Prodigal (37 page)

Quiet prevailed, beneath the electric surge of the containment field.

Either he’s gone or he knows I’m here.

Nathan looked around for anything he could use as a weapon. In the end, he came back to his hands—clenched into fists that seemed worse than useless.

The hell with it,
he decided, and slipped past the edge of the door.

Nathan bobbed his head in first, to get a snapshot view of the lab and to provoke a response. When nobody took a swipe at him, he went the rest of the way. With his back against the bulkhead, he eased himself farther along—making sweeps of the confined space, tracking shadows in the ambient light. Nathan could make out the footprints from sickbay, but they faded toward the center of the lab until they disappeared completely. Other than that, there was nothing to tell him that anyone else had ever been here.

Dammit.

Nathan froze. His eyes darted across every corner, every possible hiding place, but found few places a grown man could stuff himself. An equipment closet was big enough, but locked from the outside. That left only the containment sphere, which couldn’t possibly—

Oh, no…

Sparks rose from the monitoring console, which released a thin puff of smoke. Nathan noticed it just before the fire alarm split the air. Suppression mist poured out from the ceiling, obscuring the lab in a thick fog smeared with an eerie glow from the emergency lights.

Nathan launched himself at the console. He forgot all about Masir’s killer. The ship was his only concern—and losing the containment sphere. Parts of the control panel were smashed, along with the display, making it damned near impossible for him to operate the unit. Nathan rerouted as much of the interface as he could, hoping to get access to the diagnostic routines.

Come on, you piece of shit.

They popped up on the cracked and leaking screen, one at a time.

His eyes streaming, Nathan stared into the display and read off each indicator. The numbers blurred as hypoxia invaded his brain, but he kept holding his breath while he waited on the force field and pressure readings.

Both nominal.

Time to get the hell out of here.

Nathan pushed himself away from the console. He staggered backward, trying to make sense of his surroundings. Through the mist, the dirty fluorescent light of sickbay pointed him toward the exit. Relief washed over him as he listed toward it, his arms reaching out so he could feel the way—until terror reasserted itself in the shape of a person.

Blocking his only way out.

The thing fell on him.

Arms flailing blindly, the attacker pummeled Nathan’s chest and knocked him to the floor. Elbows jammed into his ribs, knocking out what little air remained in his lungs, compressing Nathan’s vision into an even grayer tunnel. Strength ebbing, he pushed back—clawing at the thing’s face, trying to stop the blows.

Until he saw a blade glint at him from above.

It swooped down on him at an angle. Nathan batted the weapon away, then turned his fists loose. He punched away at the amorphous shape that pinned him, landing blow after blow and shredding the skin on his knuckles. A warm gush of blood sprayed his face as he made contact with his attacker’s jaw, bringing forth a bestial scream. Nathan just kept on pounding, until he finally planted one shot in the middle of its forehead. His foe then crumpled, collapsing at his side and moaning deliriously.

Nathan rolled over, somehow getting back on his feet without crashing again. Nearly blind, he groped around until he found the attacker’s arms, then hoisted the nearly dead weight and dragged it back into sickbay. He went as far as he could before racking spasms and exhaustion finally brought him down.

By then, the emergency crews had arrived. Dressed in flame gear, they rushed past Nathan and into the lab, not giving him a second glance. He yelled, trying to draw their attention to the
real
danger—but everything came out garbled, broken by coughing fits and confusion.

Please God, don’t let me pass out.

He tried to drag himself back up—until a gentle hand eased him back down, lowering him to the floor while cradling his head.

“I need a medic!” he heard Lauren Farina shout.

“Skipper?”

“Take it easy,” she told him, tearing open a compress and dabbing his eyes with it. The touch made him flinch, cold moisture burning him like acid—but it passed after a few seconds, clearing Nathan’s sight enough for him to see the captain looking down at him. “You’ll be okay. Just give it a minute.”

Nathan’s lips parted, just enough for him to croak out the word.

“Doc—”

Farina turned her head toward the corpse. Sprawled across the deck, Masir was all but forgotten in the surrounding chaos.

“I know,” she said.

Nathan shook his head, trembling. Farina held him even closer—but he pushed her away, pointing frantically at the killer.

“What is it, Nathan?”

He swallowed hard, his throat raw.

“…it’s
him.
”

Farina drew back, suddenly clear about his meaning. She propped Nathan up, then went over to the semiconscious body he had pulled from the lab. The person lay facedown, wearing an envirosuit covered in blood—stirring slightly, muttering an incomprehensible stream. Farina grabbed one arm and rolled the body over. A pile of sweaty, disheveled hair obscured facial features—but there could be no doubt who it was.

Eyes glassy, Eve Kellean gazed into the ceiling—seeing past the bulkhead, past the ship, into a dimension of her own making. Her head lolled back and forth while she babbled, a desperate plea with an unmistakable cadence.

“…don’t do it don’t no please don’t make me…”

Farina leaned over her.

“Lieutenant,” she said. “What happened?”

Tears streaked down Kellean’s cheeks.

“…you can’t please don’t I don’t want to…”

“Talk to me, Lieutenant.”

“…
no no no no no
…”

Farina took her by the shoulders. Kellean shot bolt upright, shrieking.

“HE’S TRYING TO KILL ME!”

The magnetic lift opened into the usual tumult of activity at JTOC, setting off a round of salutes as Lea walked into the Operations center. She returned the gesture, even though they weren’t paying respect to her so much as the uniform—not to mention the gold leaf clusters on her collar. If it was one thing T-Branch understood, it was protocol—her status as a spook notwithstanding.

Eric Tiernan was already there, chatting up a couple of staff officers, when she arrived. He broke the conversation off as soon as he spotted Lea, flashing a covert smile as he came over to meet her.

“Major.”

“Lieutenant.”

“You should wear that more often,” he suggested. “It looks good on you.”

“Makes me feel like a fucking jerk.”

“That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”

“Not for long,” Lea said, showing him the way out of there. “Shall we?”

“You’re the boss,” Tiernan replied, and followed her across Operations. They walked in silence until they got past the decon tunnel that led to Special Projects and the vault door closed behind them. Then Tiernan turned to her with a grave expression. “So how did it go?”

“Not good,” she admitted. The encounter with Lyssa still had her shaking, as if the machine had left a piece of itself buried deep in her mind. “It’s getting hard to tell where Lyssa ends and Vortex begins.”

“How long has it been like this?”

“I don’t know,” Lea said. She had already asked herself that same question, searching her memories but unable to separate the facts from her own desires. She had so wanted Cray Alden to be on the other side of that glass, to have substance in her life, that she might have accepted Vortex at face value without considering the insanity beneath the surface. “Maybe I just didn’t want to see it.”

Tiernan hesitated, treading cautiously.

“You know I have to ask,” he said.

She looked up at him, into his perceptive eyes. “About the intel Vortex provided,” Lea finished.

“It matters.”

They started to walk again while Lea considered all those sessions in the Tank—especially the last one, which seemed so inevitable in hindsight.

“He would never consciously do anything to hurt me.”

“What about
sub
consciously?”

“With Lyssa flying under the radar?” Lea drew out, trailing into a momentary silence. Saying it out loud was the hardest part, because that would make it
real
—and mean that Vortex, that
Cray,
might already be too far gone. “We’ve seen what she’s capable of.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“In a very bad position. Vortex has been compromised—so we have to proceed on the assumption that any information he might provide is tainted.”

“That sets us back a bit.”

“Into the goddamned Stone Age.” Vortex had performed the job of a thousand hammerjacks, sifting more raw data than Lea could have done in an entire lifetime. “Without him, we have some real problems.”

They descended the spiral staircase to the lower levels, stopping outside the medical examiner’s office. Lea reached down to open the door, but Tiernan intercepted her hand first—taking it into his own, holding it tenderly.

“Nobody can blame you for having a blind spot,” he said. “We all take things on faith—especially with the people we care about.”

“Doesn’t help much when those people get killed.”

“It happens,” he said. “You remember them, but you move on.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because you need me.”

Lea found herself smiling. “You’re awfully cocky, Lieutenant.”

“I need to be,” Tiernan said. “It’s the only way to handle you.”

She squeezed his hand. It was all she could manage right now.

“Thanks, Eric.”

“Anytime.”

Didi Novak knew in an instant that something had changed, fixing Lea with a curious stare the moment she strolled in with Tiernan. Lea stepped away from the lieutenant, hoping not to be obvious, but Novak wasn’t fooled.

“We
really
need to have a chat.”

“Later,” Lea said.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Novak shot back. “And
you,
” she said to Tiernan, making her way around him like a drill sergeant, “I assume you’re aware of the penalties involved for conduct unbecoming?”

“I believe we’re operating within the scope of regs, ma’am.”

“I’m not talking about
your
rules, Lieutenant,” Novak snapped playfully. “You’ll find that mine are far more strict—and unforgiving.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Doctor.”

“At all times,” she finished, tossing Lea a wink of approval.

“I miss something here?” Alex Pallas asked. He unplugged himself from one of the lab consoles, still planted on the stool that had been his perch for the last several days, and rolled over to greet them.

“Just the good doctor having a little fun,” Lea assured him, with a pat on the shoulder. “You doing okay, Alex?”

“Getting a little crazy with the stims,” Pallas said, his body on a restless edge. “Novak’s been pumping me with organics, but I could swear she slipped a few tecs into that shot. Got me seeing all
kinds
of weirdness.”

“It’s called
reality,
” Novak said, turning back toward Lea. “Pay no attention to him, my dear. He’s still adjusting to the blood in his drugstream.”

Lea stifled a laugh. The deliberate normalcy on her team’s part came as a relief, but as she looked at each one of them they fell into a collective hush—everybody clearly thinking the same thing, but nobody wanting to hear it.

“They don’t know what they’re doing, shutting us down,” Pallas finally said. “Bostic must be crazy—that, or he’s the biggest
malakas
who ever wore a suit.”

“Far be it from me to agree with Alex,” Novak added, “but it does seem like a shortsighted move, even for a corporate counsel.”