WastelandRogue (22 page)

Sevrin snatched the pipe out of Rye’s hand.

She jerked free of him and spun around, terror in her eyes.
The last time he had seen her with that look of panic and confusion was in the
field of allium when she had found him.

“It’s all right. He’s my brother, Zandt,” he told her,
hoping the quick information would calm her.

She moved away. “And he’s come to take me.” She sounded
strangely disoriented.

“What are you talking about?” He reached for her but she
stepped farther from him.

“You’ve led me here to—”

“To what?” Zandt interrupted.

“Rye, it’s all right.” Sevrin grabbed her shoulder. “You can
trust him.”

“I can’t even trust you.”

“We don’t have time for you to start that all over again.”
Did she really think he had led her into a trap?

Zandt reached out and grasped Rye’s face. “Has she been in
the sun a lot?”

“We both have.”

“Has she been acting strange, paranoid?”

“A little.”

“Excuse me.” Rye wrenched her face free of Zandt’s hold. “I
am
standing right here. Maybe you could direct your questions toward me?”

Zandt gave a placating scowl. “Have you had unusual bouts of
confusion or thought you saw something that wasn’t real?”

Reluctantly she nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sevrin moved around in front of
her.

“She didn’t trust you. Dehydration sickness.” Zandt shook
his head and then said to Rye in a reprimanding tone, “You should have been
drinking more water if you were in the sun for long periods of time.
Overexposure isn’t good on your system.”

“I was drinking as often as possible,” she exclaimed.

“I can vouch for that,” Sevrin said. “I made sure she kept
hydrated. We’ve been in the rain, soaked in ponds. I don’t think I ever spent
so much time in and around water. So how is it she got sick anyway?”

“At some point, it wasn’t enough. Even something a quarter
cycle of the moon ago could have started all this.”

“The ditch, when you were burning with a fever.” Sevrin
looked back at Rye. He should have guessed that all her occasional craziness
was the result of dehydration. “Is that what was causing you to distrust me?”

Rye gave him a brief glance and a shrug.

“She couldn’t,” Zandt clarified. Walking to the spigot, he
picked up a cup she hadn’t noticed and filled it with water. “Drink this.”

She shook her head. Sevrin sensed she feared the water was
contaminated with something to sedate her.

“One of the effects of dehydration is paranoia. That
psychotic break from reality can lead her thoughts on a different path, one she
believed to be true. She’d not know it wasn’t right unless confronted and
convinced by her own mind,” Zandt continued to explain.

“Is it serious?” Sevrin asked, watching Rye’s agitated
movements.

“Not if she keeps drinking water.” Zandt grabbed Rye’s wrist
and thrust the cup into her hand. “Drink it.”

Sevrin took the cup from her. He gave her a reassuring smile
and drank some of the liquid first. “It’s just water,” he said, offering her
the cup.

She quickly tipped the cup to her lips and gulped down the
cool water. Moving to the spigot, she refilled the cup and drank more.

While she refilled and guzzled the water to quench her
obviously voracious thirst, Zandt turned to him. “Now why don’t you tell me
what you’re doing here? Especially now?”

“Well, it’s good to see you too.” Sevrin tossed the pipe on
the pile of rubble. “Why not now?”

“We don’t have time to discuss it. I’ve got to get you,” he
pointed his finger at Sevrin and then at Rye, “and her out of here.”

“Manners, Zandt. What would Mother say if she could hear you
giving orders in that disrespectful tone?” Sevrin took Rye’s hand and coaxed
her closer. “It’s all right, Rye. Zandt’s like a cactus, prickly on first
inspection, but soft on the inside. He won’t let anything happen to you any
more than I would.”

Rye eased forward, wiping the back of her hand across her
wet mouth.

“As I said,” Sevrin put his arm around Rye’s shoulders,
“this is my brother, Dr. Zandt Renault. Zandt, this is Mariah Sanborn.”

“Rye,” she grumbled.

“She prefers to be called Rye.” Sevrin added.

Zandt’s brow rose and his gaze swept down Rye and back to
her shirt hanging open. “And she is your—”

“Nothing like that,” Sevrin answered.

Rye’s grip tensed before she tugged her fingers free from
his and drew her shirt closed.

“She’s just someone I came upon in the wastelands.” Sevrin
gave a general explanation, not willing to get into what his relationship with
Rye was, since he hadn’t figured it out for himself.

The irritated sound from Rye caused him to examine his
words. He realized how he made their involvement sound meaningless and it was
far from it.

“She was looking for her sister,” he added, thinking later
would be a better time to explain his feelings. “We ended up traveling
together.”

“Old Louis Ruins is a big area.” Zandt looked at her. “Do
you know what district she might be in?”

“Her sister Shay was kidnapped by one of the marauders,”
Sevrin explained. “The scurrilous human is dead and he wasn’t forthcoming
before his ill-timed demise. He had mentioned bringing captive
lamians
to scientists, I assumed the Wickstrom Group.”

Sevrin didn’t mention the allium field since it was less
successful than a lizard hunt.

“Why would you think the scientists had anything to do with
the Wickstrom Group?” Zandt’s serious gaze moved from Sevrin back to Rye.

“You don’t get out much, do you,” Sevrin said, taking the
empty cup from Rye and refilling it for her. “Seems there are growing rumors
about
lamians
being bought for scientific experimentation. Wickstrom
comes up quite frequently in conjunction with those rumors.”

“We have a lot of different departments working on bacterial
control to soil enrichment. Nothing has anything to do with—” Zandt stopped
midsentence.

The hairs on the back of Sevrin’s neck rose.

“Follow me.” Zandt turned toward the door

Sevrin motioned Rye to follow his brother. She sat the cup
down and went into the corridor behind Zandt. But she stopped short, making him
bump into her.

He looked past her to see Zandt had spun around, his finger
to his lips, signaling for them be quiet.

Sevrin moved around Rye and whispered to Zandt, “What is
it?”

“I don’t know what rooms are monitored. I didn’t see any
cameras but it is possible for security to listen from the speakers in some
areas,” Zandt explained.

They walked stealthily, passing doors with caution. Sevrin
saw his brother in a new light, a dangerous one. He never thought of the
world’s scientific faction as a threat. Meant to do good, help the environment,
their goal was to save a splintered civilization.

At the end of the long corridor, Zandt stopped them. “There
is a department on the lowest sub-level that I’m not authorized to go into even
though I have the highest level of security access. If the rumors you’ve both
heard are true, then that’s where
lamians
are being kept.”

Zandt pushed open a door and Sevrin looked at the wide
hallway. Stark white walls and bright lighting in the flush ceiling reminded
him of the sterile room they had just come from. He motioned Rye to follow his
brother. She too showed an aversion to the glaring intensity, using her hand to
shield her eyes.

He forced himself to adjust to the brightness instead of
shying from it. His safety depend on him focusing on his environment every day.
Just because his brother worked in the place wasn’t reason enough for him to
put trust in their situation. Zandt had more than implied things weren’t quite
right with the Wickstrom Group’s facility.

Sevrin touched the smooth walls, unable to say what the
glossy composite material was. The flooring had a different texture, not quite
as slick and not rough either.

Rye paused and wrapped her arms around herself. When he
touched her shoulders, she recoiled from him as if she feared his closeness.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Still worried you can’t trust
me?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I’d understand. I can’t believe I didn’t
realize you were suffering from dehydration all the while I was concerned about
you getting sun-fever.”

“The delusions never last long. I’ll drink more.” She
shivered and seemed to hug herself tighter.

He placed his hands on her again and rubbed her upper arms.
“Are you cold?” He felt her face for a fever.

“No. It’s the pristine appearance of this corridor. It is
disturbingly unnatural and making me uneasy.”

“Me too. Then again, I’m never comfortable with confinement
unless I know the way out,” he whispered, hugging her briefly and rubbing her
back.

Zandt turned to them. His expression held both a hint of
amusement and a knowing look.

Sevrin sensed his brother knew there was a stronger
connection between him and Rye beyond coincidental travel plans.

Zandt pointed at the silver perforated tubing along the top
of the walls. “This is a sanitation passage. If we were ever under threat of
contact with any leaks from the labs, chemically treated water would spray out
to neutralize contaminants.”

They all looked up at the rasp of static from an overhead
grate.

“Halt,” a voice commanded from an unseen intercom.

“Keep going.” Zandt countered the order. “It’s an automated
warning. We set it off by not entering a code at the door.”

They hurried out of the tunnel of white into a stairwell.
There they encountered a different atmosphere. The drab gray of the walls and
dim lighting were unwelcoming. As they tromped down the steps, Sevrin kept a
hand at his back, on the grip of his gun.

Zandt led them through a door into another corridor and to
another set of stairs. On each level, the same computer-generated command to
stop echoed behind them. Then they reached the third level. Zandt put a finger
to his lips. Sevrin didn’t question the need for silence. Unlike the other
levels, here transparent glass walls framed the corridor.

A new message played from the speakers. “Searching for
intruders. Searching. Searching. Locked on unknown entities. Tracking
movements.”

“How long do we have until someone responds?” Sevrin asked.

“Not long, unless I can trick them into believing I belong
here.” He tugged a tag with his name and symbols on it from his white lab coat
and swiped it into the slot of a door panel.

“I thought you did belong here,” Rye voiced with alarm.

“I do, upstairs.” Zandt glanced back at them. “Down here,
they might have a specialized clearance pyramid.”

“Intruder identified as employee three two three. You are in
an unauthorized area. Return to your designated level, employee three two
three,” the computerized voice ordered.

“What does that all mean?” Sevrin asked.

“They recognize my ID and aren’t happy with me being in this
region. Come on.” Zandt motioned them to follow. “I’m guessing the computer
might only let me get away with that once. If I try to use my card for entry
anyplace else, I’m certain they’ll send security.”

“Great,” Rye grumbled.

Zandt looked back again.

Sevrin saw annoyance with Rye in his brother’s gaze. Zandt
never did like impatience from anyone.

“However, due to past computer errors giving false alerts,
security is slow to respond,” Zandt expounded in a disciplined tone of
self-control. “We should be out of here by then.”

“I hope so,” Rye declared. “I don’t like all this
confinement.”

“You?” Sevrin gave a laugh. “The girl who enjoys sleeping in
tight places like a coffin.”

Her brow rose. “That’s different and it was a crate,
remember? And when I felt trapped, it was only for as long as it took for me to
pop the lid open. This place is different. All the doors and locks are making
me feel a bit claustrophobic, as though I may not be able to just pop out of
this imprisonment.”

Sevrin understood her concerns. He too had an eerie feeling
they’d not leave easily.

Suddenly, Rye pressed herself up against the last glass wall
in the corridor to look through it.

“Shay!” She rushed past him and Zandt and charged into the
room.

He hurried through the door after her.

“Wait, don’t touch her,” Zandt shouted in warning.

Sevrin grabbed Rye and held her back.

In a line of a dozen metal racks lay three people, one
female and two male. The other shiny steel tables were empty.

“Let me go,” Rye begged. “She’s my sister Shay. Look what
they’ve done to her.”

Zandt plucked gloves from a container and put them on. He
examined Rye’s sister, lifting her eyelids, pulling down her bottom lip and
checking the pulse in her neck.

“She appears to be in a coma.” He touched the intravenous
tube inserted in her neck.

“Wake her up,” Rye demanded.

“I can’t without knowing the reason she’s in one. If
something physically happened to her brain, she may never come out of the deep
sleep,” Zandt explained.

Sevrin released Rye, sure she’d do what his brother told her.
Instead of listening, Rye rushed up to the table, grabbed the tube and yanked
it from Shay’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Zandt grabbed a handful of cloth
bandages and pressed it to Shay’s neck. “In a coma her body is unable to
regenerate as quickly. Do you want her to bleed to death?”

“She won’t die because you’re going to make sure she
doesn’t. And if she does, you’ll be sorry we ever met!” Rye declared.

Sevrin slid his arm around Rye. “We need to remain calm and
give Zandt a chance to figure this out.”

“Whatever medication they had her hooked up to may be the
only thing that kept her alive.” Zandt flashed an angry, accusatory glance at
Rye.