The Weapon (The Hourglass Series Book 2)

by Donaldson, Casey

  The Captain turned around and grinned. “Give me a hand.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “You two,” barked Lieutenant Wong, pointing at Finn and Boulder, “go help him.”

  “What?” asked Finn, appalled. “No.” He shook his head.

  “You’d rather we leave her here to bleed out?” demanded Lieutenant Wong.

  Finn wavered for a moment. Lieutenant Wong’s gun-hand twitched and Boulder grabbed Finn by the arm.

  “C’mon man,” said Boulder, tugging him along.

  Finn gave in and went to help the Captain carry the injured woman. Sarah stood there, stunned, and then pulled herself together. She scanned the room, looking for the first aid kit that she really hoped was there. By general rights, every lab had a safety area set up in case of accidents. Surely a team as advanced as these people were wouldn’t have shirked that? A cursory glance failed to find anything, so she started searching in between each of the lab benches. She breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled out a neat, well-packed first aid kit from the bench at the front of the lab. They boys were now half-way up the staircase, and she hurried after them. She slipped and had to steady herself on the nearby bench. She looked down to see what she had slipped on. It was blood. The injured woman was leaving a trail of it behind her. Sarah felt sick. The boys hustled the woman through the gap in the wall and out to the truck.

  Clara was waiting for them in the truck. Her mouth fell open as she saw them approach.

  “Oh my god,” she gasped. “What have you done? What did you do?” They laid the woman down on the floor in the back. “Why is she unconscious? I mean, it’s a leg wound, right?”

  Sarah jumped up into the truck and knelt down next to the woman. She rummaged around in the first aid kit and pulled out a bandage. She glanced up at the woman’s face. It was pale, too pale. There was also a dark bruise forming on her forehead.

  “I think the Captain knocked her out after he shot her,” she said dryly, not caring if she sounded judgemental. She tore the packaging off the bandage and started to wrap it tightly around the woman’s leg. She hoped it would work. The bullet was probably still in there, and would need to come out, but they didn’t have time for that and although Sarah wasn’t medically trained, she was pretty sure that she shouldn’t be doing it in the back of a truck anyway.

  “What do you want me to do?” Clara was asking Sarah, but Lieutenant Wong answered.

  “Take us to the old bank a few blocks back,” he ordered. “We’ll stay there overnight. We can stabilise the woman and then get us all back on the road again tomorrow morning to the closest military compound we can find.”

  Clara just stared at him. “I meant what can I do to help stop her from dying,” replied Clara scathingly.

  “Clara,” barked the Captain. “Do it.”

  Clara gritted her teeth but climbed back into the front of the truck and took off. To her credit, she drove far more gently than she usually did. The back of the truck hardly rocked.

  Sarah watched the woman’s blood stain the bandage she had just applied. After a moment’s hesitation she put her hand over the bandage and applied pressure. The woman groaned, but didn’t regain consciousness. Blood oozed up between Sarah’s fingers.

  “She’s still bleeding!” yelled Sarah frantically.

  “We’re nearly there,” said the Captain. Even he looked a little strained. Sarah supposed there was no point in him capturing someone if they just died on him.

  Clara stopped the truck and Sarah looked up to find themselves parked outside the front of the bank. The boys got into position to move the woman. Sarah released her hand and looked at the bandage. The blood stain had only spread a little more. She hoped it stayed that way.

  “Clara!” barked the Captain, “get the door.”

  Clara jumped out of the car and raced around to the front of the building. She tugged at the door but it didn’t budge. She kicked it viciously and it slid a few centimetres on its tracks. Sarah put her weight into it and the door slowly opened with a loud screech.

  The gloominess inside was mitigated by the large, dirty windows that opened out to the street. Sarah supposed it originally gave the bank an open, friendly atmosphere. A large reception desk stood in the centre of the room. Clara rushed to it and knocked off an old vase and a few rusted pens. Finn, Boulder and Lieutenant Wong brought the woman over to the desk and set her down on it. The woman was starting to wake up now. As the boys laid her down on the table she lashed out at them, yelling incoherently.

  “Grab her arms!” commanded the Captain.

  Seeing that she was doing more harm to herself by thrashing around and yelling, the boys complied.

  The Captain came close to her so that she could see him and looked at her in the eyes. “Calm down,” he said firmly and loudly to be heard over her laboured breathing. “You have been shot. We need to get the bullet out of your leg.”

  Sarah couldn’t help but notice that the Captain failed to state that he had been the one who shot her.

  The woman, who had stopped yelling to listen to him, now went wide-eyed with fear and starting yelling and thrashing around again. The boys nearly lost their grip.

  “Do you want to live?” demanded the Captain. The woman continued to gaze frantically around the room. Sarah wasn’t even sure if she had heard him. “Do you want to live?” repeated the Captain, louder now. This time it got through, because the woman narrowed her attention back in on him. “Because if you do, then you need to stay still, and let us do this.”

  There was a pause as the woman stared at him, still wild-eyed, and then something seemed to change in her internal landscape.

  “I’ve been shot?” asked the woman, speaking for the first time. She looked like she was trying to claw herself back from the pain and confusion with logical thought.

  “Yes, in the leg. I imagine it hurts,” replied the Captain dryly.

  Sarah wanted to punch him. He was such a twat.

  The woman nodded. “You shot me.” It was a statement, not a question, but the Captain answered anyway.

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s still in my leg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I missing any fabric from my pants?”

  “What?” The Captain stared at her, surprised.

  “Bullets can stay in,” explained the woman through gritted teeth as another wave of pain hit her. “What can’t stay in, is fabric from my clothes. That rots. So check my damn pants and see if there is just a tear, or if there is actually a hole missing.”

  This was news to Sarah, and by the look on the other’s faces it was obviously news to everybody else as well. After a second Sarah pulled down the bandage and examined the blood stained trouser leg.

  “Well?” asked the woman.

  “There’s a hole,” said Sarah, her heart sinking.

  “Not a tear?”

  “Not a tear.”

  The woman nodded, thinking. “Do you have any anaesthetic?”

  “No.”

  The woman gulped, but nodded again, adding the information to her data.

  “I have morphine,” piped up Sarah. She had seen it earlier when she had been trying to find a bandage.

  The woman nodded again, this time gratefully.

  “Are any of you medically trained?”

  Not for the first time Sarah wished that she had done more than clean in her time spent in the infirmary. If only the doctor had taught her some things.

  To her surprise Lieutenant Wong spoke up. “I’ve done a field-medics course,” he said.

  To the woman’s credit she gave a weak smile. “Better than I was hoping for, actually. Ok, do it.”

  As Lieutenant Wong came over to the first aid kit to get what he needed and Sarah took out the pre-packaged morphine syringe. She handed it to him. Lieutenant Wong took it and added it to his things. When he had all that he needed he approached the table and took out the shot of morphine.

  “Ok,” he said, ta
king her arm, “this is going-” but he stopped suddenly. He shook her arm, but it just flopped around loosely. “Hey! Hey! Lady! Wake up!” he yelled, squeezing her trapezius muscle. She didn’t reply. Lieutenant Wong lowered his head to her mouth and watched her chest, looking for signs of breathing. Sarah stared as well, petrified that the woman had died on them. The woman’s chest rose and fell rhythmically, but shallowly. “I think she’s just passed out again. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Then do it quick before she loses more,” ordered the Captain. “She needs to answer questions.”

  Lieutenant Wong grunted and pulled out a pair of scissors. He cut away the material of her pants surrounding the wound. He then pulled out something that looked like a slim pair of pliers. Sarah looked away. The Captain, Clara and Finn all stared in fascination at Lieutenant Wong working on the woman. Boulder was looking green and had stepped back, looking everywhere but at the woman. This would be, thought Sarah, the perfect time to escape. But she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave the woman here, not with them.

  The woman’s wound made a few squelchy noises as Lieutenant Wong dug around with his forceps. Finally he grunted.

  “Got it.”

  Sarah turned back to see Lieutenant Wong holding up a bloody bullet in the teeth of his forceps. A ragged piece of cloth was attached. He discarded the bullet with a flick of his wrist. The bullet seemed to ping obscenely loudly against the floor for such a small object. He then pulled out a packaged litre of normal saline and started pouring it all over the wound, letting the bloodied water pool out of it. After he finished the whole litre he chucked the empty bag in the same direction as the bullet. He shook his hand out, like it was beginning to cramp, and then went to ruffle through the first aid box. It was an awkward task, as his hand was bloody and the other hand was providing pressure over the woman’s wound. He locked eyes with Sarah.

  “Pass me the suture packs.”

  Sarah knelt back down next to the first aid box and starting searching uncertainly, not exactly sure what a suture pack would look like. They hadn’t quite made it that far in their first aid courses yet in basic training.

  “There,” said Lieutenant Wong, interrupting her thoughts. He had been peering over her shoulder as she rifled. “At the back, pale purple.”

  Sarah saw it and passed it to him, but he shook his head. “Open it up and pass me the needle.”

  Sarah opened the package and pulled out a wicked looking curved needle with a thread attached. She pulled it out and handed it to Lieutenant Wong carefully. He took it, and after only a moment’s hesitation started closing up the woman’s wound. It was not a pretty or neat job, but it seemed to work as after a moment or two the woman seemed to stop bleeding. Lieutenant Wong fished out another bag of normal saline and poured it over the wound again, using his hand to help dislodge the drier, more stubborn blood, so that her wound now looked more presentable. He then dried off the area with some spare gauze and Sarah handed him a bandage she had found while he had been stitching the woman up. Finally Lieutenant Wong sat back to appraise his work, a look of satisfaction on his face.

  “How long until she’ll be able to talk?” asked the Captain. His hands were twitching, as if he was desperate to shake her awake right then and there.

  Lieutenant Wong shrugged. “I couldn’t say, Sir. I think that’s up to her.”

  The Captain grunted and then strode away, unhappy. “Let me know the moment she awakens.” He then strode into the back of the building, presumably checking that they were safe and alone.

  “Are you going to hurt her?” Finn asked Lieutenant Wong. He had an odd look on his face, and it made Sarah a little uncomfortable.

  To Sarah’s relief Lieutenant Wong snorted out a laugh and shook his head. “The Captain’s keen, for sure, but he’ll want to get her back to an Accord barrack so we can record her answers and question her properly.” He paused. “It’s not like we need to hide the fact that we’re after them anymore,” he added in a low murmur.

  That wasn’t as reassuring an answer as Sarah was hoping for.

  “And what about us?” asked Finn, asking the question that had been on all of their minds since they had captured the woman. “What's going to happen now that you don’t need Sarah to guide you anymore?”

  There was silence as Sarah, Finn and Boulder collectively held their breaths.

  Lieutenant Wong shrugged again, this time unhelpfully. “I don’t know. That’s for the Captain to decide.”

  “But do you think he’ll let us go?” demanded Boulder, “or will he take us around the back and shoot us?”

  “He’ll probably let you go,” said Lieutenant Wong after a moment’s pause. The pause and the probably were not exactly reassuring either.

  Boulder looked like he didn’t buy it either. He opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by a noise.

  The entire group swivelled around. The woman had groaned. Her eyes opened and her hand travelled cautiously down to her leg. She touched the bandage lightly, pain obvious on her face. Sarah remembered that she didn’t get the painkillers before. She dropped to her knees and ruffled around the box. She couldn’t find that vial of morphine anymore but managed to come up with some strong-looking tablets. She handed them to the woman who, after inspecting the box for a moment, swallowed them dry. She closed her eyes and then looked back around the group, this time taking in every face for a few seconds before moving on to the next person. Was it Sarah’s imagination or did the woman seemed to take in her face a little longer than the others? But then the woman moved on and Sarah was none-the-surer.

  “Sir,” called out Lieutenant Wong over his shoulder, not turning away from the woman. “Sir!” he called again. “She’s awake.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sarah heard the Captain’s decisive footstep ring out. He was hurrying, and Sarah got the distinct impression that if they weren’t there he would have ran. He emerged from one of the doorways and strode up to the group, finally stopping in front of the woman, towering over her in a power stance. The woman leaned back a little, struggling to hide her fear. It wasn’t hard to read the Captain’s face and know he wasn’t going to be her friend.

  The Captain turned to Lieutenant Wong. “Tie her up against that column. We wouldn’t want her getting away.” He turned to the others. “The rest of you, get dinner ready.” He shrugged off his coat. “I’m starving.”

  The Captain questioned the woman for the next hour. To Sarah’s relief he didn’t touch her. The woman started off trying to keep silent, not letting a word slip. Then the Captain changed his tact, and started making wild statements about the Group and the science behind it that even Sarah knew to be bullshit, and the woman was unable to keep her derision at bay. For some reason that seemed to crumble whatever barrier she had built, because when he changed tact again she seemed unable to go back to silence, and squirmed at his attempts to get under her skin. It wasn’t, however, until he started describing what they may do to her and her family when they got back to the Accord that she really started to sweat.

  “Captain!” yelled Clara, at a point where she couldn’t take it anymore. The Captain swung around to glare at her.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Um… dinner’s ready?”

  The Captain’s eyes shifted down to the dinner they had made. They had managed to set up a small fire near one of the broken windows and had turned their dry beef and a few protein bars into a stew that smelt surprisingly good. Evidently the Captain hadn’t lied before when he said he was starving, because after a few more whispered words to the woman, which seemed to make her go even paler, he got up and strode over to them. He accepted his bowl and ate, sitting so that he was turned to face the woman the whole time. Half way through the meal Sarah found herself standing up. She grabbed a spare bowl and ladled a few spoonfuls into it before heading over to the woman. She could feel the Captain’s gaze on her back, but he didn’t stop her. Sarah stopped before the
woman, who had her eyes closed. After a moment she opened them, and then frowned at Sarah standing there.

  “I bought you dinner,” said Sarah, showing her the bowl in her hands a little unnecessarily.

  “Yes, I can see that,” said the woman.

  Sarah put the bowl down and made to go around the pillar to untie the woman’s hands so that she could feed herself but a shout from the Captain pulled her up short.

  “Hey! You leave her as she is.”

  Sarah pulled a face but returned to where the Captain could see her. She sat down in front of the woman and took a spoonful of the stew and held it in front of the woman’s face. The woman raised an eyebrow but opened her mouth, and Sarah fed her.

  “You don’t look like a soldier,” remarked the woman in between spoonfuls.

  “I’m as much a prisoner as you are,” replied Sarah.

  A weird expression shifted over the woman’s face. “Is that true?”

  “You think I would stay with him voluntarily?”

  The woman looked back over at the group. “You seem to like the white-haired one and the stocky one.”

  A guilty feeling swept over Sarah. “They’re only here because of me,” she said wretchedly.

  The woman’s eyes flew back to Sarah’s face. “I see.”

  The woman didn’t say anything for a bit so Sarah fed her a few more mouthfuls.

  “I heard the white-haired boy call you Sarah,” said the woman finally.