, you need to remember that punishing yourself is punishing her, too."
"I'm protecting her! She can't be anywhere near me." Rushing to his feet, he paced again once down the cell and then back again. He grew agitated enough to throw the cot this time. Screaming and cursing, and trying to hurt himself; He hammered at the cell's energy barrier wanting to just run, begging for her to kill him, until Eisley couldn’t take anymore.
Eisley triggered a sedation aerosol on the wall panel beside the door. She watched carefully for signs of physical distress as he slowly slumped to the floor unconscious.
Samuel and Tanner barreled through the lab at speed. She turned. "You were on the monitors?"
He shook his head. "Star commed me."
Samuel seemed rattled beyond words, his cheeks flushed with fear and the quick pace down the hall, but he showed no signs of losing control of himself and hadn’t for days now.
"I'm fine. John is not. We have to help him."
"We will," he assured her.
When the sedation had dissipated, they dropped the barrier, and Tanner and Samuel moved him to a cell with a fixed cot that wouldn't be so easy to destroy. She didn't want to fully restrain him. It would only make him lose his mind faster.
Samuel walked up beside her and pulled her to his side. "We'll solve this."
"What if we don't?"
He grabbed her chin and held it. "Then, we don't, but he'll know you never stopped trying. That counts, Eisley."
Eisley hooked the hand holding her chin with her right hand and softly smiled. It did count.
"In fact," he said. "We have a choice to make as a group. Star's working on ways to intercept comm chatter through the central network, and she thinks she's found a dark facility. We don't know what they do, and they might know who we are if we take it.
Tanner reentered the lab through the main doors. "Everyone's ready," he said.
Samuel grabbed her hand and laced their fingers. He pulled her with him to the briefing room where everyone was gathered very informally. Some even out of uniform for a change.
"Welcome, CD," he said loudly, taking his place at the podium. "Up till now, we've resisted our superiors orders passively, hitting targets earmarked for destruction already. Thanks to our brilliant and beautiful comms officer." Star made a show of a curtsy while the men hooted. "We have an opportunity.
If we are caught, we will be fugitives. We will be hunted, and it will be by people like us. If we are successful, we can gain resources, Intel and the value of a rescue of others like us is not to be understated. What say you, Chimera?"
The whole room raised up with a shout, "Hai,"
Tanner stepped forward at attention. "Sir, I accept this mission on behalf of Chimera Detachment. I think I speak for us all when I say we're ready to take the fight to the enemy."
"Very well. Star and Tanner, get what you can on our target, and bring me a plan that works. We'll brief in the morning."
Everyone slowly filed out of the briefing room until no one was left but Samuel and Eisley. She stood at the podium where he'd stood briefing his men, and said softly to the room. "I admire them all, you know."
He chuckled. "Even Star?"
She grinned. "Even Star."
Eisley felt him at her back, and she let herself lean into his chest, resting on him for a moment. "It feels so wrong when everything is in such a mess, but I am so relieved. Relieved that you're okay. That the worst is over."
"Don't get comfortable, Eisley." He exhaled softly against her ear. "This is all just beginning."
<<<<>>>>