Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood (17 page)

29

With nowhere else to go, Annja did the only thing she could think of. She quickly stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.

She was just in time.

She could hear the newcomer’s voice growing louder as he came into the room.

“Director Stone? Are you all right? I saw the door was damaged and...Director Stone?”

There was silence for a moment, followed by approaching footsteps and then a knock at the bathroom door.

“Director Stone? Are you all right?”

Annja reached into the otherwhere and drew forth her sword, even as she rapidly weighed her options. She didn’t particularly like any of them, truth be told, but she had a hunch that whoever was out there wasn’t going to go away until he made sure Stone was okay.

Covering her mouth with her hand to muffle her voice, Annja called out, “I’m fine.”

“Okay, no problem, then. I’ll just wait here.”

Come on!

Annja had been hoping her visitor would leave once he discovered that “Director Stone” was in the restroom, but no such luck. She would have to go out there and deal with him.

She took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.

Her visitor had opened the blinds and was standing near the window, looking down into the medical ward. He was curly haired and wore a white lab coat over dark slacks.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, keeping his eyes on the patients below. “I brought the latest pathogen reports and thought we might go over...”

He turned and saw Annja standing there, sword in hand.

She nearly smiled, the expression on his face was so comical. She didn’t blame him for his shock, though. A woman wielding a sword and standing between him and the safety of the hallway was probably the very last thing he’d expected to see when he’d got up this morning.

Or any morning, for that matter.

“Close your mouth before you swallow a fly,” she told him wryly.

His jaw snapped shut with a loud clack.

Annja had planned on tying him up and leaving him locked in the bathroom, but now she had other ideas. He’d mentioned pathogen reports, which meant he probably knew exactly what was going on around here. He could fill in the blanks in the narrative she’d constructed.

“Sit down in that chair and don’t move,” she told him, pointing to the leather desk chair she’d just been sitting in. “You and I are going to have a little chat.”

He glanced at the chair and drew in a deep breath.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be in the director’s office. I’m going to call security and see to it...”

He’d started toward the door, thinking perhaps that the weapon was just for show and that Annja wouldn’t have the courage to use it.

She quickly disabused him of that notion, flicking her wrist and sending the very tip of the blade lashing toward his face, cutting a two-inch furrow across his cheek.

“I said sit down,” she told him as his eyes grew wide and his hand clamped over the injury on his cheek. From where she stood, Annja could see the blood well up between his fingers and run in little rivulets across his hand.

He sat.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Theo. Theo Owens.”

“What do you do here, Theo?”

He shook his head, wincing at the resulting pain from the cut on his cheek, but he ended up answering her anyway.

“I’m the assistant lab director.”

“Lab director, huh? Sounds pretty important.”

He looked at her, his eyes blazing. “Don’t you mock me! You have no idea what we’re doing here!”

But she did, and she let him know it in no uncertain terms.

“You’re kidnapping women and using them against their will in an illegal drug trial. Something I fully intend to put a stop to.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” he said, sitting up straighter and glaring at her.

Annja smiled. “Try me.”

“No, you can’t. You don’t understand. What we’re doing here has worldwide significance.”

Annja nearly laughed, but she decided that he might just stop talking out of spite, and that was the last thing she wanted. Instead, she said, “Do tell.”

“The prion research we’re doing here can literally turn back the clock. Solve problems such as cancer, senility, simple old age. With the products we’re developing, we’ll be able to ensure that the best and brightest of us live lives considerably longer than we do now.”

“The best and brightest?”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “But of course. Who else would you give it to?”

She ignored the question; if he didn’t already see the “us versus them” theme inherent in his statement, she wasn’t going to educate him.

“You’re using those women against their will.”

Owens missed her tone apparently, because he said, “Yes! Yes, we are, I know that! But you don’t understand—we need to do it! We’d be morally remiss if we didn’t!”

Morally remiss? Are you bloody kidding me?

Somehow she didn’t think he was.

He went on. “This is clearly a situation where the good of the many outweighs the civil rights of these few individuals. The prion we’re studying is only found in those of a particular bloodline that dates back to the 1600s, a bloodline that’s becoming more and more diluted with each passing generation. If we don’t act now, the prion may very well be altered through genetic changes that we have no control over, breeding out the one quality that we need to solve the problems plaguing our society today! We must act, and we must act now!”

Annja couldn’t believe what she was hearing. That anyone could have so little respect for the lives of others made her sick, and she had to look away for a moment to keep her temper in check and not carve him into little pieces for his arrogance.

When her attention shifted away from him momentarily, Owens made his move.

He surged up out of his seat, shouting something incoherent as he tried to get to the door, perhaps thinking that if he could get out into the hall he might be able to summon help.

For a split second Annja was caught off guard. She hadn’t imagined that Owens had it in him, and yet here he was, making a break for it. Instinct caused her to raise her sword, but she realized even as she did so that she was probably going to need this sick son of a gun to get out of this place, especially if she intended to rescue the women.

So she stuck out her foot just as he went rushing past.

Owens’s shin hit her outstretched ankle, and he toppled over like a runaway freight car, slamming face-first into the carpet.

To his credit, he didn’t stay down, but immediately rolled over and tried to get back to his feet. Unfortunately for him, Annja reacted quicker than he did. She stepped in front of him, blocking his way with her sword.

“You really shouldn’t have done that, Theo,” she told him.

A few minutes later Owens was back in the swivel chair, though this time his hands were bound behind his back with the cords Annja had cut from the window blinds.

30

“Got her!” Gregor crowed.

Radecki was out of his chair and next to Gregor’s in a heartbeat. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“Coming out of Director Stone’s office,” Gregor said, pointing at the screen where Annja could be seen emerging from the room behind a man in a white lab coat.

“Who’s she with?” Radecki asked, tapping the image with his finger. “And is that a sword she’s carrying?”

The newcomer turned out to be Theo Owens, one of the geneticists working on the project under Stone. His hands were tied securely behind his back. As Radecki looked on, Creed gave Owens a shove that sent him stumbling down the hall. She was clearly forcing him to take her somewhere.

And the instrument she was using to enforce that request was, indeed, a sword. Where it had come from or how she’d gotten it, Radecki didn’t know. He didn’t remember anything like that being in Stone’s office, but perhaps it was a new addition. Maybe Creed had picked it up from somewhere else in the complex before getting to Stone’s office. Either way, the game had changed now that she was armed.

“Keep them in sight. I want to know where they’re headed.”

Gregor did as he was told, using the cameras to keep an eye on the duo as they made their way down the hall. Rather than taking the elevator, they headed for the stairs, which allowed the security officer to keep them in sight at all times as they descended to the floor of the medical ward. Once there, they made a beeline for one of the patients in pod three.

Radecki crossed the room to the weapons cabinet, took a set of keys from his belt and unlocked the door. He removed a pistol in a shoulder holster and a stun baton, keeping the former for himself and giving the baton to Chovensky before relocking the cabinet.

“Where are they now?” he asked as he slipped the shoulder holster on and checked that the gun was loaded.

“In the medical ward,” Gregor replied.

Radecki nodded. That would make sense; Creed seemed to have a hero complex. Must be going for the donors.

He took a pair of two-way radio headsets from the rack below the cabinet and tossed one to Chovensky.

To Gregor he said, “We’ll be on channel nine. I want you to keep her in sight at all times and radio me if she starts to go anywhere, understood?”

Gregor nodded. “Got it.”

“Chovensky, you’re with me.”

The big man grinned and nodded.

Time to put an end to this, Radecki thought as he swept out the door with Chovensky in his wake.

* * *

A
NNJA
KEPT
HER
sword low but still pointed at Owens’s back as they headed down the corridor. He appeared docile now, perhaps having learned his lesson back in the office, but Annja was taking no chances. He was going to help her get Csilla and then lead them out of this place, or he was going to get hurt. It was that simple.

Owens led her back down the stairs she’d come up only a short time earlier and into the medical ward.

“Now what?” he asked, glaring at her over his shoulder.

“Over there. Pod three,” Annja said, pointing with the tip of her sword.

He hesitated. “What do you want at...?”

She gave him a shove to get him going. “This isn’t Twenty Questions. Move!”

Owens did as he was instructed. He did it reluctantly, but he did it. When they reached the patients’ beds, he looked at her and raised an eyebrow as if to say,
Well
?

Annja inclined her head toward the last bed in the pod. “Over there. Csilla Polgár. I want you to turn off the machine and unhook her from it.”

“Now, just a minute! You can’t...”

Annja didn’t let him get any further. She backed him up against the bed and shoved the tip of her sword under his chin, forcing his head back as far as it would go. “I can’t
what
?” she asked in a low, menacing voice.

Go on, give me a reason, she thought.

Theo must have sensed how close to the edge she was, for he clamped his mouth shut and didn’t say anything more.

She leaned in. “I’m getting tired of having to ask for everything twice, do you hear me?”

He nodded. It wasn’t much of a nod, but then again it was hard to nod vigorously when the blade of an ancient sword was thrust under your chin.

“So do it.”

She stepped back, pulled the sword away from his throat and used the edge of the blade to cut the bonds from his wrists.

His hand immediately went to his throat, is if to prove that it was still intact. He coughed once, and then moved to do as she’d asked without another word.

As Annja looked on, Theo went to work. First he checked Csilla’s vitals by looking at the monitors she was hooked up to. Then, apparently satisfied with what he saw there, he moved around to stand next to the pumping device attached to the side of Csilla’s bed.

He glanced at Annja, seemed about to say something, and then decided against it. Instead, he flipped the switch on the side of the pump.

The pump ran through another cycle and then stopped.

Annja nodded with satisfaction.

“First the leg tubes, then the IV,” she told him.

She did her best to keep an eye on him while also watching the entrances at either end of the ward. It wasn’t easy. But she didn’t trust him enough to turn her back on him. For all she knew he’d slip Csilla something when she wasn’t looking, and all this would be for nothing.

The incoming transfer tube was attached to Csilla via a plastic port that had been surgically implanted in the vein of her left thigh. Theo donned a pair of latex gloves and removed the line, but then he hesitated.

“I don’t have the equipment I’d need to remove the port and suture the artery properly closed,” he told Annja.

“So leave the port in place for now. Just be sure that it’s sealed and capped properly,” she replied.

“You’re the boss.”

Annja let the sarcasm slide. The important thing was getting Csilla out of here before anything else happened to her.

She glanced around at the other patients, wishing she could take all of them with her. She simply didn’t have the manpower—or the transportation—to pull it off at the moment, but she made a vow that she’d be back for them before long.

Just stay alive until I can get help, she told them silently.

A glance toward the entrances at either end of the ward showed them still empty.

When Theo was done with the intake tube, he turned his attention to the outtake one. Again, he carefully removed the tubing and then sealed and capped the access port. After that it was a simple matter to take out her IV.

“Done,” he said, stepping back. He stripped off the surgical gloves and tossed them on top of the pump.

Annja looked around the room, finally spotting a wheelchair in the pod next to them.

“Go get that chair and bring it over here.”

Theo did as he was told.

“Gently lift her up and put her in the chair, please.”

Annja looked on as Theo slid his arms under Csilla, lifted her out of bed and put her down in the wheelchair. Csilla’s head lolled to one side, and he did his best to make her comfortable.

“What’s the best way to get out of the facility?” Annja asked.

Theo didn’t have to think about that one. “There’s a garage down on sublevel three, with a ramp that leads up to ground level. You should be able to get a vehicle from there.”

“Then start pushing the wheelchair in that direction,” she told him.