The Key (27 page)

On the heels of this, a siren began to pulse, with a voice saying something in a strange language.

Henderson looked around. “I could be wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like a self-destruct count down, sir.”

If the outpost was awake…Fyn looked down. A row of lights pointed down the corridor.

“Carey, look.”

Carey looked. “All right, Henderson, take your squad and get back to the portal—”

“Negative, sir. We’re not leaving until we all leave.”

“Let’s get this done then. Fyn—”

Fyn didn’t wait to be told to take point. He just took it.

They didn’t run into anyone until four corridors later and then all they saw were backs running.

“That can’t be good.” Carey looked worried.

“We go this way.” Fyn pointed at the path, now making a sharp right. If all they did was find Sara in time to die with her, so be it.

Around one corner, they ran into some opposition. The Marines stayed to clean up while Carey and Fyn surged ahead. The path led them down one more hall, and then turned into a doorway. Fyn picked up the pace, not so worried about running into anyone now, but very worried about why the AI seemed to think Sara was still here when the Dusan seemed to be fleeing the outpost.

The door slid open for him and he found out why they hadn’t bothered to take her with them.

Carey skidded to a halt beside him, his gaze taking in the gruesome scene at a glance. Fyn was already moving to her side. He didn’t know where to touch her. Blood dripped slowly down her hands into wide pools under her chair. A bloody knife lay on the table.

“Shit.” Carey sounded winded.

How was this possible? She could heal. He tried for her wrist, to check her pulse, but the deep gashes changed his mind. And the chains.

They’d chained her. What else had they done?

He reached for her neck. It took an endless minute for him to find a faint, a very faint pulse.

“She’s still alive. Barely.”

“It looks like she’s almost bled out.” Carey got on the radio. “Henderson, we found Donovan but…” He looked at Fyn. “Can we move her?”

“She’s chained to the chair.”

“I can fix that.” Carey pulled his nine mil, pointed the barrel where the chains connected to the chair and fired, breaking the connections one at a time.

When she was free, Fyn picked her up and carried her to the bed, trying not to think about why it was there. Carey handed him napkins from the table and he knotted them around her wrists—too little, too late.

Why wasn’t she healing?
The angle of the cuts was…disturbing. They looked…self-inflicted.

“What the hell happened here?” Carey asked.

The countdown seemed to be going faster now.

Carey hit the radio. “Get out of here. We’re coming as soon as we can.” He looked at Fyn. “We’ll have to risk moving her.”

But they could both tell they were running out of time. As he bent to pick her up, the count tightened…then ended. They looked at each other, bracing for it.

There was a bright flash of light. It reminded him of the one that saved the
Doolittle
. It flowed out and up…and when it faded…they were still there.

“Okay…” Carey started to breath again. “I’m thinking we should leave before they realize this place is still here and come back.”

“Good plan.” He looked at Sara, wondering how he was going to carry her with the chains still dangling from arms and legs.

Carey got on the radio. “All teams fall back. I repeat, fall back—”

“Sir, this is Evans, down by the portal. It looks like the Dusan are leaving the area.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s all lit up down here. All kinds of sensors and crap just came on. We got maps, too, like back in the city.”

“Okay, I want you to go back through and send a medical team back with a stretcher. Donovan’s in pretty bad shape. Tell them to hurry.”

* * * *

Adin watched from the bridge of his ship, waiting for the self-destruct to finish its countdown.

There was a flash on the surface. A bright light flowed out from the spot, like the one that had come from the earth ship when he had tried to take Sara the first time.

“Shields up.”

Just like then, the energy hit them, spinning their ships out of position. Adin hung on to the side of his chair, waiting for it to stop.

“Give me a read out on the surface,” he said. “Is the outpost gone?”

His man looked up from the panel. “Yes, my leader. I am also reading dangerous levels of radiant energy from the outpost’s location.”

What had he been hoping to see, he wondered? Why had he stayed? He had seen her die. Now he had seen her burial.

All he could hope is that one day he would forget her.

“Take me home,” he said.

Ten

       Sara knew people were concerned about her. The doctor talked to her in loud, jovial tones. The Old Man had come and looked at her with worried eyes and said hearty comforting things. They’d sent in the shrink.

The ones she could keep out, she did. She couldn’t see Fyn right now. When she thought of Fyn, she saw Fiona looking at Adin with a slight flush on her face. How could she tell him what they did to her? How could she not tell him?

Even with the help of the nanites, it had taken a blood transfusion to pull her back from the brink and she was still wasn’t fully recovered. Who knew bleeding out could slow her heal rate by almost half? She’d been weak as a cat, but was getting stronger every day.

They all knew she’d slit her own wrists, but they didn’t know why. No one asked. She was on a suicide watch and the few people she did see tiptoed around her like the wrong word would push her over the edge.

And they watched her.

There was a camera in the corner of the room, like a lidless eye, a red light telling her it was always on.

So Sara did the only thing she knew to do; she retreated back inside herself.

She did okay until she fell asleep. That’s when the Adin came back. The scene played again and again, but it didn’t always end the same way. Sometimes he’d be right. She would give in to him. She’d wake up sweating and shaking and sick to her stomach.

The doctor knew she wasn’t sleeping and gave her pills, but Sara only pretended to take them. The drugs made it too hard to wake up, to get out of the nightmares.

Her chest was knotted and tight and she probably needed to cry it out, but she was a soldier. Soldiers didn’t cry.

If they’d just have let her fly…but instead they watched and waited for her to crack. If she could have, she would have.

As another night prepared to close in on her, Sara sat on her bed, working out the fingering for a song on the tabletop. She longed for her keyboard, but she didn’t ask for it.

She didn’t ask for anything.

Everything she did seem to have some deeper meaning to the shrink, so she did as little as possible.

When the door slid open, Sara didn’t look up. It would be the nurse with her sleeping pill.

“Donovan?” Briggs voice boomed into the quiet of the room.

That got her to look up and jarred a real smile loose from where all her smiles were hiding.

If they’d asked her if he could come in, she’d have said no. She was glad they hadn’t asked. If there was a constant in her life, it was Briggs. She’d known him longer than…anyone. She’d never socialized with him, other than the dancing—if you could call that socializing—even after his retirement. There probably wasn’t a name for what they shared. If it was a friendship, it had none of the usual friendly accouterments.

When he retired, she’d thought he was gone from her life, but he’d pulled her into his assignment at Area 51—and then seemed annoyed about it, she recalled with an inward smile. She wouldn’t have known he did it, but the Old Man spilled it during her interview with him.

Once she’d smiled at him, it was impossible to retreat.

He stalked over to her bed and studied her face without embarrassment or pity.

Sara endured the scrutiny without flinching or looking away.

“You look like hell.”

She heard herself chuckle.

“Thank you.” She pointed to a chair. “How’s mom? My bird?”

He sat and told her the latest news, his big arms crossed over his chest. But he finally stopped, pinning her with his gaze.

“Did you try to kill yourself?” His tone said he didn’t believe it.

Sara stared at him for a moment. “I’m a fighter puke. I don’t try. I do.”

His brows arched.

“I realize being alive kind of disputes that, but it’s true. I…died.” Sara looked down at her hands for a moment, remembering how odd it felt to see herself lying in the chair, to see Adin leave her there. She’d almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He’d looked so sad and surprised. She’d watched her body jerk as the nanites tried to restart her heart. And suddenly she was back inside herself, feeling pain as the nanites fought to keep her alive. Then the slide into unconsciousness, wondering if she’d wake up…

She made herself look at Briggs, trying for a light tone. “That’s got to be some kind of record, coming back from the dead twice.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Did you want to die?”

“You know, you’re the first one to ask me that.” She looked at the camera. “
No
.”

“What the hell happened out there?”

There was a bracing vigor about his unabashed curiosity. And Sara found she was ready to tell her story—at least the bare essentials. She started after she’d been transported to the other outpost. How she couldn’t go back, so she’d started working her way to the surface, about running into the Dusan. About making some of them go away. And about her plan to get home.

“You were going to steal a Dusan ship? You may be a girl, but you got some big, brass ones.”

She grinned.

“So what went wrong?”

“Pretty much everything.” She told him about her capture. “I should have tried to take them,” she finished with a sigh.

“Six guys?” Briggs frowned.

“Turns out they had soft, chewie centers. I knocked down a bunch of them with my hands cuffed.” She smiled at the memory. “Didn’t get me anywhere, but it felt good. And the look on—”

She stopped, her hands clenching. “Anyway, they hauled me to their leader and then to a cell. And so I’m sitting there plotting my next move and some big dumb brute of a guy brings me,” she paused for effect, “a
dress.
”

Briggs straightened. “Damn. What did you do?”

Sara smiled, but she could still feel her stomach clench as she remembered holding the gown up. The fabric was so sheer she could see the wall through it. Hell, she could see the cracks in the wall through it.

“Well, I had a knife and time to kill.”

Briggs chuckled. “Good for you.”

Now she felt her insides tightening even more. She pulled her legs up to her chest, her lashes sliding down to cover her eyes.

“And then…” Her chest hurt. She didn’t want to go there again. Bad enough she did it every night in her sleep.

“And then?” Briggs finally prompted.

She took a deep breath. “Mr. Supreme Leader showed up.”

She said it lightly, like it didn’t matter. She realized she was rocking back and forth and stopped.

“He was a bit annoyed about the dress.”

There was a short, sharp silence.

“Did he—” Briggs voice was sharp and tight, too.

Color flooded her face. “No.”

Another weighted silence.

“That’s why you did it.”

Sara nodded, not looking at him. She licked her lips.

“He explained the
situation
. Wanted to kill
him,
but that only solved one problem. There were a…lot more gomers and my range of movement was…limited.”

She flushed again. It was such a girl thing to get trapped like that. If she’d known, she’d
so
have taken on those six guys.

She could still feel the moment she realized dying was her only way out. And then she’d had to figure out how to get to her knife while Adin sat there licking his chops. Even as she swept the food to the floor, she hadn’t been sure she could reach the knife, not until her hand closed around the hilt and she’d pulled it free.

And then to do it—and do it with him so close, so intent on her. Pain as the knife bit into her wrist, followed by the warm rush of blood. Change hands, sharp fear the damaged wrist couldn’t do the next cut. A moment of relief. Then the struggle to stay conscious until it was too late…

She stared straight ahead. “I sat there…dying right in front of him and he didn’t even notice until it was too late. Lucky for me he was a…delta sierra.”

“How—” Briggs stopped.

“I…told him a story.” She looked at him. “The story of Masada. Even with that punch line, he didn’t realize—” She kind of smiled, remembering the look on his face when she told him to scrape her life off the floor. He didn’t see that one coming. She frowned. “I tried to stab him with the knife, but I was too weak by then. That was a missed opportunity.”

Briggs’ breathing sounded kind of harsh.

“So…then I died…large gap until I woke up here. Not dead. That was pretty weird.”

Sara took a shaky breath, and then looked at him.

“So, they can take me off suicide watch. Didn’t want to do it, didn’t enjoy it, and don’t want to do it again.”

“So, what you been doing with your sleeping pills?”

Sara grinned and made a flipping motion.

Briggs grinned, but still asked, “So, why don’t you want to sleep?”

Sara looked away. “I do want to sleep—just not with pills.” She’d beat Adin on the outpost. She’d find a way to beat him in her dreams, too. “Other than being a bit weirded out over the whole, not dying thing, I’m freaking sierra hotel. Nothing happened.”

So why did it feel like something had happened? Why did she feel…wounded? To be free of Adin, she needed to answer that question.

He studied her for a long moment and she let him. If he believed her, so would everyone else.

“Then why won’t you see Fyn?”

Sara inhaled sharply, painfully. She looked away.