Chapter Eighteen

Melissa kept her eyes shut. She had managed to stave off the questions from the officers so far by either being unconscious or pretending to be. With lots of shouting and swearing, they loaded her into an ambulance and shot off toward a hospital.

“They said she was injured,” one paramedic said from somewhere above her as the highway roared underneath the emergency vehicle. “I don’t see it. Do you?”

“If she wasn’t before, she certainly is now. Did you see the way they tossed her out of the van?” The speaker clucked his tongue. “Those bastards.”

“It’s not a surprise. Those damn cyborgs think they can do whatever they want, and we can’t do anything about it. They killed a lot of men and women in New York City. The ones that got away from us were partially responsible.”

When they arrived at the hospital, Melissa could tell something was different about it. It smelled the way she remembered, containing the sickly scent of cleaning supplies in the air, but it was missing sounds of life. There were no visitors in the lobby, receptionists directing calls, or announcements over the loudspeaker calling doctors into the operating room.

Looking around, Melissa saw plain white walls, dropped tiled ceilings, and Purity Force officers posted in each doorway. It didn’t seem like they were prepared to let her out anytime soon.

Once the nurses had given her several tests and taken more vials of blood than she thought necessary, Melissa closed her eyes and rested. She felt warm breath suggesting a person at her bedside. No one she knew would be visiting her. The rest of the Liberators were probably back home by now, hiding in their dorms. If she was lucky, nobody in her family knew she had gotten involved in this fiasco. Even if they did find out about her trip to New York, her parents didn’t know where she was.

“Melissa, it’s time for you to open your eyes. I know you aren’t asleep.” The voice belonged to a female, and it was the first girl she had heard in a long time.

She popped open her eyelids out of surprise more than desire. The woman standing over her looked like a doctor out of a television drama. She had blonde hair carefully coifed into a chignon at the back of her head and dramatic glasses that did nothing to hide her beauty. Someone had meticulously applied the doctor’s makeup, and her lab coat looked freshly pressed.

“There we go. Good girl.” The woman placed her manicured hands on her hips. “My name is Dr. Bridget Brown. You’re at the Center for Pure Science, a Purity Force hospital. We’re going to evaluate the injuries you sustained over the last two days while in the custody of rogue cyborgs in New York City. Does that make sense?”

Melissa’s brain felt a little foggy, but she understood every word and nodded. She noticed someone had put her in a hospital gown and realized it must have happened during a time she was truly unconscious. Wires and tubes rose out of her skin and snaked their way around the bed to a monitor working quietly in the corner. Melissa stopped being curious about her surroundings and quickly looked away. She didn’t like blood, needles, or hospitals.

“We believe your name is Melissa Quinn. Is that correct?” Thankfully, the doctor brought Melissa’s attention away from her physical condition. She acted kind, but the look on her face suggested that she could become nasty in a hurry.

Melissa nodded. There was no point in lying.

“Thanks for confirming our information. There are a lot of questions we want to ask you. I believe you are healthy enough to do so. Do you agree?” Dr. Brown reached up to adjust the monitor, and a whiff of her perfume hit Melissa’s nose. The only thing she had smelled recently was a sweaty cyborg, and the sweet, floral scent made her want to gag.

“Do you think I can have some water first?” It had been a long time since Melissa did something normal like eating or drinking. “And some food?”

“We’ll see what we can do for you.” Dr. Brown gave a quick command to a nearby nurse and opened up the curtain surrounding the bed.

Several Purity Force officers came forward, flanking a man in a suit. He seemed so old that he should have retired by now. He had carefully combed back his silver hair and looked at Melissa with disdain.

“You know, before you eat, there’s someone I want you to meet. Director Sullivan is the head of Purity Force, and he thinks what you know can help us,” Dr. Brown explained. “I’ll be standing close to you and monitoring your condition, but I won’t stop the interrogation unless I feel that it’s necessary.” Her words came out clipped and curt, and they suggested she wouldn’t put up with any bullshit. Melissa knew she couldn’t lie in front of her.

Director Sullivan stepped forward and his private security detail followed him. He made no preamble but went straight into a list of questions. “Melissa Quinn, we believe you were in the holding facility where we kept our renegade machiness when a gang of cyborgs attempted a rescue. Is that correct?” His jowls shook as he spoke.

Melissa swallowed. Where were the nurse and her water? “Yes, that’s right.”

Sullivan sat down on a hard plastic chair at the side of the bed and produced a small notepad from his jacket pocket. He started scribbling furiously. “We also believe that you were part of a group of Liberators. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” Melissa wondered if she was on trial.

The director nodded, wrote something on the pad, and brought his dark gray eyes up to meet hers. He spoke without passion, reciting each sentence as though he was a mediocre actor in a community play. “I don’t usually tolerate sympathizers. People like you only exist to make trouble for people like me. You stop me from doing my job and giving people what they want. Cyborgs are a problem for humans. Only pansies like you believe otherwise. If I had things my way, we would have tossed you in jail, not a hospital.” He didn’t sound very excited. “But since you’ve managed to get yourself mixed up with a formidable cyborg group, I could use your help.”

The request sounded like a gleam of hope to Melissa. If Purity Force needed her, then they wouldn’t treat her as poorly as Thunder feared. She wanted to ask them if they knew whether or not Thunder was still functioning, but she didn’t want to make it seem like she liked one of the cyborgs. She was on tenuous ground already. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good.” Director Sullivan nodded and consulted his notepad again. “We’re particularly interested in one cyborg. Our intelligence sources say he goes by the name of Savage. Was he there?”

Melissa bit her lip. Wasn’t that one of the soldiers who Thunder had mentioned? “Yes. I believe he was. I don’t think I spoke with him, though. The only one I interacted with repeatedly while I was at the holding facility was named Thunder. He didn’t make it out.”

The older man scrutinized her for a moment, as though he could get more information out of her simply by staring. Melissa wondered if he knew something but wasn’t saying anything. Had word gotten out about her relationship with Thunder? She could easily imagine what people were saying. Check out that girl. She fucked a cyborg! When she offered no extra information, the director started to write. Dr. Brown stood quietly in the corner, watching the conversation and occasionally glancing at Melissa’s monitor.

“I want you to tell me what you planned to do by rescuing the cyborgs. Try to remember every detail. Names, dates, and the route you took to the holding facility could all be crucial.” Director Sullivan clicked the end of his pen several times as he waited for her answer.

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Melissa murmured.

The man leaned forward, staring at her with sharp, red-rimmed eyes. “Perhaps you misunderstand the nature of my request. I can find out all the answers by myself. I can get everything I need without having to interact with you for more than a second, but it’s faster and easier when you cooperate with me. I like it when my job is easy, and you will like it if my job is easy. If you don’t tell me everything, everyone involved with you is going to suffer more than they need to.”

After that ultimatum, Melissa was ready to spill the beans. She explained how she had come to be involved with the Liberators through Jake and how they had planned the trip with the idea of making a difference in the world. It didn’t seem to make any difference to Director Sullivan that they had good intentions, but Melissa told him anyway. When she got to the part about being captured in the holding facility, she stopped speaking for a minute. Nobody, especially this man, needed to know what she and Thunder had done together.

“Tell me more about the cyborg.” Sullivan checked his notes. “Did Thunder give a reason why he took you as a prisoner? It’s puzzling to me, you see. Most humans who go into a building and find a cyborg come out in a body bag.”

The nurse finally arrived, carrying a plastic tray of food. It had a bottle of cold water, a slice of roast beef covered in watery gravy, some cold macaroni and cheese, and a small dish of fruit. It was typical cafeteria fare, but Melissa dove in like it was a gourmet meal. She was starving, and the interruption gave her a moment to think about how she was going to answer.

“At first, he wanted to use me as a hostage, so he had something for negotiations.” Melissa spoke around a mouthful of roast beef, but she was prepared to throw manners to the wind. “The two of us started talking. We realized I could act as a go-between for the cyborgs and Purity Force. An ambassador, if you will. Killing each other isn’t working. We hoped we could get out of the situation without any more violence.” Thunder hadn’t liked the idea when she introduced it to him, but Melissa neglected to mention that part. They had discussed it, so it wasn’t a lie.

“That sounds unbelievable. You’re saying that a group of angry cyborgs are willing to talk out their problems. What the hell are they teaching you kids these days, anyway?”

Melissa ignored his remark and kept talking, doing her best to paint Thunder and the other cyborgs in a flattering light. “Thunder knew the skirmish was going to be dangerous, so he hid me downstairs in a storage room. He was going to come back for me, but he died before he returned.” She choked a little on the words, took a drink of water, and continued speaking. “I should have stayed down there, but I wanted to get out and do something useful. When I emerged from the basement, another cyborg saw me and got me out of the building safely.”

Sullivan leaned forward and rested one elbow on his knees. “It sounds to me like you think the ‘borgs cared about whether or not you stayed in one piece.”

Melissa nodded and stabbed at the fruit with her fork. “Of course they did. They could have left me by myself or killed me right away.” She knew the cyborgs had discussed both options. But she also thought she understood Thunder’s intentions, and she wanted to honor him after his death. If there had been good in him, she had to believe that there were other cyborgs like Thunder.

“What was the name of the cyborg who helped you out of the building?”

“Compass.”

The director nodded, but he didn’t write anything down this time. He leaned forward again. “Is that the same one who threw you out of a moving vehicle?”

He had Melissa in a verbal trap. She set the fork down on a tray and tried to compose herself. She had been terrified when Thunder took her prisoner, but it didn’t compare to what Compass had done. He and the other violent soldiers were ruining her carefully constructed narrative. “That’s the one. He was under stress and didn’t want Purity Force to capture him. I might have mentioned that he could drop me off somewhere and I would turn myself in.”

“Of course. That explains everything.” Director Sullivan stood and slapped the notebook against the side of the bed. “It wasn’t the cyborg’s fault that he nearly killed you. He was just following his programming for survival. Maybe the poor little thing felt threatened. I’ll have to remember that the next time I want to get away with murder. I’ll push someone out of a moving vehicle! Maybe I’ll write a book about it!” He was shouting now, and little strings of spittle burst from his mouth. In the corner, Dr. Brown did a poor job of hiding a smile behind her hand.

Melissa cringed from both his words and saliva. She could understand his point of view, but he was wrong. She couldn’t tell him everything because it would make trouble for both her and Thunder. A man like Director Sullivan would never believe that a human and a cyborg could fall in love.

“I’m going to make this simple for you, Miss Quinn. You’re going to give us the information we need. I suggest you answer our questions honestly. You’re going to help us find these cyborgs. For the meantime, consider yourself a guest of Purity Force. Until we take those machines into custody, you aren’t going anywhere.” He strode out of the room, taking his notepad and bodyguards with him.

Dr. Brown moved to the foot of her bed and stared at Melissa. “That went well.”