Shades of Treason (5 page)

“That’s how you want me to help?” He slid his hand down her arm.

She nodded.

He wanted to ask again if she had killed her teammates, but he hated using compulsion, hated it so much he’d left the anomaly program because of it. And what if she seized again? He didn’t want to hurt her.

Searching her eyes, he looked for more answers. This close, he could see a touch of hazel in the green irises. She seemed to be focusing better. Color was returning to her cheeks too, but she looked vulnerable without her signature half smile.

The clank of the door unlocking drew his attention. It slid open and Katie entered the cell. She set her med-sack on the data-table. When she lifted an eyebrow his direction, Rykus became all too aware he was still holding Ash in his arms.

“She had a seizure,” he explained, shifting Ash’s weight so he could get them both on their feet. He half carried her to the chair on the other side of the table, then took a step back and frowned. It wasn’t like Ash to let herself be helped with anything, not without some wisecrack or brazen remark. Even after the Dead Man’s Circuit through Caruth’s sunbaked mountains, she’d reserved enough breath to suggest skinny-dipping with him in the Liera River.

Katie opened her med-sack, took out a bio-band, then bent down to strap the device to Ash’s ankle.

“Chief medical specialist,” Ash said, her voice raspy. “I’m moving up in the world.”

Katie straightened. “I’m Dr. Monick. I just arrived from Caruth.”

Ash started what might have been a nod but cut it short. He saw something move through her eyes—a hint of fear maybe—then she dropped her gaze to the data-table. “I haven’t snapped, Doctor.”

Ah, the institute. Anomalies would do anything to avoid being sent back there. That’s where the Coalition hooked them up to machines and brainwashed them into being loyal, and that’s where they would return if they lost their holds on reality. No anomaly wanted to become an experiment, but the whole KU knew the damage they could do if they snapped. The last time it had happened had been back before the loyalty training, and twenty-six people, mostly women and children, had been slaughtered on the shopping deck of a civilian tachyon capsule.

A few days ago, Ash had inexplicably slaughtered her team.

Rykus looked at his cadet, saw her staring off at nothing. He was supposed to cull the individuals who couldn’t take the mental pressure. Had he overlooked Ash’s signs of stress?

Katie took out a tablet and stylus, then tapped on the screen. “Your vitals match the ones taken yesterday. Everything looks good. Perfect really, except for your superficial injuries.” She paused. “Your previous medic didn’t note the swelling under your right eye or the bruises on your arms.”

“She hit her head when she seized,” Rykus said. The bruises, he suspected, were his fault. He hadn’t been gentle when he’d deflected her attacks.

“When was your last booster, Lieutenant?” Katie asked.

Ash leaned back in her chair and settled her shackled hands in her lap. Something in her demeanor made Rykus uneasy. If Ash had snapped—or even if she hadn’t and was, instead, a traitor—Katie was standing too close. Ash could lash out with a kick strong and accurate enough to break a person’s neck.

He took Katie’s arm and moved her out of striking range.

Ash noticed, and the first sign of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

She turned her attention back to Katie. “A week before my last assignment. So, around ten days, I guess.”

Katie transferred her frown from him to Ash. “Your last assignment
ended
ten days ago.”

Ash blinked a few times. After a long pause, she asked, “How long was I on the
Anthem
?”

“Eight days,” Rykus answered. “You don’t remember?”

Commander Evers’s report said the
Anthem
had boarded Ash’s shuttle twelve hours after her team began their mission. The warship then rendezvoused with the
Obsidian
twenty-five hours ago, and Ash had been transferred here. If she’d injected the booster a week before her last mission, it had been almost twenty days since she’d had it.

When Ash didn’t say anything else, Katie asked, “Are you having any headaches? Any blurred vision?”

Ash still didn’t answer; she just sat there staring with an apathetic look on her face. It was the expression Rykus taught his cadets to adopt if they were captured and questioned by an enemy.

“This isn’t an interrogation,” he told her. “She’s trying to help.”

Another long blink, then Ash rolled her eyes toward him. “I know.”

Katie pursed her lips. “I think it’s too soon for you to be experiencing withdrawal symptoms, but I’ll have a booster sent up.”

Could that be what this was? The bimonthly injections curbed mental and physical fatigue. They made anomalies stronger and quicker than the average soldier. They made them heal faster. The Coalition would have fed the drugs to all its enlisted men and women, but normal humans couldn’t take them. They seized and, if they didn’t get immediate medical attention, they fell into comas. Anomalies were different though. Their bodies handled the chemicals, and though the injections didn’t make them superhuman, they certainly gave them an edge.

They’d give Ash an edge over most of the
Obsidian’s
crew and over his soldiers. The latter would be assaulting a Saricean shipyard in less than three days.

The ship’s gravity pressed down on his shoulders, and his chest felt tight. No matter how much watching Ash seize had bothered him, he had a duty to the men and women under his command. He had to do whatever it took to bring as many of them back alive as possible.

“No,” Rykus said. “No booster.”

Katie tapped something into her tablet. “You’re not in charge of her care, Commander.”

“Thank God,” Ash muttered.

He fought the temptation to turn a cold, hard glare on his cadet. Instead, he kept his gaze on Katie. “I’m in charge of her security. I won’t risk her escaping.”

Katie glanced up from her tablet. “And I won’t risk her health.”

“A few more days isn’t going to kill her.”

“If she’s already experiencing withdrawal symptoms,” she said, her blue gaze unwavering, “it might.”

It wouldn’t. Anomalies might be addicted to the drugs, but every one of them should be able to make it three or four weeks without serious complications. “I won’t approve it, Dr. Monick.”

Katie’s chin jutted out slightly. Hell. She’d completely and thoroughly adopted Ash as her patient. Katie wouldn’t back down easily. She could be damn stubborn when it came to anything medical.

“Then I’ll go through Admiral Bayis,” she said.

“
He
won’t approve it.”

Her eyes narrowed. She held his gaze for another few seconds, then reached up to click on her voice-link. “We’ll see.”

She left a message to speak to the admiral. In his peripheral vision, Rykus noticed Ash tilt her head to the side. He could practically hear her snap the pieces of a puzzle together.

“You two have a history together.” A smile stretched across her face. “I thought I was the only woman for you, Commander.”

He ignored her. Obviously she was feeling better.

Katie said nothing as she bent down to unstrap the bio-band from Ash’s ankle. When she straightened, she frowned at Ash’s shackled wrists.

“Not pretty, are they?” Ash commented.

Rykus took a step forward, saw they were swollen and purple.

“Not at all,” Katie agreed. “How long have the restraints been on you?”

“Since I was detained.”

Katie chewed on her lower lip, then turned to him. “Can you take the restraints off?”

He started to say he could, but something held him back. Ash’s wrists shouldn’t have been as swollen as they were. Tender and a little bruised? Okay. But this? No. This stunk of premeditation.

Nice try, Ash.

“You’ll have to treat her with the cuffs on.”

“Her wrists are so swollen the restraints are cutting off her circulation. If I don’t treat her, and treat her properly, her hands are going to rot off.”

“You really wouldn’t want that, Rip.” Ash’s smile took on a seductive and suggestive edge.

Katie frowned. “Is this normal behavior for her?”

He should have let Ash bash her head into the table.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “Although she usually spreads out her… comments.”

Ash swung her gaze to his. “
Flirtations
, Commander. I usually spread out my flirtations.”

“She knows how to get under your skin.” Katie let out a short, humorless laugh as she retrieved gauze and disinfectant from her med-sack. “Take off the restraints. I’m sure you can handle her.”

“I’ll loosen them, but they’re not coming off.” He kept his eyes on Ash as he pressed his thumb against the print-lock sensor. He wasn’t overreacting. Ash might not try anything with him there, but if Katie or one of the medics fell for her tricks when he was gone…

He’d have to review the precautions listed in her file, maybe add a few more restrictions. He’d do it as soon as they were done here.

The mechanism connecting the cuffs unlatched. He fastened the security bracelets encircling her wrists to the locking devices in the arms of her chair, then loosened them one notch, which barely allowed them to slide over her swollen skin.

“I like her, Rip,” Ash said.

He ignored her provocative grin, walked behind her chair, and stood, making sure she felt how close he was. Even if the Sariceans had somehow broken the loyalty training, Rykus was an imposing man. He’d cowed anomalies long before the Coalition decided the instructors should become fail-safes.

Katie pulled up the room’s other chair. The door to the cell slid open, and Admiral Bayis entered.

“Sir,” Katie said, halting her descent into the chair and straightening instead.

“You had a question, Doctor?” Bayis stopped beside the data-table.

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Ashdyn suffered what appeared to be a seizure. Withdrawal from the booster could cause this. I want to give her an injection to see if it prevents another occurrence.”

“She’s had one episode?” Bayis asked.

“When you have no previous history of seizures, one is significant, sir.”

Bayis glanced at him. “You’re against it?”

“Completely,” Rykus said, though that might have been stretching the truth. He didn’t want Ash to seize again—he wanted her to get better—but the booster would give her strength and confidence. If he wanted the majority of his soldiers to return alive from Operation Star Dive, he needed that damn cipher.

“Then she doesn’t get it,” Bayis said.

Again, Katie’s chin jutted out. “I treat anomalies every day. I’m capable of handling her.”

“Rykus is in charge.”

“But Admiral—”

“No.” Bayis held her gaze to make his point. “Finish your evaluation, Doctor. The interrogator is ready to question her. Commander”—he turned to Rykus—”I’d like to speak with you outside.”

Rykus nodded, then said to Katie, “Tighten those cuffs before you leave.”

After one last glance at an all-too-innocent-looking Ash, Rykus followed Bayis out of the cell. In the room at the end of the corridor, a petty officer sat behind a desk, watching a wall full of security vids. Two guards were on duty as well, but it would take them half a minute to get to Ash’s cell. An anomaly could wreak a lot of havoc in that amount of time.

“I take it the compulsion didn’t work again,” Bayis said.

“No.” Rykus focused on the admiral. “She seized when I tried.”

“Is that normal for an anomaly who has snapped?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “The majority of unstable anomalies seized at some point, but as far as I know, compulsion didn’t cause it.”

“Could she have faked it?”

“Faked it? N—” He stopped. He remembered her scream, the way she’d shook in his arms, how she’d opened her eyes and focused on him as if he might be her savior. It all seemed genuine, but if he took himself out of the picture, considered her record, who and what she was, he had to hesitate. Ash was a chameleon. She knew what to do and say to get what she wanted from just about anyone.

Bayis turned. He didn’t say anything, but the corners of his eyes crinkled.

That crinkle irritated the hell out of Rykus. “I’m not questioning your accusation just because she’s a woman.”

“I’m not suggesting—”

“You’re thinking it. She was one of my cadets, Admiral. I’m her fail-safe. I have a responsibility to her just like I have a responsibility to every other anomaly I’ve trained, whether they’ve been brainwashed or not.” He’d taken an oath to look out for their well-being. That’s all he was doing. “But, yes, she could have faked it.”

And if she had, it was looking more and more likely that she’d committed treason.

His hands clenched at his sides. Despite the evidence, that conclusion still didn’t feel right.

After another weighted pause, Bayis said, “That’s what I told War Chancellor Hagan, but he doesn’t believe she’s a traitor. He said the loyalty training is infallible and that she’s snapped. He thinks we should send her to the institute and be done with it.”

“He doesn’t know a goddamn—”

“I know,” Bayis said. “But he has the final say in what happens. When the interrogator is finished with her, she’ll be transferred to Caruth, whether she’s committed treason or lost her mind.”

The thought of one of the Coalition’s trained interrogators getting access to Ash made Rykus’s stomach churn.

“What if there’s a third option?”

Bayis stared at him, his expression unreadable. Rykus made sure his thoughts were hidden as well. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been to do. Conflicting thoughts and theories and feelings ricocheted off each other. When he threw in the need to gain access to the Sariceans’ files, it made his head one galactic mess of a place to live.

“I’m listening,” Bayis finally said.

“Blackmail.” Rykus put forth the first idea he latched onto. “Or she’s protecting someone.” That felt closer to the truth. “Or protecting something.”

“You’re grasping at stars.”

“Something isn’t right here.”

“Perhaps you’re looking too deeply for an explanation,” Bayis said. “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most accurate.”