Carol Ericson - Under Fire

He’d memorized that face from his quarterly visits with her. Dr. Ava Whitman had been the one bright spot in the dark tunnel of Tempest. He believed with certainty that she had no idea what she’d been dosing them with. At first, he’d been incredulous that a doctor wouldn’t know what was in a formula she was giving her patients, but her story made sense. Tempest sought out the most vulnerable. The agency used blackmail and coercion, and in Ava’s case, hope, to recruit people.

Dr. Arnoff had kept her in the dark, had probably shut down her questions by reminding her that she wouldn’t be working as a doctor if it weren’t for the agency and then using the illegality of that work to keep her in line.

And she’d been good at her job. He had a hard time remembering the two missions he’d been on last year, but he could clearly recall Ava’s soft touch and cheery tone as she checked his vitals and injected him with the serum that would destroy his life.

Ava cleared her throat. “If the blue pills are a weaker dose of the T-101 serum, why are you still taking them?”

“I have to.”

“Because you’re addicted? Why not just ride out the withdrawal?” She laced her fingers in her lap. “I can help you. I—I have some experience with that.”

He raised his eyebrows. She had to be referring to a patient. “It’s more than the addiction. I could ride that out. You saw Simon.”

She drew in a quick breath and hunched forward. “Simon went over the edge. He lost it. The stress, the tension, maybe even the brainwashing—they all did him in.”

“It’s the...T-101, Ava. Is that what you called it? Without the serum, we self-destruct. Another agent, before Simon, before me, he committed suicide. Tempest put it down to post-traumatic stress disorder because this agent had killed a child by mistake on a raid. Now I wonder if that was even a mistake or his true assignment.”

“Adam Belchik.” She drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

“That’s right. I thought he was before your time.”

“He was, but I heard about him.”

“He was the first to go off the meds, and he paid the price. He had a family, so he killed himself before he could harm them.”

“Is that why you were jabbering about cold turkey? You can’t quit cold turkey like Simon did, like Adam did. You have to keep lowering your dosage by continuing with the blue pills.”

“That’s it.” He pointed to the tin on the credenza, the fine line keeping him from insanity and rage. “I find if I take one a day, I can maintain. I tried a half, and it didn’t work.”

“You have only five left.” Her gaze darted to the credenza and back to his face.

“Four now. Four pills. Four days.”

She uncurled her legs and almost fell out of the chair as she bolted from it. “That’s crazy. What happens at the end of the four days?”

He lifted his shoulders. “I’ll be subject to incidents like the one you just witnessed until they kill me or I snap...or Tempest gets to me first.”

“And if they do?”

“They’ll either kill me or I’ll be their drone for the rest of my life.”

She folded her arms across her stomach, clutching the material of her blouse at her sides. “There has to be another way. If we get more of the pills and you take smaller and smaller doses, maybe eventually you can break free. You tried taking a half, but it was too soon.”

“Where would I get more pills? You said yourself you never saw them at the lab. They weren’t administered at the lab. My quick search there revealed nothing.”

She snapped her fingers. “Max, there has to be an antidote somewhere.”

“Why would you think that? Tempest had no intention of ever reversing the damage they’d done to us.”

“Maybe not to you, but Dr. Arnoff tested the T-101 on himself.”

His heart slammed against his chest. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive, or at least I’m positive that he told me he’d tried it on himself. He said he felt like a superhero—strong, invincible, sexually potent.”

She reddened to the edge of her hairline and waved a hand in the air. “You know, that’s what he said.”

Sexual potency? It had been a long time since he’d been close enough to a woman in a normal situation to even think about sex.

He cleared his throat. “If he acted as his own guinea pig, he’d want something to counteract the effects in case things didn’t go the way he planned.”

“Exactly—an antidote.”

“We could be jumping to conclusions.” He dragged in a breath and let it out slowly in an attempt to temper his excitement. He’d learned to be cautious about good news. “Maybe Arnoff didn’t develop an antidote. He could’ve dialed back by taking the blue pills—fewer and fewer of them until the cravings stopped and the physical effects dissipated.”

“That could be, but it also means there must be more of those blue pills floating around.” She dropped onto the bed. “What about the other agents? Can you all pool your resources and wean yourselves off of the serum?”

He cracked a smile and shook his head.

“What’s so funny? That’s the first real smile I’ve seen from you all night, and I wasn’t even making a joke.”

“I just got a visual of a bunch of Tempest agents sitting around a campfire sharing little pieces of their blue pills.”

A smile hovered at her lips. “Not possible?”

“I don’t even know who more than half of the agents are.”

“I do.”

His gaze locked onto hers. “You don’t know all their names. You don’t know where they live, and most of them are probably on assignment anyway.”

She shook her finger at him. “You’d be surprised how many of them opened up to me.”

“Not surprised at all.” She’d obviously been a ray of sunshine for the other agents, too. “But we can’t go knocking on their doors asking them to give up their meds. Unless they’ve already suspected something or had incidents like Simon and I did, they’re not going to see the problem.”

“I meant to ask you that.” She fell back against the mattress and rolled to her side to face him, propping up her head with one hand. “What made you and Simon realize what was going on?”

“There were gaps, glitches in our response to the treatment. For me it was the memories. I recalled too much about my operations. The memories they tried to implant in my brain didn’t jibe with my reality. On one assignment, Simon and I started comparing notes and then experimenting with the pills.”

“Simon didn’t show up for his last appointment with me. He never got his injection.”

“He decided to make a clean break. He shrugged off the seizures even though I tried to warn him.” He dropped his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp. What would they tell Simon’s fiancée?

The bed sank beside him, and he turned his head as Ava touched his back.

“You had to shoot Simon. He would’ve killed you. He would’ve killed me.” The pressure of her hand between his shoulder blades increased. “Now, since you saved my life—twice—I’m going to save yours.”

He wanted to believe her. He wanted to stretch out on the bed next to Ava and feel her soft touch on his forehead again.

“And how to you propose to do that, Dr. Whitman?”

Her hand dropped from his back. “Don’t call me that. I told you, I never finished. I don’t deserve the title.”

“Ava.”

“We’re going to find that antidote or a million blue pills to get you through this.” She yawned and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “But first I’m going to sleep away the rest of what’s left of this evening.”

“And your family? I thought I was taking you to the airport tomorrow so you could fly out to be with your family.”