Chapter Sixty-Three

D ULCE WOKE UP in a hospital . Again. But a quick glance out the window told her that something really strange had to have happened, considering the outside world was no longer the city of New York.

She tried to sit up, but her torso screamed in pain. There was no way she could make even the slightest movement without pain.

A monitor beeped in time with Dulce's heart. An IV line went into her right hand. The room was small and rather dark, and the door to the hallway was closed. It had the feeling of a room that had been forgotten, leftover from a forgotten age. Things just didn't seem quite as modern as Dulce expected them to. The design was off.

Dulce shivered. She wasn't sure if it was possible to have shifted through time, but she supposed it might be possible that she'd woken up in the seventies or something.

A toilet flushed.

Dulce reached around her bed, around herself, trying to find a weapon, ideally her gun, but there was nothing around. She had a gown on, and there were just basic hospital blankets covering the basic hospital sheets. Dulce took a deep breath and grabbed hold of the IV line. Worst case, she could pull the needle and use that to defend herself. A little.

A short and hairy muscular man stepped out of the bathroom, zipping up his jeans.

He stopped when he realized Dulce was staring at him.

"Oh," he said, "you're awake."

Dulce squinted, peering across the tiny dark room, hoping something would hop into her memory about the man speaking to her as if he knew her.

"Feeling okay?" he asked, stepping closer to her.

She nodded.

"Good."

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Walter Reed."

"Virginia?"

The man nodded, and dropped into the single chair.

Dulce felt very worried. A deep primal fear seemed to well up and wash over her. If she'd been evacuated from New York, what happened? Where was Brittany? Where was the new guy? Where was Joseph? What had happened with the—

"What happened in New York?" she asked, trying to keep her heart from exploding out of her chest.

"Uh," the man said, frowning a bit, "I don't really know. Your boss didn't really say anything about it."

"Joseph is okay?"

"Didn't really talk to him. I, uh, the girl? Tiny and blonde?"

"Brittany."

"Her. Yeah, figured she's the boss?"

"She's not my boss."

"Okay, well, could have fooled me. She split up the team—"

"Team?"

"We're, uh—"

"The military guys."

He snapped and pointed at her. "That's it. You were in a hospital in New York, and someone, I don't know who so don't ask, tried to bump you and your big boss off."

"Joseph?"

"The old guy."

"Yeah, Joseph Goldman."

"Whatever. Your non-boss friend Brittany wanted you out of there, so we brought you and Joseph down here. Joseph is apparently at the office, and we're at Walter Reed, so you're all caught up."

"But—" Dulce stopped herself. She knew the man couldn't possibly answer all the questions that she had. There were just too many things these men couldn't know, couldn't answer, and couldn't ask. She tried to get out of bed, but things hurt, and her head started to swim.

"Easy there," the man said. "You had some pretty serious internal hemorrhaging, so you're not going to be moving fast any time soon."

"I have to get back to New York," Dulce said, but despite her protestation, she fell back against her pillows.

"Yeah," the man said, "that's not happening. Doc was pretty clear about you staying in bed for a stretch."

"Ugh," Dulce whined. She slammed her fist down on the bed in anger, hating feeling powerless.

"Kinda my feelings too," the man said, leaning back until he'd balanced the chair on two legs. "I'd rather be out there doing something too. But, well, here we are. And not even a fucking television."

There was a kerfuffle outside, someone getting out of a chair, the legs scraping against the linoleum floor.

Dulce watched as the stout man dropped his chair to the floor, all four legs flat. He still smiled, though his eyes were no longer flitting about the room. They were focused on the door.

People spoke outside in hushed yet relaxed tones. Kerfuffle resolved.

Stout man stroked his beard, and Dulce noticed he had both hands in his lap again. She wondered where his hand had gone to…

The door opened, and Joseph Goldman walked in, his small frame exuding energy.

"Dulce," he said as a greeting.

"Joseph," she replied.

Joseph looked over at the stout man, staring for a solid twenty seconds.

"Yep got it," the stout man said. "I'll just wait outside."

He hopped off his chair and walked out of the hospital room.

Joseph waited for the door to close, the laid a hand on Dulce's bed. "You okay?"

"Seriously?" Dulce asked.

"I mean, all things considered—"

"All things considered? I'm not even sure what happened, or where I am or why what happened happened, you know?"

Joseph nodded.

"And the thing is," Dulce said, doing her best to choke back her tears because she did not want to cry in front of her boss, but with so many emotions rolling through her, all exacerbated by the drugs pumping into her system to keep the pain down, she wasn't really able to keep her shit together. "I'm not even supposed to be doing this shit."

"Come on," Joseph said, "not this again."

"Again? Joseph, this was never supposed to be my life—"

Joseph slapped the bed, his eyes hard, his lips thin, anger evident all over his features.

"This is your life," he snapped, "and I'm sorry it's not what you had planned, not what you thought might happen. I'm sorry it's a different path than Harvard to Bank to Financial Wizardry to being an unhappy disenfranchised millionaire who's got one foot in the Hamptons and one foot in Manhattan, facing an unhappy marriage and an early grave—"

"That's what YOU think it would've been, but—"

"But nothing," Joseph interrupted. "This is your life. This is what you're doing. This is what you have to do because otherwise—"

"Otherwise there's no world. Got it."

"And we try to make it up to you. We try to make sure there are benefits to make up for the life you're forced to lead—"

"The salary is a pittance—"

"To your theoretical salary. You were barely an assistant when we met—"

"But—"

"But you went to Harvard. I know. I got it. We all know. We all got it. We all are in awe that you have come down to slum it with us mere mortals, but this is our reality. Your reality and my reality."

"It didn't have to be this way."

"Yes, it did. I know you think I stole your chance to be a multimillionaire, but if you'd just stop and realize what you've got, you'd see that there's, I mean, there's fantastic salary, no expenses, plenty of free time to —

"Free time? Are you kidding?"

"Not, I mean, right now is an odd case, but if you could speak to any of the older agents—"

"Yeah, but I can't, can I Joseph?'

"There has been a bit of a run of bad luck lately."

"Bad luck? Bad luck? Bad luck is buying 100 scratch offs and winning two bucks. We are dying. Fast. That's far beyond bad luck, Joseph."

"I admit, it has been hectic the last few years, but—"

"Hectic and deadly. Why are agents dying so fast? Why are there only four of us?"

"There's five."

"Bo doesn't count."

"I meant me."

"YOU don't count."

"I'm the most experienced agent there is—"

"You're not an agent, Joseph. Don't you get it? You're the bureau chief! You're supposed to be in charge of everything and making sure those of us OUT in the field survive and excel and actually get the job done. You're a shit Bureau chief, Joseph — you're not seeing the big picture. You're racing around the country along with us trying to get everything taken care of in the way that makes sense to you as an agent, but you're not an agent."

Joseph opened his mouth, then closed it.

"I'm sorry," Dulce said softly as the pause stretched into the awkward zone. "It's just, we need someone to look at the forest, not just the trees."

"Bo, then," Joseph said. "He makes five."

"Bo doesn't count either."

"Why?"

"He's not trained!" Dulce shouted, her exasperation getting the better of her.

"He saved your life."

"He did?"

"He did."

"Fine, he can count, I guess. But there's still only five of us."

"I know."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"You don't think," Dulce asked, the anger blossoming in her again, "maybe it's because someone is killing us all off?"

"I do worry that."

"And your solution?"

"Bodyguards," Joseph replied. "Those men out there. They're around to keep you around."

Dulce blinked at him. She hadn't expected any sort of answer. She was building up her rage-induced argument to where she could logically make an exit from the agency, but Joseph had finally done something. Sure, it didn't seem like much, and it hadn't exactly stopped the problem. Although, to be fair, she wasn't dead, just injured. At least it was something, right?

"I've read your file," Joseph said, "and it doesn't seem like you'll be heading into the field any time soon."

"Why?" Dulce asked, trying to sit up with the idea of grabbing the clipboard on the end of her bed, but her core muscles had other ideas, and she was forced to slump back.

"You're injured bad enough that the docs don't want to risk another internal rupture if you're doing something like chasing bad guys. So, you'll be working with Robert—"

"I don't want to work with Robert," she whined.

Joseph blinked a few times at her. "I'm going to assume that some of this, the bulk of your behavior, is due to the pain meds, and that, perhaps, the other half is because you went to Harvard and he attended Yale and you've chosen to enact that rivalry in an extremely childish way. But you're an employee of the United States Government with a very serious mandate and we're in a Presidentially-declared State of Emergency, so now is not the time for you to be childish any longer. You will be working with Robert, you will assist him in assisting the field agents, and, Lord willing, you will be able to yell at me some other time on the other side of this when the world isn't on the verge of ending. Understand?"

Dulce was pointedly silent a moment, glaring back at Joseph. He had most definitely been extremely patronizing and more than a little bit of an asshole. And yet, at the same time, he had a point.

"Understood."

Joseph patted the bed. "See you in the office tomorrow."