Shepherd (13 page)

Esme sidled past him. Using a halo bulb, she spun the light across the black cavernous space. Roughly fifty-by-fifty feet in diameter, the bottom of the shaft was some hundred and thirty feet down. Several openings at different levels in the wall reflected jagged beams and breakthrough debris. Even the floor appeared littered with sharp, rough rubble. She held on to the door and lifted a foot, rubbing it against her opposite calf to circulate blood and create warmth.

Clay’s arms circled her waist and pulled her back. She landed on warm fuzz. He’d extracted several blankets from the closet and layered them on the floor by the doorway. Another one he wrapped around her shoulders. “I forgot how cold it gets in this section. Stay on the blankets. You can monitor my drop with the sensor pad.” He gestured to the flat silver pad he slipped into her hands.

“The descent doesn’t look safe.” She raised a brow as he attached the first of the carabiners to the rope twined through the winch. “Settling could have shifted the support beams. When was the last time you checked out this winch?”

“Settling’s a given. It’ll be fine. I’ll be up with the keg before you have a chance to design a new toy.”

With a sharp tug, he rechecked the winch’s hold and then ran his finger again over the descender, tugging to confirm friction and that the hitch functioned correctly.

“You need a complete audit of the facilities and a backup plan for reinforcing these dangerous areas.”

He chuckled. “I’ll give you a brief on the way down. You can take notes and start the plan. Probably keep you busy for three minutes.”

His quick, hard kiss was unexpected. She leaned into him too late, finding he had stepped back over the edge and disappeared. Dropping to her knees, Esme skimmed her fingers over the display of the sensor pad. Green lines designating metal reflected a three dimensional grid formation on the screen. The wood beams registered with circles at the cross-structure where they interfered with the metal’s signal. Intermittent energy signatures blossomed in blue and white, in conjunction with irregular shapes of broken structural beams, no doubt indicating signal transmissions through broken wall sections. She wished she had the control room’s full resources to monitor his descent, but it would mean leaving him.

A brief rumble vibrated beneath her knees. “Clay?”

“Motion from the grid. Nothing to worry about.”

She gripped the pad tighter and glanced at the winch. She would stop worrying when the only person to give a damn about her came back up that rope.

“Some new openings here. Remind me to check these from the other side later for security.”

Later. At least he planned to have her around long enough to remind him. Of course, he needed her to deliver the plan for safety modifications, and there was the mission.

Another rumble shook the floor. Esme planted her hands on the blanket to maintain her balance and keep from swaying toward the opening. The sensor pad bounced over the rumples of the blanket toward the yawning darkness beyond the doorway. She grabbed it before it tumbled over the edge.

A loud groan of steel echoed around her, followed by a stronger vibration and a shower of concrete from the ceiling. The rope whined and then whipped through the winch above her for several feet. Just as suddenly, the wheel spun several times and then clicked into a hold position against the rope. The whole mechanism jerked. Dust clouds and smoke billowed from the open doorway.

Esme crawled closer to the door, covering her mouth against the particles. With one big breath over her shoulder, she turned back to the doorway and screamed, “Clay.”

Nothing answered but silence.

***

Clay tried to inhale. Instead, he drowned in a cloud of stirred fungus and dust from debris. Sharp and tight, pain cut through his chest with the effort. Not enough air to breath and no muscle response from his effort to allow movement.

A bitter laugh of righteous disappointment swelled, one he cut short as his brain cataloged his problem and decided silence worked best. Finally, he’d found someone to trust, someone who had seen his physical damage and abnormality and accepted him. All hopes for a future ripped away in a heartbeat.

Esme’s shouts to him from the top of the shaft kept him still. If she thought him wounded, she would come down. He couldn’t help her. He was beyond help himself, and he couldn’t risk her meeting the same fate. If he played dead, he might be able to convince her of the futility of any dangerous action.

The beam of light arced across his section of the shaft. From between his eyelashes, dust motes glittered in the white beam. Clay closed his eyes and struggled to keep his arms lax, his fingers splayed. With each second, he forced his cyber system to hibernation and shutdown. He didn’t need to worry about his legs. The piece of rebar penetrating the center of his chest had taken care of them.

Chapter 8

The halo bulb illuminated black splotches against the cream of Clay’s shirt, but Esme ignored the blood and searched inch by inch along his neck and face for any sign of breathing. Panic choking her lungs, she spun back to the blanket and fumbled with the sensor pad to find the orange shimmer distinguishing Clay’s warm, live body from the inert objects around him.

His head and shoulder registered in faint orange that, as she watched, threatened toward gray.

Think. Think. Think.

Her bots. Poised to launch for the run to the console room, she halted at the metallic groan sounding behind her. She whipped around, grasped the winch and the rope before it slid farther, forcing the door closed with her shoulder. With the rope wedged in the frame, she struggled to lock the door braces in place.

God, she didn’t want to leave him in the dark, but if the winch didn’t hold and pitched into the shaft, it would land right on Clay and the piece of rebar skewering him. Worse, it would just crush him beneath more debris. Ensuring that he encountered no shift, no jarring of his current position until she could get help was critical.

He was alive, barely. She could tell that much. The amount of blood was alarming, but if she had to guess, it had pierced his enhanced cyber components. That might give her more time to find a way to free him and bring him up. Unfortunately, his intricate circuitry interface with biology was beyond her expertise.

She refused to consider the alternative and ran. This was not happening to her. To him. She kept muttering the phrases in her mind. She’d finally found a man with a brain she could understand. One who she could work with. One with a sensual mouth, tempting hands, and a strong body she wanted to keep beside her. Damn it, no, this was not going to happen to either of them.

Her feet tingled as she reached the grating of the console room, but not from cold. Determination radiated enough body heat to make even the knee-length shirt she wore too warm.

She wrenched her mesh cyber interface onto her hand and initiated a console to watch Clay’s heat signature and monitor the dark recesses of his tomb as she worked. Her heart felt like it would explode. What rattled her confidence more than fear was how different this felt from her imprisonment in the detention tanks. Then she risked losing only her life. To lose Clay was harder, bleaker, and sickening in a way that threatened to rob her of focus.

Without a pouch or satchel to use for supplies, she slung Clay’s duster over her shoulders and stuffed a pocket with her bots and the hodgepodge wire and duct tape contraption. In another pocket, she crammed the portable med kit—pitifully short of supplies needed for his injuries—one laser torch and another halo bulb lamp. She glanced at the monitors as her hands brushed over the supply piles, delivering instantaneous decisions on additional items as she considered the next option.

The image on the screen now flickered slowly, orange to gray, orange to gray. The pulse of color, as shocking as the fading life sign the gray implied, also gave her a moment’s hope. Constant and consistent, something was regulating his body’s functions. However, even when she got him out—and she damn well would get him out—she didn’t have the skills to fix what had happened to him. Not in time to save him.

Her fingers flew across Clay’s circular keypad until, with a snort of disgust, she stopped and shoved back the long sleeves of his coat.

Not one reference to a medic code name. No reference to injuries, blood, or transport. Of course not. Clay wasn’t haphazard or careless. He would have swept each signature and every routing identifier from his system. All the virtual communication servers he had created for his communiqués were also gone.

Think. Think.

She pressed her fingers to her lips and spun to check the other screens.

Of course. Shepherd wouldn’t leave a trail, but that didn’t mean one of the many people he’d networked with had been as thorough. It wasted precious minutes to create the code sweep module. Followed by another minute to launch it and scavenge through every list, every code name, and every virtual router she’d put into place when Clay was ambushed in Down Below.

Ready to give up and head back to the basement level, she halted for two lines of text which glittered in response to her query.

Search ‘medic’ ‘blood’ ‘port’ ‘retrieve’

Roach: unknown blood type

Onyx: synthetic AG—off

The team for the new project wasn’t finalized yet. Even complete, Clay wouldn’t have shared it with her. Yet this code name, Onyx, one she’d witnessed over his shoulder before he’d set her ID restrictions, was the first on the roster. An individual known both to Clay and Vier and trusted enough to rank first place in the team. Someone who was familiar with the synthetic process mix the Regents used for quick clotting in lieu of verified blood typing, synthetic AG. She held her breath as she typed the distress call, making certain to send as a private message this time.

Karma: Onyx??—need backup

No response. A quick glance at the second screen confirmed the pulse of Clay’s orange and gray, but the timer she’d setup in the corner of the screen indicated a slight elongation of the pulse. He was fading.

Onyx: ?? Identify your ID

Karma: Shepherd

A long pause grew into a full minute.

Onyx: Try again

Yes. Poor response on her part, but she had keyed it in before she thought better of it.

Karma: Call 4 Shepherd
When he didn’t respond, she typed again.

Karma: Radar, confirm status Karma

Radar: Status?

Karma: Confirm user Karma
Please don’t let him throw her to the wind. He’d monitored the messages she’d sent to help Clay when he was in the marketplace and had helped. She’d seen his moniker in the active list. His notation followed on every transmission Clay sent.

Radar: Acknowledge designation Karma—link Shepherd—over

Onyx: This like last time?

Evidently, everyone had received her messages earlier. Well, now wasn’t the time for humiliation.

Karma: 1000X worse

The response from Onyx was immediate. No delay. Onyx might question her involvement and her protocol, but a threat seemed to instigate his waiving risk.

Onyx: Blood pressure / Conscious/ injuries

Hmm. She glanced back at the screen to equate the pulse into a blood pressure number.

Karma: 70 over 48 & dropping / unconscious / central wound

Onyx: Blood loss?

Karma: Yes

Onyx: Pickup?

Karma: No. Come.

Again a pause. Surely if Onyx was a long-trusted member of Shepherd’s teams, then he knew this place. She honestly didn’t think Clay would survive if she left to go meet the doctor at some arranged location. Well, she had another option. Not a good one.

Karma: Won’t leave. U talk me thru?

Onyx: Negative—Confirm Come.

Then nothing but dead space.
She had no idea how long it would take him, but he’d relegated Clay’s injury to the critical level of an onsite visit, not risking details across the net. Thank God. She wasn’t about to second-guess the decision, instead taking the extra three seconds to clean the network path behind their discussion. No way was she leaving a security hole open like the one she’d unearthed to locate Onyx.

“Countdown—forty-seven hours thirty minutes.”

Pita, as Esme mentally referred to the main system’s regimented pain-in-the-ass voice-over, was getting on her nerves. Not enough to distract her from her current course. While she hoped she had synched up with a medic who Clay trusted, she still grabbed the laser gun on her way back to the lower level.

***

A small press of the widget against the wall initiated a soft whirring sound. Two seconds later, Esme knelt before the mobile vid screen she’d mounted on the wall in front of her. One tap of her finger split the views on the plasma screen into three virtual segments: one monitored Clay’s vital signs, another focused on his home’s exterior, and the final one contained the security panel.