WastelandRogue

by Brenda Williamson

  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.

  Rye lifted the tube and held it under Sevrin’s nose.

  “That smells like—” Sevrin turned toward his brother. “Since when would allium be used as a medication for a lamian?”

  “Allium?” Zandt’s puzzled expression showed he wasn’t aware.

  “I’ll give her blood.” Sevrin took off his coat, willing to do anything to help Rye’s sister.

  “No.” Rye grabbed his arm. “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You heal slower than I do and you were in the field of allium a long time. You’ll have residual traces of it.” They both knew that while he healed slowly, he’d be healed by now.

  “It can’t hurt her. Not after she’s been hooked up to the stuff for who knows how long,” Sevrin argued, confused why she’d not let him give blood.

  “No,” she said insistently, turning to Zandt.

  “I’ll give her mine.” Zandt nodded to him and took off his lab coat.

  Sevrin watched Rye at her sister’s side, holding her hand, stroking her face. Then a thought hit him. He and Rye had a connection—a bonding he’d not ever known before. Was she worried his feelings might lessen for her? Was there a possibility to bond with another female or more than one lamian?

  He put his arm around her waist and hugged her to his side. “She’ll be all right. Zandt knows what he’s doing.”

  She gave him a misty-eyed glance. “She’s pregnant, Sevrin. How can she ever be all right after being raped?”

  “We don’t know that’s how she got pregnant.”

  “She’s not interacted with a lamian for at least six to eight months since I last saw her. Who would she have been with while a captive of Hamner?”

  “I don’t have any answers, Rye. Maybe Hamner sold her, traded her or some lamian saved her. It’s not as if we waited a very long time
to be intimate. She could have met someone.”

  He pulled her close and kissed her temple. “I promise Zandt will do everything possible to bring her out of it.”

  “He better.”

  “Blaming Zandt isn’t going to help. It’s not his fault she’s like this, Rye.”

  “I know.” She turned her face against his shoulder. “She just has to be all right.”

  “And she will be.” Sevrin lifted his other arm around Rye and hugged her tight. “We found her alive and we’ll keep her that way.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you at times,” she said quietly.

  “You didn’t know something was wrong with you.”

  She turned her head and looked at him with her watery blue eyes. “But I did know. Not right away. It took me a while to figure out it was dehydration. My sister suffered from it a couple times when she was a child. I thought I had a handle on it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. That’s behind us.”

  “I hate this waiting.” She wrung her hands together nervously.

  “I know.” He kept his arm around her shoulders and watched his brother hook up wires and tubes to different apparatuses—machinery he knew nothing about. “Zandt, how long do you think this will take to wake her and the others?”

  “I don’t know. If she’d been on allium for even a few days, she’d be deep into a coma or dead. They had to be giving her something else to keep her and the baby from dying.” His brother made a fist, flexed his fingers and made a fist again. Then he jabbed a needle into his forearm attached to clear tubing he had already inserted into a vein in Shay’s arm. Immediately, blood flowed. Zandt flipped a switch on one of the pumping contraptions. It pulled the blood quickly from him and pushed it into Shay.

  “You can’t do that for all of them,” Sevrin told him.

  “I know.” Zandt looked up at Rye. “I’m not sure I can even give your sister enough.”

  “It’ll be enough. It has to be.” She stroked Shay’s hair, worry lines etched in her face.

  Sevrin returned to the door and paced back and forth. While Rye’s thoughts hung on her sister’s recovery, his stayed on their situation.

  “Where are the people who work here?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Doesn’t anyone check on these people?”