Cliff Ryder - Out of Time

At the least, it was something familiar, something she knew she was good at. She knew she wasn’t going to suddenly stumble into a cure, but the scientist in her saw the implied challenge and she accepted compulsively.

Her calls to Dr. Britton had remained unanswered. She’d gone as far as to check with other businesses with offices in the same building where he was listed. There was a door there, it seemed, and his name was tacked onto a sign above it, but no one had seen him—not recently, maybe not ever. Brin called three separate businesses in the same building and all of them gave a similar answer.

No, they did not know if Dr. Britton was open.

No, they did not know if he had been open recently.

No, they’d never been in his office, and for that matter, only one person she spoke to could even remember seeing him.

The whole experience reminded Brin of the Room 59 chat room, and it made her angry all over again. Was Dr. Britton just another part of the lie? Did he exist at all or had he been arrested or taken away somewhere? Were they really asking what she knew about Alex’s condition, or were they sending her on wild-goose chases after non-existent doctors and dead-end research to distract her from where Alex was and what he was doing?

If Dr. Britton worked for them, why had they needed a second source to confirm Alex’s condition?

She needed information, and all she had for the time being was her anger and a lot of bad guesswork. It was an infuriating situation.

She glanced at the clock. It was very late—or actually—very early. She glanced at the computer monitor, decided it didn’t matter and logged in to the e-mail account one last time. There was nothing from Alex, and she shut the machine down. She needed at least a couple of hours of rest, even if she couldn’t sleep. She’d be alone soon in a laboratory with only a laptop, valuable research and Mr. Coffee for companions. There was no room for error in that environment, and she couldn’t go in with her mind buzzing from lack of sleep. She rose and made her way to the bed she’d shared with Alex for so many years and slipped in between the sheets without un-dressing. She laid her head on his pillow, breathing in his scent, and closed her eyes, but she didn’t sleep.

THE DARKNESS RECEDED slowly. Alex heard what seemed to be voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He could barely differen-tiate one from another, and then he wasn’t certain what he heard were voices at all. It might have been the hum of high-intensity lighting or the fans on the computer servers he’d crawled beneath—

when? Days before? Hours? Minutes? His thoughts began to focused, but he didn’t open his eyes immediately.

A quick assessment revealed that he was bound to some sort of straight-backed chair. He felt heat on his face and as his mind cleared, he knew it was bright light shining on his closed eyelids. His mouth was so dry that he wasn’t certain he could pry his lips apart, and the pain in his arms and legs was excruciating. It was much more intense than it should have been, even though the bindings were tight. He heard shuffling footsteps and an occasional muttered comment, but there was no real conversation, so there was nothing to learn. At last, taking a long slow breath to calm himself, he opened his eyes.

The light was so bright it was painful. He blinked, furiously, trying to clear away the sudden tears so that he could make out his surroundings.

There was a flurry of motion and sound, and he heard a voice call out in Chinese.

“He’s waking up.”

Alex’s shoulder was throbbing. His shirt had dried and stick to the gunshot wound. When he was able to see a little, he glanced down and saw that there was a rough bandage wrapped around his clothing, but that the wound hadn’t been treated.

He was almost grateful for it. The throbbing muscle pain from the MS stabbed through his arms and legs, and he felt his left hand fluttering again, as if it might cramp. His head pounded, and he felt a numbness in his left temple. He wished there was a mirror. It felt as if his head might be loosely bandaged, but he couldn’t be sure. The wound on his shoulder was an intense, more familiar pain, and he thought that maybe if he could concentrate on it he might find a way to release the tension in his afflicted limbs. He didn’t expect to have an opportunity for escape, but he also didn’t intend to blow it if one presented itself.

The man who had spoken wore a white lab coat.

He stared down at Alex through the thick lenses of heavy, black-framed glasses. A stethoscope dangled from his neck. He held a clipboard in one hand. The man reached out and lifted Alex’s eyelids one after the other. He reached out and poked the makeshift bandage on Alex’s wounded shoulder. When Alex grimaced and let loose a short gasp of pain, the man smiled.

Footsteps sounded, and Alex heard voices approaching. A moment later there was the creak of a door opening. He turned, but could not quite see where the sound came from, or who had entered.

The doctor—at least he assumed the man was a doctor of some sort—left him and stepped out of sight.

“Is he coherent?” a voice demanded.

“He is in pain, and he has not spoken, but I believe he is awake, and he will not die soon. There is something wrong with his hand—I had no time to diagnose—but it does not matter. He can talk.”

There was a grunt of assent or satisfaction. He heard footsteps, and then someone stepped past the blinding light, blocking it from Alex for a moment, and then allowing it to stream back into his face suddenly as the figure passed. Alex cursed under his breath and closed his eyes, turning away again and waiting for his sight to adjust.

When he was able to see again, he turned his gaze forward. Standing before him was a lean, dark-skinned man with dark, penetrating eyes. He wore fatigues with some sort of collar device. On his waist he wore a belt very similar to the one Alex had taken from Boswell. A black holster hung from one hip, the butt of a nasty-looking gun protruding from the rear. Behind this, Alex caught sight of a long, thin scabbard. He wasn’t sure what kind of blade such a sheath would house, but it wasn’t any kind of standard-issue military blade.

The man’s expression was unreadable. His eyes gave away nothing, and his face might as well have been chiseled from stone. Alex glared back at him.

He wasn’t about to be intimidated, and even if he had been his training would have kicked in. He wasn’t exactly frightened, but adrenaline pumped through his system and his senses were heightened. This sent waves of pain through his hands, and his legs felt as if they were collapsing in on themselves. There was so much pain he had to wrap it into one huge ball and set his will against it to hold his gaze steady.

“I am Captain Dayne,” the man said at last. “It is my duty to oversee the security of this facility.”

That answered at least one question. However long he’d been out, and whatever they had planned for him, they hadn’t removed him from the MRIS

complex. Alex met the man’s gaze, but said nothing.

“You have caused me quite a bit of difficulty,”

Dayne continued. “Not only am I now short a good man, but my superiors are not happy with me.

They count on me to provide absolute security. As you can imagine, they were not pleased to find you inside their complex. They were even less pleased by the explosives you managed to plant.”

Alex’s mind whirled. Had they found all of the charges? How long had he been out? Would they hear an explosion any moment, or were all the packages safely detached and disarmed? There was no way to know, and he could think of no taunt or question that might lead Dayne to tell him that would not, in the asking, give away too much. He held his silence.