by Tarah Benner
“They’re all laughing at me,” Conrad cried. “They knew I couldn’t handle it, but they made me.”
“It’s okay, Conrad,” said Simjay, taking a step toward his friend and sinking down onto the ground in front of him. “No one can make you do anything anymore. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Conrad was still rocking back and forth, but he’d stopped muttering. He seemed to know where he was, but Bernie could see tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. She was beginning to think that the colonel had been more than just a cybersecurity expert.
“It’s all right,” said Simjay softly, gripping Conrad’s shoulder. “You’re one of the good ones now. You can help us save our friends.”
“No, I can’t,” Conrad whispered.
“Please,” said Simjay. “If you know anything that could help us . . .”
Conrad swallowed.
Portia was staring at Conrad as if he were a particularly revolting TV show. Bernie knew Portia had never witnessed anything like that in her life, and she was horrified.
“Please, Conrad,” said Bernie after a moment. “They took my best friend. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if we can save her, but I have to try.”
Conrad gave a shaky nod and rubbed his head. Bernie could tell that they were wearing him down. He was contemplating helping them, but whether or not he would have any useful information, she didn’t know.
“I did some work for the Department of Homeland Security a while back,” he began. “Tightening up their video-surveillance software . . . things like that.”
“Was that in Washington?” asked Simjay, careful to keep his tone soft in case the question triggered another episode.
“No,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised. “That was in Colorado Springs.”
A jolt of excitement shot down Bernie’s spine. They weren’t more than two or three hours from there.
“Where?” pressed Simjay. “Where in Colorado Springs?”
Conrad sighed and rubbed his head, looking torn between his own fear and the prospect of helping his dear friend. He shook his head slowly, and Bernie’s heart sank. He wasn’t going to tell them anything. He was a dead end.
But then Conrad opened his eyes, and his pupils were clear and focused. When he spoke, she could tell that it took an extraordinary amount of effort. Conrad still seemed shaken by his ordeal. “Cheyenne Mountain,” he said quietly. “If they took your friends, they’re being held in Cheyenne Mountain.”
eleven
Bernie
“Cheyenne Mountain?” Simjay repeated. “Like . . . Like NORAD?”
Bernie’s heart sank. Maybe Conrad was completely batshit.
“No,” he said. “Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a separate facility.”
“Well, that’s great,” said Simjay. Bernie couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic or not.
“You don’t understand,” said Conrad, his face growing very serious. “Cheyenne Mountain is the end of the line. People can be held there indefinitely without trial, and they’re completely off the radar. No law-enforcement agency will have any record of your friends being brought into custody.”
“But why are they being held there?” asked Bernie. “Why not take them back to prison?”
“If they’re at Cheyenne Mountain, they must have information the government wants.”
Bernie and Simjay exchanged a look. It had to be related to GreenSeed’s supercrops. There was no other explanation.
“So how do we get them out of there?” asked Bernie.
Conrad shook his head. “Out? There’s no getting them out of Cheyenne Mountain. It’s impenetrable. It’s the most impenetrable command center on Earth.”
“Oh, please,” said Portia. “Didn’t you just say you used to do security work for them?”
“Precisely to guard against the sort of breach you’re planning.” He looked from Simjay to Bernie to Portia. “It’s not as if I’m the only one. The Department of Homeland Security employs hundreds of people whose only job is to keep their facilities secure from outside threats.”
“That was before the whole fucking country collapsed,” snapped Portia. Bernie could tell that her annoyance with Conrad was growing.
“You don’t understand,” said Conrad. “The complex is made up of fifteen different buildings protected under two thousand feet of solid granite. It can withstand a thirty megaton nuclear explosion . . . electromagnetic pulse . . . biological attack . . .”
“Okay, we get it,” growled Portia.
“We don’t wanna bomb the place,” said Bernie. “We just want to get inside.”
“I don’t suppose they give tours or anything?” Simjay asked.
Conrad’s face went blank.
“I’m kidding!” said Simjay. “Geez, Colonel. Lighten up.”
“I know that,” said Conrad. “I’m just telling you this to show you that there is no conceivable way for you to get inside.”
“Maybe not,” said Simjay, leaning closer. “But you can get us inside.”
Conrad didn’t reply. He was staring at Simjay, utterly paralyzed by fear.
“No. I can’t,” he said finally. “I’m out of the security business. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
Simjay scooted down on the couch and leaned forward with a wince. “I’m calling bullshit, Colonel.”
Conrad didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. You can get us inside. You just don’t want to. I know you, Conrad, and you were never a bullshitter. This is your fear talking.”
In that moment, Simjay wasn’t Simjay anymore. He was Birapaar, and he wasn’t faking it.
Suddenly Bernie understood what had made dozens of Hollywood A-listers place their trust in him. Simjay saw people. He saw into their very souls and touched them where they were most vulnerable. Nobody could fake that.
“You’re acting like a coward,” Simjay whispered. “And you are not a coward.”
“I don’t know what I am,” gasped Conrad, staring blankly at the side of the couch.
“I do,” growled Simjay. “The Conrad I know is still in there somewhere. I know he is.”
Conrad glanced up at him fearfully, but Simjay grabbed him by the hair and shook him hard.
“I’m not talking about the government drudge who spent his life doing the department’s dirty work. I’m talking about Colonel Kelly — air force pilot, war hero . . . the crazy fucker who’s been pissing off all the high rollers of New Vail.” He cracked a grin. “I know you’re still in there.”
Conrad didn’t speak. He was trembling on the floor, looking up at Simjay with a pained expression. Bernie had no idea what had caused him to make such dramatic changes in his life or what had finally driven him off the deep end, but it was clear to Bernie that he was just a shell of the man he once was.
“Come on, Colonel,” Simjay muttered. “Tell me you’ll help us.”
Conrad stared at him for nearly a minute. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
After Conrad agreed to help, he told them where to find pillows and extra blankets and then excused himself to go to bed. Simjay seemed to think that they’d pushed Conrad far enough for one night and didn’t press the issue.
Although the house had looked enormous from the outside, it was basically five rooms: the sunroom, the living room, the kitchen, Conrad’s bedroom, and a guest room.
The bathroom was a compost toilet in an outhouse that Conrad had built around back. Bernie wasn’t looking forward to her usual middle-of-the-night pee break, but when she looked at the clock, she was startled to see that it was nearly six a.m. Mentally, she was still wide awake, but her body was exhausted.
Conrad slipped into his room to go to sleep, and Bernie wandered into the kitchen to help herself to a glass of water. It was a hoarder’s paradise.
Large canisters of rice, beans, lentils, flou
r, sugar, and stacks of ready-to-eat military meals were arranged on metal shelves against the wall. Hundreds of old plastic containers were stacked against the splashboard, and the cabinet under the sink was bursting with dish soap and SOS pads. The cupboard doors were covered with handwritten inventory sheets, which Conrad had been using to meticulously track the food he had left.
Bernie poured herself a glass of water from the large tank on the counter and padded back into the living room. Portia had evidently snagged the guest room for herself, and Simjay was busy making up a bed on the floor.
From the looks of things, he’d layered a few blankets one on top of the other to form a pallet in the middle of the room. He’d left a stack of pillows and blankets on the couch for Bernie, and she got an unexpected pang of emotion when she realized that he’d given up the couch for her.
“You don’t have to —” Bernie began.
“I want to,” said Simjay, fluffing up a pillow and laying it at the end of his makeshift bed.
Bernie sighed, unsure how to express her gratitude. She was sore and achy all over, and her injured leg was throbbing from being tackled and dragged into the trailer back in Texas.
“Thanks,” she said lamely, picking up one of the sheets and draping it over the old couch. Ophelia, Cordelia, and Desdemona were already snoozing on the floor, and Denali was sniffing the edge of Simjay’s bed with interest.
Simjay threw back the covers and moved to climb into his cocoon of blankets but stopped with a sharp intake of air.
Bernie looked around. “Are you —”
“I’m okay,” said Simjay, smoothing out his expression and then forcing a smile. “Just a little sore.”
“Holy shit. Simjay!” Bernie gasped. She had just caught a glimpse of Simjay’s abdomen and was startled to see a splotch of blood pooling through his shirt.
Simjay must have followed her gaze, because he slapped his hand over the stain and moved to sit down. “It’s —”
“Don’t tell me it’s nothing,” snapped Bernie, flinging herself onto the floor beside him and batting his hand away.
Simjay sighed and allowed Bernie to lift his shirt to reveal the blood-soaked bandages covering his stab wound.
“Did you rip your stitches?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Bernie growled, grabbing the hem of his shirt and yanking it up over his head.
“Easy, tiger,” Simjay rumbled, forcing a roguish grin.
But Bernie could tell that he was in too much pain to truly commit to the come-on. That, more than anything, intensified her alarm, and Simjay didn’t protest when Bernie guided him down onto his pallet.
“Wait here,” she said, getting up and rushing into the kitchen to wash her hands. Her heart was beating very fast. She didn’t know when Simjay had ripped his stitches or how serious the injury was.
From what Lark had said, he’d been badly stabbed when they were ambushed by a mob in San Antonio, but a veterinarian had managed to stitch him back up. She knew he was still on antibiotics to prevent an infection, but she guessed that any doctor would advise against overexerting himself the way he had earlier that day.
Bernie filled a plastic bowl with warm water and grabbed a roll of paper towels. When she came back into the living room, Denali was lying protectively at Simjay’s feet.
Simjay hadn’t moved an inch. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing steadily. With his swoop of silky black hair covering his eyes and the warm firelight dancing over his honey-brown skin, Bernie had the sudden bizarre urge to paint him.
Simjay’s body wasn’t conventionally attractive. His arms and legs were too long for his torso, and his upper body was as slim as a teenager’s. But his face . . .
For some reason, Bernie liked his face. He had mischievous brown eyes, perfect hair, and totally kissable lips.
Kissable lips? Bernie thought, shaking her head to clear it. What the hell was wrong with her? She was acting like a high-school girl.
It was Simjay, she told herself. She’d barely known him three days. Two of those days had been spent thinking he was a cocky, inappropriate ass. It just so happened that he’d beaten a guy to a pulp for threatening her and revealed that he did in fact have a moral compass. It wasn’t exactly a love connection, but still Bernie couldn’t deny that she was a little bit attracted to him.
Once she’d recalibrated to reality, she grabbed Conrad’s box of first-aid supplies from the oak coffee table and knelt beside Simjay to take a closer look at his wound.
“I told you . . . It’s fine,” said Simjay, not opening his eyes.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Bernie. She clenched her back teeth together and carefully peeled away his bandage.
When she saw what lay beneath, she had to stifle a gag. A two-inch-wide gash was stretched across Simjay’s abdomen, with delicate black stitches crossing over the angry red cut. The site of the wound was red and swollen, and it looked as though he’d partially ripped his stitches.
“God, Sim,” she gasped, taking in the butchered wound with a fresh wave of disgust.
“What? Is it bad?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow but keeping his eyelids closed.
“Uh, yeah. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I mean, it hurt like a motherfucker, but —”
“You haven’t been taking your pain meds, have you?”
“Oh, god no. I mean, they were fun, but they made me hella constipated.”
Bernie wrinkled her nose, and Simjay chuckled.
“Plus it’s hard to sustain a good old-fashioned opioid habit when the world is ending.”
Bernie stifled a laugh and unrolled a long sheet of paper towels. She dipped them into the water and wrung them out, studying Simjay’s wound and trying to decide where to start.
“Shit,” Bernie muttered, diving right in at the edge where a thick crust of dried blood had formed.
Over the years, she’d had plenty of experience cleaning Lark’s wounds. She was always getting into one scrape or another, but the ripped stitches were way outside Bernie’s wheelhouse. She’d never sewn up anyone before — let alone someone who was fighting off an infection.
She cleaned the wound the best she could, swabbing the area with rubbing alcohol and using tweezers to take out the ripped stitches. She rifled through Conrad’s first-aid box and quickly found what she was looking for: a needle, a lighter, and some thread.
“Fuuuuck,” she whispered to herself.
“What is it?” asked Simjay, cracking one eye open.
“I don’t want to do this,” Bernie whined. She was holding the lighter in one hand and the needle in the other. She knew she had to do it, but damn would she have liked to pass the task off to someone else.
“Do what?”
Bernie didn’t answer. She just took a deep breath, flicked the lighter, and held the needle up to the flame.
When she was confident that it was sterile, she threaded it and bent over Simjay’s quivering stomach.
“What are you —”
“Hold still,” said Bernie. As soon as she poked the needle through Simjay’s skin, she knew she should have warned him.
“Ahhh!” he groaned, eyes flying open. He looked from her to the needle poking through his skin, and Bernie could tell that he was about to panic.
“Lie back and stay still,” she said in her most commanding voice.
“But —”
“Do you want my hand to slip and accidentally sew your pancreas to your small intestine?”
“Wow, you do not know anything about human anatomy,” said Simjay with a chuckle.
But then he lay down and closed his eyes, face twitching in pain as Bernie sewed up his wound. It took her close to half an hour, but when she was done, she was pleased with her work.
Her stitches weren’t half as neat as the vet’s, but she felt confident that they would hold the wound closed. She swabbed the area with alcohol once again for g
ood measure and then applied a pain-relieving antiseptic cream. She bandaged the entire thing and let out a soft “ta-da!”
“Hmm?” said Simjay groggily.
“Never mind. You can look at it later.”
“Okay, good,” he said, groping around for a blanket.
Glancing at the clock ticking on the shelf, Bernie thought she might be better off staying awake, but her body was telling her otherwise.
Stifling a yawn, Bernie tossed the first-aid supplies back into Conrad’s box and covered Simjay with a blanket. She watched him sleep for a few seconds, wondering what the hell was up with her sudden attraction to the mouthy, awkward ex-guru.
Deciding that the swoony feelings inside of her were hallucinations brought on by a lack of sleep, she kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the couch for some much-deserved shut-eye.
Denali jumped onto the couch beside her, curling into a ball against the crook of her legs. Bernie smiled. The least she could do was pamper Denali until they rescued Lark.
Her last thought was that she had no desire to play doctor ever again — even if her patient was Simjay — before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
twelve
Lark
Lark laid awake all night, staring up at the ceiling of her cold cramped cell. Her narrow prison cot felt like a slab of concrete, and her mind kept churning through the mission she was about to undertake. She’d just shut her eyes when she heard a loud beep, and her cell door opened with a clatter.
Lark was still dressed in the outfit she’d arrived in, and she hadn’t showered in several days. Her hair was matted and her face felt greasy, but it was just as well. She was supposed to look as though she’d been roughing it on the road for days.
Once she was handcuffed, Agent Stokes and Mildred led her down the familiar hallway to the enormous stone chamber. The airlock door was open, and there was a small airport shuttle cart waiting in the tunnel.
They got inside and whizzed down a windy two-lane road until they reached a van with the Department of Justice seal on the door. Agent Cole and Agent Reuben were sitting in the front seat, dressed in black polo shirts and army-green vests. Mildred draped a blindfold over Lark’s eyes, shackled her wrists and ankles together, and loaded her into the back of the van.
