“I didn’t say I wanted them in shape. I said I wanted them in the memoriam. It will be the leverage to make her inject herself back in. They have to be alive and inside. That needs to happen before she gets here. You have thirty-two hours.”
“That’s precise.”
“Well, you have thirty-two hours because at thirty-two and one minute, you’re going to join them. I know you’ve also been in the memoriam, Dr. Morgan, though I’m tempted to begin right now. You don’t seem to be suffering from any of the maladies you are so worried about in these two. Care to take their place?”
With a careless shrug, Oz set the digital tablet to the side. Then met Smithson’s gaze evenly. “Fine. When your technicians screw it up again, hopefully they don’t lobotomize me.”
Dirk’s fingers closed into a fist. The only outward sign of a reaction to the conversation. Oz couldn’t see Hatch, now behind him, or any reaction he might be demonstrating amidst the situation. Probably a good thing. Whatever animosity they really harbored while nursing some hope that he was there to help would actually serve them all well.
They were not in a position for sharing confidences. Every interaction was heavily monitored, not only by the armed mercenaries surrounding them, but also the electronic surveillance.
Smithson glared at him, his eyes narrowing. Oz waited, schooling his features into something placid. The expression he wore when a superior tore into him in front of his colleagues because a surgery went wrong. The calm he needed in the operating room when a life literally rested in his hands and he couldn’t get the clamp to hold on a shredding artery.
The same calm he’d embraced for five excruciating years as they fought to get Valda back.
Truly, neither Smithson nor the gun worried him.
After a long moment, Smithson finally lowered the weapon. His scowl deepened. “Thirty-two hours, Doctor. Then we’re booting you in.”
Without another word, he all but stomped his way across the room. Every step radiated his displeasure. The rush wasn’t lost on Oz. He continued over to the cabinet to remove the next round of meds to inject into the IVs. He wanted to get them mobile, but he had to do it by degrees.
Three of the mercs in the room went with Smithson, leaving three heavily armed ones behind. Three. One for each of them.
Oz ignored them, much as he had since they’d carried his patients in here, and went to work. His timetable had become incredibly compressed. They needed to be out in under thirty-one hours.
If Valda really was on her way, they needed to intercept her. Then he could try to explain his reasoning for how he chose to leave. That was if Dirk didn’t dislocate his jaw when he found out.
Cautioning himself to one step a time, he got to work.
The hours counted down far more swiftly than Oz would have liked. He got them hydrated. Upped their pain medication slowly, so that the worst of the injuries would be more of a dull ache. He added nutrients and antibiotics to flush out infection. And every time he ran a scan on them, he activated the nanites in their systems.
One byproduct of the core nanites was if they weren’t in active engagement in the brain, they could serve other functions, including supporting the immune system. As far as Oz had been able to determine with Hatch’s assistance, no one had used them in that manner. It had helped to program some to encourage them to sustain Valda’s primary functions, in addition to the other equipment.
He had no idea of how well it worked, but he’d seen her moving before he left. Functioning and surviving. That was something. He had to push thoughts of her aside, because otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to function.
Managing to cobble together some sleep in between checking on them, he also spent some time “researching” their condition and the equipment that Blossom was using. The set up for their memoriam interface was similar to the machine Hatch stole, but not at the same time. They’d made some significant changes. That actually might be in their favor, since the one he’d taken hadn’t worked exactly as specified in the beginning either. It took Hatch and Oz time to calibrate it.
Unfortunately, Oz didn’t know enough of the intricacies of the pieces Hatch worked on versus the medical side he’d tackled. It had taken both of them. And as far as he was concerned, he would be fine with them not getting this one to work. Except, he couldn’t puzzle out why they wanted it to work in the first place. They’d speculated it might be a training tool or even used as some kind of entertainment, but it was frankly too invasive for either of those.
So what then?
And why were they obsessed with Valda?
It was at ten hours to go and with a fresh cup of coffee in hand as he reviewed the number of attempts and subsequent failures, when Dirk said, “You really planning on doing this, Doc?”
They were the first words he’d heard out of his rusty voice in weeks. Barely suppressing his startle, he twisted in the seat to find Dirk and Hatch both staring at him. Flicking his gaze automatically to the monitors, he allowed himself a brief nod. All of their vitals showed improvement, their faces had better color, and while they were still bruised, shaved, and beaten, they were alive.
Now, he just had to find a way to work on their circulation and get them out of those shackles.
One step at a time.
“I believe I will be doing what is necessary.” It was a non-answer, depending on how one looked at it. Dirk stared at him, his fierce expression open to interpretation. He’d lived day in and day out with these two men for the last several years. Their need to save Valda, to bring her back to them, had united them in a way even their time together with her hadn’t been able to forge.
Where once they had been four separate men with four separate relationships, they’d finally developed one of their own based on mutual trust and respect.
Or he sure as fuck hope they had and he hadn’t imagined all of it. As if dismissive, he looked away from Dirk and took a sip of his coffee.
“What’s necessary,” Hatch repeated, a scoff in his voice along with a faint croak. Despite hydrating them, they hadn’t been allowed food or water, so their throats had to be dry. He’d offered them ice chips earlier, but the pair had ignored him.
Fair, he would likely have ignored a similar offer. They wanted to trust him. Just as he wanted to trust them. But this was a precarious situation, and unlike the two of them, he’d never learned the military shorthand they could talk to each other in.
No, his shorthand was far more reserved for Valda. They understood the science and the biotechnical. When it came to more academic or philosophic debates, he and Andreas had that in common, as did Valda, whereas Hatch and Dirk were more likely to enjoy the sharp wit of a chess game, cards, or a sparring match with equal enthusiasm.
Well, not Hatch for the last so much. He worried about his pretty face too much. Oz shot that not-so-pretty mug a look. The blue eyes staring back at him held an element of challenge. “We’re not going to cooperate.”
At that, Oz allowed himself a slow smile. “When have you ever cooperated with me?” And just how many times had they argued over the right solution?
The other man snorted. “I’d flip you off if I wasn’t trussed up like some turkey.” He definitely meant Oz was an idiot for taking this flyer to try and get them out on his own. He wasn’t a special forces soldier or a pirate. He didn’t even care for weapons. He’d taken an oath to preserve life, not end it.