Fight or Flight

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  “Babe.”

  Something soft stroked Regan’s cheek, then through her hair. She murmured and turned toward it.

  “Regan, sweetheart. Wake up. C’mon, you need to go upstairs to sleep. This sofa is too small.”

  Don’t want to move. But do that again.

  Judging by the chuckle vibrating somewhere very close by, she’d said the words out loud. The hand swept through her hair again. The fingers rubbing against her scalp were exquisite. She arched like a cat.

  “Regan.”

  She snapped fully awake, recognizing Tyler’s voice and understanding she should not be seduced by it or anything else belonging to him.

  “Get away from me.” She sat up and shoved him back but swayed, the room spinning around her. “Whoa.”

  “I know. You’re beyond exhaustion.” Tyler put his arm around Regan’s back and tried to help her up. “I’ll help you upstairs.”

  “Can’t.” She couldn’t stay here. She needed to be away from Tyler. Finding Kelsey. “Kelsey. Need—”

  “It’s okay.” He managed to move her toward the stairs, and she decided to cooperate. He sounded so certain, and she wanted to believe it would be okay.

  “How you know?” she murmured. The stairs were in front of her, so she put a hand on the banister and started hauling herself upward.

  “I know where to find her. She’ll be okay until we can get there. We can’t do anything until we’ve both rested.”

  Regan couldn’t argue. After what seemed like hours, she reached the top of the stairs and made her way to the bed, not caring if Tyler joined her or not. She wouldn’t even notice.

  An instant later, she was out again.

  This time when she woke, she knew much more time had passed. Hours, though she wasn’t sure if it was four or twelve. She was still groggy. For a moment, she wished she could feel those first seconds of wakefulness when everything was good, normal, routine, and all she had to do was work out her schedule for the day. But nothing was all right here. Despair, guilt, desperation. Rage.

  With a moan, she forced herself upright. Her shirt was twisted all around her torso. When she straightened it, the combined odors of gasoline, fried foods, and too long in the same clothes wafted over her.

  O-kay. Shower first. No problem. She searched for the clock and found it on the floor. Nine-fourteen, and since sunshine burned through the thin curtains, she must have slept all night. What little had been left of it by the time the deputies were gone.

  She wondered if Tyler was still here. She wanted to kill him, but she wanted to bury herself in his arms and cry, too.

  Goddamn it.

  When she stepped into the hall carrying a change of clothes from their last Wal-Mart stop, she smelled coffee. And bacon. Normalcy. Routine. She managed a tiny smile before heading to take a quick shower, get dressed, and tie up her hair instead of drying it.

  Tyler was putting pancakes and bacon on a plate when she got downstairs. Coffee made the way she liked it already sat steaming on the table. The universe skewed for a second, showing her an alternate reality just long enough to make her crave it. Impatience banished that quickly enough. Tyler knew where her daughter was, he’d said so last night. They had to leave now, go get her before it was too late.

  But despite the sleep she’d gotten, she was still running on empty, and he probably was, too. He was trying to take care of her.

  He was taking care of her.

  “Thank you,” she made herself say.

  He didn’t look up. “Sounds kinda grudging.”

  If he could only see the warmth filling her. “It is.”

  He put her plate in front of her and filled another one for himself at the counter, then joined her. They ate in silence for a while, Regan waiting for Tyler to explain himself, Tyler waiting for God-knew-what. She wanted to push him, demand immediate action, and hated both being at his mercy and loving his care. She didn’t believe Tyler was working for Archie. But he had lied to her all along.

  “Did you sleep okay?” he finally asked.

  She shrugged. “Like I’d expect. Exhaustion makes it difficult not to, though I had some nightmares about halfway through.” She sipped her coffee and forced herself to be polite. “You?”

  He shook his head. “Not really.”

  “Guilty conscience?”

  “Yes, but not for the reason you think.” He pushed the plate away. “I was about to explain when they came through the windows.”

  The reminder of flying glass had her checking his face. The tiny cuts were starting to heal, and were so many dark lines on his cheeks and forehead. She couldn’t see the left side of his face, where she’d punched him.

  Her appetite disappeared, but she made herself finish her pancakes. She needed fuel. But she also needed to get to her daughter. She couldn’t trust what Tyler had said last night, that she’d be okay until they got there. “There” could be hundreds of miles away, for God’s sake!

  “Look, Tyler, we need—”

  “To know what we’re heading into before we do it,” he countered firmly. “You need to know the whole story. I need you to know it,” he admitted.

  “I’m listening,” she prompted. “Make it quick. They got what they want.”

  “They had it by the time they attacked yesterday. I think he still wants you, though I’m not sure why.”

  “Then why did we stay here last night?”

  “His men are tired. He doesn’t have many, and he lost six at the Harrisons’. Plus two who went to the hospital and got arrested while they were there. They need to regroup, and he probably figures you’re out of it for now, anyway.”

  “Never.”

  “Well, last night you definitely were.”

  “You think I wouldn’t have been able to fight if I had to?”

  He wisely didn’t answer.

  She shoved her empty plate across the table. “Stop dicking around, Tyler, and tell me your story.”

  He drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I told you I lived with my father growing up. My parents divorced when I was six. Infidelity, I think, though they never really explained. My father was my hero because he worked for the Air Force and created new ways to help people.”

  Regan wanted to make a gag motion but knew it was childish. Under other circumstances she wouldn’t be so uncharitable about his childhood. But the man he had hero-worshipped had kidnapped her daughter, which curbed her sympathies.

  “Can you make this a little quicker, please?”

  “I went into the service because of him. I found it wasn’t exactly what he’d made it out to be, but took my own path. When I was twenty-two, he disappeared.”

  “From you, too?”

  He nodded.

  “Did he say goodbye or anything?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything from him for about six years. Then out of the blue he wrote to me. Postcards at first, telling me he was okay and missed me. Then letters talking about his new work, and how revolutionary it would be. Vague stuff, no details. Letters became emails, and about ten years ago he asked me to visit him at his new facility.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “You mean the project, or contacting me?”

  “Both.”

  “Honestly, I think he missed me.” He toyed with the spoon next to his coffee. “Or maybe that’s just ego talking, or the angry kid he left. Maybe he just wanted someone to brag to.”

  “And? What did he brag about?”

  “Pretty much what Ben and Jeanne told you, except he never mentioned Kelsey. I don’t think he fully trusted me. At first he only described the immunity part of the project.” He stopped to down the dregs of his coffee. “On the third day, he showed me a ‘secret’ lab where they were going to weaponize the compound once he retrieved the part the Harrisons had kept. He got kind of manic, very old-school villain-y. It freaked me out.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the military? What reason did he give for disappearing?
”

  “No one had ever given me any inkling he was doing anything wrong. Neither the Harrisons nor the Air Force ever came to me. Not to ask questions, not to see if I knew where he was, nothing. I wasn’t sure what he was doing was wrong. For all I knew, the Air Force was paying for it.”

  She couldn’t fault him. Even the Harrisons hadn’t said their project was canceled or the Air Force didn’t want the weapon. Just that they didn’t want Archie selling it.

  “So you went to the Harrisons instead.”

  “I wanted to warn them he might try to break in. Jeanne was concerned about what my father would do if he knew I’d gone to them, so they hired me. Kept me close.”

  “Until they found us again.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So when were you last in contact with your father?”

  “Ten years ago. The day I left the facility.” He watched her with anxious eyes. She wanted to tell him she believed him, but…

  “They knew you’d be at Harrison’s, Tyler. They didn’t go after you. The guy who talked to you acted like your father had expectations of you.”

  “I know. It threw me.”

  “Oohhhh, Tyler.” She propped her forehead on her palms. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “The Harrisons sent their jet back here. We take the Corvette to the airport, fly to Sacramento, and get to the facility. I think my father’s people will let us in. We get Kelsey and get out.”

  She laughed mirthlessly. “That is such a stupid plan.”

  “I know. Do you have a better idea?”

  Of course she didn’t. Regan stood and carried her dishes to the sink, thinking while she washed, rinsed, and dried them, then put them away. When she was done she leaned against the sink and folded her arms.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about the trap door? If they hadn’t found it…”

  Tyler’s face darkened. “I know. I didn’t show them the room because of the weapons in there.”

  “Kelsey can handle a gun.”

  “But Van and Tom aren’t trained. And if they tried to get in there and the enemy did, instead.” He held out his hands, palms up. “They’d be trapped and have a lot more weaponry to be used against them.”

  He could have cleared out the guns, or taken some time to get Van and Tom familiar with them. She supposed his way had been easier, and if he really thought they wouldn’t need it, there was no point.

  “Everything about you has two possible explanations,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  She didn’t believe it, but out of habit, or maybe punishment for lying to her, she heard herself say, “Like, you could be taking me to your father not to help me, but to help him.”

  For a moment, Tyler looked completely defeated. Then he stood with his shoulders squared, his spine straightened, and his face cleared.

  “I’m tired of struggling over this, Regan. I can’t say anything to convince you I’m on your side. I love Kelsey and don’t want anything to happen to her. It’s up to you now.”

  He set his plate in the sink and left the room.

  ***

  Screaming at the top of her lungs felt so good, Kelsey did it twice.

  Which made her desperately need a drink to soothe her now-raw throat, but for thirty seconds it kept her from going insane.

  First, she’d explored the room some more, looking for things she could use as weapons or part of an escape plan. Some of the toys in the closet had yielded possibilities. Barbie doll legs would hurt if she jabbed someone, so she ripped them off and kept them handy. She considered making a garrote of tied-together doll clothes, but she didn’t have it in her to throttle someone and decided not to bother. Most of the rest of the stuff was too flimsy or light to be any good, but she’d collected the marbles out of a game and the thin plastic sticks out of another, thinking she could make use of them somehow. She gathered her finds into a T-shirt she’d found in the dresser drawer and hid them at the bottom.

  The books were mostly very thin paperbacks and no good as weapons, but they helped stave off boredom for a couple of hours. It was almost cool, reading old favorites and discovering ones she’d never seen before. But kids’ stories could only hold her attention for so long.

  The Bulldozer delivered a change of sheets and a pillow. She made up her bed, then took a nap, counted everything countable in the room and slept again. They’d fed her twice, but she had no idea how much time had actually passed or what day it was. Eventually, she was so frustrated she wanted to scream, and when she couldn’t think of any reason not to, she did.

  Interestingly, no one came running. She wondered if Archie was stupid enough not to be monitoring her room. When Bulldozer brought her a sandwich and bowl of soup for her third meal, he didn’t bother looking around or removing her toys from the dresser or anything else indicating a hidden camera. And he didn’t mention the screams.

  When he brought her the fourth meal, she’d been exercising to keep up her strength and work off a little of the excess energy she was building up.

  “Good,” he said, when he noticed her sweat. It was the first thing he’d said to her. “Exercise will keep you healthy.”

  “I thought my supergenetics did that.” She wandered over to the dresser where he placed the tray and made a face at the sandwich sitting there. “Don’t you guys have any imagination? How about a nice lobster or something?”

  Bulldozer didn’t answer. He removed a plastic packet from her tray and ripped it open, setting a syringe, vial, rubber strip, cotton ball, and antiseptic wipe on a towel next to the tray.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to draw the first sample.” He lifted her right arm and looked at the inside of her elbow, then compared it to her left.

  “Sample of what, blood?”

  Again he didn’t answer, but he wrapped the rubber tourniquet around her upper left arm and tapped the vein with his meaty finger.

  “Okay, I take that as a yes.” She watched him insert the needle and push the vial onto it. Dark blood poured into the vial and he snapped the tourniquet off. Then he placed the cotton ball over the puncture, pressed down, and slid the needle out.

  “Keep pressure on.”

  Kelsey bent her arm to hold the cotton in place. Bulldozer gathered up his things and started to leave.

  “That’s it?”

  For some reason, he stopped and nodded at her.

  “That’s why you’re keeping me here? For how long?”

  The answer was in his eyes. For as long as it took. She had no doubt when they got what they were looking for, they would no longer need her.

  “So I have to stay shut up in this five-year-old’s room for God knows how long, waiting to die?”

  The door closed, the deadbolt punctuating his silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “This is lovely, Tyler, but not what I was expecting,” Regan said dryly. They strolled through a city park, clasped hands swinging between them, Tyler actually ambling and Regan doing her best to look relaxed and happy like most of the other people enjoying the warm fall weather, instead of burning with rage and vengeance and desperation to get to her daughter and make sure she was alive. Whole. Surrounding them were park benches lining meandering jogging-biking-skating paths, open grass, and people playing Frisbee or cuddling on blankets.

  Nowhere could Regan see a possible entrance to an underground facility.

  Tyler wouldn’t be hurried. Every time Regan unconsciously picked up her pace, he tugged her back to slow her down. Once the tug was too obvious, and he covered by catching her mouth in a kiss. She started to shove him away, remembered where they were, and left her hand on his shoulder, her heart aching under the need to push him to hurry, goddamn it.

  Tyler hovered over her mouth. “We’re not getting past this, are we?”

  Regan raised her eyes to his and the “no” froze on her tongue. Then she sighed and backed away. “There’s a lot to finish before we can even talk about it.”


  “Fair enough.”

  They walked on. Ten minutes later they reached the other side of the park, and Regan was getting angry. How much time had they wasted? Was this much caution really necessary? “Why didn’t we just park over here?”

  “I wanted to scout the lookouts.”

  She hadn’t seen anyone who looked out of place. “How many?”

  “Two. One back in the parking area where we started—he didn’t see us. One playing fetch with a dog and a tennis ball. He’s still behind us. I don’t know if he knows who we are or not.”

  “When will we get to the entrance?”

  “We’re here.”

  They’d just about left the park and were approaching an overpass. The street to their left teemed with cars speeding awfully close to the narrow sidewalk that continued under the bridge. There was a door in the side of the overpass, presumably for maintenance. Regan glanced around, but there was nothing else—no sewer cover, no building or crypt or monument, not even businesses across the street—that could have been what they were looking for.

  Tyler moved at a constant pace into the shadow of the road above and pulled open the door. Regan moved inside and he followed, letting it close behind them.

  “Light,” Tyler said, and a weak florescent bulb flickered on overhead.

  “Your father’s an Alias fan, huh?”

  “He was here long before that show was on TV.”

  The room they were in was tiny and bare, painted white so long ago dingy gray chips now littered the floor and water stains striped the walls. Regan couldn’t see any wheels or keypads or seams of doorways.

  “No lock outside.”

  “No, too suspicious.” He was just standing there.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We go in.” But he looked at her as if trying to decide something.

  “How?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Exasperated, Regan threw up her hands. “How do you know you’ll even be able to get in?”