The red light on the camera went out ten seconds later, and with it I felt part of the conviction I'd tried to put into my words leave my body. What was left was a mixture of confusion and fear, but also hope. Hope that, come what may, this nightmare would end today, once and for all.
Don't they say that there are some things out there worth dying for? I might have just found mine.
Chapter 21
“Guess that's a wrap?” I heard Nate say just as they turned off the lights, casting me in momentary darkness until my tortured eyes got used to the absence of several megawatts burning into my retinas.
“I'll edit in the graphs and check everything else again, but yes, it's a wrap,” Dolores confirmed
“Good,” he muttered, nodding at the techie to do her thing now. He and the Ice Queen exchanged a few words, then he stepped up to where I was still perched on my stool. Amusement was back on his face, but without the mockery I'd expected.
“Very inspired speech. Even inspiring, some might say.”
Cocking my head to the side, I cleared my throat to make my strained vocal cords work again. Turned out that being partly strangled hours before didn't work so well with speeches of all kinds.
“Anything you feel I should have added?”
“It's your speech. That's for you to decide.”
I wondered if that was a hint, but then I'd long since gotten the feeling that we were beyond playing games.
“Shall we go then?” he prompted, pretty much confirming my guess.
“Just give me something to drink first, and I'm game.”
“You’re so easy to please,” he teased, but diligently fetched me an unopened bottle of water as we made our way across the atrium. Yet when he held out a chocolate bar to me, I shied back, my pulse slamming into overdrive even before the rational part of my mind caught up. Nate looked from me to the sweet treat, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Something wrong?”
“You ask me that after one of your people went all rabid cannibal after eating one of those?” I shot back, my voice wavering with fear.
It was definitely calculation in his gaze now, making me wonder if I’d just passed some kind of test.
“You sure about that?”
“Positive,” I agreed. “Watching Thecla blow herself up is one thing, but I’m not oblivious to what triggered her reaction. Besides, you know, threat of torture from you.”
He ignored that last jibe as he threw the chocolate bar into a trash can that we passed.
“Anything about that unfortunate incident that you’d like to add?” he asked.
“You mean Thecla?”
He shook his head. “No, my guy.”
I couldn’t help but feel instantly suspicious. “Why would I?”
He shrugged. “You’re a virologist, right? If it actually was rabies—“ He let that hang in the air between us.
I wondered for a second if he was yanking my chain, but he looked serious enough to give me the creeps. “It’s not like I can get a better look at the body now. Considering you burned all of them. Inside the building.”
My accusation—as expected—had no effect on him.
“I did what was necessary. Would you have preferred to look at dead people the better half of the night? Not ideal for morale, you know?”
Again I got the sense that there was something he wasn’t telling me.
“So you went out of your way to make us all comfortable? How sweet.”
He pursed his lips but let it go.
“Ever seen or read about something like that happening? Instant rabies by means of chocolate?”
I shook my head. “Nope. But the fact that you pretty much confirmed that you think it was what he ate that made him go ballistic is kind of unnerving.”
“I confirmed nothing.”
“Did, too,” I insisted, holding his gaze as he glanced at me. “Wanna tell me what is going on?”
“Wanna guess?” he shot back.
As a matter of fact, I did, but mostly because talking kept my mind off what we had set out to do.
“My guess? Steroids, or some other kind of uppers. You know, the shit that fighter pilots take to remain awake for extended missions? You and your guys have likely been popping that stuff like candy. It was just coincidence that he was having the munchies before that chemical cocktail fried his brain.”
Nate’s lips curled up, but I wouldn’t have gone as far as calling that a smile.
“And still you refused to eat that chocolate bar.”
“I’m doing low carb,” I lied.
“Humor me.”
“I wouldn’t know how?” I replied, giving him a toothy smile of my own. “But seriously, what was it?”
A look passed his features that I’d glimpsed before, only this time he didn’t try to hide it immediately.
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Because otherwise you’d have to kill me?” I joked—or hoped that it was a joke.
“Me? No. But others might have other plans. Then again, the fact that you’re helping me might do the trick already, so, yeah. Either way, you’re kind of fucked.”
“So nice of you to put my mind at ease just before we’re about to go into the hot lab. With explosives, because just being exposed to lethal microorganisms isn’t fun enough on its own?” I jeered.
“If you really want to know, ask me again when we’re inside the lab,” he replied, sounding way too cheery for such a cryptic message. I left it at that, because, really? What else could I have done?
The rest of our descent into the bowels of the complex went unsupervised, and for the most part in silence. There wasn't really anything I felt like saying until we reached the corridor outside the hot lab, where four gym bags sat waiting for us.
“That's it?” I asked, a new kind of unease clenching my stomach.
“Enough explosives to bring down half the building,” Nate confirmed. When he saw me hesitate, he stopped in mid-motion of picking two of the bags up, and instead unzipped one so he could show me the gray slabs stored inside.
“You know basic chemistry, right? Without the detonator, the charge is only so much flammable play dough. The detonators are remote controlled and cannot be set off accidentally. They are stored in this bag, and you won't get anywhere near them." He indicated his other, unopened bag.
That wasn't exactly soothing, but I nodded anyway. Reluctance had me move extra carefully as I picked up the remaining bags, then had to fight hard not to drop them when their full weight yanked on my weary muscles.
We went through the same ritual of changing into scrubs and getting ready before stepping into the suit room as before, although I hesitated in front of the mirror for a moment to check my nose. It had stopped swelling, but was still tender. Next to the darkening bruises on my jaw and cheek, it looked almost normal.
“You're not getting vain now, are you?” Nate remarked dryly as he walked by behind me, then held the door to the suit room for me. I gave him a level look.
“Not vain, just concerned.”
“About your good looks? Don't worry, a week from now none of that will be visible any longer. And you’re still pretty, if more in a tough-chick kind of way.”
I hesitated, about to close my mouth and let it slide, but it was just one more comment in a line of others that irked me too much to let me smooth my ruffled feathers.
“In the past, I've been barred from going into the hot lab because I've had a cut on my finger or a light case of the sniffles. Now I'm looking like a road map made of scrapes, cuts, and bruises, all of them barely scabbed over. I shouldn't be anywhere near this.”
“And you only notice that now?” he continued to taunt me.
That was exactly the reason why I'd tried to shut myself up, and having that rubbed in my face didn't make me feel any better.
“Yeah, but last time I still had the excuse of not being here of my own free will.”
“I haven't forced you to do anything,” he p
ointed out.
Instead of answering right away, I pulled on two layers of gloves—the thicker, blue nitrile gloves because my paranoia kept telling me that flimsy latex just wouldn't cut it to keep my nerves at bay—and I started prepping two new suits, ignoring our discarded ones from the first venture into the lab. If my motions were a little jerky, there was nothing I could do about that now.
“No, you just set everything up so that the alternative was even more of a nightmare.”
He didn't reply, so I looked up to gauge his reaction. His face was blank, but there was something lurking in his eyes that was part exasperation, part something that I couldn't decipher. Could it be regret? Guilt?
“I know,” he admitted, startling me. “I wish there'd been another way, but even pissed off as you are, you have to admit that it was the easiest route to take.”
“Like I care,” I shot back, feeling my anger resurface.
“Frankly, I don't give a shit about your hurt feelings.”
“Again, like I care,” I repeated, turning my head away to hide a stupid grin that came out of nowhere. Why did bantering with him have to be so much fun? I really must have gone nuts.
“Ah, but you do. Are you really stupid enough to romanticize this situation?”
My guffaw in reply made him smile just a little.
“Trust me, I'm not romanticizing anything. I’d even go as far as saying that if I hadn’t been of use to you, you might have let Greene strangle me. I'm well aware of that.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, proving that I’d landed a hit. Yet his voice was light as he replied. “And still you can't extricate yourself from the gravitational pull of my charm.”
His grin was way too bright to be healthy as he took the suit from me, then started the laborious task of getting into it. This time I didn't lift a finger to help.
“You're so full of shit, you know that?”
Pausing, he looked at me, still obviously amused.
“Oh, I do, but that doesn't make my observation any less keen.”
Kicking myself in the head sounded like a good idea right then, but instead I plugged in the hose to inflate the second suit to check for ruptures.
“Then you've clearly realized that whatever this is between us started under false pretenses before you brought down the building and set my heart up for premature cardiac arrest, not quite incidentally killing any chances of a continuation of ‘us’ in whatever definition. So your point is invalid,” I replied.
“Liar,” was all he said, making me hate the fact that he saw right through me.
Instead of stoking the flames of his argumentation, I started donning my own suit. Childish as it was, I was tempted not to turn on my com unit before zipping myself up, but we were working with explosives, and I didn't want to accidentally kill myself just out of spite.
Carrying the gym bags through the air locks and into the main zone of the L4 lab irked me immensely, simply because it had been drilled into me that nothing, absolutely nothing got into the lab without proper cleaning first. And now it happened the second time in a row on my watch. Just perfect. Nate either ignored my baleful glances, or, more likely, wasn't even aware of them as he preceded me into the lab proper.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked once the air lock had closed behind us and the constant hiss of the connected air hose droned out even my galloping heartbeat. In a way I was even happy to be as mad as I was right now—it helped keep the panic at bay.
“Easy. First I mark where all the explosives go. Then we glue them to the walls, arm the detonators, and get the hell out of here.”
He got out a fat, red sharpie from one of his bags and started down the corridor, painting four huge Xs onto the walls in even intervals. I followed him at a sedate pace, not entirely comfortable with leaving the bags full of C4 or thermite or whatever by the air lock doors, but I didn't want to give him a chance to order me to follow him like a dog. Like before, it was obvious to me that he still had a little trouble navigating the lab in the suit, but less so than most people after their first couple of weeks.
“Remind me again why you need me along for this? You're doing quite well for yourself.”
He halted after marking the back wall of the now deserted animal holding facility and turned his head comically slowly to glance back at me.
“I didn't explain it before, so what's with the repetition?”
“Feel free to attribute that to my level of annoyance,” I ground out.
I thought that made him grin, but couldn't be sure with the lights hitting his visor just so.
“You'll see.”
And I did, once we had completed the slow circuit and returned to the exit. With careful, deliberate motions he unzipped the bags, then got out one of the explosive bricks, and, much to my surprise, something that looked like a large tube of glue.
“You really weren't kidding when you said that we'd stick them to the walls, eh?”
He shook his head, holding out the tube to me.
“You're better with fine motor control wearing the space suits, so you do the fine motor control work. Yes, I could do this alone, but it's much less nerve-wracking as a two-man job.”
I accepted the tube with apprehension, studying the instructions before I unscrewed the stopper and gingerly broke the safety seal with the back of it, making sure that nothing leaked out onto my gloves.
“It's a strong adhesive, but it's not corrosive. Even if you get something onto your gloves, you should be fine.”
“Should be,” I echoed, staring at the unwrapped brick he held out to me. “I'm more concerned about accidentally gluing myself to something, then tearing the glove when I pull it free.”
He shrugged as if he hadn't considered that, and told me to apply a liberal amount to the brick. I did, then watched with fascination as he slapped the explosive onto the wall and held it there for maybe twenty seconds. When he removed his hand, the brick stayed firmly in place, even when he pulled on it sideways. Next, he got out what I presumed was the detonator, which looked disappointingly like a pen connected to a small control unit with a bunch of cables. The explosives brick yielded easily as he pushed the detonator in. Last, he pulled something off the back of the small, attached control unit and stuck it to the wall beside the brick.
We moved on to the next red cross marking, where the same procedure began anew.
“I take it you know what you're doing?” I asked.
“Doesn't look too hard, now, does it?” he shot back.
“You know that's not what I meant."
Holding the next brick out to me, he gave a noncommittal grunt. “In a storage facility far, far away, there's a diploma that has my name on it and states that I'm qualified to do this shit, yes. Satisfied?”
“So you have a degree in engineering?” I ventured a guess. No idea why I was doing small talk now of all times, but it was better than to dwell on the obvious.
“Ballistics and Explosives Engineering, yes,” he agreed.
“College?”
Fitting another piece of the puzzle that was Nate Miller in place was strangely satisfying.
“Yes, but I actually learned it all on the job. Later, someone thought they should commemorate it on a plaque.”
“Sounds nifty.”
“Says the woman with a longer tail of academic titles to her name than her actual name itself. You're not getting all uppity on me now, are you? I spent time defending my country. That takes away from academic pursuits.”
I ignored his jibe.
“Army?”
I tried to remember if that was what he'd told me about his family in the past, if that had even been the truth. As much as I wanted to doubt it, I somehow couldn’t disband the suspicion that—except for the obvious—Nate had been surprisingly candid with me from the start.
“Rangers, at first. After that, not an institution you've ever heard of, or ever will. Until I dropped out, that is.”
“So you were some kind
of black ops operative?”
He scrunched up his face, but after a second replied.
“I should probably say 'that's classified,' but considering that the report about my return to civilian life must look as if the file got soaked in tar, I think I can just admit it.”
We moved on to a new mark where he stopped and started unwrapping the next brick.
“And why did you quit? Not that I know the first thing about black ops, but in the movies they always look like they don't really have the same moral code as your stereotypical good guys. Sounds practically made for you.”
“I had my reasons,” he replied
“I bet,” I muttered, not sure I even wanted him to hear that remark. Judging from the slight grin on his face, he had.
“Just my luck that I got my new mission only a week after,” he offered, sounding pensive.
“So you didn’t plan on avenging Raleigh right away?”
Nate studied me intently for a moment as he considered his reply. “Remember the first time we met?”
“You mean in the park?”
He shook his head. “No, the first time. At my brother’s funeral?”
Now that he mentioned it, I remembered, if vaguely. It had felt weird to attend when I hadn’t known the deceased personally, not really, and I’d barely remained long enough to pay my respects. Except—
“We talked briefly,” I said, memories returning now that I focused on them. And with that came a different realization. “I told you that I didn’t understand how it could have happened. With Raleigh being a trained professional, and all the fail-safes in place and all.” Meaning, I’d likely doomed myself.
The way Nate looked back at me pretty much confirmed that guess.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.
“You were the only one who doubted that it was an accident,” he explained, his voice soft, contemplative. “At the time, I chalked that up to you being some kind of lovesick puppy or admirer, but over the course of the following months, your words just wouldn’t let me go. And when I got the transcript of the vid we watched, it all came back to me. Now who would I rather believe—the company who considered everything settled after handing my mother a check, or the woman who was familiar with my brother’s work and work environment, and who had nothing whatsoever to lose with her accusations?”
The Green Fields Series Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 20