He raised his hand. “I believe you.”
She stared at him for so long he was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and then she finally said, “You remember everything?”
He sighed and collapsed on the couch. “Pretty much.”
“What about the weave?”
A memory of being burned alive flashed through his head. “I know you sedated me but kept me awake so that I would suffer.”
Her face was guarded. “You do?”
“It’s okay. I deserved it.”
She continued staring at him. “For what you did?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m a bad person, Kara. I deserve to die. I want to!”
She shook her head. “I’ve thought about it, and I don’t agree.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” she said. “What happened to you was wrong. The IED in Iraq. The Red Cross losing your papers. The StrikeForce induction. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m a terrible person,” he said. “I’ve done terrible things. I’ve killed people. Lots of people.”
“You’ve saved thousands of lives. Tens of thousands. I read the mission files. You saved all those people—”
“I’m not a super-soldier, Kara. I’m just a… broken experiment that’s outlived its usefulness.”
“John…”
He took her hands in his. “I’m going to die, and there’s no changing that. I don’t mind.”
She squeezed his hands. “You should, John. You should fight for your life.”
“I’m never leaving this place.”
Kara leaned in suddenly and kissed him, her tongue seeking out his.
“What’s that for?”
She pulled back. “What if you could leave this place?”
“And go where?” he asked. “There’s nowhere on earth where they couldn’t find me.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point?”
She grabbed his shoulders and shook him gently. “Do you want to die down here, under this mountain?”
“It’s as good as anywhere.”
“What if you could die a free man? What if you could feel the sun against your skin and the wind against your face? After all you’ve done, don’t you deserve that?”
John’s mouth dropped. “I can’t believe you, of all people, are suggesting I should run away!”
Kara’s mouth formed a thin line. “I was wrong. You need to get out of here while you still can.”
“Even if I could get off the base, they can track me. The Implant has a GPS system. Anywhere I go, there’s either Wi-Fi or a cell phone tower. The Implant will phone home and tell them where I am.”
“What if I could help you escape?”
“What about the Implant?” John asked.
“Let me worry about that,” Kara said.
“Are you sure about this?” John asked.
Kara paused at the door to medical. “We need the tablet. Once we have it, we’ll smuggle you out of the base.”
Two soldiers approached them. He took a deep breath, but they passed without so much as a second look, continuing through the tunnel.
“Relax,” Kara whispered. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Yet,” he whispered back. “We haven’t done anything wrong yet.”
She shook her head, opened the door, and pulled him inside. “We’ll be all right as long as—”
Dr. Elliot glanced up from his desk. “Kara, what are you doing here?”
John blinked. Oh shit.
Kara pointed at the examination table. “Just sit there, and Dr. Elliot will take a look.”
Elliot stood and gave John a curious look. “Is he experiencing complications? Has he noticed any new pain or discomfort?”
“The gunshot wound to his arm,” Kara said. She turned and gave John a meaningful nod. “You need to take a look at it.”
Elliot grabbed his tablet and an armband sensor and approached the table, placing the sensor on John’s right bicep, a few inches above the scabbed-over bullet wound. “This will collect your vitals and pull data from the Implant.”
Kara was nodding at Elliot, but John was clueless as to what she was trying to convey. He opened his mouth, and she nodded at Elliot again. He was about to speak when Kara turned, picked up a heavy metal tray, and spun around and slammed the metal tray against Elliot’s head with a ringing thunk.
Elliot fell to the floor and raised his head, his eyes dull. “Wha?”
Kara slammed the tray against Elliot’s head again, and Elliot collapsed to the floor. John stared at her in shock. “What the hell?”
“We’ve got to hurry,” Kara said. She opened a wall cabinet and withdrew another tablet and a device similar to the arm sensor.
“You can’t just knock someone out like that,” John said. “This isn’t a video game. He could have a concussion!”
“Do you want to stand around and wait for him to come to?” Kara demanded. “Doctors are supposed to follow a code of ethics. The experiments he performed on you violated that code.”
“But—”
“We do this and we get you out of here,” Kara said, “or you’re going to die without ever seeing daylight again.”
He thought about it for several seconds. “What’s next?”
Kara smiled and pulled a bundle of black zip ties from her scrubs. “Help me.”
Minutes later and Elliot’s hands and legs were zip-tied together. Kara removed a bottle from a refrigerator in the corner, filled a syringe, and injected Elliot’s arm.
“What is that?” John asked.
“A weakened version of the sedative used in the Implant,” Kara said. “It will keep him knocked out for ten hours. Maybe twelve.”
“Is that enough time?”
Kara smiled grimly. “If we’re not safely out of here in ten hours, we will either be locked up or dead.”
“You’re sure this will work?” John asked.
“Just relax,” Kara said. “You’ll be out of there in no time.”
John tried to relax, but his arms wrapped around his legs and his knees bent back until he fitted into a space slightly larger than a beach ball within the metal box. His chest was so constricted he felt he could barely breathe.
“I can’t hold this position,” he said. “It hurts bad.”
“That’s what the armband is for,” Kara said. “I’ll administer a sedative, a muscle relaxer, and a painkiller. You’ll be fine.”
“What about the Implant?”
Kara leaned over and patted his head. “The tablet is Elliot’s master controller. With the arm relay, I can control the Implant and shut off its signal. It won’t phone home, and it won’t accept the kill code.”
He twisted his head until he caught her eye. “You didn’t just think of this.”
She offered him a wry smile. “We can talk about it later.”
“You shouldn’t risk yourself like this.”
“It’s my decision to make,” Kara said, gently closing the lid and plunging him into darkness.
There was a rattling and then the sound of metal clasps snapping shut. She tapped on the box and said, “I’m going to activate the Implant. You’ll be under in a few seconds. A Janet flight leaves for Las Vegas in twenty minutes. I’ll tell them I’m escorting a biomedical project for Elliot. I’ve already written the transfer order from his terminal. An hour after that and we’ll be boarding a private flight into O’Hare Airport. I’ve got a friend waiting for us with a car.”
He took a breath, trying to get some oxygen into his lungs. “I trust you, Kara.”
“What do you have, Dewey?” Karen asked.
Dewey pointed to the monitor on his desk. “I was able to trace the post with the financial information. It was routed through a Tor server, but since I had already hacked a bunch of them, it didn’t take long to work my way through the rest of the servers in the network.”