Forged in Ember

by Trish McCallan

  “The protocol would break down a human host’s cells,” Embray said flatly, although the look he gave her was sympathetic. His voice gained control, but wrath still marred his face. He took a couple of deep breaths before zeroing in on Amy again. “When was the injection given?”

  “About a month ago—give or take.” Amy fought to keep her voice steady.

  “Jesus . . . James . . . the bastard.” Embray’s face seized as a guttural edge sliced through the sentence.

  “You must have a way to reverse the effects?” Queasy and suddenly way too hot, Amy reluctantly forced the question out. She needed to know the answer yet dreaded hearing it at the same time. If he said no . . . if he couldn’t figure out a way to reverse the devastation taking place in Benji’s cells, her son would die.

  She wasn’t certain she could bear knowing that.

  The healings that Kait and William were doing on Benji were short-term. The fact that they’d helped at all had caught everyone by surprise. Apparently Dr. Zapa’s instincts had been correct. Now that there was physical damage to Benji’s cells, the healing energy had something to repair. But the fix never lasted long. As soon as the healers stepped away from Benji’s bed, the isotope started eating away at his cells again, and his kidney and liver enzymes crept up. The healings weren’t correcting the core problem; they only alleviated the symptoms. The only way Benji would survive this was by neutralizing the isotope destroying his cells.

  Embray paused to frown. “While I hadn’t developed a reversal compound, I had worked up the reversal protocol for one. If you have a laptop, I can download the specifics.”

  Cosky moved away from the wall. “Do you remember it? It’s unlikely you’ll be able to access Dynamic Solutions’ mainframe. Link was locked out the moment he disappeared.”

  Embray’s smile showed teeth and temper. “Trust me. I’ll be able to download it. Dynamic Solutions isn’t the only place I backed up my research.”

  Amy turned to Brendan. “Honey, would you get the laptop in Benji’s room?” She waited until her oldest left the room before turning back to Embray. “So you’ll be able to create something to reverse the effects of this”—what had he called it?—“N2FP prototype?”

  “Yes. I can,” Embray said with a curt, confident nod. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head slightly.

  The tension in Amy released in a whoosh, as though she were a balloon and someone had pricked her with a needle, letting the air out. Finally some good news.

  “I’ll need a lab, and it may take a while to collect the required elements,” Embray continued. “But I’m confident that given time, I can come up with a reversal to the N2FP protocol.”

  Given time?

  The relief vanished. Tension filled her again. How much time did Benji have? “How long will it take you?”

  “It depends.” He glanced at the people assembled in his cubicle. “I was told I was brought to a military base?”

  There were questions in his eyes along with faint surprise on his face. He must have wondered why he’d been brought to a military base rather than a hospital.

  “There was concern that you’d be exposed at a hospital,” Cosky explained blandly. “Considering the NRO’s power and reach—” He broke off with a shrug. “This facility is secure. Impenetrable. You’re safe here.”

  Embray seemed to accept that. “I’ll need a top-of-the-line lab to create the neutralizer.”

  “Not a problem,” Cosky assured him. “You’ll find everything you need here.”

  Embray shot Cosky a skeptical look. “I’ll need to check out the facility for myself, which may be problematic as I’m not quite mobile yet.”

  An understatement, considering the man had just spent the past six months in a coma and hadn’t made it out of bed since awakening.

  Cosky shrugged. “No problem. Plenty of wheelchairs to choose from.” His nonchalance seemed to put Embray at ease.

  Brendan pushed the curtain aside and reentered the room carrying Amy’s borrowed laptop. He handed it to Embray, who immediately flipped the lid and started tapping keys. A minute or so later, he gave a tight smile of victory. “I have it. Where shall I print it?”

  “I’ve been using the nurses’ station. The laptop is already linked to that printer,” Amy said, a tingling sense of unreality sweeping through her.

  They now had what amounted to a recipe for the neutralizing agent. Although the neutralizer still needed to be created, at least they had something to work off.

  Embray shut the laptop and leaned back against his pillows. He looked exhausted and drained, his face as white as the pillowcases behind his head.

  According to the reports she’d read on Embray and Dynamic Solutions, he was on the same financial playing field as Bezos. He was ranked as one of the three richest men in the world—worth more than $89 billion. Certainly he was right up there with Eric Manheim and David Coulson, two of the men who’d taken him down.

  It was almost impossible to believe that a man of his intelligence, wealth, and status could have been neutralized so easily by the NRO. But they’d had help, and Embray had been betrayed.

  “So tell me what other disasters James has orchestrated since I’ve been out.” The vicious edge to Embray’s question was clearly audible.

  There was a lot of emotion there. Hatred mostly.

  Silence claimed the room in the wake of Embray’s question. The man looked beat. Hardly in the condition to take on another life-and-death revelation.

  “Tell me.” The order came through Embray’s clenched teeth.

  For the first time Amy saw the determination and fortitude he’d used to carve out his piece of the technological pie.

  Cosky frowned, studying the pallid frustration on the face across from him. Finally he rolled his shoulders and ran a hand over his head. “He ratted out the clean energy generator Dr. Benton and Faith Ansell developed. Which led to the NRO kidnapping Dr. Benton and his team. Coulson forced them to recreate the device. Once he had the schematics, he reverse engineered the prototype and created a sonic distributor—or, as Link calls it, a clean bomb.”

  Embray froze at the disclosure, horror settling over his face. “Jesus,” he whispered, his voice suddenly shaky and weak. “If those bastards were serious about what they told me . . . about resetting Earth . . .” He shook his head, disbelief slackening his features. “Well, hell . . . they have the means to do so now.” He took a deep breath, and his body seemed to sag into the mattress as if this new revelation had sucked all the strength from him. “What you’re describing would kill most of Earth’s population and set up the New Ruling Order as less than benevolent dictators.”

  The next time Mac awoke, he was instantly aware of where he was and what had happened. Eyes closed, he assessed his condition. He wasn’t in as much pain as before, but he could sense the worst of it lurking beneath the surface, like a shark circling in the water. They probably had him on some heavy-duty painkillers. That shark would be a hell of a lot closer to the surface, ready to strike, when the current dose wore off.

  He sought Amy’s scent. It was there but faint, like an echo on the air.

  “I see you’re awake,” a chipper, unfamiliar voice said. “Can you tell me what your pain level is? From one to ten.”

  Mac carefully opened his eyes. This time the light didn’t send shards of pain through his skull.

  “The pain level,” the nurse reminded him, that perky tone in her voice rasping against his temper.

  “One,” he said. Which was true if he didn’t move or breathe. He’d prefer the lack of breathing to the fuzzy head that was dispensed along with the painkillers.

  “One as in no pain and ten as in severe pain,” the nurse said, that chipper tilt annoying as hell.

  He scowled at the irritatingly cheerful note in her voice, which started the chisel back up in his skull. “I know what the fucking pain scale is.”

  From the sour expression on the nurse’s face, she didn’t find his declarati
on convincing. Probably because of the flinch that had accompanied it.

  “Sure.” The cheerful tone deflated. “Of course you’re not in pain. Why would you be? It’s not like you took two shots to the chest or survived a deflated lung or endured massive blood loss. That’s just all in a day’s work for you big macho warriors, right? Pain? What pain? I don’t feel no stinkin’ pain. You warriors . . . you’re all alike.” Aggravation furrowed her brow and narrowed her blue eyes. “Missing the good sense God gave a gnat. But whatever, I’ll just leave you to suffer in peace along with your manly ego.”

  The woman’s voice got progressively dimmer but more sarcastic as she exited his cubicle. The fabric curtain snapped shut with a sharp rebuke.

  Jesus H. Christ. What the hell had put her ass in such a twist? Quite the bedside manner there. At least she hadn’t tried to check his bandages. Fucking with his bandages would raise the pain level to DEFCON 20 on her pain threshold.

  When the fabric curtain slid back again, he fully expected to see the once chirpy, now crabby nurse—with something that would hurt like hell. Maybe a series of rabies shots or a full body scrub with a steel bristle pad.

  But it was Amy’s concerned face studying him from the cubicle’s entrance. Her hazel eyes scanned him from head to foot.

  “You pissed off Nurse Cheerful. I didn’t think that was possible.” She stepped farther into the room, twisting at the waist to drag the curtain shut behind her.

  Mac studied her as thoroughly as she was assessing him. The dullness of exhaustion glazed her hazel eyes. Her face was pale, the skin tight, with thick black circles rimming her eyes. Even her hair hung limp.

  “How long have I been out?” She hadn’t looked so run-down last time he’d seen her.

  “You’re headed into day five.” A few more steps brought her flush with his bed.

  Shit. Five days? He needed updates on everything, but he’d start with the most important.

  “How’re Benji and Brendan?”

  Her face softened at the question. “Benji is hanging in there. Still sleeping. They have him in an induced coma while we wait for the antidote. Brendan hasn’t gotten sick yet. Thank God.”

  “Good. That’s good,” he said roughly. “How long before the antidote?”

  “A couple of days, from the sound of it. They had to order some of the elements required.”

  Mac frowned. Something was niggling at him, something she’d glossed over earlier. “Benji’s organs?”

  “Yeah, that.” She shuddered. Hope and fear fought for control of her eyes. “Benji’s organs were getting bad fast. In the beginning stages of failure. The meds weren’t working anymore. As a last-ditch effort, the doctors brought in William, and his healing worked. They’ve been alternating with Kait now. So far they appear to be holding organ failure at bay. As long as they keep working . . .” The hands around his tightened.

  He wanted to ask her why the healing had worked this time, but the question wasn’t important. What was important was that it had. He needed to conserve his strength for the important things.

  “What’s the catch?” She’d just told him that they were curing Benji, so why was the fear still so bright in her eyes?

  “There is no catch,” she said, but her face tensed.

  Like hell. He turned his hand until he could catch her fingers and squeeze. “Then why are you still worried?”

  “Because everything is so uncertain. What happens if the healings quit working before the reversal is ready? What happens if someone gets hurt badly, and they need all the healers for them?” The round eyes that clung to his were full of fear and apology. “They couldn’t even heal you the rest of the way because they were saving all their juice to keep Benji going.” She swallowed hard, shook her head. “What if this reversal Embray and the lab are creating doesn’t work? How long can William and Kait keep this up?”

  Well, that explained the fear in Amy’s eyes. It also explained why he still hurt like hell. He shrugged it off. He would deal with the pain if it kept Benji alive and the terror off Amy’s face.

  “How many healers per healing?” A sudden wave of exhaustion rolled over him.

  He fought to keep his eyes open and his mind focused on Amy. She needed reassurance. Support. He wasn’t going to lie to her; he would never lie to her, even to ease her fear. But he could present some facts that might relieve her worry.

  “You mean each time he’s healed? One. Why?” She frowned slightly.

  “Because there’s more than one healer here. There are plenty to go around.”

  She shook her head, her eyes clinging to his. “With Kait tapped out and reenergizing, they wouldn’t even heal you for fear they wouldn’t be able to help Benji if he needs it.”

  The guilt in her expression was so sharp it cut him to the quick. “I didn’t need healing. I can heal the rest of the way on my own. Why would they waste their energy on someone who doesn’t need it?”

  He wouldn’t have wanted them to either.

  “One day at a time, sweetheart. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He didn’t realize what he’d said until her eyelids flared and her hands flexed around his.

  Fuck.

  He pulled back reflectively. Their hands separated as he waited warily for her response. To his relief and frustration, she didn’t have a chance to reply. The curtain suddenly swung back, and Rawls stepped inside.

  “I thought I heard that old-man-raspy voice of yours.”

  “At least I don’t have no prissy accent.” Mac shot a quick glance at Amy’s face but didn’t see a reaction to the endearment.

  Rawls shook his head and smirked. “Jealousy. Pure jealousy.” As he removed the chart from the box wired to the foot of the bed, the smirk fell from his face. He spent a couple of seconds flipping through the papers clipped to the board before dropping it back in the box.

  “So tell me, Doc. Am I going to live?” Mac asked with another sideways glance at Amy. If not for the telltale widening of her eyes and flexing of her hands, he’d have thought she’d missed the endearment completely.

  “Near as I can tell.”

  The slowness of the reply brought Mac’s attention to his corpsman. He caught the rise of Rawls’s eyebrows.

  “Maybe I should come back later.”

  “No. No.” Amy moved away from the bed. “I need to check on Benji.” The eyes that dropped to Mac’s face were shadowed, the green fire dampened. “I’ll stop by later. If you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Sure,” Mac mumbled and watched her slip past Rawls and out of the room.

  “From that scowl I’m guessing I interrupted something,” Rawls said, an apology thick in his voice.

  “No. You didn’t.” Mac scowled harder.

  Damned if it wasn’t the truth. The exhaustion surged again. He ignored it. It was past time for some more updates.

  “Zane? Beth?”

  “They’re both fine. The baby is fine. The docs are monitoring Beth, but it looks like what happened earlier was a false alarm.”

  Great. Just fucking great. Zane had been sidelined by a false alarm. How much of that clusterfuck would have been avoided if they’d had Zane on guard duty too? There was little doubt his absence had played into the downhill spiral the mission had taken. With two eyes on guard duty, maybe that shooter would have been sighted earlier . . . which reminded him—

  “You take down the bastard who shot me?”

  “I hit him, but he didn’t go down. Took off instead. Since we were occupied keeping you breathing, we opted to let him go.” Rawls pushed back the chair next to Mac’s bed with his boot and dropped into it.

  Point taken.

  Mac battled another surge of exhaustion. At least the fatigue was muffling the pain.

  “You take Link apart for setting us up like that?” That fucking detail still rankled.

  Rawls shrugged, muffled a yawn with his hand. “He swears he didn’t know about anyone else on the island. Hell, truth be told, I tend to believe
him.”

  Mac snorted. “You always were a Pollyanna.”

  “Makes no sense why’d he’d set us up. Not when he’s stuck here to face the consequences.”

  Okay. Rawls had a point.

  “What’s your take on Embray?” Amy had told him the man was alive and awake. If he was already working on an antidote to his compound, he must have awoken with his mental faculties intact.

  None of which meant they could trust him.

  “My take? He’s pissed. Beyond pissed would be more accurate. You should have seen him when we told him his isotope had been injected into Amy’s boys. If Link had been in front of him, he’d be dead. No question.”

  “Can we trust him?”

  Rawls paused, pinching his chin as he thought that over. Finally he shrugged. “Don’t know. He’s saying all the right things. Doing all the right things. Not sure how we can test his trustworthiness at this point, other than waiting to see if his antidote works.”

  Fuck.

  Mac grimaced. What a way to test someone’s character . . . by waiting to see if a child lived or died.

  On that cheerful thought, Cosky stepped into the room. Mac scanned the flat, cold face. Ice still chilled the gunmetal-gray eyes. Mac couldn’t remember ever seeing them that cold—or distant—at least when they were aimed in his direction.

  He frowned, the pain in his chest kicking up a couple of notches. Rawls had been wrong. That moment of self-sacrifice—when he’d saved Kait’s and Cos’s asses by jumping in front of the bullets meant for them—hadn’t sweetened his lieutenant’s temper.

  Of course, Kait wouldn’t have been there, in need of ass-saving, if Mac hadn’t talked her into that damn room.

  Fuck.

  He grimaced, shooting Rawls a quick look. “You want to give us a minute?”

  Rawls sent him a sympathetic glance as he headed for the curtained exit. Yeah . . . he knew how much Mac was looking forward to this conversation. Once Rawls had cleared the room, Mac grabbed the bull by the horns.

  “Look. I’m sorry, okay?”

  If anything, Cosky’s face turned stonier. “No. You’re not. Fuck, if you could go back in time—you wouldn’t change a damn thing.”