Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

She hopped her chair over to Batman’s inert form and pushed herself forward, bracing her knees against his back. With her hands secured in front of her, it was easy… ish. Kevin Beach had left Daniel’s gas mask on the floor; she hooked it with one finger and then tilted the chair back until all four legs were on the ground. She leaned her face as close to her hands as she could and slipped the mask over her head, pressing the rubber rim tight to her face to create a seal. She blew out her air in a big whoosh, clearing the chamber, and then took a hesitant breath.

If some of the chemical had lingered, she figured she still would have been okay. She’d built up a decent resistance and would not have been out as long as the others. But it was especially nice to have such a big head start.

She scooted to the desk and rubbed the zip tie around her wrists against the edge of the scalpel on her props tray. It popped quickly against the pressure she was generating. It was easy work to slice the rest of the ties, and then she was free.

First things first. She reset the screen saver on her computer to come on after fifteen minutes of inactivity.

She couldn’t lift Batman, sprawled facedown on the floor beside his brother, but his arms and legs were close enough to Daniel’s that she could use the restraints that had been around Daniel’s left wrist and left ankle to secure Kevin’s. He’d thrown the key carelessly on the table by Daniel’s side; she pocketed it.

She didn’t resecure Daniel. Maybe it was a mistake, but she’d already done so much to him, it just felt unfair. And underneath it all, she wasn’t afraid of him. Another potential mistake.

She stripped Batman of his guns and removed the cartridges and firing pins from the rifle and the HDS. She put the safety on the SIG Sauer and tucked it into the back of her belt. She liked it – it looked more serious than her PPK. She went out to the barn stalls to find her PPK and then shoved it in beside the SIG Sauer. She was more familiar with her own. Better to keep it handy, too.

She found her shoes, stashed the other guns, and then grabbed the movers’ straps on her way back into the tent. The dog was too heavy to move easily, so she wrapped the straps around it and hauled it back to the bunk room. At first she simply closed the door and walked away – dogs didn’t have opposable thumbs. A moment later, though, she changed her mind. The dog’s name was Einstein; who knew what it was capable of? She looked for something to drag in front of the door. Most of the heavy machinery was bolted down. After a few seconds of thought, she walked around to the silver sedan. It just fit between the tent and the stalls. She pulled it right up to the bunk-room door, wedged the front bumper tight against the wood, and then put it in park. She threw the parking brake on for good measure.

She closed the barn door and rearmed it. A quick look outside told her that it was almost dawn.

Back to Other Daniel. The Batsuit was a chore to remove. The fabric between the Kevlar panels was thick and ribbed with fine cables, almost like gristle. She snapped two blades on it before finally quitting at his waist. She settled for peeling back the top half and patting down his legs, which didn’t have as much Kevlar to disguise them. She found a knife holstered in the small of his back and one shoved into each boot. She pulled his socks off. He was missing the pinkie toe on his left foot, but he had no other weapons that she could find. Not that he’d need any if he got his hands on her again. His whole body was roped with lean, hard bands of muscle. His back was a mess of scars – some from bullets, some blades, and one bad burn – with one more telling scar under the edge of his hairline. He’d removed his tracker, too. Definitely no longer with the CIA. A defector? A double agent?

But how had he found his brother?

She remembered the droning of the noisy prop plane, the booming thud of the improvised crash landing – someone in a hurry, she’d thought. Someone for whom time was the biggest problem.

She turned to look at Daniel; it seemed another examination was in order. She’d done a more thorough job going over his back, so she looked closely now at his stomach, groin, and thighs. Something she should have done before, but she’d misread the situation badly.

It was the idea of time – the hurried way Batman had arrived and attacked – that pointed her toward what she was looking for. An ordinary tracker would indicate only where the subject was, and Daniel wasn’t really that far from home, not far enough to cause his dead brother to panic and run in guns blazing. So this tracker must monitor something more than just location, and it would have to be placed in the right spot.

She wanted to kick herself when she saw it – the little red tail of a scar sticking out from the edge of the tape she had used to secure the catheter tube against his leg. She pulled the tape now – always better to do that when the subject was still under anyway – and then removed the catheter. He’d be getting up soon.

The scar was tiny, with nothing raised under the skin. She figured the device must be more deeply implanted, next to the femoral artery, no doubt. When his blood pressure had gone crazy with the first round of interrogation, or maybe even from his fear when he’d first woken up, it must have tipped off his brother. And whoever else was monitoring him. The tracker would have to come out.

She had enough time before he woke up, so she got her first-aid kit. After snapping on some gloves, she numbed the site and sterilized the scalpel – good thing she hadn’t broken all of them on the Batsuit. She scrubbed the skin with iodine, then made a quick, neat incision on top of the old one, though a bit longer. She didn’t have forceps or tweezers, so she just poked around carefully with one finger on the inside and one on the outside. When she found the device – a little capsule about the size of a throat lozenge – she was able to pressure it out fairly easily.

She cleaned up the site and then superglued the edges together.

After that, she treated the raw skin on his wrists and ankles, cleaning and bandaging everything. Finally, she put the blanket over him and got him the pillow.

The capsule she left to cool on the steel table. To anyone watching the tracker on a monitor, it would appear that Daniel Beach had just died. She had a feeling that his death wouldn’t bother anyone in the department. She had a better sense of the other side’s plan now, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t all about her.

She exited the tent to attend to her own face, first wiping off the blood and then trying to determine the extent of the damage. The lip was swollen, and the tear needed a stitch; she applied a drop of superglue. Her cheek was missing a few layers of skin and she was going to have a matched set of very pronounced black eyes. Her nose was swollen and crooked, so she took advantage of her current painless state to push it back into shape as well as she could.

The pain would return fairly soon, though she’d given herself the maximum dose of the drug she’d privately named Survive . It wasn’t meant to work long term; it was just for making it through an attack like the one she’d just endured. Kind of like the adrenaline her body naturally generated, just much more powerful, and with some opiates to block the pain. Survive wasn’t on the books; her list of duties had not included creating anti -torture concoctions, but she’d thought it might be something she’d need someday, and she’d been right. This wasn’t the first time she’d used it – she’d overreacted to those earlier assassination attempts – but it was the first time she’d actually suffered through a decent beating with Survive in her system. She was pleased with its performance.