Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) (31 page)

“What have we here? Bring her into my office.” He leads the way through the mob as head to his office. It only takes a minute or so, it probably would’ve been faster if we weren’t all clustered together in the hall.

“Here we are, set her down here so I can examine her.”

We go inside a very small room that has a tiny desk.

“This is your office? My bathroom at home is bigger than this.”

“Well we couldn’t exactly afford to give me the space that a real office has, anything large enough to fit people in it is converted into a hospital room.”

“Understandable, why don’t we just go into one of the rooms then? Because I doubt that she will be better right away.”

“What's her name?” He asks, he takes out a light and opens her eyelid.

“It’s Kate, and Doc what the hell is the point of shining that in her eye?”

“I’m checking to see if her pupillary reflex is good, it just lets me know that her body is still functioning properly.”

“And is it?”

“Yes, she will fine. What were you doing anyway; she wouldn’t have passed out without a good reason.”

“We were stuck in a lift, and there were fumes coming in; making it very hard to breathe after a while. I was on the verge if passing out as well when we were rescued, somewhat.” My mind flashes back to the two men that tried to kill me.

“What exactly happened, I mean; we know that there was an explosion. That much is clear, but what really happened?”

“I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss this with you, sorry Doc. It might cause a panic, and we are already in a bad situation we don’t need to add to that stress level with more stress.”

“I won’t blab to anyone, you can trust me,” he urges.

“Actually no Sir, I can't trust anyone.”

That response catches him off guard, “what do you mean by that?”

“Our enemies are everywhere Doc; don’t trust anyone, for your sake,” I put my hand on his shoulder, “now, can I move her?”

“Of course you can, besides she can't stay in my office.”

“Ok, you gotta stop calling it an office, it’s a box. My closet is bigger than this,” I bend over to pick Kate up; I have just the room in mind. “Oh, are those cryo tanks ready?” The thought of Syreena being put into stasis has been hanging in my mind ever since I had the conversation with the good Doctor. I never stop thinking about her, she’s the one most single important thing in my life; one that’ll stay in my life.

“Yes, they are almost ready; I could have them in full working order in say…an hour?”

“When can we wake her up?” An hour? That isn’t soon enough.

“Like I said before it can be dangerous, we don’t know how long she will last before she goes into critical condition; it might be minutes or hours. It would be best if we do so right before we plan to put her in.”

“Alright, just let me know when you plan to do that.”

“I will come and get you when the time comes.”

“Thanks Doc, I owe you one.”

I turn out of the office and look for Syreenas room. It’s hard to find because of all the people crammed everywhere. I don’t even know how this place can function, you can’t move a foot in either direction before hitting someone. It must make the staff extremely stressed seeing as they can’t do their job properly.

It takes only a minute before I’m standing outside her door. I go inside.

Luckily the room is small enough so that it’s only able to hold one patient. A bed with two chairs on each side; there’s also a small table in the corner of the room.

I pull the two chairs together and make a makeshift bed; I set Kate down gently on them. It isn’t an actual bed but it’ll do for now.

The only place for me to sit is on the bed next to Syreena.

“I’m back, like I said I would be. I also made a new friend since I was here last. She’s a really cute kid that I saved from her suicidal father. Hopefully you’ll meet her, if not today then someday in the future when I come back for you.”

I sigh as a single tear rolls down my cheek, there’s nothing more painful than watching her lie here, completely helpless, and I know that there’s nothing that I can do that’ll make her better. That’s probably the most painful part, knowing that I can’t save her.

I sit here talking to her for what feels like hours, eventually though my needs overruled my wants.

“I’ll be back ok?” I stand up; my stomach’s been gnawing at me since I got out of the lift. You’d think that I’d eaten enough food previously before my meeting with Weber.

I get off the bed and look back to Kate, surprisingly she sitting there, looking at me. She’s completely awake.

“How long have you been up for?”

“A while,” is all she says, she looks at me like she’s afraid.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I’m your friend not your enemy.”

She gets up and rushes to me, she tries to wrap her arms all the way around my body. I bend down and hug her back; even though I don’t know her at all it still feels nice to have a connection.

“You wanna stay in here and keep her company while I try and get us some food?”

She nods vigorously, she must be terrified enough of something to want to stay confined in a room, maybe she’s afraid of crowds.

“Ok I’ll be right back. Um, just talk to her; apparently they can hear still when they are in a coma.”

She hops up on the bed and stares at me; she doesn’t utter a sound though. It’s possible that what she wants to say she can’t say in front of me, children eh? Always shy of their true feelings.

****

Day 33: Cycle 3: Period 2: Year 2397

It takes me nearly a half hour in the mess hall to get some food, the line is just terrible. Luckily, it’s easy to get back, the hallways have died down a bit, with the occasional group of people scurrying about.

I open the door to Syreenas room. Kate’s still sitting on the bed, although this time she isn’t talking; she’s braiding Syreenas hair. I actually laugh at this, it takes a lot for me to laugh nowadays. I’m actually surprised that a girl this young knows how to braid someone’s hair, especially if it isn’t her own. It must be hard seeing that Syreena can’t move her head at all.

I smile, it’s strange; at this moment I’m the most peaceful state that I’ve been in since I was captured. It brings a strange image into my mind; it’s my family. It makes perfect sense for Kate to stay with us; if her entire family’s wiped out then she might want to find a new one. Once we’re through with this mess I could adopt her.

I shake my head, a lot of my plan that my mind has just devised relied on a lot of ‘ifs’. It’s bad to think like that, the only thing that you need to do to survive is live in the moment.

“Having fun are we?” I must’ve startled her when the words came out of my mouth, her head snaps around to see who’s in the room.

“Oh it’s just you.”

“Who else would it be?” I set the food down on the table.

She jumps up and runs for the food, she must be starving to move that fast.

“There was a Doctor in here,” she shovels in a spoonful of oatmeal, “he came in here after you left.”

“Was his name Zanning?”

“Can't remember, he went to her and then left,” she never lifts her gaze from the food.

Curiosity takes the best of me, what if it was another traitor? Although, how would they know who to target? “Did he do anything to her?”

“All he did was look at those screens over there, and then he wrote them down and then he left.” She manages to say behind a mouthful of food.

I don’t know for sure that the information’s accurate, if that was really what the Doctor was doing, as far as I know Kate wouldn’t lie to me, intentionally at least.

“Leave some of that for me ok?” It isn’t much food, but I always try to be the nice guy, out of the entire heaping plate all I need is a little bit of it.

Kate nods at me before she swallows, “thank you for getting this.”

“Don’t worry about it kiddo. It’s not like I was going to let you starve. What kind of person would I be then?”

Right when Kate starts to say something back the door squeals open. Doctor Zannings head pokes through the gap, “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Not that I know of, please come in,” I gesture to one of the chairs, “why don’t you have a seat?”

“Ah, thank you. As you are wondering about our previous discussion, I do believe that we are ready to revive your wife and then put her in cryo.”

“Already?” It doesn’t seem like an hour’s passed already.

“Yes, yes; if you and the girl want to come to the cryo chambers then we can begin.”

“Can't we just do it in here?”

“What part?”

“The talking part obviously.”

“No, no; we can't revive her in here. If we do that and she goes into a catatonic state then she will not last long. If we do it in the chambers then that will no longer be an issue seeing as we will be ready to put her in stasis.”

He does have a valid point there; I lean over to Kate and whisper in her ear. “Was that the man that came in here earlier?”

She shakes her head.

I look up at the ceiling, there’s possibly security cameras somewhere in the room, it takes me only seconds to locate it.

“Is there a security room somewhere close by?” I ask Zanning.

“Why?” He raises his eyebrow dubiously.

“Because I asked, that’s why.”

“There should be one just down the hallway here. Is something wrong?”

“We will just have to see in a sec now don’t we?” I usher him out the door, “come on Kate, you can bring the food with us if you want,” I wave over to her to follow me. She grabs the plate and runs over to my side.

I let Zanning lead the way through the corridor, the security room hopefully recorded what transpired when I was in the mess hall.

“Surely a child shouldn’t be going in here, for security reasons.”

“You’re kidding me right?” I scoff at him, “like you said, she’s just a child what could she possibly do that would harm anyone?”

He doesn’t acknowledge that I said anything, but he doesn’t push the matter further. He makes a few turns in the corridor, “here we are,” he takes his security pass that’s hanging around his neck and swipes it inside the door pad.

The guard inside is already standing up on full alert with his hand down by his hip, in case he needs to draw his weapon.

“Relax Jeremy, it’s just me,” Zanning says.

I look at his uniform; he appears to be military, which makes no sense, why is he stuck in this room being a security guard? Surely there are better things that he can do with his time.

I quickly identify his rank that’s embroidered onto his shoulders.

“Sargent, I take it that you keep records of all the footage from the security cameras?”

“For security reasons of course,” he replies.

“Can you pull up the previous footage from room two-oh-three?”

“Sure, just give me a second,” he scrolls through the monitor icons and finds the files that have the time signature on them from the time when I had left for the mess hall.

“Sir, is there any reason why you are doing this?”

“If you must know there was a man in that room that was doing something to my wife’s monitor, I want to know if he tampered with anything while he was in there.”

“How do you know that there was a man in there Sir?”

I gesture to Kate, “she was in the room when he came in.”

“And he didn’t notice her at all while he was in there?”

I look at Kate, “did he know that you were even in the room?”

She shakes her head.

“Sorry Sir, but there is nothing in this footage, see?” He points at the screen, “there’s you leaving the premise and the girl is just sitting there, alone. Even if I scroll through all this footage till you time you return -which I already heave by the way- there is still no one in the room, she is constantly alone.”

I look at Kate again, “are you sure that a man came in the room Kate?”

She nodded her head, “he was there, I saw him.”

All of a sudden the security room is just one big alarm going off, communicators on all frequency are going haywire.

“What in the hell?” The guard says, his hands fly all over the intercoms. “Sir, I’m getting reports that people all over several medical levels are dying, all at once.”

“Doc is that possible? Do we have a contagion on our hands?”

“Not likely, we scan everyone before we take them in; there have been no known diseases or anything like that in this base yet.”

“Sir, take a look at this,” the guard points back at the monitor that’s in front of him, “is that the guy?” He asks Kate.

She looks up at the monitor for a second to verify his identity; she nods at all of us.

“How long ago was that recorded?” I ask him.