Lilly raced toward the building alongside Michelle.
“Jack is gonna be furious,” Michelle warned.
“Yeah, well, I’m gonna deal with that later. Right now we have to help him and the others.”
She’d heard the shots from inside the facility, and knew they’d come from their enemies, because they were too loud to come from guns with silencers.
“I have to find the backup generators,” Michelle said. “Help me with the search on the outside of the building.”
“I can’t,” Lilly said, “I have to get Tiger out of the machine, or he’ll suffer permanent brain damage.”
Arriving at the front entrance, Michelle let out a harsh breath. “Be careful. Or Jack will have my head too.”
“Find the generator. Go!” Lilly said and opened the unlocked front door.
Inside, she looked around. She’d heard the men talk about quadrants and their various directions on their comms, but northwest and southeast meant nothing to her. Couldn’t they just have said front left or back right? No, they had to use cardinal points, as if she knew her way around a compass!
Pallets stacked up high blocked her view to the back of the building. Letting her eyes roam to her left and right, Lilly made her way to the left edge of the pallets, where a path led deeper into the interior of the building. At the corner, she peered past the pallets. She saw the top of the MRI machine behind a forklift truck and a few metal shelving units. From behind them, there were grunts and other sounds indicating that several men were involved in hand-to-hand combat, though she couldn’t see much. Glass and metal items shattered, and again there was a gunshot. She caught a glimpse of Jack being thrown against a metal rack, and a man dressed in black diving after him.
Shit! She had to help Jack and the others, even though she knew she had no chance if one of the bad guys was coming after her. But with Ace, Fox, and Jack fighting their opponents, she was the only one who could disconnect Tiger from the machine.
Lilly ran down the narrow path between the stacks of pallets, staying low so that nobody would see her approach.
“Ace, on your left!” she heard Jack’s voice in her earpiece.
Hearing Jack’s voice meant he was gaining the upper hand on his opponent. But she had no time to look for him or Ace or Fox to see if they were doing okay. She headed straight for the MRI machine. She could see it clearly now. In front of it, a man in a white coat lay on the ground, bleeding profusely from a chest wound.
On the gurney lay a black man. She couldn’t see his face since his upper body was inside the machine. He was dressed in green scrubs, and barefoot. His wrists, feet, and waist were chained to the gurney with leather straps. Lilly had to assume that his head and shoulders were equally restrained. On the top of his left hand was an IV port, which was connected to a drip hanging from an IV pole.
Next to the MRI machine was a console, a server tower, and two computer monitors that looked like they were recording brain waves, as well as another panel with buttons. She had to assume that this was the electronic equipment which controlled the machine. She cast a look to her left and saw Fox fighting with a man in blue overalls, tossing him against a door. Behind Fox another guy lunged for him.
“Fox, behind you!” she yelled into her microphone.
She saw Fox whirling around on his heel, but the guy was already grabbing him.
“Lilly?” Jack said through the earpiece, sounding winded. “Get the fuck out!”
“I’ve gotta get Tiger out of the machine,” she said and turned back to the control panel. She placed her gun on the table, while she searched frantically for an off switch, but there was none. There were several buttons with symbols on them.
Fuck! She hated guessing. She took a breath. Four buttons had arrows. She pressed one of them and looked at the gurney. It moved farther into the machine.
“Crap!”
She pressed the button with the arrow pointing in the other direction. The gurney moved in the opposite direction. Lilly breathed a sigh of release as she saw Tiger’s chest, and finally his head coming out, while the MRI machine was still droning on and continuing its circular motion. Tiger’s head was locked in a brace. It almost looked like a helmet, though it was made of plastic. She rushed to his side.
“Tiger, I’m here to get you out,” she said quickly and examined the locking mechanism.
A look at his face told her that he was semi-conscious.
“Stay with me, Tiger,” she said softly. “Stay awake.”
She tried to turn the helmet, so she could figure out how it was attached, and had to realize that the helmet was part of the gurney, and she couldn’t see any clasps or anything else to figure out how to open it so she could free Tiger from it.
Fuck!
Maybe if she took all the other restraints off him first, she would be able to move him sufficiently to find an opening mechanism. Quickly, she undid the leather restraints on his feet, waist, and wrists.
“Tiger, wiggle your hands and feet if you can hear me,” she said.
Behind her, she heard a stack of pallets crash, and men cry out in pain, but she had no time to look at what was going on. She had to get Tiger off the gurney, though she realized that he wouldn’t be able to assist her in any way: his hands and feet weren’t moving. He was paralyzed, most likely from the drugs they’d given him. She looked at the tray next to the console. A vial and a needle lay on it. Midazolam, just as she’d suspected. She yanked the drip from Tiger’s IV port but kept the port in his hand. Most likely the drip was just a saline solution, but she couldn’t be sure that it didn’t contain more of the sedative to keep him paralyzed.
“Listen to my voice, Tiger, stay with me,” she said.
Lilly had some difficulty loosening the leather strap that was tightly bound across Tiger’s pectorals and biceps. She had to yank on it, using all her strength to unhook him from it. Her heart beat frantically not only from the physical stress, but also the mental one. She cast a quick look to where the Stargate agents were fighting.
She saw Ace running after a man in a white coat as he tried to flee through the back exit. Fox was still fighting his opponent, trying to wrestle the gun from him. She didn’t have a clear view of Jack and the man he fought with. Their confrontation had taken them behind the pallets.
Lilly turned back to the console, looking for anything that would indicate how she could get Tiger’s head out of the tight helmet. Maybe one of the buttons with a symbol on it? She felt sweat collect on her nape and forehead but forced herself to remain calm. She had to keep her wits about her if she wanted to help Tiger.
A movement to her right made her snap her head in its direction. Too late. The middle-aged man in the business suit was pointing a gun at her. She froze.
“Step away from the console,” he ordered and made a shooing motion with his gun.
Her gun lay on the console, where she’d placed it earlier to free her hands. The man saw it too.
“I said step away from the console, Miss Davis, and not a word out of your mouth, or it’ll be your last.”
She recognized his voice then. It was the same man who’d pretended to be Henry Sheppard. This had to be Smith. She took a step back and away from the console. Why hadn’t he shot her yet? She glanced toward the area where Fox battled it out with the man in the blue overalls. He wasn’t looking in her direction. When she turned back to look at Smith’s gun, she realized that it didn’t have a silencer.
She understood then. He didn’t want to shoot her, because it would alert Fox and Jack. She remained stationary, hoping that one of the Stargate agents would eventually see that she was in trouble.
Smith walked closer to the server tower, his gun still trained on her. He was only three feet from her, when he leaned toward the server, pressed a lever on it, and a compartment opened. He reached for it and pulled out a component that look like a hard drive. He shoved it in his jacket pocket. This was why he hadn’t fled yet. He needed whatever data the machine had collected.
Smith leaned toward the console again and hit a button. With horror, Lilly watched as the gurney moved back into the MRI machine, Tiger still hooked to it by the helmet. And even if the mechanism gave way, he wouldn’t be able to escape, the paralyzing drug still in his system.
“Lilly!” Jack screamed from somewhere behind her, his voice echoing in her earpiece at the same time. Jack had seen the situation she was in. He’d get her out of it and help her save Tiger.
Her relief was short-lived. Smith grabbed her, and in the process her earpiece fell to the ground. He pulled her in front of him, one arm around her torso, imprisoning her arms, the other hand pointing his gun underneath her chin, its muzzle pressing against the soft flesh underneath her jaw.
She was his hostage and his human shield now.