13. Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Day 2-6 Denali, Alaska
This call wasn’t going as smoothly as he’d hoped.
“Demi—” Aiden barely got her name out before she broke in again.
“No. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask; the answer is no.” Frustrated exasperation framed each word. “I’m not putting my life on hold and flying to God knows where, just because you want to see me.” An annoyed breath blasted the line. “I told you I have responsibilities now.”
“The cat.” Aiden scowled as he paced the linoleum floor of his isolation chamber in his borrowed surgical scrubs. The scrubs were surprisingly comfortable—soft as silk as they brushed against his arms and legs. “You can bring the damn cat with you.”
“No, I can’t,” she retorted. “I just picked him up from the vet. He’s in no condition to travel.”
Her life was more important than a damn cat.
Not that he could tell her that. She didn’t know he’d brought danger to her doorstep, or why it was imperative that she join him. Hell, he couldn’t even tell her where she’d be flying, not over the phone, not when anyone could be listening in on her line.
“It’s just a cat,” he growled, his frustration getting the better of him. “It’s not even your cat. There’s got to be a dozen animal rescues in the San Diego area. Farm it off to one of them.”
He regretted the suggestion immediately. Demi wouldn’t appreciate his cavalier attitude. But damn it, he couldn’t tell her why he needed her to fly out and meet him. Wolf had arranged a phone for him, assuring him the cell was secure. But that security didn’t extend to Demi’s phone. Anyone could be listening in on her line.
Whoever was behind that test in Tajikistan had access to WARCOM. Those fucking cameras proved that. They knew who he was. Since he’d been in contact with Hurley until Wolf whisked him away, they knew he’d survived. They’d come after him to find out why. And when they couldn’t locate him, they’d go after those he loved to smoke him out. Kait was inaccessible, but Demi was vulnerable.
He completed another circuit of his chamber and paused next to the right wall, which was constructed of smoke colored glass or plastic or something similar. He had to convince her to fly up to meet him. The safest place for her was tucked away in this secret base, surrounded by lethal warriors.
“He’s my cat now. I accepted responsibility for him.” The flat, calm tone screamed ‘pissed off.’ The angrier Demi got, the calmer and more rational she became. “I’m not abandoning him.”
Great. She’d dug her heels in.
It would help his case if he could explain why he needed her to join him. Demi wasn’t stupid. If she knew the reasons behind his request, she wouldn’t be so intractable.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Hold on a second.” This approach wasn’t working. He needed to pivot.
He reassessed his strategy. The assholes behind Karaveht’s death toll probably hadn’t tracked Demi down or tapped her line yet. It hadn’t even been ten hours since Wolf had dropped in to rescue him. But if they were listening in on this conversation…so what? If he was careful about what he told her, if he stuck to information the assholes behind the test already knew, then he wouldn’t be giving anything critical away.
Releasing a slow breath, he rearranged his talking points. “Look—”
“Give it a rest, okay?” she interrupted. “I know what this request is about.”
His eyebrows rose. He doubted that.
“You want to meet with me, so you can convince me to continue our relationship.” A soft sigh followed before she added, “Kait told me she spilled the beans. I know you know I want to break off our friends with benefits arrangement.”
Fuck. “That isn’t what this is about.”
Her voice firmed. “I haven’t changed my mind. Nor am I abandoning my responsibilities and flying off to meet with you. A face-to-face chat will just lead to sex, which will just fuck with my mind all over again.”
Before he’d found out she wanted to dump him, he’d have teased her about fucking with more than her mind. A sliver of sorrow pierced him. Was that easy, teasing repertoire a thing of the past now?
“I’m sorry, Aiden, but I really have to go.”
“Demi—” His protest came too late. She’d already hung up.
His hand clenched the cell phone. He fought the impulse to hurl the damn thing as hard as he could against the glass door of his isolation unit.
Instead, he dialed her number again, his teeth grinding with every ring that rode the line. By the time he gave up and ended the call, his jaw ached. He paced from one smokey wall of his chamber to the other, while strategies marched through his mind.
If he couldn’t convince her to fly up to him, and he couldn’t fly down to her, the next best option was saddling her with a security team, men he trusted to protect her until he was free to do the job himself.
An old roommate of his, Lucas Trammel, had joined Forged, a San Diego security company, after he’d left his leadership role on ST7. Aiden knew several other dudes from the firm, too, excellent operators that he’d crewed with in the past. An hour later, he had a surveillance team on Demi. Men he could trust to monitor her and step in if anyone tried to grab her. He suspected she’d be furious if she found out he had her under surveillance, so the protection crew was under orders not to engage with her unless it was absolutely necessary.
He’d fly down and haul her up to Alaska in person as soon as the Shadow Mountain docs released him from isolation.
It was ironic, really. While Benioko, the base shaman, had convinced Wolf’s warriors that Aiden was not a health threat, he hadn’t been as persuasive with the base scientists and doctors. No surprise, really. Scientists and doctors dealt with the physical, not the mystical. When the Thunderbird set down in the Shadow Mountain air hanger, a small hoard of men and women in lab coats and PPE had swarmed the craft and hustled everyone off to the isolation complex.
Aiden was relieved the scientists were taking precautions. Although he wasn’t nearly as concerned about infecting people now as he’d been earlier. So far, neither he, Kait, or any of the warriors aboard the Thunderbird were showing signs of insanity. Besides, it shouldn’t take long for the tests to clear him. A day, maybe two, and he’d be on one of Shadow Mountain’s jets—Wolf claimed they had three—heading down to Coronado to collect Demi.
Three days later, he wasn’t nearly as optimistic.
The insides of his arms were an ugly black and blue and looked like a pair of pincushions. He’d been x-rayed, ultrasounded, and stuffed into so many mechanical hollow tubes that he’d developed an itchy sense of claustrophobia.
Yet he was still here, in this damn isolation chamber, with no end in sight.
He knew there were others in the isolation unit—Wolf, Kait, and Cosky, along with the rest of the warriors who’d arrived on the Thunderbird. But he couldn’t see anyone on either side of his chamber.
The walls of his prison were an impenetrable smoky gray with a glass-like texture that flowed smoothly beneath his fingertips. There was an adjustable hospital bed against the back wall, with a small table beside it. An enormous television was mounted above the door, and a bathroom, complete with a pulsing shower, tucked into the left corner of the chamber. The head was enclosed by the same smokey gray glass as the walls. He could adjust the temperature of the room to his comfort level. He even had privacy when he wanted it. By some marvel of engineering, the punch of a button on the control strip embedded into the table beside the bed would shift the front of the enclosure from clear to smokey.
The space would be comfortable enough if he wasn’t locked in, and if he was getting some damn sleep. But no, those freaky, white-faced demons with the elongated mouths and eyes from his nightmares seemed to have an impenetrable hold on him in here. His nights were whacked.
He paced from wall to wall, absently listening to the faint hiss of air circulating through the chamber by the vents along the back wall. Periodically, he’d glare at the clock merrily ticking down the wasted hours above the bed. That damn clock had become an obsession, a constant reminder of passing time, of what he should be doing, rather than pacing the linoleum floor, or pumping out dozens of pushups and sit-ups, or wasting time watching TV.
He should be tracking down the bastards behind that ugliness in Karaveht. He should be down in Coronado with Demi protecting her from whatever nightmare he’d brought to her door.
At least she was safe…for the moment. Tag said there was no sign she was in danger. Nobody was showing interest in her. Nobody was staking out her condo complex—except for the men he’d hired to do so. But his instincts insisted she was in danger. Or that she soon would be.
And goddammit, she still wasn’t answering his phone calls. The frustration of that left a metallic taste on his tongue.
When the pneumatic door hissed open, he expected a nurse in a protective suit, intent on drawing more blood. Instead, Wolf and a small herd of doctors entered his chamber. Wolf had been released from isolation? That was news. Even more newsworthy was that none of his visitors were wearing protective equipment.
“I’m not contagious?” he asked as his lead doctor, Soloman Brickenhouse, crossed the linoleum toward him.
“No, you are not,” Brickenhouse said. “Every test came back clear. We waited an extra twenty-four hours out of an abundance of caution. But after the latest test results, there’s no need to keep you in isolation any longer.”
Huh…
Aiden frowned, absently rubbing his chin. “It’s not a virus then?”
From what little he knew of viruses, they had unpredictable incubation periods. It seemed unlikely the docs could be certain he wasn’t contagious after four days.
“Not a virus.” Doctor Brickenhouse advanced on the bed and unhooked a clipboard from the metal bar stretching across the foot of the frame. He plucked a pen from the breast pocket of his lab coat. A scratching sound filled the room as he scrawled something unreadable on the paper clipped to the plastic board. “Nor is it an environmental pathogen.” A long, silver braid swung against the back of the white coat as he turned and beckoned a short, round dude forward. “Doctor Cole can explain this better than I.”
Aiden turned toward the dude Brickenhouse had gestured at. This new doc was built like a buoy, if a buoy grew arms and legs and sprouted a bowling ball for a head. He was short enough that the white smock hit him mid-calf. Fuck, the dude looked like a kid playing dress up.
The bowling ball of a guy stepped forward, one finger pressed against the old-fashioned square glasses swallowing his round face. His brown eyes looked enormous beneath the lenses. “We’ve identified the…” he paused as though searching for the closest word, before shrugging, “culprit, that caused your friends to attack each other.”
Culprit? Aiden’s forehead furrowed. That seemed a weird choice of words. Still, at least they’d identified what had caused the insanity. You couldn’t solve a problem without identifying it.
“What was it?” He paused, his muscles bunching. “Do I have what they had?”
“No.” The human bowling ball bounced slightly on his toes. His face was earnest yet concerned. “We found none of the nanobots in your blood, muscle tissue, or skin samples.”
“Nanobots?” He froze. “That’s what killed my team?”
What. The. Hell?
“Well, nanobots are the closest representative to what we found in your teammates’ samples. But it isn’t a clear identification of the…objects…either. We’ve seen nothing like them. While these structures are of an organic nature, they aren’t composed of virus and bacterium DNA cells, or polynucleotides, like typical organic nanobots, nor of metals or diamonds as the typical inorganic bot. Instead, they appear to be composed of organic proteins and elements found within the human body itself. Elements such as iron, calcium, salt…” The doctor shook his bald head. “It’s ingenious really.”
Baffled, Aiden frowned. He’d heard of nanobots, knew they existed. But that was where his knowledge ended.
“Aren’t nanobots a medical thing?” he asked.
Had a medical experiment gone wrong? Two seconds later, he cast that possibility aside. Every instinct he possessed insisted he and his team had been sent into a test zone—the test of a new weapon. Apparently, a nanobot weapon.
“They can be.” Doctor Cole pushed his glasses back up. “They’re microscopic, so they move through the human body and blood with ease. The ones we found in your friends are inactive, so we can’t be certain how they progressed through their hosts. But they must have moved from the original point of contact, as we found heavy concentrations of them in your teammates’ brain tissue. Particularly in the amygdala and hypothalamus, which explains the scenario you described.” When Aiden stared at him blankly, Cole frowned and rocked back on his heels. The movement sent his glasses sliding back down his nose again. He pushed them up. “The amygdala and hypothalamus are two of the structures in the brain that control extreme emotion, as well as violence. There were also heavy concentrations of the bots in the hippocampus, thalamus, and nucleus accumbens, structures within the brain. These structures have been associated with psychotic and schizophrenic behavior and audio and visual hallucinations.” He dropped his hand and lifted his gaze to Aiden’s face. “In short, these nanobots appear to be drawn to the areas in the brain that control violent emotions, along with violent and psychotic behavior.”
Aiden’s entire body tightened. That sure as hell sounded like a fucking weapon to him. A weapon that turned ordinary people into psychotic killers. “You find any of those damn things in me?”
Cole shook his head. “All the samples we pulled from you were clean. Of course, under the circumstances, we couldn’t pull brain tissue, but the bots were not present in your blood, muscle, or skin samples under the AFM—atomic force microscope. We found large concentrations of them in all your teammates’ samples. Plus, while there were high concentrations of the bots in your teammates’ brains—there was no evidence of them in the multiple MRI, SPECT, EEG and FMRI scans we did of your brain.”
Aiden’s chest tightened. Unease crawled through him. “You said they were microscopic. Would they even show up on brain scans?”
“They do if there are enough of them,” Doctor Brickenhouse interrupted. “They form concentrated clusters that can be identified at high magnification. These clusters were visible in your teammates’ brain scans. There were no concentrated masses in yours. With the lack of the bots in your tissue samples and no indication of a large collection in your brain scans, we’re fairly confident that you’re not infected.”
Fairly confident .
Aiden flinched, his stomach cramping at the thought of microscopic bugs crawling through his brain. They might not be insects, but Jesus… The idea of tiny bugs eating away at his brain until there was nothing left but violence and psychosis gave him the willies.
“We’re releasing you from isolation.” Dr. Brickenhouse handed Aiden’s chart to a serious-looking woman in light blue scrubs standing to his right.
That was the best news he’d heard in days. Aiden turned to Wolf. “I’ll take that jet now.”
Thank Christ. He could finally take care of Demi.
Wolf shook his head. “Not yet—”
“I’m afraid you misunderstood,” Brickenhouse interrupted, a polite expression on his high cheek boned face. “While we are releasing you from the isolation chamber, we aren’t releasing you from the medical facility. You’re being transferred to the clinic. We need to do more testing.”
“Why?” Aiden tensed beneath a surge of frustration. “You just said I wasn’t infected. Why keep me here? Why run more tests?”
“Well,” Brickenhouse took a step back, as though he were startled by Aiden’s reaction. Maybe even apprehensive, like his patient was exhibiting overly aggressive behavior.
Aiden forced his rigid shoulders and arms to relax and loosened his clenched hands, trying to project a less lethal attitude.
Brickenhouse relaxed. “The question isn’t whether you carry the bots any longer—”
“—it’s why the bots didn’t infect you,” Dr. Cole nodded in agreement. “If we can zero in on why the bot’s avoided you, we may be able to manufacture a cure. If this is a weapon, as you and others believe, an antidote is essential.”
“The tests we’ll be running next rule out conditions that could have caused the nanobots to reject you as a host. By running a full battery of tests on you and comparing them against your teammates’ results, we might be able to pinpoint why you’re immune.”
Well…hell. He could hardly skip out on that approach, since it might save lives. “How long are we talking about?”
“At least seventy-two hours,” Brickenhouse said, his dark eyes narrowing. “We don’t know what we’re looking for yet. This could take time.”
“You have twenty-four hours,” Aiden interjected. “Get your testing done by then. I’m out of here tomorrow morning.” Both doctors looked like they’d swallowed a lemon. Aiden turned, catching Wolf’s guarded gaze. “I mean it, bro. Demi needs me.” Although she didn’t realize it. “You get me a chopper or a plane and I’ll give you twenty-four hours of testing. No plane, then I’m out of here now. I’ll book my own trip to Coronado.”
Wolf stared at him in silent contemplation, then turned and left the room.
Was that a yes or a no?
“Mr. Winchester,” Dr. Cole’s face folded into lines of disapproval. “Such testing cannot be put on a timetable.”
Aiden shrugged. “Testing can resume when I get back, right? I’ll only be gone a day.”
“Oh,” Dr. Cole’s face turned hopeful again. “You plan on returning?”
“Don’t have much choice.” Aiden left it at that. It wasn’t like he had any other place to go.