She stayed up near the very top of the tank, just beneath the water line, attached to the wall, and made herself as small and as flat as possible. There was always the possibility that she could die on a mission. That was part of the . . . adrenaline rush. It was always about pitting her skills against an enemy. If she wasn't good enough, if she made a mistake, that was on her. But this . . . Peter Whitney had deliberately injected her with a killer virus in order to ensure that she returned to him. He was willing to risk her dying a painful death to prove his point.
He owned them. All of them. Each and every girl he took out of an orphanage and experimented on. Some died. That didn't matter to him. None of them mattered to him. Only the science. Only the soldiers he developed piggybacking on the research he'd conducted on the girls. Children with no childhood. No loving parents. She hadn't understood what that meant until she'd been out in the world and realized the majority of people didn't live as she did.
All of the girls had discussed trying to break free before Whitney added them to his disgusting program to give him more babies to experiment on. The thought of leaving the only life they'd ever known was terrifying. But this. Leaving her to die in a foreign country because she was late through no fault of her own. She had the information Whitney needed, but because he insisted on injecting her with a killer virus before she went on her mission, she might never get that information to him. He liked playing god. He was willing to lose one of them in order to scare the others into compliance.
Something hit the water hard, startling her. She nearly jerked off the wall, blinking in protest against the bright lights shining into the tank. Her sanctuary was no longer that. The environment had gone from cool, dark water--a place of safety--to one of overwhelmingly intense brilliant light illuminating the water nearly to the bottom of the tank. The hook dragged viciously along the floor and she shuddered in reaction.
A second hook entered the water with an ominous splash as the first was pulled back up. The next few minutes were a nightmare as the tank was thoroughly searched with hooks along the bottom. Had a diver with scuba gear been hiding there, he would have been torn to pieces.
She relaxed a bit as they pulled the hooks back up to the top. They would leave soon and she could make the climb out of the tank and across the roof. Already she could tell she was weaker, but she knew she could still climb down the side of the building and get to the van where Whitney's supersoldiers waited to administer the antidote to the poisonous virus, reducing it to a mere illness instead of something lethal.
The hook plunged back into the water, startling her. She nearly detached from the wall as the iron dragged up the side of the tank while the second hook entered the water. This was . . . bad. She had nowhere to go. If she moved fast to avoid the hook, she would be spotted. If she didn't, the hook could tear her apart. Either way, she was dead.
The sound, magnified underwater, was horrendous to her ears. She wanted to cover them against the terrible scraping and grinding as the point of the hook dug into the side of the tank. She watched it come closer and closer as it crawled up from the bottom. The other hook came up almost beside it, covering more territory as they ripped long gouges in the wall.
She tried to time letting go of the wall so neither hook would brush against her body and signal to the men on the other end that there was something present other than wall. She pushed off gently and slid between the two chains, trying to swim slowly so that movement wouldn't catch eyes. She stroked her arms with powerful pulls to take her down, still hugging the wall as best she could below the hooks. If she could just attach herself on the path already taken, she'd have a good chance of riding this latest threat out.
The advantage of going deeper was that the light didn't penetrate all the way to the bottom. She just had to avoid the hooks as they plunged into the water and sank. Once she was deep enough, the soldiers above her wouldn't be able to see even if she did make a jerky movement to prevent the hook from impaling her.
She'd made it about halfway down when the hooks began their upward scraping along the wall. Once again she stayed very still, the sound grating on her nerves, her heart pounding as the huge hooks got closer and closer. This time she did a slow somersault to avoid getting scraped by either hook. The dive took her lower into the tank. She didn't see how they could possibly think anyone could stay underwater that long, and by now they certainly would have discovered a scuba tank.
The soldiers were thorough, plunging the hooks deep and dragging them up the walls without missing so much as a few inches of space. Bellisia realized they had to have perfected this method of searching the tanks by doing it often. That made sense. The tanks were large and Cheng was paranoid. No doubt the many floors and laboratories were being searched just as thoroughly.
There, in the water, listening to the sound of the chains scraping up the walls, she contemplated the difference between Cheng and Whitney. Both had far too much money. Whitney seemed to need to take his research further and further out of the realm of humanity and deeper into the realm of insanity. No government would ever sanction what he was doing, yet he was getting away with it. At least his motive, although twisted, was to produce better soldiers for his country.
Cheng wasn't affiliated with his government as far as she could tell. He worked closely with them, but he wasn't a patriot. He was out for himself. He seemed to want more money and power than he already had. She'd researched him carefully, and few on the planet had more than he did. Still, it wasn't enough for him. Yet he had no family. No one to share his life with. He didn't work for the sake of knowledge. He existed only to make money.
Bellisia was aware of her heart laboring harder and the pressure on her lungs becoming more severe. That was unusual. She'd taken a large gulp of air and she should have quite a bit of time left before she had to rise, but it felt as if she'd been underwater a little too long, even for her. Of course Whitney would find something that would negatively impact her ability in the water. He didn't want her to use that means as an escape route.
She had no choice but to begin her ascent. She tried to stay to the side of the tank that they'd already dredged. It was terrifying to be in the water as the large, heavy hooks slammed close to her again and again. It was inevitable that she would be hit, given the many strikes the soldiers made at the water, and it happened as she was just pushing off the wall to allow her body to rise slowly, naturally. The hook hit the bottom of the tank and was jerked upward and to the left, right across her back. She folded herself in half to minimize the damage, but it hit hard enough to jar her, even with the way the water slowed the big hook down.
Bellisia felt the burn as the point ripped her skin open. It was a shallow wound, but it stung like hell and instantly there was blood in the water. She had to concentrate to close those cells to keep from leaking enough blood that the soldiers would notice. Under her skin she had a network of finely controlled muscles that aided her in changing the look and feel of her body's surface skin. Now, she used them to squeeze the cells closed and prevent dumping blood into the water, at least until the spotlights were turned off.
It seemed to take forever as she continued to rise, her lungs burning and her muscles cramping. All the while the horrible splash and scraping of the hooks continued. Twice she had extremely close calls and once more the tip barely skimmed along her body, hitting her thigh, ripping her open. It was much harder to control the bleeding this time, as she was weaker and needed to break the surface before her muscles went into full cramps.
She was relieved when the hooks were dragged from the water and the soldiers began to climb down the ladders back to the roof. Instantly she kicked the remaining four feet to the surface and took in great gulps of air. She clung to the side for several long minutes, resting her head against the wall while she tried to breathe away the inferno inside her. She couldn't keep doing this for Whitney. She wouldn't survive. He made them all feel as if they were nothing. She knew she wasn't alone in wanting to es
cape because they all talked about it, late at night when one or two could disrupt the cameras and recording equipment and they were alone in the dorms.
She had tried planning an escape with her best friend, Zara, but before they could attempt to carry out their plans, Zara was sent on an undercover mission and Bellisia was sent to ascertain whether or not Violet was betraying Whitney. Whitney had set Violet up as senator, taking over when her husband had been killed. Whitney didn't trust Violet, so he'd gone so far as to "pair" her with him. That meant she would always be physically attracted to Whitney. That attraction evidently didn't stop Violet from conspiring against the man who had experimented on her.
Bellisia began her slow climb out of the water tank. She would have to dry off before she could make the trek across the roof to the side of the building. If she didn't, one of the soldiers might discover the wet trail leading to the edge. From the heat of the high-powered lights, the platform around the tank was really warm and she lay down, allowing her body to change to the color of the dingy planks.
She didn't dare sleep, not when soldiers still guarded the roof, but they seemed content with pacing the length of it in patterns, checking every place that could possibly hide a body over and over. She realized the soldiers were as afraid of Cheng as she and the other women in her unit were afraid of Whitney. Life was cheap to both men, at least other people's lives.
She began her slow crawl down the side of the tank once she felt she wouldn't leave behind a trail. Her body was hot now, so hot she felt as if her skin would crack open. Her muscles cramped and she couldn't stop shaking. That didn't bode well for crossing the roof, but at least it was very dark now that the spotlights had been turned off. If she shook when a guard was close, hopefully the darkness would conceal her.
It took her just under forty minutes in the dark, with her body on fire and her muscles cramping painfully, to climb down the side of the building. The virus he'd given her was vicious, her fever high, her insides searing her. For someone like her, someone needing more water than most people, it was sheer agony, as if he'd developed the strain specifically for her--and he probably had. That only strengthened her resolve to escape.
She rested for a moment to get her bearings and plan out her next step. She needed the antidote immediately, and that meant putting herself back in Whitney's hands. She had no other choice. Bellisia made her way across the lawn to the street where the van was waiting for her. It was parked one block down to be inconspicuous, one block away, which put it right next to the river.
She was staggering by the time she reached the vehicle, and Gerald, one of the supersoldiers sent to watch over her, leapt out to catch her up and get her back into the van. He placed her on a gurney and immediately spoke into his cell to tell Whitney she was back. She closed her eyes and turned her face away, as if losing consciousness.
"I need the information she has," Peter Whitney said. "Get it from her before you administer the antidote. Take her to the plane immediately. Your destination will be Italy."
Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. She knew several of the women had been taken there to ensure they became pregnant. The GhostWalkers had destroyed his breeding program in the United States. No way was she going to Italy.
"Whitney needs a report," Gerald said.
She kept her breathing shallow. Labored. Eyes closed, body limp.
"Bellisia, honey, come on, give me the report. You need the antidote. He won't let me give it to you until you give him what he wants."
She stayed very still. Gerald and his partner, Adam, were her handlers on nearly every mission. The three had developed a friendship of sorts, if one could be friends with their guards. She knew how to control her breathing and heart rate, and she did both to make him think she was crashing.
"We're losing her, Doc," Gerald said while Adam caught at her arm, shoving up the material of her bodysuit.
"Be certain. She could be faking," Whitney warned.
"No, she's out of it. She got back way past the time she was supposed to. We might be too late to save her. They locked the building down and she was still inside." Gerald's voice held urgency.
"Did you see Violet or any of her people going in or coming out?" Whitney demanded.
"I never saw Senator Smythe. I have no idea if she was there or not," Gerald said. Bellisia wasn't altogether certain he spoke the truth. He may very well have seen the senator, but Gerald and Adam didn't always like the way Whitney treated the women.
"Be sure Bellisia is really out."
Gerald prodded her. Hard. She made no response.
"She's burning up. And she's bleeding on her back and thigh."
"Inject her. She'll need water."
"Adam, give her the antidote fast. We'll need water for her."
She felt the needle and then the sting of the antidote as it went in. She stayed silent, uncertain how fast it was supposed to work. She hated needles, in fact the sensation of them entering her skin often made her nauseous. The double row of muscles caused the needle to spread a terrible fire through every cell.
"Doc says get her water."
Adam held up a bottle. "She's not responsive enough to drink." That showed her how upset Adam was on her behalf; he knew she would need to be submerged in water. He wasn't thinking clearly.
"Not drink. Pour it over her."
The cool water went over her arm and then her chest. She nearly lost her ability to keep her heart and lungs under control, the relief was so tremendous.
"That's not enough. Get it out of the river."
Adam threw open the double doors to the van and hopped out. Her acute hearing picked up Whitney hissing in disapproval. He didn't like that they'd parked by a river. That was her signal to move.
She leapt from the gurney and onto the ground right beside a startled Adam.
"Grab her," Gerald yelled.
She raced across the street with Adam rushing after her. The tips of his fingers brushed her back just as she dove right off the edge into the river. Water closed over her head, the cool wetness welcoming her.
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Leopard's Fury Page 36