Winter's Storm: Retribution (Winter's Saga #2) (16 page)

From her jacket pocket the room heard a sharp ringing. She sound startled her from her thoughts.

“
Yes?” She said into the cell phone. Her brows wrinkled with worry.

“
We’ll be right there. Thanks, Paulie,” she said.

Everyone, getting the gist of the conversation, began quickly cleaning up their plates.

“
What’s happening?” Theo asked.

“
Meg’s temperature has spiked and she’s seizing,” Margo said whisking away the tears that had already begun to fall.

“
Oh, no,” Evan moaned.

Eyes wide with fear, Margo, Theo, Alik, Evan, Creed and Cole ran down the hallway toward the laboratory.

27 Brainstorming Session

Scrubbing in took a few minutes, but as soon as everyone was inside the double doors, they got to work on Meg.

“
Her fever was hovering around 100, but spiked to 104.8. The febrile seizure lasted for about forty-five seconds before stopping. Fortunately, the side rails were up on her bed so she didn’t fall to the ground. She does look to have bitten her tongue pretty badly, though,” Paulie was trying to maintain his physician’s objectivity, but he wasn’t doing a great job of it. This little girl had been through so much already. It was breaking his heart to watch her suffer any longer.

Dr. Andrews had retrieved a bulb syringe and started trying to extract the blood pooling in Meg’s mouth from her self-inflicted bite wound. He looked on the verge of tears himself.

“
Her temperature is back to 100.3 now. I’ll have to reset her I.V. She yanked it out during the episode,” Evan said to the room. He carefully began pulling the tape off his sister’s arm and with expert movements cleaned the site with gauze and rubbing alcohol, sterilizing it. An angry purplish-blue color quickly formed where the I.V. had been pulled partially out of place. Her face was pale except for the trickle of blood that had slipped down from the corner of her mouth. This was all nearly too much for Evan. His blue mask was doing a poor job collecting the tears he cried.

Everyone’s nerves were shot. They all loved Meg in their own way and were so scared for her. She was always so spunky and energetic; she could get a room full of people moving faster than anyone. She was bossy and controlling with the strength of spirit to back it all up. Watching her lie on that white-sheeted gurney small, frail and broken was pushing everyone to the brink of hopelessness.

“
Let’s brainstorm,” Margo said to everyone. “What do we know?”

“
Good idea, Margo. We need to run this like we would any patient’s diagnosis,” Theo brightened a little at the idea of doing something productive.

“
Right, I’ll scribe,” Paulie said walking to the whiteboard in the corner of the room and grabbing a dry erase marker.

“
Um, no offense Paulie, but I couldn’t read your writing when you were my professor,” Margo gently teased as she held her hand out for the marker. Paulie grinned sheepishly and passed it over.

“
Okay, we know she’s been unconscious for,” Margo paused to look up at the wall clock, “nineteen hours after collapsing during a run.”

“
Her lab work indicates an increase in white blood cells—which usually means infection,” Evan supposed.

“
Her red blood cell count was low indicating possible anemia,” Paulie added.

“
Well, the anemia could have caused the headache and fainting,” Theo thought, “A bleeding ulcer could cause the anemia and high white blood count,” he offered.

“
But we already performed a sonogram looking at all her internal organs, and there was no sign of bleeding,” Paulie added with a sigh.

“
Maybe we missed something,” said Theo.

“
We’re missing something, that’s for sure. But what?” Margo stared at the notes she had written in black ink on the board. “There was the fever and seizure too,” she continued.

“
Infection could cause the fever,” Paulie said.

“
Right, but that takes us back to the question, what is causing the infection? We started her on the antibiotics how long ago?” Margo asked.

Evan looked at his chart. “We began a full scope antibiotic intravenously at 11:18 last night. So she’s been on them for twelve hours,” he concluded.

“
That should have been enough time for us to see improvement. Instead, she seems to be getting worse. That fever is scary,” Paulie said.

“
A regular human being experiencing high fevers for days on end will suffer brain damage,” Alik said, as though reading from a book. This was the first he said during the entire discussion. Not having the scientific background his younger brother and mother had left him feeling inadequate. But Alik’s memory was unmatched, and he was racking his brain trying to remember anything he’d ever read that could be of help to the conversation right now. So, his mind raced back to an afternoon at the ranch when he was bored enough to read an entire stack of his mom’s scientific magazines.

“
Right, Alik. I’m just hoping we can figure this out before too much time passes,” Theo said.

“
There’s another option,” Creed said softly. He was staring at Meg and thinking about how beautiful she looked, even in her current condition.

“
What was that, Creed?” Alik asked.

This time, Creed cleared the emotion from his throat before speaking, “I said there’s another option we haven’t discussed.”

“
What option?” Cole asked skeptically.

“
A whole group of specialists are out there who may be able to help her,” he said letting the words sink into the room.

“
What kind of ‘specialists’?” Theo asked.

“
Scientists who focus solely on metahumans,” Creed said cryptically.

“
If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, the answer is absolutely not!” Margo’s voice was raspy with emotion.

“
What’s he talking about?” Cole asked, hating again how it felt to be the only one in the room not knowing what was going on.

“
He’s talking about the doctors who work for Kenneth Williams,” Evan said evenly.

“
What the heck? You think Williams would help Meg get better? Did he grow a heart while I wasn’t looking?” Cole yelled.

“
It’s just an option I wanted to be sure everyone realized,” Creed said, carefully back-peddling. “I’m not the doctor here, so I’m not the one to decide how desperate Meg’s condition really is. You are her family,” he said almost wistfully. “Since she’s unable to make decisions for herself right now, it’s your call.”

Except for the beeping of Meg’s monitor, the room went quiet. Creed’s words were sinking in.

“
Cole’s right, though,” Alik said. “Even if Meg’s condition were desperate, why would Williams be willing to help? What would stop him from taking Meg and dissecting her for his evil plans? Or use her as leverage to get me and Evan to turn ourselves in to him? Or cure her but alter her mental status and turn her against us? Anyway I think about it, the outcome would be bad.”

“
Like I said, Meg is unconscious. As her family, you have to make decisions for her—however tough they are. I just wanted to mention the Facility as an option. That’s all,” Creed said diplomatically.

“
I don’t know how much longer we’ll have to debate the issue. Meg’s organs are going to start shutting down because of the low levels of oxygen carrying red blood cells. Without oxygen, the organ tissues will begin to fail,” Paulie said softly.

“
What do you think about giving her a blood transfusion?” Alik asked the room.

“
Hum. Now there’s an idea. She can’t have regular blood, so that would leave Alik and Evan as the only donors,” Theo said, thoughtfully.

“
And me,” Creed said openly anxious to be of some kind of help.

“
We would have to test your blood—to be sure it would be a suitable match; but yes, theoretically, as a metahuman, you could donate, too,” Margo added cautiously.

“
The blood donations could help give us more time before her condition gets much worse,” Evan said, hesitantly optimistic. “On the other hand, nothing about her illness has been predictable, so it’s hard to say. I don’t think it could hurt,” he added with a hopeful shrug.

“
I’ll go first,” Alik said walking toward a chair, pulling up the sleeve of the sterile scrubs he wore and extending his arm.

“
Okay, let’s give it a try,” Paulie said as he shuffled through a drawer to retrieve the blood drawing supplies.

“
Creed, let me go ahead and draw a test sample from you so we can be working on that, too,” Margo said.

“
Yes, ma’am,” Creed answered. He walked over to the small doctor and pushed up his sleeve exposing taut mounds of muscle.

Margo had to ask, “How many meta soldiers like you does Williams have at the Facility?” She began sterilizing the biggest, juiciest looking vein right in the crook of his arm.

“
A lot.”

“
How many is that?”

“
I don’t mean to sound secretive, I just—I just mean even I’m not sure of the number. If I had to guess, there are probably about a hundred meta men and women at different stages of training currently at the Facility.”

Margo’s eyes widened. “That many?”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

She was trying not to let her panic show in unsteady hands as she wrapped the rubber tourniquet around his upper arm. She had to stretch it hard to reach around his huge biceps.

“
What about those who have already been sent on assignment? Do you know where they might be? Or what they are doing?”

“
I don’t know. We’re trained to work under any condition in any circumstance by ourselves or in teams. There’s no telling where meta operatives are once they leave the Facility.” Margo watched Creed’s deep blue eyes as he spoke, trying to determine his true motives.

Unaware of the scrutiny, Creed continued. “Once soldiers leave the Facility, they don’t come back, remember?” He shrugged softly. “I doubt even the Commander has access to that information.”

Not for the first time, or the last, Margo thought back to Kenneth Williams and remembered feeling his demented evil. She was letting the idea soak in. Metas could be anywhere. Metas could be in our human military, in politics, in positions of power—all over the world. And this meta, right under her hands, could be one of the most deadly to have been the one Williams chose to send after them.

“
Why did Williams choose you specifically to come after us?” she couldn’t help but ask.

Creed took a deep breath before answering. “Two reasons I know of: One, after the Retribution Match, he knew what I was capable of and two, he has no idea how well-trained those three are,” Creed nodded to the other metas in the room. “If he’d known, he would have sent an entire section after them.”

Margo asked feeling a wave of nausea crash over her. “How do you know they’re trained?”

Creed felt his face flush deeply. Deciding he needed to come clean he confessed, “I saw them spar, once.”

Margo looked deeply into his eyes. “Back in Kansas, at the hospital?”

Creed’s silence was his answer.

“
That was you, wasn’t it?” Her face was pale, but her expression was resolved.

“
Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.” His eyes dropped and watched her still steady hands working on his arm with skill and precision.

“
What made you stop? You could have finished me right then?” Margo asked the question she had been wondering about for months.

“
The pillow—the pillow had Meg’s scent on it. Something about that was like a slap across my face. It woke me up. I couldn’t kill my brother and I—Dr. Winter, I’m not a killer.” Creed’s blue eyes glistened with sincerity and pleaded with her to believe what he was saying. “No matter what Williams’ orders, I am not a monster.”

Creed’s gripping stare unlocked as he looked back down at his arm, veins bulging. “Why didn’t you just run after the hospital—to get away from Dr. Williams?”

“
I thought about it, ma’am. I really did. But then I knew he wasn’t done with you. I figured, if I stayed the course and played along, I would have the chance again to—I don’t know, make things right; to see Meg, and help you all. If it wasn’t me, he would have sent someone else, and trust me when I say, the Facility is full of soldiers who would kill without a second thought.”

“
So you made sure you were chosen to come after us once we were found?” Margo sat knee to knee with the meta now that she’d finished taking his blood samples. Her hand was methodically rocking the corked vials back and forth keeping the blood inside from coagulating.

“
Yes, ma’am.”

Margo stared at the young meta. She knew there was more to the story, but Creed’s body language was ridged now, as though he was unsure whether he had just said too much. And Margo was just as tense, unsure whether to believe him or fear him or both.

28 Margo’s Plan

The blood transfusion went fine, and seemed to be helping Meg’s organs to function, if only temporarily. Alik, being tall and weighing a considerable amount, could give a double-red donation, which basically meant he donated twice the amount of a regular donation. It also meant he wasn’t going to be able to donate again for six weeks.