Lethal Treatment

by S A Gardner

  My mind stalled for moments. Then it dawned on me.

  He didn’t know. That I’d killed Jake.

  How? He’d said he’d woken up before, talked to his team. They hadn’t told him? But he knew Jake had confessed—

  Oh, God, yes. Jake had done that after he’d shot him. Damian had heard that part.

  Which made his confession now genuine. It shouldn’t make my heart pirouette in my chest. It did.

  It also didn’t change a thing.

  Feeling every fiber of my being aching, a pain I knew would never leave me, I mumbled, “Jake can only resurface as a zombie now. If he does, I’d probably stake him again.”

  “Stakes are for vampires not zombies.” His correction was so very serious. Then his face went slack. “He’s dead?”

  A fountain of bile erupted into my throat. “I killed him.”

  Reactions fast-forwarded over his face, trampling each other. Relief, relish, remorse. Remorse?

  Then he closed his eyes.

  “What did I tell you about closing your eyes?

  My snarl snapped them open. “Have mercy on a half-dead man, Calista. The confusion is more than I can handle right now, feeling you going to pieces with worry over me, and burning to strangle me at the same moment.”

  “Yeah, my middle name is rollercoaster. Here’s your chance to get off.”

  His large hand, like a cyborg’s in maintenance with its attached wires and tubes, caressed mine as it clutched the railing. “Not in this life. Or any other.” Then without attempting to breach the subject of my execution of Jake, very wisely so, his voice gentled, soothing me everywhere I hurt. “So—assuming I live, where do we go from here?”

  “You’ll live,” I growled. “You don’t dare cross me, remember? And back to square one, where else?”

  That had him sitting up again. This time he dislodged almost all his probes. “What?”

  A screech of fright escaped me as I swooped to reattach them. “Lie back down right this second, De Luna. And don’t move again, or I’m putting you in a full body cast till you heal completely.”

  Grumbling, he lay back, barely showing any restriction of movement or discomfort. I looked worse and creaked far more, for God’s sake. Damn him and his inhuman pain threshold and regenerative powers. And thank God for them.

  “There’s no way we can go on as if we aren’t lovers.” He resumed drenching me in passion, considering it his best counterattack. He was right.

  I wasn’t letting him know he was. “We aren’t. We just had one night together.”

  “One night worth a thousand and one nights.”

  He was right here, too. I wasn’t admitting that, either.

  How could I lust after him when he was my post-operative patient, and we were figuratively and literally up in the damn air? How could he make me feel he’d possessed and pleasured me all over again with one look?

  How could I love him, so totally, and trust him not at all?

  The more I thought about it with hindsight as fuel, the more I realized there was so much more he was still hiding. Would keep on hiding. Not knowing so much about him, realizing I’d probably never know…

  That was no way to have a relationship.

  Then again, what kind of relationship could two people like us have? I said so.

  He clutched my hand again. “I’ll take anything, Calista. Anything at all with you.”

  “Anything? Such a broad-spectrum term. From sporadic encounters to till-death-may-or-may-not-us-part.”

  His eye narrowed in sensual menace and possessiveness. “Sporadic encounters are out.”

  Oh. Oh. Oh, no.

  No way was I touching that. Not now. Probably not ever.

  A diversion. One was in order.

  I got one. The cosmic forces must think they owed me some sort of break.

  Our retrieval posse, Sir Ashton and General Fitzpatrick, entered from the back of the helicopter where they’d been conferencing with Ed and Matt, getting full reports.

  “Pleased to see you awake, De Luna.” Sir Ashton didn’t sound or look at all pleased to see him alive even. “Quite the ruse you played on us. You’re lucky any of you is still in one piece. And that the real threat has been dealt with. All thanks to Calista, of course.”

  Fitzpatrick puffed out his impressive chest. “I thought we agreed it was all a need-to-know, and that what Calista and her team went through and survived was totally up to them. Not to mention on account of the changes in the plan they forced on our people. We would have gladly come here alone, with just documentation stating we belonged to your GCA.”

  Sir Ashton sniffed. “Oh, yes, to kill our operatives based on the testimony of tortured-to-death militants.”

  Well, well. The plot congeals. Didn’t hear anything about torture from Damian. The man was a compulsive omitter.

  Fitzpatrick shrugged. “The Intel was valid. And even the possibility of those weapons being perfected warranted extreme action. We weren’t about to let anyone with any information about them go free to possibly disseminate it.”

  “Whether they were guilty or innocent?” Sir Ashton seethed. He’d already advocated that GCA change its tune. But not to a radical anthem.

  Okay. This was clearly going nowhere. And in my condition, I wasn’t interested in watching their testosterone-drenched procedural slam down.

  I stepped in both men’s faces. “If you’re going to continue bickering, get the hell out of here and go back where you came from, and stop interrupting my patient’s recovery.”

  That elicited a host of male reactions. Disbelieving displeasure from Fitzpatrick, grim gauging from Sir Ashton. The only unreserved approval issued from Damian.

  Now I had their attention, I went on, “You may stay only if you actually have something of value to say to us. Any new info after you interrogated the scientists?”

  Fitzpatrick inhaled an irritated breath, his confusion about me still growing in his eyes. “Just more details about Constantine’s rise to power. They all think he went mad during the first couple of years of his incarceration. Calculatingly, mercilessly mad. Then he put his superior skills and intelligence to use, turning the tide in his favor. When the militants asked him to use his medical expertise to make weapons, he saw his opportunity. He picked the scientists, each from a branch he needed in his R&D, and sent the militants after them.”

  “So they were kidnapped?” I asked.

  “No. They were bought off,” Fitzpatrick said.

  “And what do you intend to do with them? Your original plan was eradication.”

  Fitzpatrick seemed to get even bigger. “And you went and changed my men’s orders, so now we have a mess to deal with.”

  “You mean it’s a mess to kill them now,” I scoffed. “But not during the attack?”

  He didn’t answer. I suspected some accident would befall them before they made it back to their respective countries.

  But I wasn’t fighting this fight. Those people had betrayed science and humanity in the worst way. They were far worse than Jake since they didn’t share his values and ends. Or his ordeals. They saw no problem in wiping out millions if it made them millions. I wouldn’t be their defender.

  Seemed Fitzpatrick understood my silence, appreciated it. And me a bit more with it.

  Weird, that. This ruthless streak in me sure appealed to men, didn’t it? Wondered what that said about them. What it made me.

  “The scientists tutored him at first,” Fitzpatrick continued his account. “He began with the rudiments of biological-chemical warfare knowledge, but in no time left them all, the highest experts in their fields, far behind.”

  Sir Ashton exhaled. “They tried to exonerate themselves, insisted they never expected him to attain such expertise, that they became extremely disturbed at the Armageddon potential of his discoveries. When they expressed concern, they were sidelined to supporting venues. He experimented on the refugees and on low-ranking militants, then tried to save them, to fin
d out if they could be saved. Yet the scientists say no one suspected his true intentions. In this I believed them. Supernaturally cunning, that one. Meanwhile, he sold his less diabolic inventions to the highest bidder, making millions for his sponsors, possibly billions for himself.”

  It was all still unbelievable. Jake? He’d done all that?

  I still found myself defending him. “He told me money was his means to the highest end.”

  “And what was that?” That was Damian, sounding as if he’d kill Jake again if he could.

  An exhalation deflated me around the still reverberating shock. “Curing the planet’s ills by eradicating the septic foci of chronic conflict. His theory is that there are no oppressed and oppressors, just evil that is manifesting now, and evil that will manifest later, the latter being the worse of both. All sides in a conflict have to go, in his opinion.”

  “That madman was on his way to beating Hitler and Machiavelli.”

  Sir Ashton tutted at Fitzpatrick’s comment. “Actually, Machiavelli never harmed a soul and was unfairly persecuted for writing The Prince. Maybe you should cite Lenin or Stalin with sixty million dead to their ‘collectivization’ and ‘purges’ or Mao’s incalculable victims in his Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and roles in Tibetan and Cambodian genocides. His ideology also caused the largest man-made disaster in recorded history, ending in twenty-five million starving to death. I could go on.”

  Fitzpatrick blinked. Then again. I giggled. You’d think he’d know his military history better than that.

  But Sir Ashton’s history lesson pointed out something huge. Those men had been considered dictators and despots, but were also revered, some still were, especially Chairman Mao. He’d caused the death of tens of millions yet was still considered China’s savior and the reason it was a super power today.

  I wasn’t about to say that now, that this paralleled Jake’s nightmarish plans too much. Or that deep down I thought it might be the only way to force humanity beyond the impasse it had reached. It would be especially insane to say that, after I’d killed him to stop him from carrying out his plans.

  “Constantine had an edge over every totalitarian madman,” Damian said slowly, the one I suspected knew Jake the best. “Many edges. All of them were just political leaders with no particular skills, and they lived in an era where technology was still crude and limited. But far more importantly, none possessed anything near his superhuman intellect and absolute command of so many skills, not to mention his limitless inventiveness, what he took from the realm of theory to application in record time. Had he lived, gone unopposed, he would have caused far more devastation than they collectively had. He really might have brought about the end of the world.”

  The helicopter’s thunder blared back in my ears in the oppressive silence that followed Damian’s momentous summation.

  I had no doubt each of them pondered what I did. What had been at stake. What we’d escaped.

  As the one who’d ended it all, knowing that didn’t make me feel better. Nothing ever would. I knew this would haunt me to my dying day. The confusions, the regrets. The memories.

  Finally, Sir Ashton exhaled. “This superhuman intellect must have been why he believed he knew better than everyone, and would take care of it all. It must also be how he came to see everyone as less and individual lives as worthless.”

  I couldn’t participate in their dissection of Jake’s character. I couldn’t even imagine what had warped the compassionate human being he used to be. I’d never judge him. Not when I’d been the reason for it all.

  And now I’d never have the chance to undo it.

  As if to deprive me of my moment of bleak reminiscence and self-flagellation, Damian said, “He might have shown you a different side of him, Calista, but you must know he was always an extremist in his beliefs, especially in his own superiority. But when he lived in a governed society, in a safe and privileged life, he had his radical tendencies under control. Then he was abducted, tortured, and it only shattered the reins he had on his dark, life-despising side. And the more he let it take over, the deeper he descended. I believe he wouldn’t have stopped sinking to ever darker depths.”

  Maybe. Possibly. Probably. But I couldn’t judge him.

  Yeah, funny that. I only executed him.

  But there was another reason, a far more disturbing one why this was a bleeding raw point with me.

  Jake had been confident I could be brought to embrace his nihilistic doctrines. With his dying breath, he’d been positive it was only a matter of time until I did. He’d believed the accumulation of failures and frustrations, as my achievements unraveled and the world’s madness ratcheted, would drive me to his same conclusions, force me on his same path.

  And deep inside me, something kept insisting he could have been right. That something resonated with his views, admiring his macabre crusade, awed by his larger-than-life-and-death goals.

  That was what scared the hell out of me.

  I’d always known I was my father’s daughter. But it seemed I’d taken his vigilante genes to a whole new level. Damian had had every right to think I was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

  The only reassuring thing here was that I was aware of that, was terrified. And was doing everything in my power to keep my radical component under control.

  But would that control withstand a fraction of what had fractured Jake’s? Or would his prophecy come to pass one day?

  I could only hope I was never put to the test.

  For now, I told Damian to stop philosophizing and Sir Ashton and Fitzpatrick to move along. Damian, while looking impossibly vital, wasn’t exactly recovering from a tonsillectomy.

  This time they obeyed this doctor’s orders. Ayesha came to help with Damian’s periodic postoperative measures, recording his progress, hanging another bag of plasma and administering the next dose of medications.

  After she left, he tried to talk again. Suspecting what about, and almost preferring a bullet to the heart myself to broaching that subject, I told him to sleep, or I’d make him.

  At last, he gave up and closed his eyes. After getting my express permission to.

  After he stilled, and believing he’d fallen asleep, I bent to kiss him. Before I could sit back to continue my vigil, he opened his eyes, caught me.

  His urgency made me swallow my rebuke. “I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but I think you’ve only set him free from the hell he’s been rotting in inside his own mind.”

  I stared at him for a moment before a sob-laugh gashed my throat. “Nice try, De Luna. I bet he’d beg to differ if he could. He seemed pretty damn comfortable within said mind.”

  “I don’t think so,” he insisted. “I really don’t. Apart from that last isolated human island within him, the part that loved you, he was thoroughly sick and unremittingly tormented.”

  “Yeah, thanks very much. It’s very comforting to be reminded that I used that island as firm footing from where to shoot him to death.”

  “Don’t. Don’t, Calista. Don’t let this fester inside you. You did what you had to do. What had to be done. As you always do.”

  I reached down, combed raven silk off his forehead. “And by your black-and-white standards, if they’d ever been really that…” He grimaced at my implication of distrust. I shrugged. Like I had to live with the consequences of my decisions, so did he. “…this is an all-objectives accomplished mission, isn’t it? We destroyed a militant hive and an apocalyptic warfare project. We opened the road to all international forces to reach the refugees, to either set up a steady supply route or to relocate them. And we brought the mastermind of this hub of insanity down.”

  “Well, yeah. All objectives accomplished,” he repeated, his eyes dimming, growing puzzled.

  My heart gave me the kick I deserved.

  Great. Tell him to rest then talk him to death.

  He was frowning now, as if looking for something he’d misplaced. “The mission—at least
. What about us?”

  “We’ll see about us, Damian. Now rest, please.”

  “But you love me—still?” His eyes were defocusing, his voice slurring.

  I began losing coherence, too—until I realized. Ayesha had topped up his sedation. He wasn’t deteriorating, just surrendering to artificial sleep. Long after he should have, too.

  Brutal relief made me almost keel over him.

  Steadying myself, I feathered his chest, wishing I could transfuse him with my lifeforce, heal his injury, erase it.

  “Yeah, I still love you, Damian. Always have.”

  I didn’t say I always would. In this life, and in any other. Like he’d said.

  There was no place in our kind of life for promises of forever.

  He clung to consciousness as if waiting for that reassurance. When I wouldn’t oblige him, he let go with a still uncertain smile.

  Not that he could be as uncertain as I was. About how to deal with that love. And with all the rest. My work, my vocation, my methods. My mind. The whole package, really.

  Reassessment and recalibration of self and path was universally good for the soul. In my case, it was an urgent necessity. For everyone’s sake, maybe even the world’s.

  If one good thing had come out of this colossal mess, beside the obvious, it was that I’d seen an extreme vision of what doing good at any cost could lead to. I’d come face-to-face with the ultimate personification of my own judge-executioner tendencies.

  Now, more than ever, I realized the need to walk this tightrope I’d chosen for a life, with constant awareness and unwavering control. Every single day, for the rest of my life.

  Sounded like a plan.

  From the Author

  I hope you enjoyed the first installment in the adventures of Dr. Calista St. James!

  If you did, I’d truly appreciate it if you spread the word. As an indie author, reviews mean everything to my success, as they’re how other readers consider giving my books a try. Even a one-line review on the book’s page on Amazon especially, and also Goodreads and Bookbub would be amazing.