After a life overflowing with adrenaline highs, Winny Swink felt the same intoxicating rush she had first experienced when she was stealing her father’s car at the age of thirteen. Not even her joyride in the Raptor over the skies of Washington had left her feeling this giddy.
She stood by the door to the central courtyard—a flat grassy hexagon bounded on all sides by the different wings of Ward Six. To the patients, this was nirvana, the sacred space out under the open sky, sun, and stars. It lay just out of reach and beyond the locked doors. To the supplicants inside—separated by an insurmountable barrier of glass and aluminum—it could be seen, longed for.
As the distant whirring of the approaching helicopter grew louder, Winny Swink had no thoughts for anything but the thrill of her ass against that seat. She could almost sense the cyclic in her hand as she rolled in the collective, desperate to feel the beast tremble as it lifted her into the sky and ecstasy.
At the faint squeak of a wheel and the shuffling of feet, Swink turned to see the chief and Talavera—dressed in scrubs—pushing Falcon up on a gurney. Falcon lay in a fetal crouch, and to Swink’s eyes, the guy really looked sick.
“Where’s Nurse Seymore?”
“Taped securely to a clinic bed.” Karla glanced back down the hallway. “No sign of Edwin yet?”
“He’s coming, too?”
At the tone in Swink’s voice, Talavera looked nervously at Karla, as if expecting an explosion.
Instead of answering, Karla stuck a hand in her pocket. Producing a pass card, she slipped it across the lock, then opened the wide glass door. The sound of beating rotors grew louder.
Karla shot Winny a hard look. “ET’s the computer guru, or can you crack classified security programs in addition to flying helicopters and stolen fighters?”
Swink took a deep breath, struggling with annoyance, but the sound of the circling helicopter overrode any other concern. “Yeah, whatever. More people means more to go wrong.”
“Well,” Talavera asked. “Where is he?”
To Swink, the woman looked ready to piss herself. “You gonna fall apart on us, Cat? Commit suicide at the first sign of trouble? Why are you even here?”
Cat Talavera looked like a mouse surrounded by snakes.
Karla said, “Falcon wanted her, he gets her.”
“Yeah, well, ask me, and I’ll tell you Falcon looks like he’s about to shit himself inside out.”
She’d no more than said it, than Falcon, in a weak voice, squeaked, “Rudy, shut up! She’d break your neck if you even tried.”
“Who’s Rudy?” Swink asked. “I thought he just talked to Major whats’s’name and that Theresa woman.”
“Who cares?” Karla asked, eyes narrowing as she whispered, “Come on, Edwin. The bus to candy land is here.”
As the chopper circled lower, grass rippled in the downwash.
“Remember,” Karla called over the roar. “Cat, you and Winny wait until the EMTs unstrap the litter. While they’re working on that, I’m walking up behind them with the zip ties.”
She brandished a handful of the plastic restraints.
“Where’d you find those?” Winny shouted.
“Locked drawer in the clinic.” Karla grinned. “And I got one of these, too.” She pulled a capped syringe from the other pocket. “Persuasion to get the pilot to step out.”
“What’s in it?”
“Water. But he won’t know that.” Karla glanced out as a Jet Ranger settled onto the central helipad and began to spool down. “On deck, people. Let’s go!”
“Where’s Edwin?” Talavera cried.
“He’d damned well better be beating feet!” Karla told her as she pushed the door open and dragged Falcon’s gurney out onto the cement.