The Black Tide

by Keri Arthur

  “Rhea save me from stubborn women,” Jonas muttered. A second later, he was gently pressing some sort of padding on both the front and the back of the wound.

  “I'll be okay.” I raised a hand and wiggled a couple of fingers. Needles of fire raced upward in response. “See? Still got full movement.”

  He made a disparaging sound. “Let's just hope that the ruse works, otherwise you've incapacitated yourself for nothing.”

  “It'll work.” It had to. It might be the only real hope we had of getting into the true heart of the place.

  The scooter stopped its upward movement and began to rotate again. Jonas reached into the medikit for the sealer, spraying the exit wound first. It ran out before more than a fine mist hit the entry wound.

  “It's probably better that I'm bleeding when I get in there.” I took the padding from him and held it against the wound with my good hand. “You’d better get back to the pilot seat.”

  He hesitated, seeming ready to say something, then half shrugged and went back to the driver seat.

  I followed him over. Despite the pressure I was putting on the wound, blood seeped past my fingertips and soaked my coverall. I just hoped the pain was worth it—that it did, in fact, stop them noticing the ill fit of the uniform and the weapons it concealed.

  A large section of the wall directly ahead of us had begun to slide to one side, revealing a brightly lit loading dock. Six well-armed soldiers lined either side of the small runway.

  “They're not taking any chances,” I murmured.

  “I'd be more surprised if they were.”

  I sat down and scanned the area as the scooter was slowly drawn into the heart of the loading bay and parked at an angle to the left of the strip.

  “Echo three-two, please lower the ramp and prepare for inspection,” the metallic voice said.

  Jonas glanced at me, eyebrow raised. “Ready?”

  I nodded. He opened the door and then spun around in his seat. Three men flowed into the scooter before the ramp was fully down, their gazes doing a quick sweep before resting on us.

  They didn't say anything. They just watched us, weapons raised and ready to use. After another minute or so, a fourth man appeared. He was holding a scanner rather than a gun.

  “Present RFIDs, please,” he said, his voice as deep as his body was wide.

  “Commander Jenkins, at your service, sir.” I rose and held out a blood-slicked arm. “I've a man who needs urgent medical care—”

  “All in good time, Commander.” He ran the scanner over my stolen chip and studied the screen for a minute. When the light flicked from red to green, he looked at Jonas. “Your turn.”

  Jonas held out his arm without comment. When the scanner beeped approval, he moved on to the driver Cat had attacked. Once the scanner had cleared our victim, the big man finally relaxed.

  “Right, Commander, we've approval for you and you people to be taken to the med center for treatment.”

  “I believe Officer Grant might have a serious head injury—”

  “And our facility is state-of-the-art. If for any reason we can't handle it, we’ll certainly stabilize his condition and move him on to a larger center.” He paused and glanced at his screen. “Headquarters wants a full report once the two of you have been cleared by the docs.”

  “Of course,” I said, voice cool.

  He nodded and glanced at the nearest soldier. “Escort the commander and Officer Wright to med center one. I've called an airbed for Officer Grant. He's to be taken immediately to trauma in med center two.”

  The armed man saluted and then glanced at us. “This way, if you please, Commander.”

  We followed without comment. As we walked down the ramp, a second soldier fell into step behind us. Our footsteps echoed almost forlornly across the loading bay’s vastness. There were no other vehicles parked here and the only people evident were the remaining nine armed men. As we passed them, they turned as one and then spread out around the scooter. No one was getting in or out of that vehicle without going through them first.

  There were three doors leading off the loading bay—two of them were large enough to allow vehicle access, but the third was smaller, and obviously meant solely for foot traffic. It was to this one we were led.

  The door silently slid aside as we entered. I quickly scanned the door but couldn't see the telltale signs of inset scanning equipment. Relief stirred but didn't last. Just because this door didn't have it, didn't mean others wouldn't.

  The corridor beyond was bright, white, and soulless, and it very much reminded me of every military corridor in every bunker I'd been in. But there were no doorways here, no windows for natural light, and certainly no signs to give an indication of where we might be headed.

  I frowned and glanced at Jonas. Keep calm, his gaze seemed to say. Or maybe it was a distant echo of his thoughts. Either way, it made me smile. Trepidation might be stirring, but I certainly wasn't going to react without thought or reason.

  You want us to investigate? Bear asked.

  I hesitated and then said, Yes, but keep together. If there's the slightest indication of anyone sensing your presence, get back to me ASAP.

  Unless there's a Nuri in this place, that's unlikely, Cat said, and then they both intoned, before I could say anything further, but we promise to be careful.

  I smiled as they raced away, their laughter briefly gifting the cold air warmth.

  Our footsteps echoed on. After another five minutes, Jonas said, “How much further, soldier? The commander is losing a lot of blood with all this movement.”

  “Three minutes,” the man in front said, without looking at either of us.

  Jonas grunted and flexed his fingers—the only sign of the tension I could feel in him.

  We rounded a corner. A bank of four elevators lay directly ahead, each one guarded by two armed men. It was the first indication that this place was more than just a storage facility for cotton and wool bales. No matter how valuable a commodity either might be, eight men guarding access to lower storage levels was certainly overkill.

  As we approached the first elevator, one of its guards stepped forward and wordlessly offered a scanner. Our guard ran his RFID chip across it and, a second later, the elevator door opened. We followed him in and, as the doors closed, our guide said, “Med center one.”

  The elevator swept us sideways rather than down, which was interesting. Maybe the laboratories we were seeking weren’t underground, as we’d been expecting, but rather somewhere on the top level of this vast building.

  The elevator came to a halt and the door opened. The soldier led the way down another bright, sterile corridor. This one did at least have various doors leading off it. I scanned each one as we passed, but there was no indication of what might lie beyond them and no sound emanating from them. For all the physical security so evident in this warehouse, it seemed oddly empty and very quiet.

  We finally approached a door with a simple red cross on it. The soldier stopped, scanned his chip and, as the door slid open, waved us inside. Neither he nor his silent partner followed us. Instead, they stationed themselves either side of the door. We weren't getting out without having to go through them first.

  As the door closed behind us, a friendly voice said, “Jenkins and Wright, I'm presuming?”

  I glanced around and spotted a stick of a man with a thick thatch of gray hair coming through a second doorway. He paused to thrust his palms under the sanitizer on the wall and then rubbed his hands together as he walked toward us.

  “Security tells me you got into a spot of bother out in the Red Plains Desert,” he continued. “Sorry to hear that, of course, but gunshot wounds are certainly more exciting to deal with than the usual crap we get in this med center.”

  “What sort of wounds are you usually dealing with?” Jonas stopped several feet away from me, his gaze doing a slow sweep of the room. Checking for security features, although at first glance, there didn't even appear to be camera
s.

  “Oh, the usual stuff for a warehouse like this—torn muscles and crushed limbs, mainly. You'd think people would be more careful around automated equipment, but no, they seemed to think automated means risk free.”

  Meaning either this doctor had no idea this place was anything more than just a warehouse, or he was a very good actor. I had a suspicion the answer wasn’t the latter.

  He motioned me to move my fingers from the padding. The bleeding had stopped quite a few minutes ago, so when he gently pulled the pad away, it tore the clot and started the bleeding again. He made a soft clucking sound. “In and out wound, from the look of it. Why didn't you seal the front rather than use padding?”

  “Ran out of sealer,” I said, aware that Jonas was now silently moving toward the second door. “How bad is it?”

  “Have you full use of your hand?”

  I nodded and wiggled my fingers.

  “Then nothing vital was hit. But we'll put you on a medibed and see what that says.” He paused and glanced around as Jonas opened the other door. “Hey, you can't go in there.”

  Jonas stopped in the doorway, preventing it from closing again. “I'm just looking for the bathroom facilities.”

  “They’re over there.” The doc somewhat irritably waved his hand to a small corridor behind and to the left of where we were standing. “That's my private quarters, soldier, and I'll ask you to come away.”

  Jonas gaze came to mine even as he obeyed. I knew then that, for whatever reason, we were alone in this place. “Sorry,” he said evenly. “Meant no harm.”

  The doc grunted and returned his attention to me. “We'll get you over to the medibed and—”

  The rest of the sentence died on his lips as Jonas knocked him out and then caught him before he could hit the floor. He heaved the man over his shoulder, walked across to the nearest medibed, and dumped him into it.

  I moved to the light screen and ordered the doc sedated and strapped down. “How long do you think we've got before those soldiers realize something is wrong?”

  “How long is a piece of string?” Jonas retorted. Then he glanced at me and grimaced. “Sorry, just tense. This has been far too easy.”

  “It won't remain that way. It never does.”

  “That's comforting.”

  I smiled. “Were the doc's quarters in that room, as he said?”

  “Yes. There appeared to be an unlocked light screen in there—he must have been on it when we came into the room.”

  “Fortunate.”

  “Yes.”

  He turned and walked back to the room. I shifted back to my own form and then followed, rotating my arm in an effort to ease the ache and keep it mobile. The bleeding had once again stopped—yet another indication that my healing abilities had been fast-tracked by the rift—but I couldn’t afford any stiffness developing. Not with what was probably coming.

  The doc's quarters were sparse even by my standards, consisting of little more than a single bunk, a locker, a small autocook, and the desk with the light screen. The screen had frozen on what looked to be the hairy butt of a man. After a moment, I realized there were actually two men and that they were mid-coitus.

  “He could have at least chosen a less graphic point to freeze on,” Jonas muttered, and hit the pause button. The sound of approaching sexual gratification instantly filled the air. He pressed the mute button, then downsized the picture. “Right, let's see what this baby can tell us.”

  He opened the main drive and began flicking through the various sectors. I leaned my good shoulder against the wall and rolled up the sleeves on the now too-long coverall. From what I could see, there wasn't really a whole lot of information to be found.

  After a moment, he grunted. “There's nothing but medical records on this thing. The doc hasn't got any access to get into the mainframe.”

  “That's not really surprising.”

  “No.” Jonas thrust up from the chair. “I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way.”

  “It’d be best if we wait for Cat and Bear to return. They can provide a general layout and tell us where the bad stuff might be hiding.”

  “As long as they don’t take too long. The countdown clock to discovery started ticking the minute we took out the doc.”

  He walked over to the doc’s bunk and pressed a wall panel at the end of the bed. There was a soft click and then the panel opened to reveal a closet. Hanging inside were several lab coats and two small stacks of neatly folded clothing.

  Jonas must have caught my surprise, because he glanced at me, grin flashing. “This sort of setup is common in modern-day military accommodation.”

  “Pampered is what you lot are,” I said with a smile. “We had to make do with a footlocker.”

  He chuckled softly as he pulled out two lab coats and handed one to me. “Not to one-up you or anything, but we rangers carried everything in backpacks.”

  “I guess lockers would have been impractical when you’re trying to sneak up on enemy lines.” I tucked the coat under my good arm, then unzipped the coverall and undid the belt. Once it was strapped back on the outside, I did the coverall back up and pulled on the lab coat.

  “Not to mention awkward even when we weren’t.” His amusement faded. “Let’s take out our guards and check the remainder of this floor while we’re waiting for your ghosts to return.”

  I frowned. “There’re no cameras here in the med room, but surely they’d have them in the corridors?”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  “Which doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

  “I know, but it’s not like we have another choice.”

  That was certainly true. We walked out into the main room and across to the door. I stood on one side, Jonas the other. He glanced at me, eyebrow raised in question. I flexed my fingers and then nodded.

  He punched the release button and, as the door slid open, we darted through as one, grabbed the turning guards, and thrust them together hard enough that the crack of heads was audible. It didn’t knock either out but it dazed them enough that Jonas was quickly able to finish them off.

  As he dragged the bodies inside, I walked over to the doc, pulled out a knife, and removed his RFID chip along with a good chunk of flesh. The medibed immediately sensed the new wound and instigated healing.

  “That may not work outside flesh,” Jonas commented.

  “It might, given it’s still connected to biomatter.”

  He nodded and cautiously moved out into the corridor. I scanned the ceiling but still couldn’t see any sign of either cameras or other security measures. It was all rather puzzling. Even if this section was nothing more than part of the warehouse and the security here was as it had always been, why wouldn’t they have implemented more measures when they’d taken it over as one of their bases of operation?

  The doc’s bloody RFID chip opened some doors but not others. The rooms it opened were a variety of storage areas, more medical facilities, and a number of bunk facilities. All of them were currently empty, and the odd feeling of disconnect grew. It was almost as if this area had all but been abandoned, but if that was the case, why did they have one of the warehouse’s main treatment centers up here?

  The rooms the chip didn’t open, we ignored. Shooting the scanners would not only keep them in a locked position, but might well raise the sort of interest we were trying to avoid.

  The corridor began a long sweep to the left, and Jonas slowed.

  “What’s wrong?” I said softly, tension immediately rising.

  “There are guards up ahead.”

  “How many?”

  “Four.” He paused. “But they’re not guarding another elevator foyer. I can’t hear any movement up or down.”

  “The elevators might not be in use.”

  “Maybe.” He paused and cocked his head to one side. I had no idea what he was listening to—I might have tiger DNA and my senses might be inherently sharper than most, but it still wasn’t up to t
he acuteness of a full shifter’s. “Two guards have just been dispatched to investigate the lack of response from the soldiers we killed.”

  “How long have we got?”

  “Three minutes, if that, before they get here.”

  “That will give us time to get back to that last storeroom.”

  “Even hiding will only give us a few extra minutes.” He spun around and headed back up the corridor. “We need to uncover what is being protected up ahead before our dead guards are discovered and the alarm sounds.”

  “The lab coats should at least give us a bit of leeway to approach without raising too much—” I stopped. Cat and Bear were racing toward us and they weren’t happy.

  What’s wrong? I asked.

  We found the labs, Bear said. They're not underground. They're all on this level, behind the security doors at the end of this corridor.

  And? I said, when neither of them immediately continued.

  And, Cat said, there are children there. Seven of them.

  I blinked as the importance of that sank in. It could be nothing more than a coincidence, especially given I'd also found children at the sand base—children who'd been purchased rather than stolen. But if it wasn't....

  If it wasn't, then we'd just stumbled upon all the remaining missing children.

  Chapter Six

  “Is Penny one of them?” Jonas’s question was soft. Urgent.

  No, Bear said. Sorry.

  Jonas's frustration surged, a sharp rush that briefly spiked through my mind before he got it under control. “It was a forlorn hope at best, and hardly one you need to apologize for, Bear.”

  “We will find her, Jonas.” I placed a hand on his arm, offering sympathy even though I suspected he neither wanted nor needed it.

  “I know.” His voice was even, but the grimness in his gaze cut through me like ice. “Just as I know she might neither want help nor be capable of fleeing with us.”