SharedObjectives

by Chandra Ryan

  Their ascent to the surface was one of precision and ease. Even Lisa managed to make the trip without any unnecessary noise. He’d be impressed if he weren’t busy wishing she’d stayed behind in the safety of the bunker.

  His team made their way through the forest slowly. He’d picked a route that would provide them with the most coverage but that added time to the trip. Which was okay with him. He’d give up a little bit of time for the added safety. When they finally reached the base, he felt exposed. He couldn’t do much to prevent it. The buildings provided for some amount of coverage but not nearly as much as the forest had.

  The teams broke off one by one as they passed from quadrant to quadrant. They didn’t need any gestures or reminders from him. His men were the best. They knew what to do and so did he. His weapon drawn and ready to fire, he led Ben, Lisa and the remaining men to the lab. The door opened with a soft whoosh. He motioned two of the men to stand guard at the entrance and then directed the rest of them into the building. As soon as they’d walked into the lab and the door closed behind them, an eerie silence engulfed them. Dixie had gotten used to the hustle of the bunker. There, people were practically tripping over one another. The lab, however, was more than empty. It felt abandoned.

  He only had to motion at the branching corridor as they passed it for the two remaining men to break off from the group to search it. For better or worse, they were on their own in this. He opened the door to the room that housed the stasis chambers and then held up a hand to Lisa and Ben. He wanted to clear the area before he allowed them to enter it.

  The lights were dimmed so they cast deep shadows around the room. Not being able to see into the corners and the recesses made him jittery. And the beeping and ventilation noises of the chambers didn’t help alleviate that feeling.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to think as a soldier. He didn’t have time for nerves right now and neither did the men counting on him. He didn’t turn the lights on as he did a clockwise sweep of the room. He searched every nook and cranny for possible combatants. And he made sure to do a thorough search of every closet and checked under any piece of furniture with a gap large enough to house a body before he decided it was clear.

  He flipped on the lights and then directed Lisa and Ben to join him. He wouldn’t risk talking until the others returned from their searches, but he felt more confident by the moment. Lisa wasted no time in crossing to the stasis chambers and Ben went immediately to the computers. Dixie went to stand next to Lisa’s side but as she took notes on her digital reader, he quickly realized he was in over his head. The notes she took looked as if they were in a completely different language where even the base characters were unfamiliar. When Ben waved to get his attention, Dixie happily went to go check on him instead.

  Ben had a report on the screen and was pointing to one line in particular. Dixie was so stunned that the military hadn’t cleaned the machine before they left that it took a moment for the text of the document to sink in. Apparently Dixie had given authorization for whatever currently resided in those chambers. Or, at least, that’s what the records showed. He skimmed the rest of the report in confusion but when he got to the bottom, realization settled in the pit of his stomach like a lead weight. The military had set him up for whatever scandal they’d created. That’s why they’d left the document on the computer. What good would a setup be if no one ever saw it?

  The door to the lab slid open and Dixie found himself pointing his weapon at his own men on instinct. After they nodded in recognition, they lowered their guns. The rest of the building had been cleared. Now he just needed to wait for the remaining eight men to return before he could question Lisa and find out what the fuck he’d fallen into.

  It only took about fifteen minutes for the last set of men to return. When the last pair announced their quadrant clear, Dixie turned to Lisa. “What the hell is in those chambers?” He kept his voice to a whisper. Even though the base had been cleared, he didn’t feel like pressing his luck right now.

  Her face was pale and her body tense as she looked up at him. “I don’t know,” she whispered back.

  “What do you mean? Are they super-soldiers or not?”

  “They’re enhanced but they’re not super-soldiers. Or, at least, they aren’t like any of the super-soldiers we’ve seen before.”

  “What do you mean?” He felt sick as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “Super-soldiers are humans who have been modified. As you know,” she added quickly. “But these beings appear to have been created.”

  “Are they human?”

  Her brow wrinkled with apparent concern. “That would depend on how you defined human.”

  His world tilted ever so slightly as her words echoed off the walls of the room. If whatever those chambers housed inspired that level of philosophical debate, he was screwed. “Shit. Ben, clean the computers. Do a full sweep. Then we’re moving the experiments back to the bunker until we get this figured out. I want this whole room wiped of any evidence. I’m not taking the fall for whatever is in those chambers.”

  The ceiling above him cracked ominously just before a loud explosion filled the air. Chunks of drywall fell on Dixie’s head and a fine film of white dust swirled through the air as two men dropped down into the room, weapons drawn. Immediately one of Dixie’s men jumped in front of Lisa and pulled her down to the ground. All his other men had weapons drawn—except Ben. He’d been doing the computer cleanse and had put his gun down just out of reach. It was a rookie mistake but not one he deserved to die for, especially just after finding out he’d become a father. Ben would be an amazing dad.

  The image of Nate’s face flashed in Dixie’s mind. Without any further thought, he threw himself at Ben as gunfire echoed through the room. Two of his men were still outside, guarding the entrance. That left twelve Coalition members against two military. The odds were definitely in their favor. But that didn’t mean they weren’t going to take some casualties. And, as searing pain ripped through his back, he began to wonder if he might be one of them. “Laser weapons.” The words were barely a whisper. With the burning sensation enveloping his lungs, he couldn’t manage to speak any louder. But he was close enough to Ben’s ear to be heard.

  “Fuck!” Ben grabbed Dixie’s weapon out of his hand and then rolled him over on the floor. “They’ve got lasers, men. Armor won’t help.” Ben kept himself in a crouch as he opened fire on the men.

  The seconds passed painfully as he waited for the confrontation to end. As soon as the last shot had been fired, he heard Ben’s voice issuing orders but he was too deep in the haze of pain to understand them.

  Another streak of pain burned through him as someone rolled him over onto his stomach. Tiny hands examined the wound. He might hate putting Lisa in danger, but having a doctor with them might have been a good call after all. But Dixie knew they’d have to transport him back to the bunker before she could work on him. They couldn’t stay here. The risk of another military ambush was too high.

  The world started to dim around him as he was flipped onto his back. He blinked his eyes to clear them but they were too heavy to open again. He didn’t really care, though. The pain didn’t seem so bad when his eyes were closed. A sharp slap across the face woke him to both the lab and the pain once more.

  “You don’t get to give up. Do you hear me, soldier?” Lisa’s words were strong despite the panic he heard in her voice.

  “You giving the orders now?” Damn. Why did it hurt so bad to breathe?

  “Damn straight. We’re going to get you to the bunker and I’m going to save your life. Am I clear?”

  He smiled despite the circumstances. “Crystal.” They hadn’t been together long, but he was glad he’d found her. Her strength and courage, not to mention her passion for everything, made him happy that he had the chance to get to know her. It sucked that their time had been so short, though.

  The world went fuzzy around him again. Regardless of her
orders, he just didn’t see any way he would be waking up this time.

  Lisa stared down at Dixie’s face as his breathing faltered for the second time. She didn’t think a slap would bring him out of it this time. “Get me a ventilator, a table and a surgery kit.” She began stripping his armor and uniform off him before giving him CPR. She could almost hear his jokes about her looking for excuses to kiss him echoing in her head but had to silence them. Thinking about him as her lover made it hard for her to function as a doctor. As soon as he started breathing again, she leaned back to evaluate his condition. He needed surgery and they were in a medical facility. This was going to happen and it was going to happen now. Only, no one seemed to be moving. “Get me a fucking ventilator, a table and kit or get out of my way so I can do it myself.”

  That seemed to push the men into action. Three of them disappeared into a nearby room and reappeared a few minutes later. Two of them were pushing a surgical table while the third carried the kit and the ventilator. It wasn’t an ideal situation but it was her best chance at saving Dixie so she’d take it. “Thank you. Help me get him onto the table and get him hooked up to the ventilator.” She’d stripped him from the waist up but she couldn’t possibly lift him. It took all three men to do that.

  “How many men do you need to assist you?” Ben asked.

  “Two. Preference given to any who have medical training of any type.”

  “Candlon and Leeam, you’re with her. The rest of you are with me. We need to get these experiments to the bunker.”

  She glanced up at Ben as she scrubbed her hands. “They have to be moved in their chambers. That’s the only thing keeping them alive.”

  “You heard the lady. Hope you had a good breakfast, men.”

  She tuned them out as she focused on the operation she was about to perform. In the real world she wouldn’t even be allowed to observe the surgery because of her relationship with the patient. And for good reason. Her nerves were strained to the point of breaking, her eyes stung with unshed tears and her hands trembled. But she could do this. Dixie needed her to.

  She took a deep breath as she dried her hands. When she joined the men at the table the soldiers had already hooked Dixie up to the ventilator, scrubbed up and donned gloves. “Has the wound been disinfected?”

  “Yes sir.”

  She didn’t know which soldier addressed her so she just nodded and went back to her examination. “I need a scope and a monitor.”

  They handed her the coiled camera that would record internal damage done to Dixie’s body along with the screen that would allow her to see it. “Let’s apply a regional anesthetic before I go in. The last thing we need is him waking up and freaking out because of the pain while I’m doing this.” She waited until one of the soldiers gave Dixie an injection in his shoulder before she slipped the scope through the small hole in Dixie’s shoulder.

  She hated guns. She hated the death and destruction they left in their wake. But she was grateful that Dixie had been shot with a laser burst and not a traditional weapon. The heat of the blast had cauterized the blood vessels as it’d passed though the tissue, lessening the chances of him dying from bleeding out. And there was no shrapnel to dig out. Still, it’d done significant damage to his left lung.

  “Looks as if his lung got the worst of it.” She quickly estimated the size of the hole the laser had torn through the muscle wall. “I’m going to need a 7mm muscle patch.” New weapons had brought about the need for new medical techniques. Muscle and skin patches were common now and a lot more effective than the glues and valves of the past. They were miracles. But she’d just seen the dark side of the miracle and it left a knot in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know what slept in those stasis chambers being carried out of the lab, but growing tissue for transplant had been the first step in creating them. She shuddered as she thought about it. Creating tissue to save a life was one thing. Creating life, however, was something completely different. It crossed so many ethical lines that she didn’t even know where to begin her condemnation of it.

  Using the scope to guide her, she aligned the patch and then affixed it with biological glue before removing her instruments. She then sutured and bandaged the wound before taking a step back. She grabbed a stethoscope from a nearby shelf so she could listen to his lungs. Both seemed to be filling with air now. “Turn the ventilator off but don’t remove it.” She wanted to make sure air was only a second away if she hadn’t repaired the damage.

  The machine went silent but his lungs still filled. “Thank god. Remove the ventilator and give him something to keep him out. I want him fully recovered before he’s up and giving orders again.”

  “Yes sir.”

  As soon as she turned from the table the gravity of the moment caught up to her and made the room swim around her. She had to grab on to the table edge to keep from falling over.

  “You okay?” Ben wrapped an arm around her waist to brace her.

  As quickly as the moment hit, it passed. “I think so.” She looked up to see three of the original six chambers had been removed. “You guys already made a trip?”

  “Yep. One more and we’ll be done here.”

  “We’ll go with you.” She glanced back at the soldiers who were already loading Dixie up on a stretcher. “Strap him down securely.”

  They nodded as the fasteners clicked loudly. “He’s secure, sir.”

  “Good. We’re ready whenever you are.”

  “Two men per chamber and two men to carry Dixie only leaves me and four other soldiers to act as guards.”

  “Did you miss addition day in math class?” she asked sharply. “You forgot to count me.” She was sick and tired of not being counted. She could hold a weapon and probably shoot it if need be. Yet Ben still saw her as a limitation.

  His eyebrow rose in question but he didn’t challenge her outright. “It might be best if we take the remaining chambers and then return for you and Dixie.”

  “We don’t know what they were planning. The military could swarm the base at any moment,” she argued. “If this is a setup, they’ll need someone to discover it. And the sooner the better.”

  He clenched his jaw and took a shaky breath. “You’re right. The military will need this place discovered quickly if it plans on pinning it on the Coalition.” He gestured to the soldiers. “Be on alert but be fast. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Ben led the way while she stayed somewhere in the middle. Two of the remaining four guards were in front while the other two flanked the group as they exited the building. She’d felt vulnerable on the trip to the lab but that was nothing compared to how exposed she felt now.

  As they hustled between buildings, every sound became that of an assailant creeping up on them. Her body tensed as she waited for the impending attack. At any moment, she expected the explosion of weapons and the cries of the injured. Just like the sound the gun made as it fired on Ben. Only, it’d hit Dixie.

  She staggered as the scene played out in her head. She’d been trapped under the soldier who shielded her with his own body so she couldn’t reach them. Not until it was over. Every second she waited had lasted for an eternity. She’d wanted to yell at him. But if he hadn’t jumped in front of Ben, Ben would’ve been the one hit. She refused to pick one man over the other but the doctor in her knew Ben would’ve taken that shot to the heart. The chances of him surviving that kind of blow would’ve been slim to none.

  She cast a glare over at the still-unconscious Dixie. He was lucky he’d survived. If he hadn’t, she would’ve killed him. She couldn’t believe how much he’d come to mean to her in such a short time. With Ben, she had expected to fall hard and fast. She’d been so in love with him two years ago that her heart had been breaking every day since. Having him back in her life had eased that pain. Since she’d never stopped loving him, it only made sense she’d fall for him again. But she had never expected to feel the same about anyone else. When Dixie had quit breathing, she’d learned ho
w wrong she’d been in that assumption.

  Her heart beat faster as they left the base and began to make their way through the forest. When Ben left two years ago, he’d broken her heart so badly that it’d never fully recovered. The only thing that’d given her comfort during those dark days had been her son. What would comfort her when both Ben and Dixie decided it was time to move on? Her knees gave out at the thought.

  “Shit.” Ben was at her side in moments. “Are you okay?”

  She wanted to be strong. More than anything she wanted to be the soldier he needed her to be at that moment. But she couldn’t seem to regain control of her muscles. They insisted on shivering despite the warmth of the day and the heavy armor she wore. “Can’t seem to stop shaking,” she said through chattering teeth.

  “It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot today. Sometimes it takes a bit for your brain to catch up to the trauma.” He picked her up and cradled her securely next to his chest as he started walking again.

  “Shock?” How had she not seen that? Had she lost her mental faculties along with her physical abilities?

  He smiled down at her. “Yep.”

  She took several deep breaths before she could force her body to relax. “I’m good. I can walk again.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t put her down though. “But this is faster.”

  She grimaced at him but didn’t argue because not only was he right, but it also felt so damn good to be wrapped in his strength. She’d officially become a damsel in distress and it sucked how much she enjoyed it.

  He carried her until they reached the hatch that led down into the bunker. When he finally set her down, relief filled her at her ability to hold her own weight. Still, he stayed close. As if he expected her to collapse at any moment. And, as much as that irritated her, it also made her chest puff with satisfaction. He wanted to be there for her.

  With Ben currently guarding her, getting the chambers down into the bunker fell to the other men. They ran ropes around the first one and then shouted down at someone below before sliding the ends of the rope into a pulley. With five enhanced soldiers manning the operation, the chamber moved slowly into the hole. For a moment it appeared to be being eaten by the ground, but it eventually disappeared. They repeated the process with the last two chambers and then it was their turn to descend into the safe haven.