45. Chapter 45
Chapter forty-five
Day 23 Denali, Alaska
His fingers drumming against his jean clad thigh, Cosky’s eyes narrowed on Aiden’s clenched jaw as he finished his sitrep. “So, yeah, we’re fucked. Back to square one.”
Aiden grunted an acknowledgement and rolled his tense shoulders. Fucked described them alright.
“Kuznetsov’s mistress,” Aiden said. It took effort to keep his tone even. “She’s obviously more involved than you boys suspected.”
According to Cosky, they’d found multiple concealed weapons in the bag she’d left on the Thunderbird, including knives hidden in the heels of her shoes. And then there was the syringe she’d used to kill Daniel and make her escape. One didn’t carry concealed weapons unless they were worried about their safety. Had she felt in danger because of her proximity to Kuznetsov? Or had she been involved in her lover’s weapons dealings? The fact she’d killed Daniel so easily showed she had the same psychopathic tendencies as her lover.
“Did the lab isolate what was in that syringe?” His mouth tightened beneath a surge of guilt. He should have been there. He should have been that bitch’s assigned guard, not Daniel. This was his battle. It hadn’t been Daniel’s.
“Yeah, about that…” Cosky scrubbed his palms down his face. He followed that with a sudden, hard yawn. “Faith says the residue they found inside the syringe was tetrodotoxin—or at least a pumped-up version of it. Tetrodotoxin is found in the Blue-Ringed Octopus. One bite can kill an adult human in minutes. Only the shit in the syringe was synthetically modified for quicker absorption.” His face darkened. “Daniel didn’t have a fucking chance.”
“When we run into her again—” and they would, he’d make sure of it— “we need to be prepared for her toxic tricks. Has the lab come up with an antidote?”
Cosky shrugged. “They’re working on it.”
Aiden simply nodded. The lab had a lot on their plate. Right now, they were focused on the nanobots Wolf had returned with.
The active nanobots.
The tension of that news still made Aiden’s jaw ache.
“I hope the lab rats know what they’re doing.” He stirred uneasily, his skin crawling. “One slip up and those damn things could infect everyone on base.”
Twitching fingers…twitching faces…blind, enraged eyes…the spray of blood across snow.
With a deep breath and a masked shudder, he took a mental trip around the memory.
“Faith says there’s been no contact between the lab personnel and the bots since they transferred them to the tank with the atomic force microscope.” Cosky didn’t look relieved, though. Fuck, he looked as uneasy as Aiden felt. “They’ve sealed the fuckers inside a leak proof, specially designed container made from the same alloy as the ones that Wolf brought back. As an extra precaution, the tank they sealed them in is enclosed inside a specially designed air-vacuumed room. They’ve got a bunch of those high magnification microscopes looking inside the tank and monitoring the room surrounding it. The images are then beamed to computers on the outside.” He paused, looking queasy. “So far, their precautions seem to hold them.”
Aiden shied away from thinking about that too hard. They were damn lucky none of the lab rats had been infected when they’d transferred the bots to their new home. Plus, those fucking bots were microscopic. How the hell could the lab rats be so sure they wouldn’t find some tiny crack in their tank and sneak out? Same with their specially designed room.
The damn things shouldn’t be kept anywhere near people. It was too fucking dangerous. But it didn’t sound like there was any other choice. It would take months to set up a remote lab that could monitor and experiment on the fuckers. They didn’t have months. They needed answers and ways to deactivate them ASAP.
“How the hell can they do any testing if nobody can get close to them?” Aiden asked, trying hard not to let his doomsday imagination go wild.
From Cosky’s wince, he was going through the same disaster scenarios. “Robotics. Faith says everything is done through robotics. From itty bitty microscopic ones inside the tank, to big ones outside.” His face turned grim. “Your brother was damn lucky. He hit O’Neill and then the ground hard enough to break some ribs along with his arm. If the bot case had cracked…” He shook his head, his face grimmer than ever.
It had been six days since the Thunderbird had returned to base, and it looked like they’d gotten lucky. No signs of bot infection. Cosky, Wolf and the rest of the Thunderbird’s crew had been released from isolation the day before, a day after Aiden had awakened.
He still couldn’t believe he’d slept through the whole damn thing. Instead of joining forces with Wolf and his men, he’d left them to shoulder his fight, his responsibility. He’d pushed to get the Shadow Mountain warriors involved, and then he’d abandoned them. Not by choice, but the results were the same. Other men had paid the price because of his obsession. One man had died because of him. Another lay in the bed next door, fighting for his life.
The guilt of that sank deep, burned like acid in his gut.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Cosky’s voice went hard.
“Yeah? What’s that?” Cosky had no fucking clue what was going on in his head.
His brother-in-law’s voice turned to steel. “You’re blaming yourself, thinking you let the rest of us fight your battle, that one man is dead and another dying because of you. And that’s bullshit. This bot weapon affects all of us. If it gets loose, it will threaten everyone, including the people we love. We didn’t go after Kuznetsov because of you. We did it because it had to be done, because it was the first step in the fight to stop the bots from eradicating humanity. Benioko knew about this weapon and the danger it posed before we pulled your ass out of Karaveht, before your teammates were even infected. He would have approved the mission to bring in Kuznetsov even if you hadn’t been involved.”
Well, fuck. Apparently, Cosky did know what he was thinking. A long, uncomfortable silence fell between them. Cosky broke it by clearing his throat.
“Just so you know.” Cosky hesitated, watching him with an odd expression on his face—partially reluctant, partially resigned. He finally released a what-the-hell sigh. “Demi spent nearly every second while you were getting your beauty sleep sitting beside your bed.”
“So I’ve heard.” Aiden stiffened; this was not a conversational jaunt he wanted to take.
Her bedside vigil didn’t mean shit, other than she had a good heart. It sure as hell didn’t mean she’d changed her mind about getting back together with him. Hell, she hadn’t visited him since he woke up. Sure, she’d been sitting beside him when he’d first cracked his eyes open and broke free from those weird-ass dreams, but she hadn’t been back since.
Cosky grimaced, reluctance heavy on his face. “Kait thinks she’s willing to reopen the conversation about your deadass love life.”
A spark of hope lit. It immediately guttered. Demi had made it crystal clear that she wasn’t willing to hook up with a guy whose entire career involved risking his life. Nothing about that had changed between closing his eyes and opening them. Hell, all she had to do was peek into the room next door and look at the grieving woman sitting by Samuel’s bed to realize she’d made the right decision.
Not that he wanted to talk about that. He searched for a change of subject. “Where’s Kait, anyway?”
For a moment it looked like Cosky wasn’t going to answer, but then he shrugged and squared his shoulders as though expecting pushback. “She’s talking to your doctors.”
Aiden stiffened. “What the—”
“Before you go off half-cocked,” Cosky broke in with a long-suffering sigh, “the meeting wasn’t Kait’s idea. Your doctors asked to meet with her.”
That stopped Aiden cold. His doctors had requested a meeting with his sister. “Why?”
Cosky shrugged, looking baffled himself. “Something about the healings she’s done on you.”
“That makes no sense,” Aiden growled. “Why would they need to know that?”
“I’m sure Kait will fill you in when she gets back.”
As if on cue, the accordion-style door slid back and his sister walked into his room.
She’d barely taken two steps before Aiden launched his first question. “What did my doctors want with you?”
She shot Cosky an annoyed look, but the dude just shrugged.
“They’re his doctors. He’s got a right to know.”
The nape of Aiden’s neck prickled. Was there something the doctors weren’t telling him? “What’s wrong? What did they say?”
She frowned, her forehead wrinkling, looking confused herself. “It’s not so much what they said, as much as all the questions they asked.”
“What the hell did they ask?” The tension in his neck crawled up to the base of his head, which started to pound.
“They wanted to know about all the times I’ve healed you over the years and what injuries you sustained that caused the healings.”
Aiden cocked his head, puzzled by the explanation. “Like when I damaged my spine?”
“That and others, going all the way back to our childhood.” She lifted her eyebrows. “I didn’t realize until I started listing them how many times I’ve healed you. Turns out you’re incredibly accident-prone.”
Aiden crossed his ankles and settled back against the pillows. “Why would they want to know any of that?”
A thoughtful look entered her eyes. She absently scraped her thumbnail along the bottom of her lower lip. “I don’t know, but the questions weren’t just about my healings on you. They asked other things too. Like how often you were sick, whether you’d had any major or minor illnesses over the years. Then they moved on to Dad and Mom. All sorts of questions about their health, too.”
“Like a family health history questionnaire?” Cosky asked, his eyebrows rising.
“I filled one of those out when I first arrived,” Aiden said. “Back when I was in isolation.” He frowned across the room at the pleats on the accordion door.
“They must be double checking.” Kait settled into the chair beside Cosky. “I’d tell you to ask the doctors yourself, but I’m a thousand percent sure you’re already planning on that.”
“Damn right,” Aiden muttered. “They say anything about when they’re going to release me?”
“No. But it can’t be long now. You seem like you’re back to normal.” Kait smiled at him, relief shining in her eyes. “You don’t seem nearly as tired as you did before you woke up, either. You’re never sleeping when I visit. Not like you were before.”
Aiden grimaced. He wasn’t sleeping because he was afraid to shut his damn eyes. He was tired of the fucking nightmares messing with his mind. Dread carved a hole in his gut. If he could figure out what the dreams were trying to tell him, maybe he could address the problem. But those damn twisted people, with their elongated eyes and mouths, never said a damn thing. They just stared at him with their slanted, hollow eyes, like they expected him to know what they wanted.
Like they were waiting for something from him.