Shades of Treason (6 page)

“Then why isn’t she denying the charges? She isn’t suicidal. There has to be a reason she’s not answering our questions.”

“No, Commander.” Bayis turned away from the security vid. “There has to be a
way
she isn’t answering
your
questions. A loyalty-trained anomaly shouldn’t be able to ignore her fail-safe’s orders.”

The muscles in Rykus’s back and neck tightened. He tried to make his body relax, but Bayis’s words were true. She shouldn’t be able to ignore him. He’d screwed up, overlooked signs of her mental frailty or treasonous motives, and because of that, five good soldiers were dead.

And more would die soon if he didn’t get access to those files.

Bayis drew in a deep breath, then let it out. “Maybe there is another explanation, but without evidence, we have to assume she’s betrayed us.” He paused, and Rykus saw the gravity of his next words in his eyes before he said them. “If it’s proven that she hasn’t snapped, Rykus, people will start mining deeper for an explanation. They’ll stop asking her questions and will start asking you.”

Rykus let out a sharp, short laugh. “Hagan’s already starting the rumors, isn’t he?”

Bayis’s mouth flattened into a line that all but confirmed Rykus’s words.

“Just give me some time before you send in the interrogator,” he said. “I’ll find answers.”

The admiral turned away to face the security vid again. “I can give you three hours. Lieutenant Ashdyn is scheduled to capsule out at oh two hundred. You need to come up with an explanation before then.”

CHAPTER SIX

THE SLICK, COOL gel the doctor painted over Ash’s swollen wrists eased the pain. It would reduce the swelling too. In time. Time that Ash didn’t have. Not with the interrogator ready to begin his work.

She glanced at the med-sack on the data-table. The name tape on the sack’s side read K. Monick. The initial tapped against a compartment in Ash’s mind.

Katie
. She was almost certain that was the doctor’s name. She’d heard it years ago on Caruth. Rykus had been canceling dinner plans because of “problems with the cadets.” That wasn’t the complete truth. That night, Ash had been the only cadet causing “problems.”

“Is something funny, Lieutenant?” Katie asked.

“No, ma’am.” Ash let her smile linger even as the doctor retightened her cuffs. Sometimes a smile was all that stood between Ash and despair.

Katie retrieved a blood-band from her med-sack, then wrapped it around the crook of Ash’s right arm. “You still look at Commander Rykus with respect.”

Ash gave the doctor her best if-I-did-it-was-an-accident expression.

“When he’s not looking at you, of course,” Katie continued. “I think it’s difficult for you to disobey him.”

Ash snorted. It was more difficult than she would ever admit.

“And if it’s difficult for you to disobey him, then it’s likely the loyalty training is still in place.”

Ash wanted to nod so badly her right leg started jumping. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep her mouth shut and lowered her gaze to the floor. She couldn’t say anything, not even something mundane or unrelated to Katie’s unspoken question. The wrong word or inflection might send Ash into another blackout. Since she’d been arrested, she’d experimented with hundreds of words and phrases, thousands maybe. Some of them barely made any sense at all, but the result of trying to speak the truth was always the same. Her blackouts weren’t triggered by what she said. As near as she could tell, they were triggered by her intentions, and so far, she hadn’t been able to accidentally point a finger at Jevan.

“Rykus doesn’t think you committed treason,” Katie said, frowning at her tablet.

Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t breathe.

Ash did those three things fairly well, but she couldn’t control the way her heart pumped warm blood through her veins. If Katie’s words were true—and, damn it, Ash wanted them to be true—her fail-safe believed in her. Despite everything, he believed.

“Anyway,” Katie said, “I still have some tests to run. Make a fist, please.”

Ash complied, clenching her left hand. Her wrist ached despite the healing and numbing effect of the medical gel. Katie shifted the blood-band around Ash’s inner elbow until a sensor beeped. When Ash felt a sharp prick, she relaxed her fist, letting the band draw her blood.

“A blood test won’t tell you if I’ve snapped,” Ash said.

Katie unstrapped the band. “I’m hoping it’ll help identify the cause of your seizure.”

Wouldn’t that be nice?

“Since you’re so concerned about my well-being, why don’t you ask the interrogator to wait on the results?”

Katie met her gaze. “You have something Commander Rykus needs.”

Again, she had to swallow down what she wanted to say. She couldn’t risk another blackout. They were getting worse, leaving her with headaches and a general feeling of weakness. She needed to keep her mind clear. At least for a few more hours.

When Ash gave no response to her words, Katie said, “I’m hoping the results will appease the doctors at the institute.”

A cool, ghostlike sensation started at her scalp, then slid down her spine. She would
not
return to the institution. She’d rather die.

“There’s nothing to study.” Ash kept her tone light. The last thing she needed was for the Coalition to learn just how badly she did not want to end up a lab rat.

“You’re wrong about that. If you’ve snapped, they’ll want to know what went wrong in your head. If you’re a traitor, they’ll want to know how you broke the loyalty training.”

“You think I’ve broken the training?” Ash asked carefully. Her head throbbed, but she remained conscious.

Katie placed the blood-band and her other supplies back in the med-sack.

“There’s no other explanation for why you would kill your teammates and not respond to your fail-safe’s command. Unless you have one you’d like to offer?”

Ash’s corpse would have scars on the inside of her cheek, she was biting it so hard and so often. Her headache sharpened. Anything she attempted to say now would trigger a blackout.

The metallic tang of blood invaded her mouth. Silently, she watched Katie stand.

“As your treating physician,” the woman said, sounding and looking one hundred percent like a detached, unemotional medical specialist, “I recommend you answer the interrogator’s questions.
All
of his questions. It would be in your medical interest to do so.”

Katie grabbed her med-sack and exited the cell.

Ash’s gaze shifted from the solid steel door to the idle data-table. The images of her teammates were gone, leaving behind a dark, scratched, and smudged surface. Her soul felt the same way. No one could see past the evidence to the truth. She didn’t blame them. If she’d been in their place, studying the documents and data that Jevan must have had planted, she would have condemned herself too.

A clank rang out from the front of her cell. A second later, the door slid open. A man dressed in a black uniform stepped inside. Even if Ash hadn’t expected him, the crossed daggers over his heart gave away what he was.

Ash let her shoulders droop, making herself look small and, she hoped, fragile.

There’s no need to go through this.
The words trumpeted through her mind, and the ghost-fingers she’d felt earlier tightened in her hair. She shivered, then pushed the feeling aside. She wouldn’t give this man the cipher. It might lead the Coalition to the truth about what had been done to her, but it would also lead to suspicions and accusations that would rip the alliance apart. Besides, Jevan
wanted
her to reveal the cipher. That was the only reason she was able to. He’d tugged and pulled and prodded on that part of her mind so hard it didn’t matter that the files might clear her name. He wanted something in them badly enough to risk letting her live. Ash would make him regret that decision. Somehow.

The interrogator took a black glove out of the case he carried. When he pulled it on, she caught a glimpse of the silver circle in his palm.

Nausea churned in Ash’s stomach. It was a nerve-disc. Anomalies were introduced to those fun little devices during resistance training. They hurt like hell, made you think your flesh was on fire—melting, charring, dripping off—but they did no lasting damage.

She closed her eyes. Her heart thumped too quickly in her chest, and she knew the interrogator could see her quick, shallow breaths, her near panic. She didn’t want to go through this. The resistance training hadn’t been pleasant, but she’d known then that everything would be okay. She didn’t have that assurance now.

The interrogator approached, then lifted his gloved hand. She clenched her teeth together, determined not to scream. Her resolve shattered the instant the silver disc touched her skin.

“Okay,” Ash rasped out minutes, hours, an eternity later. “Okay.”

Sweat drenched her body, and her chest heaved, sucking air into lungs that felt too sticky to expand.

“Okay.” She rocked back and forth, hot and cold, trembling and numb. She couldn’t scream anymore. Her throat was too raw, too parched. She squeezed her already-closed eyes shut harder.

“You’re ready to enter the cipher?” her interrogator asked, monotone.

Ash tried to force out a yes with her nod, but she only managed to repeat
okay
over and over. She hurt too much to form any other word. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.

She raised her head, desperate to make him understand she’d had enough. She’d do whatever he wanted, just so long as the pain—

The pain had… It hadn’t stopped. It had ebbed. Her skin still felt like it was on fire, and moving even a little hurt—so did not moving at all—but the interrogator no longer touched the nerve-disc to her skin, and the reprieve allowed her mind to function again.

She’d made him stop two, maybe three times before, promising to enter the cipher into the data-table. Each time, she’d meant her words, but once she reached this point, the point where she was once again capable of thought, she changed her mind. She focused on her team. They were her brothers, the only family she’d ever had, and the only reason she’d been adopted into their ranks was because the Coalition had accepted Glory into its membership. She’d been on the edge of losing her soul completely on her home world, but an aid worker had given her food and a cot to sleep on, not just once, but a dozen times, and every morning she woke up safe and secure in their shelter, the flag of the Coalition was hanging in a window, backlit by the dawn.

Ash focused on the small flag sewn onto the interrogator’s uniform. She’d vowed to preserve and protect the Coalition. Only a small number of people would give their lives for it. Many would like to see it ripped apart. All they needed was a reason, a conspiracy. Learning that telepaths existed and that they had infiltrated the Coalition would make them suspect everyone. The senators already fought and argued and threatened to secede. She wouldn’t give them more fuel to burn their ties.

Sweat stung her eyes, resurrecting tears which had dried up eons ago. She was just catching her breath when the interrogator moved toward her.

“No more delays.” He gripped the pinky of her right hand and broke it.

Ash cried out and doubled over.

He slammed his fist into her face, knocking her back against her chair.

She blinked, trying to force the black splotches out of her vision, trying to pull her thoughts back together.

He reached for her hand again.

“Okay!” she gasped. Breaking bones was a psychological tactic—it disturbed an individual a hell of a lot more to see a crooked, flopping finger than it did to see unblemished skin—but that knowledge didn’t render the tactic ineffective.

“I don’t believe you,” he said in his cold, dead voice. He reached into the case sitting on top of the data-table. When he faced her again, he held a hammer. Hope dislodged from its tiny corner in her heart and fled. This truly was the end then. She wouldn’t be able to escape after he took that to her. After he broke more bones.

The data-table was on; the time blinked 2200. She’d been with the interrogator for almost an hour. Her body felt like it had been beaten and bruised and broken for so much longer than that. She had to make her plan work now.
Now
, before she lost the last of her strength.

As he raised the hammer up, Ash screamed. Not in fear or panic, but in a raw, determined fury.

The security bracelets bit into her shackled wrists as she yanked her arms backward. Her wrists were swollen, but not as much as before. The medical gel did its trick, and it made her skin slick enough for her hands to slip free.

The hammer slammed down, catching only the side of her left hand. She ignored the bright burst of pain, threw an uppercut that caught the interrogator on the chin. He stumbled and the guard by the door drew his weapon.

“On the ground! Now!” the guard shouted.

Ash dropped to her knees immediately, hands raised. He held a Maven 660. It wouldn’t burn a hole through the hull of the ship, but it would burn one through her.

“Don’t move!” he ordered, striding forward until the barrel of his gun pressed into her forehead, a move meant to intimidate her into surrendering.