by S A Gardner
I shook my head, feeling it might snap off my brittle neck, my voice issuing through barbed wires. “I know nothing.”
“You do know everything,” Damian insisted. “You’ve worked most of it out, but the only thing you couldn’t imagine is that Jake, and the other scientists, have sold out, and are actually working with the militants, who in turn are working for an international terrorist organization. The terrorists objected to the militants’ bid for popularity, thought scrutiny might expose their real purpose before they were ready to strike. They were the ones who replanted the minefields to stop them from carrying out their plans and to limit their movements. That’s when the bigwig militants found a safe route around it, no doubt under Jake’s guidance. We embarked on our journey before they could discreetly tell us about the new path to the camp.”
The stasis of shock started to crack. Every muscle in my body started vibrating like a gong struck by a vicious hammer. What Damian was saying…what he was accusing Jake of…
It was beyond monstrous. And I couldn’t…couldn’t…
Stop. Keep it together. Unravel later.
Had to keep asking questions until this madness made any sort of sense.
My voice came out shredded through the broken glass filling my larynx. “If Jake already knew what you were, what danger you pose to him, why didn’t he expose you?”
Damian hurled a murderous glance at Jake. “Because he wanted you on his side. He wanted you, period. That’s why he let us come in the first place.”
“Give me a break,” I choked. “No way is any of this…this insanity about me.”
Damian looked back at me, the change coming over his face staggering. It became indulgence and intimacy incarnate. Now?
“You always underestimate your effect.”
“You mean you both want me so much, you kept me in the dark as you got me all the way here, where I could have been killed a dozen times over?”
Affront and anger blasted off Damian, compromising my already shaky balance. “I tried everything to keep you out of this from the start, then every step of the way, right until the last moment inside that base. But we both know how this went. Now you must step aside and let me do my job. Eradicate him and the others and their work. They’ve almost perfected new weapons that would make every mass destruction weapon in history seem merciful by comparison.”
I swung round to Jake. “Is this the chemical/biological weapons development facility? The one experimenting on the refugees?”
Jake straightened with difficulty, nodded. “But the rest of his accusations are false. It’s so like him, to mix just enough truth with fabrication to make it sound plausible and sincere.”
If I could, I would have rolled my eyes. “Just how well do you know each other?”
Jake had always been brave, but what I’d witnessed minutes ago had been way beyond that. He’d literally laughed in the face of certain, excruciating death and his executioner. And it hadn’t been bravado. After all that had happened to him, he’d developed a new level of fearlessness I’d never seen before.
Now he was openly provoking Damian, tossing him a goading glance. “Exceptionally so, wouldn’t you say, Damian?”
So they had been hiding a much more complicated history. Not that it could be as atrocious as their current state. Anyway, what mattered here didn’t concern their relationship. Only their lies.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Jake?” I gritted. “When I asked you about the refugees’ death rates? Why did you say there was another installation here?”
“The same reason I didn’t want you to reveal you knew I was a prisoner,” Jake said, like Damian reverting to overwhelming sincerity when he faced me. “I wanted you out of here, safe. If I’d told you, I knew you’d do something crazy to stop them.”
Feeling my guts start to strangle each other, I hissed, “Are you their accomplice?”
His answer was immediate. “I’m not. And neither are the rest of the scientists. But we are privy to literally cataclysmic knowledge. To Damian, we must be sacrificed with the guilty rather than risk future leakages.”
Radical measures and leaving no loose ends were Damian’s specialty. But I still had trouble believing he’d wipe out innocents. Let alone that brutally, with that much relish.
There was no way to prove either man’s words. Both had lied to me. Both could be lying now. But if so, what was the truth? Was there a truth, or as usual, just perspective?
Damian touched my shoulder, braving another ram. “I lied to you because I was afraid of the depth of your feelings for Constantine, that they would blind you into taking his side. At least letting him slip by. As you’re doing now.”
Which made sense. If Jake was guilty of what he’d accused him of. But what else had Damian lied about?
Had all his passion been to secure me on his side? To have me so blinded by what I felt for him, I’d be willing to stand aside as he executed Jake without handing me conclusive proof?
Again, as if he’d read his mind, he exhaled. “I had no concrete proof to offer you.”
Jake struggled to his feet. “And you won’t ever have any.”
“I have the proof of nine thousand dead refugees,” Damian snarled.
Jake made a dismissing gesture. “I tried to save them. The militants let me struggle to, as an empirical experiment. When I couldn’t, they knew no one else ever could, and that their weapon’s effects were un-survivable.”
Another plausible answer. To contribute to my impending head burst.
Jake’s next words, so cool and calm, did far worse than that. They soiled my psyche.
Where was catatonic shock when a woman needed it?
“Anyway, why kill me now, Damian? If what you say is true, why not take me back to be put on trial?” He turned his eyes to me, compelling in their earnestness. “I’ll tell you why, Cali. He has orders to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Which includes you and your team, now that you know the real danger here. An unfortunate accident befalling you all on the way back would wrap it all up.”
The hell in Damian’s eyes flared. Jake was a goner the moment I let my guard down.
Then he turned those eyes on me, the blast of hatred becoming pure, overwhelming love. “Trust your heart, querida.”
My heart? That shredded mess inside my rib cage?
Jake had his firm hold there, too, and point for point, plausibility-wise, he was winning.
Still, it whimpered Damian…
Damian moved so fast he blurred. Then he was kicking me, in the abdomen, full force.
In the whiteout before the pain registered, everything streaked.
Was that my proof? His way of saying: you lovesick moron, you dropped your guard?
But I was only guarding Jake from you. I would rather die than think I need to guard myself against you.
As the lament splintered through me, a corner of my mind remained adamant, refusing to believe Damian would ever harm me. Another clinically observed his technique. Perfect, pitiless. His booted foot plowing into me, folding me in half, hurling me backward as easily as he would a pillow.
As I hurtled away, suspended in the momentary weightlessness, I wondered why I wasn’t blacking out. Anyone would have, with that much force per square inch impacting their solar plexus. Not to mention the detonation of anguish. Then I slammed against the jagged cavern wall.
Darkness. Void. I surrendered to their onslaught, snatched at it.
If the Damian I loved didn’t exist, if this one would end my life, I didn’t want to be aware as he did it.
My consciousness came back online to the world shaking. Another detonation. And the cavern was raining boulders. Right where I’d been standing. Where Damian was now after he’d kicked me. Out of the trajectory of their destruction.
He was buried in a blink.
Horror shoved aside pain and disorientation. “Damian.”
Another blow jarred me, knocking the gun I’d still been cl
utching away. Jake.
Disarming me in case I turned on him? Thought I could even consider him now?
Damian. Get him out.
Rabid strength poured through me as I hauled rocks off him, nothing inside me anymore but the need to see him whole. More rocks could come down on me. I didn’t care. As long as I could still move, still breathe, I’d dig him out.
Then I could see him. No visible injuries, no blood. He’d taken the best position, face down, hands protecting his head. And he was moving, rolling more rocks off his back, turning over. Yes, God, yes, Damian…
A resounding boom jolted me. Damian jerked, too, his beautiful eyes seeking mine, uncomprehending, then reproaching.
I didn’t understand. Even when I saw it.
The dark, viscid crimson blossoming over his chest.
Forty-Six
“I had to kill him.”
Kill him. Kill him.
Kill him.
Jake had killed Damian.
No. No. NO!
He can’t have. Damian isn’t dying. He can’t die.
He will.
A bullet right in his chest—his heart—his eyes fogging, leaving me, hurtling out of reach—oh God, oh God, no, no, no.
I pressed over his wound. His blood burned my flailing hands, scorched my sanity. No knowledge left. All training erased. Heart flapping uselessly, imitating his, no blood pumping, everything receding…
No. Can’t afford a breakdown. Save him. Do it. Now. Die later. Focus. Focus!
I lunged for the backpack, groped in the debris of my shell-shocked mind for the emergency measures buried under the avalanche of fright and desperation. ABC…ABC…
Yes, yes. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Revive him, stabilize him…Reassure him. “Damian, I’m here…I’ll take care of you, don’t worry…I’ll never let you go…help me…hang on…”
He opened his eyes and my heart ruptured. He was telling me something. Something important. Then I heard words.
Jake’s.
“He wouldn’t have stopped until I was dead, Cali. Until we all were. Your use to him is over, and your danger is now…”
I was outside my body, watching it exploding in a violent backswing. The back of my fist impacted the side of Jake’s head, sending him sprawling on the ground. Good thing for him it only packed a fraction of my horror and rage and despair. The full dose would have snapped his neck.
He fell, facedown. I forgot he existed.
Only Damian. Save him.
My heart stampeded, my breath fractured my lungs as I tipped his head back, suctioned blood out of his throat, placed the airway in his mouth so he wouldn’t suffocate on his tongue or blood, started him on hundred percent oxygen. I fumbled for a saline bag, a line, a cannula, speeding up, blurring, setting up fluid delivery, measuring his blood pressure.
Oh, God, no. NO!
Like that night in Sudan, only much worse—so much worse…
A movement behind me registered. Jake, staggering up. My focus dragged to him, long enough to see him wiping blood from his mouth. I forgot him as I looked at him, turned to Damian, kept the pressure on his wound, bathed in more of his blood.
Only his incredibly slow heartbeat was saving him from bleeding out now. But he knew that, would help me by slowing it down even more, giving me time…
“I understand your confusion, Cali.” Jake. So damned reasonable and collected. “Damian is a master manipulator, and you think I’m the bad guy now. I won’t even remind you that you interrupted him murdering me. But whatever you think, we have to run. His men must have heard this shot. Once we’re in their power, it’ll all be over. If we can reach your team, make a head start, we’d stand a chance. Come with me, Cali. I love you. No matter what you do, I’ll always love you. We’ll work this out.”
Like I’d listen to him after he killed Damian in cold blood… I gagged, retched.
He didn’t kill him. Damian won’t die. Damian, God…
I forced myself to answer Jake as I continued working. “Give me the gun, Jake. If you really love me, don’t force me to take you down.”
“I’ll need your promise first that we’ll run together before they come.”
“Damian was wrong to decide to execute you.” I had to admit that much. “And I won’t let his men near you, either. You have nothing to fear. I guarantee it.” Damian grunted something. It sounded like “Don’t.” Another salvo of terror exploded in my gut. “That is, if Damian doesn’t die. If he does, I’ll kill you myself. So you’d better come here and help me save him.”
“Unacceptable, Cali.” Regret permeated Jake’s elegant tones, an acid drip on my exposed nerves. “I can’t surrender my fate to your misconceptions. I would lift your confusion if I had time. You of all people will understand why I’m doing all this.”
All this…what? All Damian accused him of?
He went on. “You know how extreme measures are the only way to eradicate an insidious, devastating disease. Money is the narrow-minded motive a one-dimensional, avaricious man like Damian can come up with. It’s just a by-product and further means to an end, a higher cause. The highest cause.”
His words hit me like a meteor shower.
He was confessing.
“But you have freed me from my suffocating parasites. And though this isn’t how I planned it, I waited eight years for you. I’ve been waiting for you since that day you took my hands in yours. I can wait forever, if need be. I’ll find you again one day, when you realize you’ve allied yourself with the wrong man. We will be together then, sharing it all.”
He retreated as he talked, those uncanny eyes crinkling in a smile that wasn’t a smile, but a pledge of eternal love.
Then he was gone.
Icy shards impaled me. How hadn’t I seen it before?
He was insane.
A mind of that caliber, deranged to that extent, was a major catastrophe.
A major catastrophe I didn’t give a fig about. The only impending disaster I cared about was right under my hands.
Damian had all signs of cardiac tamponade.
Neck veins bulging, barely audible heart sounds through chafing pericardial rub, plummeting blood pressure. The bullet had a ripped a hole in his heart or his vena cava in the pericardial sac covering it. Blood was accumulating there, preventing his heart from expanding properly to fill and pump. His heart was being strangled by its own blood into stopping.
“S-stop…him…”
Damian. Still conscious. He’d fumbled out the airway to rasp his plea.
“I have to arrest your deterioration first.”
A euphemism for stop you dying.
He would if I didn’t evacuate the blood accumulating around his heart. Now. No time to run for help to transfer him to the STS. Had to perform the pericardiocentesis blind, with no way to monitor where my needle was going.
“I d-don’t matter…he’ll kill…thousands more…millions…start wars…”
Damian’s gasped words drenched me in agony and despair. “You matter, Damian…to me. I’m not that righteous I’d risk you to stop Jake, or even a war.”
“Then f-fuck both…but h-he won’t s-stop until he g-gets you…that’s why I had t-to take him out. Now only you can…take my t-team…stop him…”
“You. Come. First.” I opened his jacket, dragged a couple of rocks, struggled to raise him against them. He had to be in a thirty to sixty degree position for this to work. “The reason you’re still alive is because you didn’t go into neurogenic shock thanks to your uncanny pain threshold and steel nerves. And because your heart is the slowest one in existence. Now you’re agitating yourself into a quicker heartbeat. So shut up about Jake and concentrate on slowing it the hell down, so I can fix you.”
“Or…you’ll…’fix’ me…huh?”
Unbelievable. Teasing me, with a bullet through the heart. But that was the Damian I couldn’t live without.
“You bet.” I bent to his cold lips, took them in a fierce press. “
But you’re safe from my emasculating intentions since you know better than to dare die on me. You know I’d drag you back from hell itself. Now do it.”
“Yes…ma’am…”
His eyes, dimming as they were, overflowed with such passion. It pummeled my soul, seared it. Then he complied, his pulse decelerating until it was less than twenty beats per minutes.
After another auscultation to gauge the position of the effusion without ultrasound or even an electrocardiogram, I knew couldn’t use the subxiphoid approach. Had to go for the less favorable parasternal one.
Without the luxury of prepping his skin or administering local anesthesia, I punctured his skin with a four-inch, 18 gauge spinal needle in the fifth intercostal space, at the left sternal border, at the cardiac notch of the left lung. He didn’t even flinch beneath my hands.
Oh, Damian. Powerful, perfect…cold…dying—
Focus. Fall apart later. After you snatch him back from death’s clutching claws.
Advancing the needle toward his heart was the most harrowing thing I’d ever done. I could puncture it, finish him.
My internal upheaval filled my ears as I felt the needle puncture the pericardium. Then I attached a three-way stopcock. The moment I hooked a 50-cc syringe, blood filled it under pressure. I was in the right place!
“I’m in, Damian,” I hiccupped. “You’re doing great.”
There was no answer. His eyes were closed. He’d finally lost consciousness. Another wave of desperation buffeted me.
Couldn’t afford freaking out. Had to believe he’d shut down on purpose, to give me more time to work, to save him.
Yes, yes. That was it.
No longer feeling my hands, I attached a blood bag to the stopcock. I watched his distended neck veins compulsively as blood kept coming until the bag filled. I injected it with an anticoagulant, placed it on one of the boulders that had nearly crushed him and infused it back into him.
I doubted much more would come. Blood around his heart must be clotting. I had to remove the clot, definitively fix the injury—cut through his chest, expose his heart—