Rian gave a single nod. “What about it?”
Tannin motioned to the screen. “I kept a sample on my commpad, since it was so far beyond anything I’d seen before. I was studying it to see if I could glean anything about Reidar technology.”
“You kept a sample of the virus that almost turned the ship into a floating ice chest?” Rian’s expression went taut, getting a little too close to stabbing-range for his comfort.
“Yes, but it was totally disabled. Don’t worry about that now. The point is, I’ve repurposed it, and I’m about to launch it into GenProxy’s systems. I’ve also arranged to appropriate their comm system, so when they call out for tech support, I’ll take the call. Then it’s a matter of walking through the doors and pretending I’m going to look at their servers.”
Rian’s expression altered the slightest bit, almost like he was…impressed? Nah, he must have been imagining things.
“Okay, let’s get to it then.” Rian pulled out a nucleon gun and checked the power pack. “I’ve got ammo with names on it for every one of the bastards inside that place.”
“You can’t come.” He snapped his mouth closed after he said the words, Rian glancing up, his eyes glacial. Okay, maybe he could have laid that out more diplomatically.
“What do you mean I can’t come?”
“Think about it. Niels wants Ella, but you said yourself, the Reidar have been trying to kill you for years. If you go in there with me, you might blow my cover and we end up with the same result—Zahli dead before we can reach her.”
Rian stared at him in icy, stony silence for a long moment. Goddamnit. He didn’t want to fight the man on this, but he would. He’d do anything to save Zahli, even take on her psychopathic brother if it meant saving her.
With a slow movement, Rian handed over the nucleon gun. “Take this.”
He blew out the breath that’d jammed up in his lungs. “Thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll get Zahli out.”
Rian crossed his arms. “And if you don’t, you can use that to shoot yourself with. Save me the trouble.”
He paused, taking in Rian’s usual unemotional countenance, unable to tell if that had been a joke or he was totally serious.
“If I’m not back in twenty minutes, feel free to go with Plan B and shoot your way inside.”
Rian didn’t answer as Tannin tabbed the crystal screen to launch the virus into GenProxy’s systems. Hacked in, he watched as everything in the lab failed in an almost poetic cascade of computers and equipment going offline. It only took a short few minutes for someone to put a call out to their usual tech-support company, which he intercepted and answered.
“Okay, I’m going in.” He pushed open the car door, anxious anticipation washing over him in chilled waves.
“And make sure you kill at least a couple of the frecking aliens.”
He slammed the door on Rian’s parting order, adjusting the coat, which was a size too small, and turning the holo-ID badge around so it was facing in. Hopefully they wouldn’t ask to see it. If they did, he’d just have to take a leaf out of Rian’s playbook and put a few aliens down.
He hurried through the rain, which had eased off into a heavy drizzle, and entered one of the hospital’s side entrances. The GenProxy lab was one of twenty sub-basement levels, so he had to go down on a crowded elevator. When he stepped out on the lab’s floor, there was nothing to see but a small blank room and a guard sitting behind a desk.
“I’m here about the system failure,” he said before the guard could ask. The man swept a brief glance over him.
“I’ll comm someone to take you to the server room.”
He nodded, while on the inside he tightened with frustration. If he had an escort take him to the server room, how in the fiery pits of Erebus was he supposed to sneak off and find Zahli?
After a silent few moments in which the guard stared at him and didn’t try to make small talk, while he did everything in his power to look bored and not fidget, a door to the left of the guard’s station opened and a woman in a white lab coat stepped out.
“This way, please. We need this problem fixed as soon as possible. Some of our genetic material is in danger of being compromised, because the backup system isn’t working either.”
“Of course,” he managed to say with the right amount of gravity, locking down the urge to grin. Payback was a bitch—in this case, a viral bitch of their own design.
He followed the woman into a hallway, which was a lot nicer than the guardroom outside. The corridor was wide, in some places lined with chairs on the outer-partition side of consulting rooms, waiting rooms, and treatment rooms, looking more like a hospital or surgery for the ultra-rich, rather than the lab as it was listed on the hospital’s directory. And there seemed to be any number of doctors, nurses, and patients around. Were they human? Or was every single one of them a shape shifting alien, and this was one of their treatment centers like Rian had said? It would make sense for them to have their own doctors and hospitals. When they got injured—or he presumed they got sick sometimes—they couldn’t exactly go to a normal hospital or someone would have worked out by now humans weren’t alone in this universe.
The woman led him to what seemed like the far end of the sub-level and then pushed open a door. “This is our main server room, but we have a small secondary one on the other side of this level.”
He stepped through the doorway, passing a quick glance around the space, which looked totally normal and in no way screamed “alien torture lab.”
Unfortunately, the woman also stepped inside and sat down in a seat just inside the doorway, not looking like she planned on going anywhere as he approached a bank of crystal display screens.
“This might take a while, so if you’ve got something else you need to be doing—”
“I have to be here.” The woman didn’t look up from the commpad she had in her hand, scrolling through whatever was on her screen.
“Okay,” he muttered, positioning himself at a screen she wouldn’t be able to see from where she sat.
He’d left himself a backdoor into the virus so he could get in and navigate the systems while they still appeared to be down.
Unfortunately, the first thing he came across was a security warning. Frecking hell. As soon as he’d stepped into the hospital, a facial scan had picked up his status as a wanted criminal. It wouldn’t take the IPC authorities long to get to the hospital and work out where he’d gone. At least with the systems down, the guard at the front desk on this level didn’t have a clue.
But it meant he had a lot less than the twenty minutes he’d told Rian. He couldn’t deal with the issue now; he had to find Zahli. The last thing he wanted was to end up back on Erebus, but if that was the difference between seeing Zahli safe or losing her for good, then he’d go back to that hell in a heartbeat.
Disregarding the security alert, he dove into the files, looking for any clue of Zahli. None of the folders or information had names on them, simply either “patient” or “subject” with a designation of mixed numbers and letters. There were eight new entries from the last twelve hours, six patients and two subjects. With no other lead, he took note of the room and lab numbers. Now somehow, he had to lose his escort. Rian had given him a nucleon gun, not a pulse pistol. He could have used something to knock her out with, because for all he knew, she was human. And he couldn’t shoot her in cold blood, even though she was the single thing standing between him and finding Zahli.
“I’m going to need to see that other server room.”
The woman glanced up from her commpad, a faintly annoyed expression crossing her features.
He stepped out from behind the bank of screens and joined her as she opened the door. The security system was down like everything else, but the door locks were a bit like the ones used on Erebus. With his window into the virus, they shouldn’t take much to scramble.
He half-stepped in front of the woman and she glanced up in surprise, shuffling back a little.
<
br /> “Sorry about this,” he muttered a second before he shoved her square in the middle of the chest and sent her stumbling back. He slammed the door closed and held it there while he accessed the controls with the other hand. The woman banged, shouting angrily, however the door—which probably doubled as a blast panel—was so thick the sound was muffled. Still, he glanced up and down the hallway to make sure he hadn’t attracted any attention to himself as he finished jumbling the door security and once it had locked down, stepped back.
Getting his bearings, he set off along the corridor, walking quickly and hoping he didn’t come across anyone who would want to know what he was doing. In a matter of minutes, he’d checked three of the rooms and found them occupied with patients—none of them Zahli. He came across one of the two labs he’d wanted to check and had to stop short as a man in a white coat stepped out. He ducked out of sight into the nearest room, the patient luckily either asleep or unconscious.
The man stopped midway down the opposite corridor to have a short conversation on his commpad, though Tannin couldn’t hear what the doctor was saying. After too many long, impatient seconds, where he spent resisting the urge to use Rian’s nucleon gun after all, the man moved on and Tannin hurried out and down to the lab.
He yanked open and door and rushed in, sure he wouldn’t find her. A jolt of relief and consternation cut off his breath because Zahli sat on the bare floor in the middle of the room.
“Tannin!” Her eyes widened when she saw him, her face pale and expression drawn.
He started forward, but Zahli held out both hands. “No, wait!”
Something in her voice pulled him up short, and he skidded to a stop a mere few feet from her. “It’s invisible, but it’s there. Some kind of electromagnetic field. It’ll knock you out if you touch it.”
He scanned around her, looking for any telltale shimmer or disturbance in the atmosphere. “I hacked into their systems. Took them all off-line.”
Including the security system, so that would mean no invisible cage…he hoped.
He crouched down so he was eye level with her, edging forward. She shook her head frantically, tears welling in her eyes.
“Please, Tannin, don’t. You can’t let them catch you. I can’t sit here and watch that happen.”
His ribs clamped around his lungs, shoulders yanking tight as tension turned his muscles to stone. “It’ll be fine, Zahli. You trust me, right?”
She jerked a nod, tears spilling over to streak down her cheeks.
“I trust you,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her knees and scrunching into a ball.
“Then it’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. You just have to believe me.”
She gulped a stuttered breath and he leaned forward, stretching out a hand. A tremor cascaded down his arm, making his hand shake as he got closer to her. His lungs locked up, and he couldn’t find any air as he inched closer, sure that any second now, he’d get zapped and be down for the count, not able to even help himself, let alone her.
But nothing happened, and then the tips of his fingers brushed her jaw, and he slid his hand to the back of her neck. She tumbled forward, landing against his chest, even as he yanked her tightly against him.
“Oh god, Zahli.” He gripped her tighter, aware he might be crushing her, but unable to make his arms unclamp from around her. But she was hugging him back just as tightly, her short nails digging into his shoulder blades even though his borrowed jacket and shirt.
She shuddered, her whole body quaking against him, and he wanted to give her a moment to gather herself, but they didn’t have the time. His twenty minutes were rapidly dwindling and the IPC authorities would be on their way.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Come on, Rian’s waiting outside.” Tannin pulled her up, but typical of Zahli, once she was on her feet, some of the determination and strength he’d seen in her that first day on Erebus returned. She glanced down at the gun on his hip and wiped both hands over her face.
“Do you have a spare weapon?”
“No.” He pulled out the nucleon gun and handed it over to her. “But you take this one. You’re probably a better shot than I am.”
She nodded and took the weapon in a two-handed grip. But before they could even take a step, the door to the lab opened and the man in the white coat he’d seen leaving earlier stepped in.
Tannin hadn’t even started forming a thought about what to do when Zahli brought the gun up and shot him, damn near perfectly in the center of his forehead. The man jerked back into the door he’d just closed and slid to the floor.
“Zahli—” Shock froze his brain and his tongue, because no other words followed her name.
“He was one of them.” Her expression scarily reminiscent of her brother, she stepped closer and fired off several more rounds into the man’s chest, though he didn’t think the guy would have been getting up from that head shot, even if he had been Reidar.
“Okay, he obviously deserved that, but let’s try not to leave a trail of bodies on the way out, otherwise we might not get out.”
He walked over to the door and closer inspection revealed that the doctor had definitely been Reidar. With a grimace, he shoved the body out of the way, then held a hand out for Zahli.
She wrapped her fingers around his in a firm grip, and slipped the gun into the small of her back, under her shirt.
Out in the hall, they paused while he did his door-scrambling routine again, and then it took him a second to remember which way they needed to go to get out. Halfway back, it occurred to him that he stupidly hadn’t worked out how he was going to walk Zahli past the guard at the front desk.
His coat disguise had worked once already, so he figured why not again? As they passed an empty office with the lights dimmed, he paused to snatch a white lab coat on a hat stand and then hand it off to Zahli. She shrugged into it without a word as they continued down the corridor.
As they got closer to the entrance, they passed other doctors and nurses, but no one paid them any attention. He’d actually started thinking they were brazenly going to get away with walking out the main entrance, but then they stepped into the empty anteroom with the guard at his desk.
As soon as the guard saw them, he stood up, his expression darkening.
“Hey, wait just a—”
Zahli yanked out the nucleon gun and shot him, but the guard tried to duck at the last second and she only clipped his shoulder. He went down behind the desk, but Zahli darted around the end of the counter and finished the job with lightning-quick accuracy.
“Seriously?” he muttered as she shoved the gun away again.
“In case you haven’t worked it out by now, everyone on this level is Reidar.”
“I thought that might be the case, but I wasn’t sure. Not sure enough to randomly shoot anyone who got in my way.”
Zahli started to turn toward him, but stopped as something on the guard’s desk caught her attention. “Tannin, what’s this?”
He stepped around the bench to see her pointing at a crystal display, where his face appeared under a flashing security warning.
“Damn it.” He tapped at the screen, taking precious moments they probably didn’t have to access the hospital-wide system. He wished he could wipe himself from the entire IPC database, but in that second, the best he could do was delete the security alert and his picture from the hospital’s computers.
Just as he finished, the elevator arrived, Zahli having pushed the button a few moments earlier. The car was empty this time, and in a matter of seconds they were hurrying through the ground level of the building.
Outside, the rain had set in heavily again, and he grabbed Zahli’s arm, tugging her along to Rian’s waiting car.
Except when they reached the vehicle, he stopped and intercepted Zahli’s hand before she could open the door.
“Tannin, what are you—?” Her words cut off as he yanked her against him and caught her mouth in a hard kiss, laced with reckless despe
ration. The rain pounded around them, yet he couldn’t do anything except stand there and hold her, tasting pure, sweet, familiar Zahli, everything he thought he’d lost and would never have again.
He pulled back the slightest fraction, releasing a choppy breath. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head, leaning into him with a small sniff, water running in rivulets over both of them. “I’m okay, they didn’t do anything. I only got knocked out by the invisible field once. After that, I was careful. Apparently they were waiting for Rian to show up before the fun was going to begin.”
“Thank god,” he breathed out the words against her lips, catching her mouth with his again. He hadn’t let the thought that they might have tortured her—just like in the transmission—enter his mind, but he’d been aware of it lurking in the background shadows of his head.
“As much as I love standing around watching you two suck face, we don’t have time for it.” Rian’s voice cut through the battering rain and euphoric haze.
Zahli broke the kiss and looked around him at Rian. “How did you get here so fast?”
“Get in the car and we’ll tell you on the way to the Imojenna,” Rian replied.
A stubborn gleam lit her blue eyes, so Tannin took her arm and tugged her toward the waiting vehicle, sliding into the passenger seat and then pulling her onto his lap. He didn’t care what the hell Rian said. There was no way in the fiery pits of Erebus he’d be letting her go. Ever again.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed on the Imojenna anymore, and here you are taking me back.” She crossed her arms and sat with an annoyed, rigid posture, glaring at her brother.
Rian’s lips tightened into a thin line as he guided the vehicle through the streets toward the spaceport. “Obviously the Reidar have proven everyone is collateral, but if you want to stay on Dalphin and get nabbed again, be my guest. There won’t be a rescue part two.”
Zahli snorted. “Why, because it’ll get in the way of your grand plans for revenge?”
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