by Lizzy Ford
Chapter Five
LANA AWOKE LETHARGIC AND in pain. Her wrist throbbed despite the warmth in her blood caused by the sedative–pain reliever. She gazed at the soft ceiling lighting before tilting her head to see whose quiet voices she heard. The figures were blurry. She raised her injured arm, relieved to see she still had a hand.
With a start, she realized she’d been sleeping. She had too much to do to sleep! She had to find the other keypad. If Arnie smuggled one out of the command center, he may have the remaining keys in his quarters. Lana sat up. The world spun. She shook her head and pushed herself off the bed, hugging her hurt arm to her chest. Nausea washed over her. Her surroundings blurred into light and shadows, and she felt the sickening sense of falling off the cliff again.
“Doc!” The warbled voice was gravelly. A warm embrace caught her mid-fall over the cliff, and the scent of soap and man penetrated her bewildered senses. She sagged against the hard frame.
Hold on, Angel.
She couldn’t tell if the voice was aloud or in her head until she remembered that the Guardian was likely dead. He hadn’t responded to her calls in over three days. Saddened, she made an effort to stand on her own legs. The grip around her was too tight.
Whoever kept her from falling swept her off her feet and placed her again on the hospital bed. Lana sat as soon as he released her and started to her feet again, only to feel a hand planted in her chest that pushed her onto her back.
Warm brown eyes gazed down at her from a sun-bronzed face. He was vaguely familiar, his gaze intense. His features were chiseled, masculine and firm, his brow low and slashed with two dark eyebrows.
Major Brady, she remembered.
Another form crossed her vision, and she sought to make it out as well. Before her eyes could focus, pain jolted through her. Her heart bolted and her body convulsed. The fuzzy, unfamiliar world around her burst into clarity.
“One more?” the doc asked, peering into her face.
“No!” she managed.
He flashed a smile.
“God, Doc, that hurts like hell,” a male’s voice said from nearby.
“Well, Dan, it’s good for you to know I can put you close to death. And bring you back, if I feel like it,” the doctor said, stepping away.
“You’re a sick man, doc.”
“Lana, hon, you okay?” the doctor asked.
Major Brady was staring hard at the doctor, as if ready to pounce if he raised the adrenaline charge gun again. She gazed at the handsome man, unable to shake the sense she knew him somehow. He was large, as were all the genetically engineered, secretive counter-insurgency special forces in the regular army. His shoulders were broad, his chest wide, his stomach flat, his hips lean. He was one large muscle with a direct gaze that made her overly self-conscious.
“Yes,” she replied.
The doc helped her sit. Major Dan, a man with blond hair and dark eyes, sat in the bed across the aisle from her. He flashed a smile. Lana looked from him to Major Brady, with his darker features and hair.
“Doc, I really have too much to do to stay here,” she said. “Can you clear me?”
“Shut up and lay down,” the doc replied.
The man who couldn’t speak above a whisper pushed her down, silently concurring with the doctor. Her gaze dropped to his large hand. His battle suit was rolled to his elbows, revealing roped forearms and a Thomas Jefferson quote tattooed on his inner forearm.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. She glanced up at him again, not expecting someone from the lower class and trained for battle to wear such a classic quote.
He turned away and spoke in his broken voice to the man called Dan. Lena frowned, wondering if the doc’s adrenaline gun had overcharged her and made her hallucinate. She swore she heard the Guardian’s voice again. The doc reappeared, frowning, and armed with another medicine gun.
“Greenie says you have to go back to work. I’ll give you a charge of—”
Fire tore through her, and she gasped, the pain nearly driving her unconscious before it ceased.
“Jesus, doc!” she cried.
Warmth flowed through her, and the pain dissipated.
“It’s better than an apple a day,” the doctor said cheerfully. “It’ll keep you from collapsing for about twelve hours. You gotta tell him you need sleep.”
“I don’t have time,” she replied, feeling worn despite the charge. She rose with effort. Her legs were a little wobbly, and she waited for them to steady her.
“You’ll have to find time. Your chem tests came back all over the place. How many of the anti-sleepers have you been taking?”
She gave him a look.
“That many?” he said, crossing his arms. “I’ll put you on quarters for tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Doc, but I really—”
“You should listen to him.” Brady’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Thank you, deep-throat,” the doc said with a look at Major Brady.
The look the major gave him was as intense as one of the doc’s adrenaline shots. She had a feeling the doc would need his own pain meds if he kept taunting the two tense soldiers.
“Come back tomorrow,” the doc ordered. “Here’s your stuff.” He handed her a bag with her micro and her personal vault. Her micro was bright with an alert.
She accepted it and activated her channel on the net, not surprised when she heard the general’s voice.
“You gonna live?” he asked gruffly.
“Yes, sir,” Lana said, lifting the bag to see the alert. The micro was finished decrypting the messages. Her head hurt too much to read, and she lowered the bag.
“We have another issue. Come to the hub.”
“Yes, sir.” She paused to rub her face hard with the meaty parts of her hands. She felt weak and tired. “Doc, I need to pick up my prescription for—”
“Heeeeeeeeell no.”
She shook her head and walked out of the bay into the foyer, tucking the micro and vault into her pockets. Elise always had extra anti-sleepers.
Another wave of dizziness washed over her. Lana’s head buzzed, and she staggered, leaning against a wall. She sank down against it when her vision grew narrow. The body heat of someone kneeling beside her made her blink, and she braced herself for the doc shooting her up again.
“Drink,” Brady’s rough voice instructed. She felt the pressure of a cup against her lips.
The cool liquid entered her mouth. She swallowed. Then coughed at the tart aftertaste. She drank more, forcing herself to swallow it. The tunnel vision receded.
“What is this?” she asked, blinking as her gaze cleared.
“Down South, we call this energy water,” he said. He removed the cup. “It’s a mix of high-potency vitamins, electrolytes, and herbs. It’ll help you more than that shit the doc gave you.”
Lana met his gaze, hearing his Southern drawl for the first time. His nearness was comforting, his body warmth making her feel a little less cold.
“You need to learn to shoot,” he added.
“I tried. I’m no good at it.”
“It’s a good skill to have. You could’ve popped that maniac before he dragged you over the cliff.”
It’s a good skill to have. His use of Guardian’s words confused her already drained mind. Maybe all regular army-types thought this way.
“Thank you, Brady,” she said. While the night’s events were still a bit hazy, her memory was clear enough to feel gratitude towards the man crouched beside her. “You saved me.”
“I’m just happy you’re alive,” he said, touching her face in an unexpected display of tenderness
Lana studied his chiseled features, which didn’t seem capable of much emotion at all. His ragged voice held genuine warmth, though, so she took his words at face value. The large soldier made her feel tiny hunched next to the wall. His direct gaze made her overly self-conscious again. She wondered if her hair was as messy as she suspected.
“I’ll walk you out,” he said, standing.
He offered her a hand. Lana accepted it and allowed him to pull her up and steady her with warm hands on her arms. She’d never interacted with the army-types before, but she found herself liking them, if they were all like Guardian and Brady. Brady led her to the door without releasing her hand and opened it for her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, uncertain what to think about the small touches. They made her insides feel even warmer than the doc’s drugs.
“No more cliff diving,” Brady said as she stepped into the night. “And get some rest.”
Lana smiled faintly and nodded, touched by his concern. The door closed behind her. She stood at the bottom of the hill leading towards the command center. It may as well have been a death march! She was sweating from the effort of walking out of the medical facility.
“Greenie sent me.” Elise’s voice came from the darkened parking area. Lana turned and smiled as the security specialist drove towards her in a cart. Her smile faded at the look on Elise’s face.
“What happened?” Lana asked.
Elise pursed her lips, and Lana was surprised to see her eyes water. “Someone wiped out everyone in the mountain.”
“What?”
Elise said nothing else, struggling to control her own emotions. Lana’s head spun at the news. She thought of Elise’s security detail and then of the Vice President, the President’s staff, the renowned scholars and businessmen taking refuge there.
They drove to the command center in anxious silence. It was quieter than a graveyard when they pushed their way in. The highest-ranking military members and civilian staff members were crammed into the small center, staring at the scene on the screen before them. Lana made her way through them to the general and followed his gaze. The cameras in the mountain showed a white haze hugging the ceilings and the unmoving bodies of the men and women in the mountain. She covered her mouth, horrified.
“We have a security breach,” the general said, his voice unsteady. “Lana, contact the central and western centers.”
Elise nudged Lana when she continued to stare. She all but dropped into the commo sector chair and issued mayday calls on the emergency net. Her left hand was numb from the drugs, her right hand trembling as she pushed the buttons. She checked the comms from the mountain and fed the decrypted messages back into the computer. Everything looked quiet, until she checked her micro again and saw that the decryption program had begun popping up the messages that had been repressed in the comms system. Lana was surprised to find that someone else at the Peak within the mountain had issued a similar mayday call.
A few days ago, the day Arnie had locked himself in the hub. It was one of many messages her micro had decoded. There were messages from Mr. Tim mixed in with messages from General Greene.
She glanced up at the screen, feeling uneasy about reading messages the dead man had sent.
General Greene is leading the Western insurgency. More attack imminent. Send help.
The words took her breath away. It had been addressed to the Peace Command Center—the site where peace had been declared and the new government created after the East-West Civil War—in Colorado. She punched the message closed and forwarded it to her micro before deleting it. Her gaze went to the general, who held tears in his eyes. The meds in her system, the weakness from her injury, the night itself was too much for her to digest fully. She discreetly began to dig through the other messages. With some dread, she hunched her shoulders to keep anyone from looking at her micro and opened those from Mr. Tim. Most were short phrases that looked like orders.
Attack imminent. Prepare, read the earliest one, sent the night he called to warn her. Peace CC is safest, read another. To her relief, nothing appeared too off with his messages, except the encryption. General Greene’s messages, however, made her sick to her stomach.
Lana read through one detailing the intent to attack using a secret weapon. It didn’t take much for her to realize he’d used one of the Horsemen. She stared for a long moment at the net code indicating that the receiver of the general’s messages was located in the West Control Center. Elise had said the PMF soldiers were fighting alongside hers, and that they’d seen soldiers in Western uniforms. It wasn’t just the injury and meds that made Lana’s head spin.
General Greene spoke finally, his voice jarring her out of her thoughts. Lana locked her micro.
“Elise, I need a team to go down and test the air. I want to know what this is, where it came from,” the general ordered. “Intel!”
“Sir!”
“Check your systems for threats, anything in the last twenty-four hours that seems out of place.”
“Lana.”
“Sir?”
“Stay here. Check all the systems and find that damn battalion we were expecting today!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everyone out.”
Those in the room obeyed, too stunned to speak on their way out. Lana looked up at the scenes on the screens then at the general. He was peering closely at the people on the screen, as if trying to assess if there were any survivors.
Her instincts were at a clamor. Lana moved away from the commo computer and started systems checks on the others. She locked down all the systems and routed all the controls to her micro.
“Tell me you know where the rest of those keypads are,” General Greene said.
“Sir, I still don’t know where the others are,” she said in a tight voice.
“We gotta find ’em,” he said. “You okay?”
She looked down at her wrist. “I think so.”
“You did good.”
She turned to look at him. He offered a genuine smile she couldn’t bring herself to return. She nodded and looked down.
“If you need a break, take it,” he said. “The doc was pissed with me.”
“I will, sir,” she said.
He left, closing the ill-fitting door behind him. Her gaze went again to the keypads protected behind the titanium glass. She slumped on the infrastructure terminal, awaiting the results of the status checks. She flipped off the scenes from the mountain, unable to look at the destruction.
She felt like crying. Instead, she rose and stared again at the animated timeline, wishing her conclusions were something other than what they were. She looked at her micro and read another of General Greene’s messages. Her eyes watered.
PMF spies warning our Eastern adversaries in the government. Accelerate plans. Government will splinter once the attacks occur. The West won’t lose this war a second time.
One of the systems beeped. Lana tucked the micro in her pocket and crossed to it. It was the perimeter security check. The usual scan she ran came back normal. The administrator scan, which only the President or Vice President could run, came back with half a dozen errors.
In the past forty-eight hours, there had been fifty perimeter breaches, all from the west wall. All during a set time period when the security was disabled by someone in the command center. Her hand shaking, she checked the log to see it had last been accessed by General Greene twenty-five hours ago.
Not only was there a traitor at the Peak, but there were an untold number of insurgents lying in wait. Lana checked the general’s location, not surprised to find him at the west wall. She pinged Elise.
“I’m busy,” Elise barked.
“Can you bring me my anti-sleepers?”
“Give me an hour.”
Lana typed a message to Mr. Tim, telling him she was leaving and heading to the Peace Command Center, which was the first center beyond the Mississippi River. She moved to the emerops computer, struggling to hold back tears. She issued only a few commands, enough to lock them out to anyone but her. She was getting ready to pass the point of no return.
