Hades (12 page)

She tried to wiggle her toes, it felt like
they moved but no one said anything. She wrinkled up her nose,
something smelled really bad. “What the hell is that awful smell?”
Hades asked.

“I think they’re bringing the stuff from the
lab up through here to dispose of it,” said an unfamiliar
voice.

What stuff from the lab? You guys better
not be disposing of anything without me checking it out!
She
tried to voice the objection but it just echoed through her mind.
She tried to talk so much but only a low moan came out.

“Close the door Keelan. I think I heard her.”
She heard the door close.

“I hope you’re right man, but I didn’t hear a
thing,” Keelan replied. He said it like he felt sorry for
Hades.

Hades ran his finger down her arm. She just
knew it was him, hell, it better be him. “Sweetheart, just wake up
for me, please,” he whispered in her ear. She wanted to so much,
she tried again. She relaxed and rested. She hadn’t managed to do
anything but trying had worn her out.

She tried to move her finger. Yes! That she
could do, but nothing else. She had so much to tell him, she wanted
to hold him. She tried to talk, this time she heard herself moan
and he heard her too. “That was her, she’s trying to talk.”

That was the beginning of her fight to regain
consciousness and control of her own body. She slowly worked her
way forward, moving her finger then her hand. She moaned and then
she whispered one word at a time. She even opened her eyes looking
at her mate so happy to have him right there next to her. She
looked next to him at a stranger. He was a god, she was sure but
that was all she was sure of.

Hades helped her sit up and she could speak
slowly and with effort. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated.
Her head felt like a cannonball had made a direct hit. She was up
for maybe two hours when she was hit with a wave of tiredness. The
doctor who looked so familiar but she couldn’t place, said she
should rest but Hades should wake her regularly so they wouldn’t
lose the progress she had made.

By the next day, she was able to carry on a
stilted conversation and Hades had brought her up to date. The
doctor came in to see her and now without the veil of terrible pain
and misery filling her head, she recognized her.

“Rachel,” Doc greeted her with a raspy voice.
“Origin caught you?”

Hades listened with interest though it didn’t
surprise him that his mate knew the doctor. They were both in the
same field and they were both considered experts. They would either
know each other or at least know of each other.

“Not long after I spoke to you. I expect a
few
I told you sos
but my choices were limited and my
experience with the military wasn’t as golden as yours.”

Rachel had come to her several years ago
because Origin was trying to recruit her and they had been very
aggressive. They had been pushy enough that Rachel spoke to her
about it since they were friends, even if not really close ones.
Doc had suggested she go to work for the military but Rachel had
had a bad experience with a military project so she stayed with her
current job at a college affiliated hospital. Had Doc thought at
the time that Origin would use criminal tactics, she would have
found help for Rachel. Now she thought of all the geneticists she
knew that had mentioned Origin’s recruiting methods in a negative
way then ended up working for them later, there were a lot of them.
Maybe she should have made the connection but she had been so
career oriented then.

“How are you feeling?” Rachel asked.

“Dull pain, memory okay, but not quite myself
yet,” Doc said using a minimum of words.

“You had us all worried for a while. I
believe you’ll make a full recovery. The reason we didn’t do more
for you is you are going through a change but it hasn’t fully
completed yet. It seems to be helping your healing but I don’t know
much about it. I was afraid to interfere with the healing
properties you seem to be gaining. I’ve not been able to test my
own changes because my lab assistants watch every move I make.”

“How’d they find two of them that were so
loyal to Origin?” Hades asked.

“They didn’t. They were Origin soldiers that
they trained to do the lab work.”

Hades got on his radio. “Lock up the lab
assistants, now.” He turned to Rachel. “We left them free to help
you.”

“I needed the help, but I can do without them
now.”

“I’ll want to look at my x-rays and lab
work,” Doc said.

“I expected that,” Rachel said as she handed
Doc a folder. “You’ve not changed a bit, you always want to look at
things yourself.” Her smile took away the some of the sharpness of
her words. She was right, Doc knew she was and she tried to work on
that personal flaw.

“You’ve changed too much,” Doc said as she
took in the haunted look on Rachel’s face, the dark circles under
her eyes, and the fact that she looked like she’d aged at double
the rate since she had last seen her. Worry and concerns had
started to mark her until then youthful face.

Doc had known Rachel, who was younger by a
few years, since Rachel had graduated and decided to go into the
field of genetics. They had worked together briefly but kept in
touch since the work they did was so closely related and they
sometimes contacted each other to get a second opinion on research
results. At least they had kept in touch until lately. Rachel was
good people and Doc would never believe otherwise even if she had
been coerced into working for Origin.

“I know, I’ve learned too much about the dark
side that used to be hidden from me.”

Doc wished Rachel would tell her more about
what was going on here in her personal life and at the facility.
Everyone that came in to speak to Hades looked nervous and seemed
to be walking on eggshells. It was clear things were going on here
they were keeping from her. It made her wonder what was going on
and how she could find out. Right now, she was just glad to be
alive after what she had gone through but they should know she was
strong enough to be told.

Origin’s dirty dozen, there had been about
that many at the start, had herded her in the direction of the
facility but she’d taken out two of them and injured some of the
others. The distraction, as two of their fellow soldiers screamed
like girls, allowed her to break away from them and head in a
direction they didn’t want her to go. Only two had continued after
her and while it had seemed like a good idea at the time, it had
almost cost her her life.

She looked up at Hades who sat holding her
hand and looking at her with so much love she wondered how she
could have ever thought he would do her wrong. She felt a warm
feeling come over her as she watched him. His mind was elsewhere
but he held her hand, his finger swirling patterns on her wrist.
There was a knock at the door and Keelan came in with another god
following close behind.

“This is Lander, he’s the one Rachel is mated
to.”

Something in the way Keelan said it made Doc
feel he disapproved of Rachel, the mating, or both.

Hades said nothing so Doc said, “Rachel is a
great doctor and a sweet girl. You’re lucky to have her.”

Keelan looked surprised. “You knew Rachel
before?”

“I’ve known Rachel for years. She’s good
people and always has been.” Lander shot her a smile, he must have
to defend his mate often. “I knew her when Origin tried to hire her
and she refused. Had I known they were forcing scientists to work
for them, I would have made sure that was stopped.”

She could see Keelan still wasn’t convinced.
There was another knock and Rachel came in. “Just checking on my
patient.”

The atmosphere grew tense between Keelan and
Rachel, she clearly knew how he felt about her. Doc had no idea why
except that Keelan probably considered everyone working for Origin
the enemy. He must not realize that some of their employees, mostly
the scientists that were top in their fields, were coerced into
working for them.

“I need to know about the biological tissues
that were here. Someone better tell me about them,” Doc
demanded.

“Why don’t you asked your good friend, I
think she had a lot to do with whatever Origin was up to,” Keelan
said bitterly.

“If she hadn’t told me, I would have never
known about it. There was an self destruct set on the storage
cooler and had she not given me the combination, the evidence would
be gone.” Hades gave Keelan an intense look.

“I’m sure it was a trick of some kind.”

“Why do you only see what you want to see?”
Rachel asked Keelan.

“I’ve seen you hurting me and my brothers
since you’ve come here. You’ve never seemed to care, never tried to
stop them. All I’ve seen in you is cruelty and a willingness to do
harm,” Keelan accused her.

“Damn you, Keelan!” she yelled as she turned
away from him, but she didn’t walk away. Instead she pulled up the
back of her shirt. Her back was scarred with deep criss-cross marks
clearly made by a whip. She’d been whipped more than once because
the marks were aged to varying degrees some barely healed. “Does
this look like I did nothing?” She rushed from the room.

Lander started to follow her but Keelan
stopped him. “You knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She didn’t want anyone to know. The marks
shame and embarrass her even though I told her they were a mark of
her bravery. She’s fought for us many times but the first time she
did it in front of Alex,” Lander said.

“Alex disappeared,” Keelan said.

“He was murdered and they said the next time
she disagreed with her instructions in front of a god, that not
only would that god die, but they’d choose another to die with him.
She did what she could, but she had no choice but to follow their
instructions,” Lander said.

“Did she tell you, Hades? Is that how you
knew?”

“No, the sick fucks kept tapes of her
beatings and watched them for entertainment. Argos found them when
he went through their tapes looking for information. He informed
me.”

“I’m sorry, Lander, I didn’t know.”

“Don’t tell me, tell Rachel.”

“I will, brother, I promise.”

“So now that we’re done upsetting the
resident doctor, someone better tell me about the tissue samples,”
Doc said.

Lander and Keelan looked clueless so she
looked over at Hades. “Okay, I just don’t want you all worked up
while you’re healing.”

“Too late. Now get on with it.”

“When I spoke to Rachel she described the
experiments they were trying to do here. It sounded like the lab
where we found all those embryos and fetuses before. She confirmed
it was breeding tests and they had her working on some kind of
mating drug. She slowed down the research and made mistakes on
purpose. I think we found the source of the drugs I was given. The
embryos were brought in and the drugs were tested on them.”

“What do you mean, mating drug?” Keelan asked
outraged.

“Origin has been trying to find a drug that
will cancel out the bond soul mates have and allow or cause them to
mate with whatever female they are put with. They tested it out on
me when a spy infiltrated Olympus but it only knocked me out. It
didn’t effect my mating chemicals or my desire for my mate.”

“Shit!” Keeland said. “Why do they want to do
that?”

“They want to breed more gods and they no
longer have access to Cronos DNA,” Doc said. “The mating chemicals
or lack of them, prevent fertility. They are doing two things,
testing them on gods so they can breed them to whoever they want,
and trying to add them to make god’s sperm viable. They are having
just enough luck that an embryo forms but it lacks what it needs to
survive and spontaneously aborts.”

“Father Cronos was just a tall tale they told
us like the human boogeyman,” Lander said ignoring everything else
Doc said.

“Don’t leave your bed at night or Father will
get you. Eat all your food or Cronos will punish you.” Keelan said
with a chuckle.

“No, Cronos is real and we have him at
Olympus,” Hades assured them.

“I never thought he could be real,” Lander
said in awe.

“Me either,” said Keelan.

“Well he’s real and he’s not human,” Doc
explained.

“What is he if he’s not human?” Keelan
asked.

“He’s something I’ve never seen before,” Doc
admitted.

“I’d like to see him sometime, maybe talk to
him if possible,” Keelan said.

“You’ll have to come to Olympus, and Cronos
is in a deep sleep, but he’s still alive. His body has completely
shut down except on a cellular level. I can’t call it hibernation
because animals in hibernation wake sometimes when they need to eat
because they are basically just in a deep sleep, while this is a
complete shutdown…”

“Please, Honey, this is more than any of us
need to know,” Hades said.

“Sorry,” Doc replied. She had been about to
go into detail about Cronos’s condition and these guys were
warriors who really didn’t care about those things. Medicine was
her passion and Cronos was so unusual any geneticist, hell, any
doctor would be interested not only in him but his state of being
which human medicine couldn’t explain.

“I understand, it’s your area of interest.
Rachel made samples of all the tissues she has so you can take them
home to study. We will be going home soon, I called Zeus to let him
know to send the copters after us. So far, Greenland hasn’t given
us an answer on what they will do with this facility. Keelan, your
gods can stay for now, or go with us when the copters arrive.”

“I’ll let my gods know and get back with you
once everyone has made their decision. Right now, my feelings are
mixed. I’d like to see Cronos and the other gods, our brothers, but
I also have a need to claim this place and make it the home it
always should have been,” Keelan explained just before he left.