When the Harvester took that next step into the room, Nicoli shoved the door as hard as he could into the man. The impact wasn't enough to knock him out, but it was enough to startle him, giving Nicoli the few seconds he needed to step out from behind the door and punch the man in the stomach.
Doubled-over with pain, the Harvester stumbled to the side and fell against the countertop where his hand fell across a slender pipe.
Damn it. Why hadn't he noticed a pipe when he was searching the room for weapons?
Nicoli suspected the answer had something to do with the naked woman in the room, but the Harvester gave him no time for further self-recrimination.
Swinging the pipe before him and moving surprisingly fast, the Harvester advanced, forcing Nicoli back with each step. On the third swipe, Nicoli didn’t move fast enough and the pipe smashed against his lower arm. Reacting to the pain, Nicoli bent over, pulling his injured arm close to his stomach. The Harvester, thinking Nicoli seriously injured, changed tactics. He raised the pipe to bring it crashing down on Nicoli’s head and that was his mistake.
While the man’s arms were raised, Nicoli punched him - as hard as he could - in the stomach. The sound of the Harvester's breath rushing out as he doubled over was almost as gratifying as watching the man drop the pipe. Nicoli didn't give him a chance to recover before moving in to grab the man's head and giving it a harsh twist.
There was a sickening snap and when Nicoli released the man, he fell limply to the floor where he remained motionless.
“Is he dead?” The woman’s quiet question echoed in the sudden silence of the room.
“I sure as hell hope so.” Then it occurred to Nicoli that she might be upset, so he forgot about the corpse at his feet and went to her.
It was a mistake. As soon as he stood before her, his mind remembered the feel of her pressed against him. His gaze wandered hungrily over her until he reached her eyes, opened wide like trapped prey beneath a predator's stare. His fault, he knew. He'd been out-of-body so long he could no longer control his baser reactions.
Nervously, it seemed, she wet her lips and it was his undoing. He couldn't pull his gaze from the rose-red invitation of those lips and felt as if he were falling. Before he knew what he intended to do, his hands came up to gently cup her face as he slowly lowered his head.
“Please,” she whispered.
Confused, he paused. Please continue or please stop?
Belatedly, he remembered how bruised she was and felt guilty. He was proving to be no better than the animals who had attacked her before.
Cursing, he stepped back, running his hand through his hair to keep from touching her again. “You're right. Bad idea. You should probably get dressed.”
“In what?”
He returned to the corpse and with efficient movements, removed the robe, revealing the body beneath.
The image was shocking.
The man’s face was horribly scarred and made up of a patchwork of skin grafts in various skin tones and textures. If all the robed Harvesters looked like this, it was little wonder why they covered themselves.
Trying to shake off the image, Nicoli stood and handed the woman the robe.
"You don't expect me to wear that, do you?” She looked horrified at the idea and he couldn't blame her.
“Well," he said thoughtfully. "There is another option. You could lay down on one of those gurneys and let me push you through the halls. No one would suspect a thing. It's the perfect cover for my mission - which, by the way, is extremely important.”
"You can't be serious!” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "What mission?"
"It's classified. I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you.” He winked at her and then couldn't believe he'd done it. When was the last time he'd teased a woman? This was certainly not the place or time.
"Screw you. I'll wear the robe.” She held out her hand to take it but the look on her face as she was about to lift the robe over her head was pathetic, making him wish he really could offer her another clothing option.
Suddenly he remembered the bundle of clothes stuffed into the pocket of his robe. "Wait a second.” Digging them out, he handed them to her. "See if these fit."
She glowered at him as she jerked them from his hands.
"Look, I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot I had them."
"Turn around."
It was his turn to stare at her in surprise. "Standing naked in front of me doesn't bother you but getting dressed does? Seriously?” Still she didn't move. “Fine, I’ll step into the outer room, but hurry.”
He left her to go check on the unconscious Harvester. The man hadn’t moved so Nicoli conducted a thorough search of the man's robe pockets, but came away with nothing.
“Is he dead?”
Nicoli hadn't heard her walk up. “No. Not yet.” He turned to look at her. She was wearing the robe and since he didn’t see her holding the clothes he’d offered her, he assumed she had those on beneath it.
“The clothes fit okay?” He tried to sound normal.
“Yes, thank you, um....”
"Nicoli,” he provided for her. “Nicoli Romanof. And you are...?"
She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Instead, a strange expression crossed her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, when it seemed she was on the verge of panic.
“I can’t remember my name!"
Chapter 9
Nicoli reached out, gently grasping her upper arms to give her a reassuring squeeze as frightened eyes stared up at him. This woman, who had awakened to find herself naked, surrounded by what would seem like hundreds of corpses and a strange man leaning over her, had not hesitated to smash him in the nose and fight for her life. Yet the challenge of memory loss seemed more than she could bear and Nicoli found himself feeling oddly protective of her.
“I’m sure it’s temporary. The effects of the collar, the whole experience. That kind of thing. Your memory will come back,” he assured her.
"Do you think so?"
"Of course," he answered with conviction, remembering his own initial experience upon first awakening, which had been unsettling, to say the least. "Until it does, though, you need a name.” He gave it only a moment’s consideration. “I’ll call you Kiera.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, looking distrustful.
“It means ‘heart of a warrior’,” he told her with a smile, rubbing his jaw where she’d hit him earlier. “It seems fitting under the circumstances.”
She offered a slight smile in return.
“Are you ready to get out of here, Kiera?"
After she nodded, he released her arms and walked back to the prone body of the Harvester. After a moment’s thought, he bent over and grabbed the man’s ankles.
“Wait here,” he ordered as he dragged the body into the back room. He knew he couldn’t leave the second man to report their presence, but he didn’t want to subject the woman to anymore ugliness than she’d already seen. With a small niggling doubt as to his own humanity, he dragged the Harvester to the far corner of the back room and broke his neck.
Then he dragged the first body over to join it. About to walk away, his gaze fell on their boots. He and the woman couldn't walk around barefooted without drawing attention, so helping himself to both pairs, he carried them into the front room and held out the smaller pair to the woman.
“Put these on.”
Though she wrinkled her nose in disgust, she took them and after the barest hint of hesitation, bent over to pull them on.
"They fit," she announced holding the hem of her robe up to show him.
Nicoli thought "fit" was being too generous. The boots swallowed her small feet. "Can you walk?” If they had to run for their lives, he wanted to know that she could do it.
As he watched, she took several shuffling steps. His expression must have projected his concern because when she came back to stand in front of him, she gracefully stepped to one side, rais
ing her knees high with each step, and just like that, she was out of the boots and barefoot again.
"Okay," he agreed. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does--"
"I'll lose the boots and run like hell," she finished for him. "Got it. What now?"
By now, Michels and Yanur must be wondering where he was. The sooner he completed his mission, the sooner they could all leave the planet. As he tried on the larger of the two pairs of boots, he briefly considered sending Kiera out on her own to find his ship, but discarded the idea as too risky. He would keep her with him and hope he could protect her.
"Let's go.” He crossed the room to the door and after listening for sounds coming from the hallway and hearing none, he opened the door a crack and peeked out. The hallway was empty.
"Where are we going?" Kiera had come to stand behind him.
"To find their main computer."
"Are you crazy? We'll get caught. We need to find a way out of this place."
Nicoli eased the door closed before the sound of their voices could attract attention. "We will leave," he assured her. "Right after we find the main computer."
She crossed her arms and shook her head. "No. I'm not going with you."
"Look, I don't have time to argue about this."
"Maybe I have my own mission to complete," she challenged. "Had you thought of that?"
“Right," he said with exaggerated patience. "Must have been a covert operation then. I especially like the part where you laid naked and unconscious? A real double-threat. Very impressive. I don't think the Harvesters realized what danger they were in.” He didn't bother to hide his sarcasm. “You want to be someone's sex slave?” He let his hungry gaze travel over her. “I’m sure we can work out an arrangement to our mutual satisfaction. Until then," he grabbed her arm, jerking her close and speaking through gritted teeth, "you stay with me and do as I say. Understand? And if we get out of here alive, I'll not only help you figure out who you are - I'll take you home."
A healthy dose of fear under the circumstances wouldn't have been a bad thing but while her eyes had opened wider in surprise, he didn't think he'd frightened her nearly as much as he'd hoped. Still, he didn't release her until she'd nodded her agreement.
"Good. I'm glad we understand one another." He leaned close to the door again and, hearing nothing, opened it. The hallway was still clear.
With Nicoli taking the lead, they stepped out, closing the door behind them. At the end of the hall, Nicoli located the lift and they took it up one flight.
The doors opened onto another long hallway with a door at the end. Nicoli supposed this was the way he’d been brought into the building. Without getting out of the lift, Nicoli let the doors close and punched the button to take them up to the next level.
This time when the doors opened, they were looking into a grand foyer filled with robed Harvesters. Some stood around talking while others merely crossed the foyer on their way to other destinations. Nicoli grabbed Kiera’s arm and escorted her off. No one paid them any attention. With the robes on they looked like everyone else. It was the perfect disguise – until someone engaged them in conversation.
“Now what?” Keira whispered.
Nicoli looked around. From this perspective, the building seemed to be shaped like a wagon wheel with this foyer as the central hub and hallways radiating off of it like spokes. Before he left the building, Nicoli was determined to explore every one of them.
“Let’s see what’s down here.”
He crossed the short distance to the nearest hallway. It seemed heavily populated, but no one stopped them as they started down it.
Reaching the end without incident, they stepped through the only door and stopped abruptly. Stretching out for what seemed like kilometers were rows upon rows of plants.
“Food," Kiera said, having drawn the same conclusion he had.
"Probably.” He stepped up to the nearest plant and grabbed a handful of soil. “But they’re not planted in dirt. I don’t know what this is, but it's synthetic."
Kiera looked around. “They seem to be thriving."
"Yes, interesting. Wait here.” He started down one row, not sure what he was looking for. After several steps, he heard a light hissing noise coming from further inside the room. He followed the sound until he stepped into a cool mist.
Not everywhere, of course. Just in this one section. Looking up, Nicoli saw the source of the water; it was the pipes running along the ceiling. He visually traced them to their point of origin – a large metal regulator lodged in the wall. One of the lights on the front was lit.
Even as Nicoli studied it, the light went out and the mist stopped. A second light came on and Nicoli heard the mist come on in another section of the room.
“Computer operated climate control,” Nicoli remarked with satisfaction. He hurried back to the door where Kiera waited. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
Instead of answering, he opened the door and went through, assuming, correctly, that she'd follow after him.
They continued to explore the building, Nicoli worrying the entire time that at any second, their luck would run out and someone would stop to question them.
The time seemed to drag as they searched for the main computer and at times, Nicoli found his mind drifting to images of his companion, as she’d been when he first found her. It was very distracting and certainly the last thing he needed at this juncture in the mission.
“Well?”
Nicoli ignored her question. It was the fifth time she’d tried to get him to tell her where they were going - and the fifth time he'd ignored her.
He opened the door to the next room in their search and looked inside. It appeared to be some type of waiting room, filled with unoccupied chairs.
It wasn't that Nicoli wanted to encounter Harvesters but he was suspicious of how few they’d actually seen during their search. The Harvesters couldn’t have survived so many centuries being careless or lucky, which meant they were clever. And clever was not a good trait to have in one’s enemy.
“Well?” Kiera asked, clearly tired of their continued searching.
“Maybe.” He stepped into the room and gestured for her to follow. Across the room was a second door and Nicoli went to it. Not hearing any noise from the other side, he opened it and went inside.
This looked like a medical exam room. In the center of the room was an exam table with cabinets of equipment and supplies lining one wall. On the adjacent wall was a desk and there, on top of the desk, sat a holographic image generator that could only belong to a computer.
Finally.
“Watch through the door and let me know if anyone comes in.” He waited for her nod before moving to sit at the desk. It took a few tries to bring up the screen and keyboard and then a few more to actually get into the operating system, but he managed.
Just like every other planet in the system, the Harvesters couldn’t function without a connection to the universal web and he needed to tap into it. Unfortunately, getting past their security was proving to be an unexpected challenge.
“Aren’t you finished yet?” Kiera muttered a few minutes later. “I could’ve downloaded the entire USP Intergalactic Trade Agreement by now.”
He cursed her under his breath as he tapped his fingers in the air, trying a different series of code. The computer was similar to the virtual-com he used back on Althusia, but just different enough that it wasn't accepting his commands. “You know about the IGTA?”
There was silence as she thought about it. “I guess I do,” she finally said. “Maybe my memory's finally coming back.”
“Wonderful," he replied dryly. “What I need now is less talk and more surveillance. I don't want any surprises."
“Do you think you could hurry, though?” She sounded exasperated. “I can feel myself growing old.”
“It may interest you to know that it’s not as easy as it looks.” He bit out the words, feeling his temper rise.
That was it. His temper sparked and he gestured for her to take his place. “Perhaps you think you can do better?"
She met his challenging gaze with one of defiance as she stepped past him to stand before the computer. She took a moment to study the holographic keyboard image and then ran her fingers across it causing the screen image to flicker and blur.
“What are you doing?” He grabbed her hand before she could do anymore damage.
“It can’t be any worse than that gibberish you’re keying in.”
She was maddening. "Do something like that again and I'll leave you here."
"You wouldn't."
He mustered up his most insincere smile. "Try me. I'll leave you here so fast --"
The flash of light across the computer's screen image caught his attention and he forgot what he was about to say. Instead, his full attention was now focused on the computer.
Of course. Why hadn't he thought of this? With her nonsensical commands, Kiera had overloaded the computer and forced it into an automatic reboot. If he could interrupt that routine long enough to introduce the virus, maybe he had a chance of completing this mission after all.
He watched the image disappear and knew that when the computer started back up, there would be a very narrow window of opportunity. He'd only have one chance to enter the right commands.
At the first blink of light signaling the reboot had begun, he started typing. To her credit, Kiera stood quietly by his side, watching him work.
He entered his last command and the image blinked out again.
"Did it work?” She practically whispered the words as if afraid to speak any louder.
"I don't know," he admitted.
They fell silent and watched the area where the screen image would appear. They waited so long that Nicoli was on the verge of calling it a failed attempt when a single icon flashed into existence and hung there.
Too Close to the Sun (The Sun 1) Page 10