Chapter Twenty-Three
Bren and Cam led Seb to an interview room in the security annex of the base. Surprisingly, Stanton wasn’t already waiting in there. The d-bag probably wanted to make a grand entrance or something.
Bren had stayed silent the whole walk over, and now she simply pointed out one of the four seats, a wordless order for him to sit. Cam ordered a couple of MPs to attention in either corner of the room, then took up a wide-legged stance next to the table, expression far from impressed.
“Will you at least tell me where they took Jenna?” Seb tried not to sound belligerent as he rounded the square table and dropped into one of the uncomfortable, utilitarian chairs.
Glaring, Bren crossed her arms. “So you can escape and go find her? Don’t you think you’ve found enough trouble since she arrived on the Knox?”
He didn’t fail to miss the note of contempt in her voice, putting his defenses way up.
“None of this is Jenna’s fault.”
“Yeah?” Bren took a step forward and braced one hand on the desk. “You might have skirted the line when it came to defying orders before, but it was always for selfless reasons, to save someone else. You’re one of the first to put your well-being after that of the squad. Yet, since Jenna turned up, you’ve not only crossed the line, but you made damn sure you blew it to hell on the way past. And for what? Because your best friend turned out to be a traitor and feelings got hurt? Well guess what? Lawler betrayed all of us, not just you.”
“You’re his CO, Brenner,” Cam put in, rumble of irritation in his voice, like maybe he was pissed that the Knox’s problems had become his problems. “If you thought he was compromising the safety of the squad or the ship, you should have addressed the issue long before now.”
Her expression turned ice-cold, but Seb could tell the barb had stung.
“This isn’t Bren’s fault either.” He shoved to his feet, making the chair squeal across the floor. “I know what I did was selfish. Don’t think I had any illusions about my choices. But none of those accusations are fair, and you know it.”
Bren straightened, some of the anger draining out of her expression. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But this isn’t just about you, Seb. This is about all of us. No one wants to see you go down for this, and even though your ego is already bigger than the Knox, you’re pretty much the best damned pilot on the squad. We can’t replace you that easily.”
With a long sigh, Seb dropped back into his seat, flattening his palms on the cool top of the table. “I’m sorry as well. I only wish I could make you understand, but there’s a lot more at stake than just my spot on the squad.”
“Well if you actually told Alpha or me what the hell is going on, maybe we could help you.”
“I would. I’ve wanted to.” He shook his head, focusing on where the light reflected off the dull surface of the desk. He hated that he was torn between trusting his CO and squad and betraying Jenna’s confidence. “But it’s not in my place to say anything.”
Bren didn’t answer, instead, she paced away to the door, avoiding Cam’s intense gaze shifting between the two of them. After a long silent moment, she looked back at him.
“I can only guess that whatever your motives, you somehow think you’re protecting Jenna by not speaking up. But, I have to tell you, things are not looking good for you. Stanton wants to railroad you straight into an interrogation cell. Yang is the only thing standing between the two of you, and even he is starting to lose ground. I hope, whatever happens, that Jenna is worth it.”
“She is worth it.” He brought his head up, catching Bren’s questioning gaze. “She’s worth everything.”
Bren nodded, her face taking on a definite note of resignation. “They’ve put her in the barracks on the east side of the base. She’s under house arrest, but not detained or restrained until we get the whole picture. If you play your cards right, you might be able to save her from going down at least.”
“Thank you, Bren.”
Without replying, she opened the door, motioning to the two military police. “Apparently you need a guard, though I’m inclined to think at this point it’s more to stop you from making some other crazy escape attempt. By the book all the way from now on, got it, Sub-Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Brenner, sir.”
With a nod, she left the room. Cam shot him a final warning glare as he followed Bren out. “You know I run a tight base, Rayne. I don’t want to hear about you causing any more trouble, or Stanton and Yang won’t be the only ones you’ll be answering to.”
“Yes, sir,” he repeated, trying to keep the antagonism out of his voice as Cam shut the door tightly behind him.
He got it, he’d screwed up. But he didn’t need everyone to treat him like a rookie who’d accidentally discharged his weapon during silent operations.
Seb leaned back in his chair, eyeing the two MPs who were studiously not looking at him.
“So, what do you guys do for fun around here? Please tell me there’s an underground fight club or secret poker game on base. I’m awesome at poker.”
Neither man answered, though the one on the left seemed to be fighting a grin.
“That’s your game, huh? Bore me to death. Sensory deprivation until I crack? Well I can tell you with all certainty that it’ll work. There’s nothing I hate more than being bored. Get Stanton in here so I can spill my guts.” The door rattled as he finished saying the words, and despite his jokes, his heart skipped over a few rapid beats. “Is that him now? I guess it’ll be better to get this over and done with.”
The MPs shared a look, hands going to weapons as the door swung open and a figure launched into the room. Because it wasn’t Stanton, it was the damned ninja again. Aw hell, hadn’t he left this guy on the Knox? He shoved to his feet, backed way up as the attacker put down one of the MPs in a blink, and then turned on the other.
While the ninja wannabe was grappling with the remaining MP, Seb scuttled around the table and went in low, snatching a knife off the belt from the MP laid out on the floor.
By the time he got upright, the attacker had knocked out the other MP and turned toward him. He kept the knife concealed at his thigh, shifting back half a step. His heart ramped up in his chest as the ninja tracked him and another step backward put him up against the edge of the table.
“I don’t suppose I can just promise to keep my mouth shut and take myself off to some other part of the galaxy? You don’t have to kill me. Apparently CI is going to make sure I’m kicked off the squad.”
The ninja leaped at him, and Seb brought up the knife. At the last second, his attacker twisted, and he ended up slashing the ninja’s arm instead. The attacker shifted out of reach and kicked at his wrist, sending the knife spinning out of his grip.
Christ, he was in serious trouble. The last few times, this guy had almost taken his number. He was pretty sure only other people interrupting this bastard had saved him. Well, there wouldn’t be anyone to intervene this time. So yep, he was kinda screwed.
The ninja pulled a gun, while clamping a hand over his bleeding bicep. Well, at least he’d done some damage to the guy. Maybe if he was really lucky, he’d hit an artery and this would all end with him bleeding out. Of course, the ninja could shoot him a dozen times before that. But surely, someone had heard the commotion. Surely someone would come in here to see what the hell was going on. He just had to stall long enough… But the ninja was lifting the weapon to line him up. He skirted around the table, putting the piece of furniture between them—not that it would save him from a gunshot.
“Just wait one—!” The words were hardly out of his mouth before the weapon went off. Seb felt something prick into his chest and looked down, not to see a bloody mess, but a small tranq-dart nailed right over his heart.
“What the hell?” The words slurred a little, as though his tongue had swelled to twice its size. A lightning surge of raking numbness spread through him in a flooding tide, and his knees gave out as his arms fell limp to his side. He pitched over, trying to keep his eyes open, but landed half facedown and couldn’t roll himself over.
The ninja reached up to pull off the mask, shaking out a wealth of glossy, dark-red curly hair, before stepping over him.
Seb groaned, trying to force some power into his limbs. Without even looking at him, the woman pointed the gun and shot another dart, this one sticking into his thigh. A new hot wave of deeper numbness started spreading, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
…
Awareness came at him with all the finesse of a sledgehammer and left his head aching in much the same way.
Goddamn. What the hell had he drunk last night? And how much? And for god’s sake, why? He’d thought he’d left his days of getting ass-face wasted back at pre-mil training. FP squadron members did not overindulge to the point of making themselves comatose, not if they wanted to keep their spot on the team.
A little more of his brain cleared, but that only made his head feel worse as he realized he was sitting up and had his arms stretched awkwardly behind his back. His fingers tingled with pins and needles and he tried to bring his hands forward, only to encounter some kind of resistance.
With a groan, because this was going to be like taking a nail in the forehead, he cracked open his eyes and forced his neck muscles to lift his head. Everything spun woozily for a moment, before settling and slowly focusing.
He was in some kind of dusty storeroom on the base…at least, he assumed he was still on the base. The large room about him was shadowed, stacked with crates, some haphazardly covered with tarps. No. Maybe not a storeroom. The cargo hold of a ship? A deep churn of anxiety rolled through him.
Seb tugged at his arms again, and the chafing around his wrists registered. Damn it, he was tied up. His heart lurched and the rush of blood, laced with adrenaline, cleared his fuzzy mind right up.
The interrogation room. He’d been in the interrogation room with those two MPs. And then that crazy ninja-chick had come in, taken out his guards and shot him up with some kind of drug. Katie. No, Carrie. That’s what Jenna had said her name was. If Stanton had been behind Jenna’s apparent death, had he ordered Carrie to take care of loose ends, like Jenna had surmised?
According to Bren, Stanton thought he was a CSS mole. Maybe this was the agent’s way of scaring the truth out of him. Torture him for answers he didn’t have and then make him disappear for good. Unless Stanton suspected he’d worked out the truth about the CI agent being a CSS mole, and his only intention was to see Seb dead after wringing out whatever information he could.
The rush of blood through his veins turned cold, and he tugged at the ropes again. He had to get out of here before Carrie or Stanton came to start working him over. He had no idea how he’d stand up under torture. He couldn’t be the one who gave Jenna up, couldn’t be responsible for her death by telling Stanton his underhanded tactics to take Jenna out had failed.
He strained against the ropes, his shoulders starting to ache, while the burn in his wrists increased until his hands started slipping against one another, wet with blood. But it was no use, the ties weren’t loosening in the least, and he was probably wasting energy he’d need for later. Not to mention the drugs hadn’t cleared his system yet, leaving his movements slow and awkward.
Seb swore, his words echoing dully off the surrounding bulkheads.
A clang sounded somewhere behind him, off to his right, followed by the grating noise of a hatchway opening. Footsteps echoed, closing in on his position. He clenched his hands, not bothering to crane for a look. Whoever it was would reveal themselves in a moment, and after that, the fun would begin.
A rising surge of anxiety swelled, but he locked down his muscles. Whatever came next, it would all come down to his mind, no matter what happened to his body. He had to hold on to whatever strength he had, hold on to the notion that he would die before uttering a word about Jenna. Because the alternative was her death, and that was something he couldn’t live with, no matter how short a time he had left in this universe.
The now-familiar black-clad figure moved up on his right side and stood in front of him.
“Hello, Sub-Lieutenant.” Carrie sent him a cutting smile, tapping a medical dosing gun she held in her right hand against her left palm.
Hell, did she plan on knocking him out again, or worse, was there some kind of truth serum in that doser?
“Oh, no need to worry about this.” She stopped the tapping and held the dosing gun up. “It’s only got a stimulant in it, just in case you hadn’t woken up yet. You see, I’m a bit short on time, so I really need you to start talking.”
She closed the remaining steps between them and jammed the doser against his neck. A quick stinging puncture and then cold flooded into his veins, followed by a shuddering contraction of muscles as the drug inundated his system and lit him up like a damn sun going supernova, raking burns under his skin.
His lungs seized, cutting off his breath as he rode out the painful convulsion. When the initial effect wore off and he could gasp, his brain felt like it was taking in too much information on superspeed.
“What the hell did you do that for?” His voice came out gravelly and he cleared his dry throat.
She carelessly tossed the dosing gun aside. “Just expediting matters, in case you were still a bit fuzzy. I need you to be crystal clear when we have our little conversation.”
“I didn’t need that stimulant to give you the only answer you’ll be hearing from me. Screw you.”
Carrie grinned, but the expression was spiteful. She leaned in closer, threading her fingers through his short hair, then grabbing a handful and wrenching his head back.
“Now, now, Sub-Lieutenant, there’s no need to be rude.” She yanked harder, and he gritted his teeth against making any noise. This was child’s play. She would do a lot worse to him once she got frustrated at his lack of cooperation. “Tell me one tiny thing, and then this can all be over.”
“Oh yeah, and what might that be?” He hadn’t failed to notice she’d said nothing about letting him go. This can all be over sounded more like code for I’m going to kill you.
She let his head go with a hard shove, leaving him with an aching neck.
“The data drive you gave Stanton was empty. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then you went back behind enemy lines. So, now I think you know more. This is simple. Tell me where the information is, and we can call it a day.”
The data drive again? If he’d known the damn thing was going to cause him this much trouble, he’d never have agreed to go back for it. Of course, then he wouldn’t have found Jenna alive and offered to help her… Okay, so he’d go back for it a million times over so long as Jenna was waiting for him every time.
The smile he sent Carrie came easily, because Jenna was worth more to him than his own life. So yeah, that made things simple, just like Carrie had said.
“Like I told Stanton, I don’t know. I got told to retrieve a dead body, but with a CSS patrol on the ground, it was too risky, so I searched the corpse and found the drive. Whether or not it had any information on it has nothing to do with me, I was just the messenger boy. And as for my recent trip, that was all about making sure a scum CSS traitor was good and dead.”
“Cute.” Carrie crossed her arms and sent him another malicious grin. “But Stanton thinks you’re hiding something, and so do I.”
She sashayed forward, and perched on his knee. Her fingers crept up his chest, skimmed his neck, and then latched onto his chin, nails digging into his flesh. “You want to know what I think?”
“Not really,” he muttered around the hold she had on him.
“The drive was meant to be encrypted, and even though you’re just a brain-dead stick jockey, I think somehow you got a glimpse of what was on it. Maybe you thought you could use the intel, turn a profit by blackmailing a few people. Not very smart, because any of the agents on that list would track you down and slit your throat before you saw a dime.”
Not very smart, huh? Carrie had brought him here to rip whatever information she could from him, yet so far, he hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know, while he had garnered a few interesting facts. So the information on the drive was a list of agents. But what kind of list, and how did that tie in with Jenna getting scrubbed?
“That’s some interesting theory you’ve come up with, but I’m afraid it’s way off the mark. Being the dumb grunt that I am, I couldn’t have come up with such a smart plan, even if I had seen what was on the drive.” He sent her a bland smile, and she responded by backhanding him across the face.
Blood welled into his mouth, and he spat some out before she grabbed his face again.
“I’ve been watching you, flyboy, and I know you’re up to something. I found that jamming device you put on doors to the command center, so explain to me what that was all about?”
The cold running through his veins turned icy and brittle. He locked his jaw, refusing to say anything when the conversation was straying so close to Jenna.
“Now you’ve got nothing to say? But you were so chatty up until now. And I thought we were starting to understand each other.”
Something pricked into his chest, and he looked down as far as her hold on him would allow to see a knife poised high in the middle of his pecs. The blade slit his shirt and lightly scored his skin with a shallow sting as she traced the tip downward. His shirt split apart and small rivulets of blood had started dripping down his abdomen by the time the knife reached his belt buckle.
“I have to admit, the prospect of playing with you intrigues me, so by all means, hang on to the pretense that you don’t know where that drive of CI double agents is. I like to take things slow.”
CI double agents? Goddamn. No wonder Stanton and Carrie here were so hot to get their hands on the device. That kind of information had the power to change Command Intelligence from the inside out.
Carrie used the bloodied tip of her knife to push his shirt open, her gaze riveted on his chest, an intense light in her slightly unhinged gaze. And the truth struck him like a shot to the head—she actually was enjoying this.
“You’re one twisted bitch, you know that?”
She flicked the knife up to rest against the bottom of his chin. “This is just foreplay. You’ll find out exactly how twisted I can be if you don’t start talking.”
“If you’re looking for someone to talk to, they’ve got these trained professionals who get paid to sit around and listen to your brand of crazy all day long.”
She gave a short, toneless laugh and put a little more pressure on the blade against his skin.
He clamped his jaw, staring her down as she traced the edge of the knife along his jaw, and then nicked the bottom of his earlobe, sending a rivulet of blood dripping down his neck. Yeah, he could see in the flash of her gaze that her words had been true—this was the fun stuff before the real torture began.
The stakes were much higher than he could have ever guessed, with he and Jenna stuck in the middle of a shit storm. If the drive she’d given him was empty, what had happened to the real information on it? Did she still have it on her and hadn’t told him, or had it been lost between all the killing and subterfuge?
Carrie titled her head as she trailed the knife in a light arc across his neck, not breaking the skin, but scoring it, leaving a burning trail.
“Skin is really interesting you know.” Her eyes were on the weapon as she traced the sharp edge downward again.
“Is it? I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it too closely.”
The blade skipped over his belly button and she hooked it under his belt. “It’s the only thing keeping all our insides together, yet it’s so fragile. It comes off so easily.”
Hell, this chick really was buckets full of crazy. She slashed upward, cutting through the thick leather of his belt like it was butter on a hot day, then grabbed the buckle and yanked the belt free.
“I mean, really, people think they’re invincible, yet we’re all walking around in these bodies that can’t survive without a simple thing like skin.”
The tip went into the top fastening of his pants, and popped the clasp free, slicing it clean off the material.
Seb swallowed, not letting himself even glance downward. If she took that any farther south, he was in some serious trouble. There were all kinds of torture he could imagine taking like a man, but if she was going to threaten his masculinity, death definitely looked like the better option.
Carrie dropped the knife away from him, and he let out a quick exhale. She slid forward a little in his lap, her free hand slipping to the back of his neck, where she dug her nails into the base of his skull.
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. “Are you starting to get the picture, now, Sebastian? You’re going to talk, there’s no doubt about that. But it can either be pleasant”—her nails raked his chest, through the trails of blood—“or it can be rather unpleasant. Either way, I’ll still be having fun.”
“If I tell you in no uncertain terms that I can’t help you and I don’t have the information you need, I don’t suppose you’ll take me at my word and end this before it gets any messier.” His breath was jagged over the words.
Carrie shook her head, half smiling with an almost-indulgent expression crossing her features. “I’d have to be pretty dumb to fall for that one. We both know how this game works, so buck up, cowboy.”
“Actually, I have no idea how this game works. Maybe there’s like a manual you could go get for me. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure there’s some serious personal-space lines being crossed right now and the military has rules about that sort of thing.”
And the knife was back, levered under his jawline where she’d just had her mouth. “Your smart tongue is only going to be amusing for so long.”