Codename: Nightshade (Deadly Seven Strike Force) (38 page)

I just want it to end.

“I want to run some variables today,” he says not to me but to the others in the room. There are so many others in this place. Men and women of all sizes and races. All of them wear white suits, white gloves, white masks over their mouths, and white paper booties over their shoes.

They leave no trace of their presence behind.

“Prep her and move her to the questioning room once she’s ready.”

The questioning room
. The little white box that he shoves me into to watch as my mind falls apart.

“I don’t feel like dancing for your enjoyment today, asshole."

“I appreciate your emotions, Subject B,” he says, “but I don’t care how you feel.”

I wonder if I should have a comeback for that. I usually have something sarcastic to say when the bad guy has me against the ropes, don’t I?

“Doctor, your visitors have arrived,” a female over my left shoulder informs him.

Heinrich seems torn between relief and frustration. “Very well. Prep her, anyway, but don’t begin any of the psycho-stimulants until I return.”

“Aye, sir,” a male voice says on my right.

I’m surrounded by faces covered in the same white masks. I don’t bother looking into their eyes, don’t bother trying to tell if one is a woman or another is a man. What does it matter? They think of me as nothing but a test subject.

I think of them as nothing but the Devil’s minions.

“The boys down the hall said the room needs a cleaning,” the one on my right says to the one on my left. “Why don’t you go help with that, and I’ll finish her up.”

This confuses the one on my left. I can tell from the way their eyebrows flex and pull. “Was the room used without my knowledge?”

The one on my right shrugs. “I was sent in here to relieve you so you could sort it out.”

The one on my left makes a noise that I feel describes my current mood as she storms out of the room.

“Bloody hell, I thought she’d never leave,” the one that stayed behind me says.

I glance to my left. Are we alone?

“Look at me,” the nondescript mask-covered face commands, forcing me to turn that way.

A light shines in my eyes. I resist, blinking, feeling tears well at the corners of my lids.

“This isn’t how you prep me,” I tell them. “You stick the needle in my arm and drag me down the hall. Then you leave me alone to let my brain tear me apart.”

I hear the person swallow and see the color drain from what little patch of their skin that is exposed. “What have they done to you?”

You should know
, I want to say.
You’re one of them
.

I can’t get the words out before I feel a warm hand touch my forehead. It brushes my hair away from my face in a soothing motion that doesn’t make any sense.

“It’s alright,” they say. “It’s going to be alright now.”

I’m not able to be afraid anymore. What’s left to fear? Death? I welcome it with open arms if it means I get Heinrich out of my head.

I hear the door open and close.

“It is clear,” a new voice says.

“Aye.”

That word. The one standing closest to me said it earlier to Heinrich. Three little letters that are worming their way through my ears and into my system. My muscles jerk as I tug against the restraints.

“No,” I say.

“It’s okay,” he says. His hands on my forehead again in reassurance.

“No.” I moan the word. I was wrong about fear. I do fear this. I’ve feared this from the moment I realized he could make Nikolai appear in these dreams.

“Shade, it’s me,” Claymore says, tugging the mask from his face.

God, he’s a sight for sore eyes. For a second, I let myself see him, let myself believe this is real. He unties my restraints, and I sit up, allowing myself to touch his face.

He feels so real.

“My God,” the other voice in the room says.

I don’t have to look to know who
that
is.

Hassan.

Heinrich has come up with some outlandish scenarios for me to survive, but the idea that Claymore and Hassan would work together to break me out is almost laughable.

“Are you alright, daughter?”

I press the top of my head to Claymore’s chest. I miss my friend. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on him over the years. Maybe that’s where this dream is coming from. Claymore always knows when I’m in trouble, always finds me before I even think about sending out the SOS.

I need him to find me now.

I hear Hassan move closer. “What have they done to her?”

“You know better than me,” Claymore says. “Whatever it is… she ain’t herself.”

She ain’t herself.
He doesn’t know the half of it.

“Listen, Shade,” he says, wrapping his arms around me as he leans closer. He even smells like Claymore. Old Spice and some sort of oil that I think he uses to polish metal like his knife. “We don’t have much time before the distraction runs out of ideas to distract.”

“You can’t break me out of this,” I say, my voice muffled by his shirt.

He shoves against my shoulders until I look up. “The hell I can’t.”

I tilt my head to the right as I stare at him. “Where were you? They found me. They took me. Where were you?”

I hate myself for the tears in my eyes. I’m not a child who needs protecting. I can’t blame him for my shortcomings.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sincerity in his voice. “By the time I found out what was going down, they already had you. I had to work this angle. I couldn’t risk them killing you.”

That makes me laugh, loud and long and with hysterical glee. “I’d really rather they killed me, MacNeal.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Hassan says. “The boy is not skilled in deception
or
politics. Our window is shrinking by the second.”

“Aye,” Claymore agrees. “Can you stand, Shade?”

Can I stand? My legs dangle over the edge of the high medical bed I’ve been strapped to for who knows how long. I stand a lot in my mind. I run… in circles. I jump, but the walls are too high.

“I don’t know,” I say in all honesty.

He braces his hands under my arms and helps ease me to the ground. My legs stay strong under me. Claymore is excited by it while, for me, it confirms even more that this isn’t real.

“I will go ahead of you,” Hassan says. “The transport will be waiting at the rendezvous point. Have her there, or I will do what I warned from the beginning.”

“Why are you even here?” I ask.

Hassan doesn’t stop to explain. He just gives me the same look he always gives me when I see him. He returns his mask to his face and leaves.

“Why is he here?” I ask as I follow Claymore to the door. “I don’t get why he would be here.”

“Look, I know you have a billion questions about all this.” I honestly only have one—what’s Heinrich’s end goal of this illusion. “All I can tell you is this thing goes deeper than we thought. Deeper than anyone could imagine. And your father—”

“He’s not my father.”

He sighs. “
Hassan
has a lot of the answers we need.”

Of all the dreams he’s cooked up, nothing has been this spot on to my current world. I usually see Nikolai, usually see memories or scenarios that regard to just this place.

I don’t know how he knows Claymore would be the one to come get me, or what we were looking for before I was taken, but this feels authentic in context.

My hands start to shake. “I want this to end. Give me a gun.”

Claymore stops next to the door, eyeing me like my head just fell off. “No.”

That response confuses me. They’ve always given me a gun. Every simulation of reality has offered me the ability to end the dream whenever I want—all I had to do was kill Nikolai.

He’s not in this one.

Why?

Claymore puts the mask back over his face, wrapping his arm around my waist. “Keep your head down and follow my lead.”

I do as I’m told, feeling a strange sensation in my mind as strategic reasoning takes over. If I’m not allowed to shoot him, how do I end this game?

We work down a bright white hallway that I know well. This leads to the rooms where I’m watched and inspected. He turns down a second hall I’ve never seen before. More white. Oddly, it strikes me that everything’s so clean and clear.

Seems like the blood would stain through eventually. Maybe that’s why they keep everything so white—they can just bleach their sins away.

I’m losing control of what little sanity I’ve retained in this illusion when we reach a closed door.

“Security panel,” he whispers. “Damn.”

“Four ones,” I say.

“What?”

“The code. It’s 1-1-1-1.”

“How do you know that?”

I stare at the floor, realizing offhandedly that I’m barefoot. I always have shoes in the dreams with Nikolai.

“Shade,” he says, shaking me to catch my attention. “How do you know that’s the right code?”

“The tone. They punch the same keys to open every door, and the tone is for one. It beeps four times.”

“You have numeric tones memorized?”

I shrug a shoulder. “I’m a freak.”

“Bloody hell,” he mumbles, punching in the code. “You’re worse than Pretty Boy when he gets wasted.”

A random memory is sparked by that. I see Ace looking down at me with heavily hooded eyes and feel his hands cup my ass as we sway to some God awful 90s grunge music. The scent of stale beer fills my nose.

“Don’t get all handsy or this dance is done right now,” I'd told him.

He hummed, moving his hands up my back to pull me in closer. “You know what I’m going to call you?” I remember I shook my head. “Pineapple.”

The face I made amused him. “My name is Penelope.”

“Nope. Pineapple. You’re hard and prickly on the outside, but I bet you’re sweet as fuck on the inside…
juicy
.”

I gave him a black eye that night. And he’s called me Pineapple ever since.

Drunk Ace
is
a pain in the ass.

The door unlocks, and he thanks me for my freaky brain. He holds it open as I shuffle through.

I take one step inside and double over as a disgusting odor hits me. I heave, holding my hand over my mouth.

He runs into my back as he tries to follow. “What are you…? Bloody hell, that’s a powerful stink.”

I take several deep breaths, wishing my sense of smell would just disappear. I look around once the urge to puke fades. We stand in a huge empty room. Metal columns are spread every few feet, supporting bare metal framework above. It’s like the place was only half-built with the bones but no real structure inside. Somewhere, something is dripping. The ground squishes under my bare feet.

I feel like I’m being slowly digested by this part of the building.

This can’t be real. First Claymore and Hassan are working together, and now I walk through a doorway from a typical medical facility to… an abandoned warehouse.

“I thought this was the exit,” he says as he explores further ahead. “The map shows this as the exit.”

I’m still taking in the smell. I recognize it. Death isn’t something you forget once you’ve tasted it with all five senses.

Claymore wanders through a doorway on the other end of the space. I work my way to the side. Sunlight fights through cracks in the walls. I’m thankful not more can get in. I don’t think I want to see what exactly is under my feet.

One patch of ground is lit up. I hesitate before stepping closer. To my relief, the ground is just mud and a few weeds, at least in that highlighted spot. I stall a few steps away when I see the reddish orange flowers.

Poppies.

I wonder where we are, whether they’re indigenous to the area. I kneel down, inspecting them. They’re growing from the mud.
How
?

“Damn,” Claymore says. “This must be a façade of some sort. There’s a door up there, but it’s rigged shut. We gotta work our way back.”

I’m still caught up in staring at the flowers when I hear the familiar whoosh of his knife twirling in the air. My stomach sinks as a thought fills my head—not a gun with him. I'll have to kill him with his knife.

“Come on,” he says, not bothering with helping me up. He knows I can walk on my own.

He never babies me.

I’m noticing a pattern with the men in my life.

I grab one of the flowers, clutching it tightly as I hop up and follow him. We walk back down the side hall and take another hall to the right. I have no idea where we are. My focus is entirely on the flash of metal I see over his shoulder each time he tosses the knife into the air.

Unlike every time a false Nikolai has been shoved at me, I’m reluctant to kill Claymore. I don’t know why. I love Nikolai in a way I can never love anyone else. I don’t love MacNeal like that. I do love him. He really is my best friend. Maybe that’s my answer. Maybe I’m okay with false friends so long as I’m not alone, but I can’t have a lie about Nikolai live in this world.

Goddamn, the crazier I am, the more poetic I get.

“Maybe we should try one of these doors?” he suggests.

Why is he asking me? I’ve never once tried to escape this place. Never paid attention to anything but the walk to and from my cell.

He enters the code at the first door we come to and ushers me inside.

It’s a bust. We’re standing in a room with rows of computers. A few servers are situated in the back. I stare at all the blinking lights from the towers. I can’t help but wonder what sort of information is transmitted from this place.

“Oh, bloody fucking hell,” he says. “I should have studied that map harder.”

“Not really,” I say, ambling over to a computer. “You should have just followed the path you took to get in.”

“Aye, I followed Hassan. I dunno how he didn’t get lost.”

I sit in one of the blue plastic chairs. “He’s a rat. He’s used to getting out of mazes.”

“You know, from all the shit you’ve talked about the guy over the years, I have to admit he’s surprised me.”

“He’s a good liar.”

“Aye… but you might be surprised to find he has reasons for it.”

Anger rattles me from deep inside. I see the reflection of the knife in the monitor in front of me.