Chapter Four

 

Bree exploded out of a dream into blinding white light and utter silence. She sucked in a breath. The sound of the abrupt inhalation rang in her ears. Her heart pounded even louder.

Instinctively, she flung out her hands, but something held her arms in place. It was light...not dark, she thought, anchoring her mind to reality. Not the river from her childhood, the canoe, but she was just as trapped.

Bree swerved her attention upward from the sides of the luminescent white box that contained her. Pipes and intricately twined wires lined the ceiling, high above. The irregularity of the stone surface suggested that it was a cave or an area dug under the ground. A vague sense of pressure in her ears suggested it was located at some depth.

A high-tech dungeon?

Good guess, she thought. She was eight-way, hand-tied to a gurney. Her flight suit was gone. The closest thing she could come up with to describe what she was wearing was a white rubber suit, riddled with wires and who knew what else. What was it designed to deliver? Electric shocks? Direct nerve stimulation? Her imagination did a good job of filling in the blanks. A fog clung to her brain, dulling her thoughts, but nothing hurt—and she knew plenty of spots that should have been hurting: lacerations left from the forest landing, the bullet wound on her calf. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t added any new injuries to the list.

She swallowed, her mouth dry, and tried to come up with a plan. She’d been in sticky situations before, but it was going to take a boatload of creativity to get out of this one, though it didn’t hurt to give the basics a shot, first. “Help!” she shouted. “Help! Can anyone hear me?”

“Too well.” The bounty hunter peeked over the edge of the box-bed. It must be on a raised platform because she couldn’t see him from the shoulders down.

“Let me go!” she yelled.

The man exhaled and adjusted his clear protective goggles. “I don’t know which I care for less, your pleading or your wingman’s cursing.”

“Where is she? Is she here? Let me see her!”

“I put her to sleep.”

“To sleep?” Bree choked out. Cats and dogs were put to sleep, not people.

“Sleep sleep,” he clarified. “Well, perhaps a little deeper than that.”

The bounty hunter lifted a needle to the light. A trembling droplet sparkled on its tip.

“Wait!” No more drugs. She wanted something she could fight, where the odds were more in her favor; she couldn’t defend against the meds. “I’ll cooperate,” she lied.

When the man’s needle paused in midair, she stalled for time. “We were part of a peacekeeping patrol. We have nothing against your people. Our countries are not at war.”

“This is true.” He tapped the needle thoughtfully. And then he lifted his eyes. “Let me be frank, Captain. We share something in common: distaste for the ruling government here—although the term ‘government’ hardly applies to this particular regime. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” he said in a mocking tone, and lifted the needle.

“Wait.” She cleared the hoarseness from her throat. “You’re a rebel?” If he was a radical, a dissident, then she was a hostage and not a prisoner of war. The distinction meant that all the rules had changed. In other words, there were none.

“I’m a scientist. The type of work that I do requires aggressive subject acquisition, but there are few places to find young, healthy, robust people for my needs, people who won’t be missed. Your peace patrols presented the perfect opportunity. I could acquire the subjects I needed while placing the president in a delicious pickle.”

A pickle? He had to be joking. “That pickle could lead to nuclear war!”

“So, what if it does?” He shrugged. “My laboratory is deep underground, hardened for a direct hit. I have power and supplies to last through an Armageddon of a thousand years.”

She shook her head, trying to absorb it all. “Did you do it?” She had to know. “Did you shoot me down?”

“Ah. And how did I accomplish the deed? Your wing-man had the same questions. The answer is yes, and with shoulder-launched missiles, available easily and everywhere, even here in this ignorant, arrogant little principality. Try not to look so surprised. I can read everything in your face, you know. Every emotion. It is a good thing I do not have the need to interrogate you, Captain. You would have made my job an easy one.”

No, you bastard, I wouldn’t have. She had a wingman to protect. A friend. She’d never have let Cam down. Or betrayed her country. All her life all she’d ever wanted to be was a soldier to serve her country and its ideals. Bree knew she looked inconsequential to some, but appearances were deceiving. That her captor didn’t recognize that made him far more vulnerable than she was with her supposed transparent expressions.

“Now, to sleep,” he said. The needle he held disappeared from sight. To where? Something powerful entered her bloodstream and gave her the answer. “More correctly, I will place you in suspended animation. Bio-stasis is the common term, and one you may have heard, although technically your biological functions are not completely suspended.” He ran his gloved hand over the smooth white edge of her coffin-like box as if he thought it was a thing of beauty. “The cryopod,” he said with reverence. “It will maintain your body temperature at the defined level, while these tubes, here, will fill your body cavities—stomach, intestines, lungs, and the like—with supercooled fluid. In that manner, you will continue to exist, indefinitely, unaware of the passage of time, while aging proceeds at such a slowed rate that you could live nearly forever in the state.” His eyes shone with promise, excitement. “Or at least that is my goal once I perfect my life’s work.”

Once he did? It wasn’t perfected yet? Bree was spinning now, falling into a black hole, but she had enough adrenaline left to push her pulse faster. She tried to free her legs. The restraints tightened around her jerking limbs until she imagined her bones snapping under the pressure.

“Keep still!”

“Why are you doing this?” she gasped.

“To be able to say that I can.” The fanatical determination in the man’s eyes chilled her to the bone. “Don’t worry. It will be for only a day or two. A week at most, depending on how well you are doing. And what then? I’ll thank you and your cohort for your time and set you free where your people will be sure to find you. Enough talk. I am behind schedule.”

A clear lid descended over the pod. Her eardrums wrenched with a pressure change. She was closed off to everything outside, as if she were in the cockpit of the F-16. In a way, it was reassuring. It meant that her captor did indeed have decent technology at his disposal. Maybe, just maybe, she would wake up at the other end of this.

But as soon as the door sealed, the interior of the pod whirred to life. Tubes and needles with fiber-optic-illuminated ends moved into position. One straw lowered to her mouth. She pressed her lips together, turned her head as far as the neck brace would let her.

The scientist rapped on the glass and shook his head. “Keep still!”

A gas of some kind entered the pod. It smelled sweet. Another drug. A silent scream of outrage ripped through her. She wasn’t ready to die, not this way, captured and caged.

If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and will aid others to escape.

Bree held her breath, her heart slamming against her ribs. Tears stung her eyes, and her lungs felt ready to explode. She knotted her hands into fists, but the instinct to survive was too strong and she couldn’t keep from sucking in a breath.

The sedative took effect immediately. To pass out was to give in, and she wasn’t ready for that. With all that she had, she struggled to stay awake, to stay alive, fighting with the zest for life and the strength of will that had been hers since birth. Sass, her grandfather had called it.

The straw scraped along the seam of her compressed lips, found the corner of her mouth, and invaded. A cold salty-sweet liquid squirted inside. Bree spat it out, until it began to gush and she couldn’t keep up. She coughed, inhaled a lungful of the vile stuff. It went up her nose. She was suffocating. Arching her back, she thrashed about in her restraints.

Somewhere above her, her captor watched the drugs take her down. Somewhere above him, she could only hope, God watched them both. It was her last thought before the growing darkness choked out the light.