The Torid Affair by Laurann Dohner
Chapter Seven
Six doors later, they found the missing assistant. As predicted, Carlton fired a weapon at Maith. The sound of it had scared Jessa, but the laser shot was quickly followed by a male shriek and a loud thud.
“I have the male,” Maith called out.
Jessa shoved off the wall, entered the dark room, and reset the interior switch. Lights flooded from overhead to reveal what appeared to be a tiny studio apartment. It had a bathroom, a bed in the small living room area, and a counter with sink. Her gaze quickly took it all in before settling where Maith had Carlton George pinned face down on the floor.
She stepped forward and kicked the discarded weapon farther from Carlton’s reach.
“You’re crushing me!” the assistant gasped.
“You tried to kill him, asshole,” she accused before Maith could speak. “You’re lucky to still be breathing. Can you haul him to his feet, please?”
Maith adjusted, captured Carlton’s wrists together in one big hand, then used the back of the human’s shirt to lift him. He spun Carlton until Jessa could see the jerk’s red, infuriated face.
Carlton glared at her. “You’re not gonna get away with this. Order this alien to release me!”
Jessa rolled her eyes. “Or what? You’ll bellow and whine? You assholes blew up United Earth property and possibly killed a bunch of people in the process. And don’t forget how you were planning on murdering Maith and me when the governor was secure. Nobody would give a shit if we gutted you after hearing everything you’ve done.” She paused. “What access codes did you need from your pal Boyd? Call me curious.”
The assistant sealed his lips together for a moment, then blurted, “I demand a lawyer.”
She couldn’t believe his audacity. “You and your governor buried us alive. No one is getting in or out of here anytime soon. Answer my question. What codes does Boyd have that are so important? It sure wasn’t to deactivate the bombs.” She reached up and tapped her ear. “Enhanced. I heard your conversation with the guard. You wanted that bomb to go off.”
“I heard you as well,” Maith confirmed. “You wanted the mansion to blow.”
Carlton glared harder at Jessa. “I demand a lawyer. I’m not telling you anything.”
“Fine.” She shrugged. “The fleet investigators can force it out of you.” She glanced at Maith. “We need to tie the jerk up.”
“I have rights! You can’t do that,” Carlton protested. “I’ll have you both arrested. I’m pressing charges!”
Jessa stepped closer and reached up, grabbing his chin. Then she kneed him in the balls.
He groaned, instinctively trying to bend forward, but between her and Maith, he couldn’t move.
“Bitch!” Carlton gasped.
“Idiot. You buried us down here. I give zero fucks about your rights. What about ours? Or the people who were in the mansion when the bombs went off? Fuck. You. Unless you’re willing to answer my questions, seal your damn lips.” She released his chin and backed up. “Or I’ll nail you in the balls every time you whine or make an idle threat.”
She turned, glancing around the room. The bed looked too comfortable to tie him to. Also not sturdy enough. She walked into the bathroom and reset the light in there. The toilet was attached to the wall with thick metal piping, and the toilet bowl and the tank were one piece, bolted in place. She grinned. “Bring him in here. I’ll be right back.”
Jessa ran to her med kit, checked on the unconscious humans, and grabbed a few alien-strength restraints. She returned to find that Maith had dragged Carlton into the bathroom, as she’d asked.
“Bring him over here. We’re going to lock him to the back of the toilet. He can hug the bowl.”
Carlton frantically shook his head, paling. “No!”
“You’ll have enough room to piss on your knees if you need to empty your bladder, and it gives you access to water if you’re thirsty.” Jessa smirked. “You can use your chin to flush…unless you like drinking your own urine.”
“You fucking cunt!”
Maith hesitated for just a moment, then hauled a struggling, yelling Carlton to the toilet. Between the two of them, they got him secured. She felt zero guilt. There weren’t any holding cells in the security room, so this was a great compromise.
Maith procured the weapon Carlton had used and met her in the hallway. His green eyes narrowed when their gazes locked.
Jessa crossed her arms over her chest. “If you have a problem with where we left him, why did you bring him in there?”
“I don’t have a problem. It was a solid place to secure him. He isn’t strong enough to break the toilet or the pipe to free himself.”
“Then what’s the look for?”
“You enjoyed that.”
Jessa couldn’t deny it. “Guilty. That guy makes me furious and he’s horrible.”
“He can’t unfasten his pants, but he can take drinks if he grows thirsty.”
“I guess I could open his pants, but I don’t want to touch him.”
Maith’s stern expression softened. “I’ll check on him every few hours.”
Jessa sighed. “It’s a temporary fix. One I highly enjoyed seeing implemented. I’d love to leave him hugging that toilet for eternity but I’m not a total bitch. We need to find a better place to secure him and the other prisoners. They’re going to need bathroom and water access. But everything I’ve seen so far doesn’t line up with typical United Earth emergency bunkers. The doors would all be clearly marked, the exits and entrances too, and there would be a large industrial kitchen. This one doesn’t have that. It would be in the main area of the bunker, to give everyone free access. What exactly did you see in those freezers?”
“Lots of meat.”
“Meat we have no way of cooking without a real kitchen, if there isn’t one.”
“That would be a problem.” Maith glanced at the doors they hadn’t opened yet.
“We might find a kitchen still,” she sighed. “And dry food is usually secured there, in locked closets. This entire bunker is an oddity.”
Maith nodded and moved to the next secured door, pointing the weapon toward it. Jessa focused on the entry pad and overrode the lock. She moved to the side as he rushed into the dark room. She tensed again, hoping no one was hiding behind any of these doors they’d yet to open.
Maith walked out. “Another cabin.”
“Like the last one?” She stepped inside and reset the lights. They came on to show an identical studio apartment. “And the mystery deepens.”
“Why?”
“They’d normally have multiple bunks in sleeping rooms to accommodate a lot of people. Emergency bunkers are designed to house hundreds. Sometimes thousands. These are small private quarters.”
“We will get answers.”
Jessa had a feeling United Earth wasn’t going to be happy with anything that they’d discovered. It was possible that Governor Boyd had bribed the construction workers to change the layout of the bunker when it was being built, without permission from U.E. It would make him guilty of even more crimes. Emergency bunkers weren’t meant to be private escapes for power-hungry jerks.
It made her feel better knowing Boyd, Carlton, and everyone associated with the two were probably going to spend the rest of their lives in prison. She recalled all the patients she’d treated who’d been abused by those overseeing the colony. The half-starved and injured kids had gotten to her the most.
The next two rooms were also private sleeping apartments. The third was a large kitchen. Jessa hacked the pantry lock pad. Relief hit when they saw it was fully stocked with dry and frozen foods. They wouldn’t go hungry. Still…she frown as she turned to peer at Maith.
“They have frozen storage in here. So why the other unit?”
He shrugged.
“Weird,” she muttered. “After we’re done searching these rooms, I’m going to take a peek inside those other freezers.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That the governor and his goons may have been hording all the good stuff for themselves down here, instead of making it available to the civilians. When I was on another fleet ship, we once had to respond to a riot that took place on a space station. That station commander and his staff had been hording all the real meat and most of the medical supplies they stole from the transport deliveries. Stationers were pissed when they found out who’d really screwed them. They’d believed the suppliers had been ripping them off.”
Maith led her out of the kitchen. Private quarters were located behind several more sealed doors. They had slowly worked their way nearly to the end of the second corridor. She sent the code to open yet another door and waited.
He seemed to tense the second the door cracked opened, then rushed inside with a snarl. “Get your med kit.”
She spun, jogging down the hallway without question. She trusted Maith. Whatever he’d seen or smelled in the darkness had to mean someone inside the room was injured. She quickly checked on the three unconscious prisoners, closed her kit, then ran back.
The door remained open and Maith had turned on the lights. When she rushed in, the horrifying sight made her gasp.
Eight metal cages in all, grouped in fours against two of the side walls of the large room. The interiors were about seven feet high, maybe five feet wide, and just as deep. Each contained a pull-down folding cot attached to the bars and a dual toilet/sink unit located under the simple beds.
Two of the cells held people. The lock on one of them had been cut open with the laser rifle, and Maith currently kneeled beside an injured man on one of the cots.
The second prisoner was a woman. Her face showed bruising near her cheekbone and the eye above it was slightly swollen. She sat curled on her cot, her knees drawn up, and she appeared frightened.
“We’re with the fleet.” Jessa found her voice. “You’re safe now.”
“Med kit,” Maith snarled. “The male is critical.”
Jessa tore her gaze off the woman and rushed inside the cramped cage. The floor was metal and uncomfortable as she knelt on her knees next to Maith, getting a good look at their patient.
Anger flooded her. He wasn’t an adult after all. Not fully. He was probably fifteen or sixteen, if she were to guess. The kid was unconscious and barely breathing. Maith had lifted the kid’s shirt, revealing ugly bruising and what she was certain were some broken ribs. She automatically began to check him with her artificial eye as she put down her kit and opened it to grab her scanner.
The scan confirmed what the heat sensors in her artificial eye had implied. “No internal bleeding. Thankfully. Just really bad bruising and four broken ribs.” She took a blood sample and read the results. “Fuck!” She dug into her med kit, opening a side compartment.
“What?”
“He’s got Prissa disease.” She withdrew her rapid-acting alien vaccines and dosed the boy. She hit him with an immunity booster next. Then she lifted her vaccine injector again and pressed it to her own skin, dosing herself. She set up another dose and looked at Maith. “Are you immune to Prissa disease?”
“I don’t know what that is,” he responded.
“It’s a tiny airborne parasite originating from spore-producing plants on a planet we call Prissa.” She grimaced. “An entire survey team on an uninhabited planet Earth now controls were struck down with it. Nine of them died before the A.R.S. sent to the site realized the cause and found a cure. It infects anyone who breaths in the spores. The parasite becomes active in a warm set of lungs and then it spreads throughout the body. It’s deadly if left unchecked and highly transferable from a living host.”
Jessa shook her head. “How in the hell did this kid encounter it? Prissa is now a restricted planet. Can I dose you just in case? It’s highly contagious, Maith. Even a cough can spread the parasites, since they’re present in all body fluids. You’ve also touched him, and he’s sweating. The vaccine will kill the parasites.”
“You said it’s a disease…”
“I didn’t name the damn thing. The A.R.S. sent to that planet named it that, probably because the parasites spread like a disease.”
He gave a sharp nod and she injected him. Then she glanced at the woman in the next cage, passing the injector to Maith. “She needs a dose. It’s already loaded.”
Maith got up and left the cage to cut open the lock on the next one. It gave Jessa more room to assess the kid. She did speak to the woman though, who whimpered.
“That’s Maith. He looks terrifying as hell but Veslors have huge hearts, and he’s a medic. He won’t hurt you. He’s working with the fleet. Let him dose you. You were feet away from this kid, and he’s heavily infected with the parasites. That means you more than likely have them too. It would be a miracle if you didn’t, since you’re breathing the same air in a confined space.”
The woman allowed Maith to dose her. He turned his head, staring at Jessa through the cage bars. “May I use your scanner? I didn’t bring mine. I don’t want to leave you alone to retrieve it.”
Jessa passed her scanner through the bars. She started IV fluids for the teenager. “We need to find more medical supplies. My kit is getting low, and I’m going to need at least ten bags of saline. He’s highly dehydrated and will stay that way until all the parasites die. It will take at least ten to twenty hours, based on how badly he’s infected.”
“I saw some medical supplies in the stacked boxes in the main room.”
She was relieved to hear that. “I’m not surprised that these bastards were hording them. You also need to contact your grouping to tell them that everyone needs the vaccine before entering the bunker. Anyone who comes into this room or near these two will be exposed. Defcon Red will have to send down doses. The pharmacy in Med Bay is equipped to manufacture it. Prissa disease,” she reminded him.
He activated his grouping bracelet and the hologram keyboard popped up. She returned her focus to the kid, working to stabilize his broken ribs. Jessa really wanted to know how he’d been exposed and why he’d been locked up in the bunker. She glanced at the woman. “Do you know why this teenager was brought here?”
The woman hesitated. “He was already here when I was arrested.”
“What’s your name? I’m Jessa.” She didn’t want to be too formal with the frightened woman, and she kept her tone soothing.
“Wilma Johns. My husband is the U.E. coordinator for the settlement. They arrested me to keep him in line when the fleet arrived.”
Jessa filled in the blanks. “So he’d lie for them about the real situation going on here or they’d kill you?”
Big tears slid down the woman’s face. “Yes.”
“She’s sixteen weeks pregnant, according to your scanner,” Maith said, his tone barely suppressing his anger. “The unborn cub is fine. She shows signs of not being fed well and was hit in the face and arms. No broken bones.”
“One of your captors is secured to a toilet,” Jessa ground out. “The governor’s assistant. Not that it probably helps to know that. The governor was stabbed in the gut too.” She wanted justice for Wilma Johns. “Were they aware that you’re pregnant?”
Wilma sniffed, more tears rolling down her face. “Yes. Um, is that vaccine safe for my baby?”
Maith snarled.
Jessa nodded. “It’s safe for the fetus.”
“Can you take me to my husband?” The hopeful tone in Wilma’s voice saddened Jessa.
“Not yet. We need to remain in the bunker until those doses of vaccine are given to anyone coming in here. You don’t want this to spread to anyone that you care about. Let’s get you out of that cell and fed while we wait.” Jessa glanced at Maith. The last thing she figured the pregnant patient needed to learn was that they were buried alive. “But we’ll get you to your husband soon. Promise.” Then she growled a warning to him in Veslor. “Quiet to keep her calm.”
He met her gaze, responding in Veslor. “She will see the damage and had to have heard the explosion.”
“Get her calm and fed first, then we’ll explain.”
“Yes.” He helped the female off the cot and out of the cage, where he paused, switching back to English. “I will feed her.”
Jessa switched to English too. “She will probably want a shower.” She met the woman’s gaze. “How long have they had you down here?”
Wilma shrugged. “Maybe a week? It’s hard to tell time here and the guards didn’t come check on us often or bring food. They were nervous about Ned being sick. That’s his name. He’s been too feverish to make much sense the last few days. I only know his first name, and that he keeps asking for his mom. Is he going to be okay?”
“His long-term prognosis should be fine but the parasites have done a number on his body. It’s going to take a few weeks for him to fully recover.”
Relief flashed over Wilma’s face. “I think he’s from the space port area of the city.” She pointed to a pair of shoes in the corner of Ned’s cage. “See the gray dust caked on them? The ground is covered in ash in that part of the city. It’s where they burn trash from supply deliveries. I noticed when I managed to talk him into taking off his shoes during one of his lucid moments, so he’d be more comfortable.”
“Thanks for sharing that. We’ll be able to identify him by DNA once we’re out of the bunker, if he’s still unconscious at that point. The fleet has access to the colony database, and he’s old enough to have been transported to this planet,” Jessa informed her. “All civilian colony transports keep DNA records.” She wasn’t going to mention they did so to be able to identify bodies if anyone were to die.
Maith led the woman away. Jessa watched them go, concerned about the pregnant woman. Wilma had to lean heavily on the tall Veslor and appeared shaky on her feet.
Jessa checked on the teenager and saw that his vitals were stabilizing. Not by much, but it was an improvement. She rechecked the blood test she’d taken, going over the results more thoroughly. It was her guess that he’d been exposed at least three weeks before, from the rate of infection.
Jessa sat back on her haunches and stared at the kid’s face. To gain access to Prissa was difficult. No colonists lived on the restricted planet. Only miners, who were all vaccinated against infection.
Company transports were allowed to pick up the quintwin rocks only after they’d been sanitized. The rocks were the only things allowed to leave that planet. They were shipped in storage holds without air or heat to make sure no remaining spores survived. As a final precaution, the cargo was always quarantined and rechecked before transfer to its destination. The crew of those vessels were also required to be vaccinated. Everything revolving around the mining of Prissa was highly regulated.
The teenager wasn’t old enough to work on Prissa or a company transport vessel. And Torid didn’t get much traffic. Supply freighters and the occasional United Earth inspection team were the only official visitors. It was yet another mystery.
She got to her feet and closed her med kit, retrieved her alien vaccine injector, and went to pay Carlton George a visit. He had managed to lower the lid of the toilet to use as a pillow as he hugged the base.
“Hey, shithead. We need to talk.”
Carlton jerked his head up and turned to glower at her. “I’m going to kill you, bitch.”
She set her kit down on the floor, well out of his reach at the open bathroom door. “Not if you die first. Let’s talk about the teenager locked in a cage down the hall. Did you know he’s sick?”
A flicker of dread on his face revealed he wasn’t surprised.
“He has Prissa disease. Did you know that? It’s got a hundred percent kill rate if it goes untreated and is highly contagious. Lucky for me, I’m Defcon Red’s A.R.S., so I have one of these babies.” She lifted the injector in her hand and waved it. “I’m basically a medical doctor, but I specialize in aliens. Any other fleet doctor could diagnose the boy, but they’d need to order a transport to fly down here with the cure. Fortunately, I always travel with this special injector filled with vaccines for known alien viruses and diseases.”
Carlton kept glaring at her…but his gaze darted briefly to the device in her hand.
“I’m going to have Maith move you to one of those cages eventually. That entire room is infected. It’s up to you if I vaccinate you, or let parasites invade your body. You’ll have three to four weeks before you die…unless you have any underlying health issues. Then you might last ten days.”
Carlton paled.
“The first symptom is a rash and itchy skin, and your throat will feel raw. Then you’ll experience chills and fever. Coughing so hard it feels like you might hack up a lung. Muscle cramps come next. Painful ones that will make you feel like you’ve been beaten to hell and back. Every inch of you will hurt.” She paused. “Eventually you’ll be delirious, rarely conscious, and suffer violent tremors until death. Not the worst way to die. Trust me. Cuga disease is an even bigger nightmare. That turns your internal organs into mush and you bleed out. Eyes, ears, ass…hell, you’d piss blood. Vomiting. Nasty fucking thing. Most people kill themselves if they get it before help can arrive. It’s that painful and horrible.”
Carlton sneered. “You won’t do that. You have to share the cure if you have it. You’re a fucking doctor.”
“I’ve already vaccinated myself, the alien, and the two innocent people you had locked up. I only have three doses left,” she lied. “And there are four of you assholes alive. That means one of you is screwed until help can dig their way down here. Who should get a dose, do you think? Your precious governor? Maybe the guard or that woman? Decisions, decisions.” She tapped the injector against her leg. “Talk…or it sure as hell won’t be you.”
All the color leached from his face.
“That poor kid was ravaged so badly that, even though he’ll recover, he’s going to need weeks to regain his strength enough to shower and walk without assistance. The parasites like to feed on muscle. Where did the kid come from? How was he exposed? I want details. I’m sick of dealing with unanswered questions.”
Carlton kept glancing at the injector. “You’re lying.” He didn’t look convinced of his own words, though. Not with the fear that flashed in his eyes.
“Fine. I’m going to go get Maith right now to put you in the cage next to the kid. You’ll be exposed the second you’re dragged into that holding area.”
“You bitch!”
“Yes, I am.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the door. “Enjoy the rash. It will appear within an hour of exposure.”
“Swear to me that one of those doses is mine!”
She took her time, seeming to debate it for his discomfort. “Fine.” She grimaced. “But I want details. Lots of them.”
“We buy from independent vendors sometimes. One of them promised us something rare, but when he arrived, he didn’t contact us first before landing. It put us on alert, fearing an attack. One of the crew stumbled out of their ship and collapsed. The kid’s a scavenger who hangs out at the port, going through the trash containers for things damaged in transit. A lot of those worthless bastards rummage through them before the contents are incinerated. The crew member was having convulsions. The kid rushed to help him.”
“I bet no one else did.”
“Only an idiot would have! We locked down the area and sent in a suited medical team. It wasn’t something they’d ever seen before. All the crew were too sick to talk and one of them had already died. We quarantine the ship, had it moved to a secure location and then destroyed. Rodney wanted to toss the kid in the ship before we destroyed it, but the medical team wanted to study him, so we put him down here. The guards who feed him know to not touch him or get too close.”
“Moron. You’re lucky it didn’t spread to the entire colony. Why didn’t you call for help?”
He sealed his lips firmly.
“Right. Let me guess. Those ‘independent vendors’ aren’t legal and you didn’t want United Earth or the fleet to know.”
“I told you how the kid got sick and why he’s locked down here. I want the cure.”
“How did you get a Deki lock on the bunker?”
Carlton’s gaze darted away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t share doses with liars. And you suck at it. Answer the question.”
He hesitated. “That was Rodney. Not me. He sometimes trades for things with aliens. A few of them have visited us.”
“Which ones?”
“I don’t fucking know!”
“Describe what they looked like.”
He grimaced. “I hate aliens. Rodney never made me deal with them. If he’d tried, I’d have refused. Only good alien is a dead one. I wasn’t about to get murdered because Rodney wanted to trade. I have no idea what they looked like because I stayed far away from the port when they landed.”
“I actually believe you would have avoided them at all costs.”
She stepped over to him and slapped the injector against his throat, dosing him. “I keep my word.” Then she retrieved her med kit and returned to the teenager to check on him. Ned’s condition continued to improve.