Chapter Seven Faith

"Absolutely not."

Faith counted to ten, trying not to lose her composure. For two days, she had been trying to persuade Robyn to sign off on a mission. But she wouldn't budge.

"I'll go in disguise." She followed Robyn round the tiny kitchen as she made a sandwich. "I'll go alone."

Ignoring her, Robyn finished buttering the bread and threw on a slice of ham.

"I'll go with Diane."

"No." The older woman finished building the sandwich. Grasping a large knife, she sawed it in half.

"That would only be two of us." Collecting the remaining ingredients from the counter, Faith walked to the fridge and cleared them away. "You can spare that, for one night."

Robyn turned to face Faith, one eyebrow raised. "Send two inexperienced young girls out into the city in the middle of the night on a mission doomed to failure?" She pointed the knife at Faith. "Again, no."

Discarding it in the sink, she picked up her plate, stalked to a table and sat down. Faith watched as she took an enormous bite out of the sandwich, bending her head to read something on her wristclip. A surge of desperation flooded Faith. She couldn't just abandon Sophia. Her friend had been her main reason for returning to Bellator. Ever since Diane had discovered that she was being kept in Bellator Hospital rather than the academy, Faith hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. Now she knew where her friend was, she couldn't just ignore it.

Doggedly, she walked across and plonked herself down opposite the other woman. When Robyn looked up from her first bite, she sighed.

"Look, I'm sorry about your friend. Really." Her face softened. "And we will try to look at how we might help her. But it's too dangerous right now." She took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. "We just can't go charging after every single person Danforth hurts. The Resistance is bigger than that."

"But–"

Robyn's face darkened. "I'm tired of this discussion. Let me make it very clear. Madeleine would go nuts if she found out I'd sanctioned anyone to gallivant around the city without her permission, let alone the two of you." She shook her head in disbelief. "The hospital, of all places! It has to be among the most well-guarded locations in the city."

"I've been there before though," Faith protested. "I got in and out without being spotted. I could do it again."

"No. It's too dangerous. The fact that you're asking me and not Madeleine tells me you know how risky it is. Don't think I'm a soft touch." Standing up, Robyn took the plate, sandwich and all, to the door. "I've said no and I mean it."

Once she was gone, Faith slumped down in her chair. She had thought the hard part was over once they'd learned where Sophia was. And after the success of the nighttime visit to the academy, she'd assumed that a similar mission to the hospital would be possible. But she hadn't counted on the Resistance leaders' stubbornness.

They agreed that the information Blake and the others were in the process of gathering from Anderson's datadev was extremely useful. Many of the files were password protected, and though she'd been working day and night, the techie had yet to hack into the more sensitive ones. But the basic information from the student records was more accessible.

Sophia's file was flagged because she was not currently living in the academy itself. The same could be said for the seven other girls who had been kidnapped by the Eremus citizens. But while Faith's file stated her current location as Eremus, Sophia's read Bellator Hospital: Ward FEX2.

Other than that, they knew nothing. A search of the ward number had revealed nothing. Where other areas of the hospital had webpages about their specialty, the two wards labelled FEX were a mystery. Even more worrying was the fact that the dates on the front of her file suggested she had been in the hospital since the day Danforth's forces had brought her back to Bellator.

There had been no attempt to take her back to the academy, which made Faith wonder if her friend had been injured in the attack. She had imagined everything, from a serious wound, to sickness, to torture. Nothing was more frightening than the complete unknown. But the Resistance refused to risk everything for a single citizen.

Faith slumped down over the table, her head on her arms. She hadn't come all this way to be a mere mile away from her friend and not help her. But going alone, without permission or support, wasn't the most appealing option either. Sneaking out of the academy in the past had always led to trouble on her return. The Resistance was organised. Its members thought things through. Faith would be a fool to ignore Robyn's words of caution.

She was fighting tears when she heard a noise behind her.

"Let me guess." Faith turned to see Diane, rolling her eyes. "She said no again."

Faith wasn't able to voice a reply.

"Thought she might." Diane slid into the seat next to her. "I'm sorry."

Faith swallowed hard. "Not your fault."

"No. But it still sucks." She leaned closer, dropping her voice. "Want to sneak out there tonight? We could go by ourselves. I know where we can get hold of a couple of weapons."

For a moment, Faith considered it. But an image of Diane smacking Carl over the head as they fled from the cottage in the woods flashed into her mind.

"No. Robyn's right." Faith inhaled deeply. "We don't have the experience. Alone, we'd probably make things worse."

Diane raised an eyebrow. "When did you get so sensible?"

Faith rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure."

"Just wish there was some way of finding out why she's there." Diane drummed her fingernails against the table. "I wonder if…" She broke off.

Faith frowned. "What?"

Abruptly, Diane stood up. "Come with me."

She pulled Faith to her feet and headed for the door. Hauling it open, she hurried through, towing Faith behind her. Before Faith could protest, her headstrong friend was rapping on a door further up the hallway.

"Blake, you in there?" For a moment, there was no response. "Blake!"

Faith braced herself for the grumpy woman's response to the interruption. Seconds later, there was a grunt from the other side of the door.

Grinning, Diane shoved the door open. "Mind if we ask you something?"

Following her friend inside, Faith found herself in a small room, packed with technical equipment she couldn't begin to name. Aside from several datadevs, there were various screens and consoles installed around the room, and numerous devices both large and small scattered across every surface. Warm and smelling vaguely of sweat, the room nevertheless hummed with energy.

In the centre of it all was an ancient office chair, its wheels allowing the user to roll between the various pieces of equipment. Seated on it, hunched over one of the datadevs, was Blake. She didn't look up as they entered.

"Shut the door."

The command was thrown over her shoulder as she tapped several buttons in sequence and squinted at the screen. Her rudeness didn't deter Diane, who strode across and stood next to her. "You could hack into any security system in the city, right?"

Blake snorted. "Yes."

"Soooo… if we wanted to gain access to, say, the cameras in the academy, you could do that?"

Blake sniffed. "I've done it before."

"What about other important locations?"

"Yeah. Given enough time, I can gain access to most systems." Blake shot her a sideways glance. "We often try to keep an eye on major government targets, places we think things are happening that we need to know about. The issue is there aren't enough of us to keep a handle on all those places at once."

"How about the hospital?"

"Sure." Blake shrugged, turning her attention back to the datadev. "We've kept a close eye on the med centres and hospitals in the past. Especially since Eremus decimated the Fertility Unit."

"Could you take a look now?"

Faith suddenly understood what Diane was getting at. Access to the cameras inside the hospital might well allow them to see Sophia without setting foot in the hospital. That way, they could learn more about her situation. Work out if she needed immediate rescue.

Blake had stopped typing. Narrowing her eyes, she leaned across Diane and looped her fingers through the handle of her coffee mug. Leaning back in her chair, she took a long swig. "Tell me why, and maybe I'll think about it."

Diane looked at Faith, nodding her head towards Blake. Shuffling closer, Faith took a breath.

"As you know, your… investigation into the information kept on Anderson's datadev showed us that my friend Sophia is… well, is currently being kept in the Bellator Hospital. We d-don't know why." Faith found her hands were shaking, but forced herself to continue. "Robyn won't allow us to go to the hospital and rescue her–"

"Too right." Blake interrupted. "Suicide mission, with so little information."

"Yes… I suppose so." Faith stood taller. "But… I care very much about Sophia. She's the reason I came back here. And I need to know… I have to know what's happening to her."

"You want me to hack into their system so you can look at the feed from their cameras?" Blake's eyes widened. "No chance."

"Wait," Diane butted in. "You said yourself that we don't know enough about the situation to risk going down there. Surely your purpose is to look into suspicious situations like this… make sure the Resistance is armed with information."

Sensing Blake was tiring of them, Faith pressed the point. "What if you took a break from this and tried to locate Sophia? What if you could find her… watch her… see what's happening to her." She shrugged, hoping her words were having some effect. "Might shed some light on what they're doing to the rest of the girls as well.

"Watch her?" Blake drained her cup and set it down on the table with a thump. "I think I just said how we don't have enough people to do things like that. I've enough to do without sitting at a screen staring at a hospital patient all night."

"What if we did it?" Diane leaned forward. "We could take turns…"

"…make notes," Faith added, "detail what we see."

"Madeleine and Robyn would like that, wouldn't they?" Diane finished.

Blake's gaze went between the two of them. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"We're not." Ignoring Blake's scowl, Diane perched on the edge of the desk beside her. Her gaze turned serious. "Haven't you ever had someone you'd do anything for? Someone who you'd defend, no matter what?"

Faith knew she was thinking of her friend Serene, the first victim of femgazipane. Diane had been unable to save her, and had made it her business to stop the same thing from happening to Sophia. Faith looked back at Blake, whose eyes had narrowed. For a moment, she stared at Diane in silence.

And then, without a word, she turned back to her datadev. Exiting her current screen, she opened a different app, her fingers flying over the keys. A form appeared. Without a pause, Blake tabbed through the different boxes, typing in multiple commands, her eyes glued to the screen. Faith found she couldn't read more than the first couple of words on each page before Blake had flashed on to the next.

Eventually, they were staring at what appeared to be the view from a camera.

"Wait, that's…" Faith breathed.

On the screen was a clear view of the reception desk of the Emergency Department of the Bellator Hospital. A woman in a medtech uniform sat behind it, speaking into a microphone attached to a set of headphones. Blake stretched across Diane again, pushing a button on a screen to her left. Seconds later, the same camera feed was displayed on it.

"Grab that." She jerked her head at a stool in the corner. Faith obeyed, placing it in front of the second screen and sitting down. "Watch."

Blake tapped a key on the datadev below the screen. The view changed, now displaying a hospital corridor. A second tap revealed an empty waiting room.

"Every camera the hospital has in operation." Blake changed the view again. "See? You'll have to toggle through them all. I don't have time."

Abruptly, she turned back to her original screen. Diane moved across to stand behind Faith, nodding to the datadev. "Come on. What are you waiting for?"

Her hands shaking, Faith pressed the key Blake had indicated, her eyes fixed on the screen. A medic station popped up next. Numerous technicians and medics stood talking, drinking coffee, typing information into datadevs of their own. Another tap shifted the view to a corridor, then a storage room, not unlike the one in which she had met Noah.

How na?ve she had been, simply walking into the hospital that night. If the images on her phone hadn't given her away, the cameras in the hospital would have. Faith wondered how closely they were monitored. Did the hospital have enough security staff to be constantly watching every room? She hoped not.

She found herself with a new appreciation for Blake, someone technical who could deactivate cameras and sensors when necessary. It was the very reason that going solo hadn't worked out well for her in the past. Having a team behind you was, she admitted, very useful.

Faith tapped again, faster this time, revealing a ward with several beds containing patients. She paused to take a closer look. Most of them were sleeping; none of them were Sophia. More images flashed by: a room with a scanner, several offices, a consultation room where all that could be seen was a curtain pulled around a bed. Again, Faith stopped, trying to work out whether it was occupied. When she couldn't, she made a mental note to come back and look at the room again later. Continuing to look, she scanned past a staffroom, the main hospital entrance, and multiple reception desks in different departments.

On and on Faith went, her eyes checking for any sign of a face she recognised before hitting the button again.

"Incredible," Diane muttered, beside her. "Think of what we could learn from this."

Faith ignored her, keeping her eyes glued to the screen. Was she going to have to go through every room in the hospital to find her friend?

And then, she stopped. Tabbing back once, she stared.

On the screen was a narrow view of a very small ward. It contained four single beds with rails around the sides and little else. Dominating the room were a number of large machines, grouped in various positions around one of the beds. Numerous wires snaked between them, interconnecting the different pieces of equipment. Faith shuddered, imagining the sounds emitting from the monstrous devices.

Her eyes travelled to the figure in the bed. It was the only one which was occupied. Pale and tiny, Sophia lay on her back. She was either asleep or unconscious. Faith didn't want to think about which. The tubes twisting out of the machinery were inserted into her body at various points: the crook of her elbow, her neck, her wrist.

As Faith stared, the screen grew brighter, as though someone unseen had flicked on a light. A second figure moved into view. A medic in overalls walked to the bed and leaned in close. Her heart in her mouth, Faith could only watch as the petite woman observed Sophia, tapping information into a datadev she held in her hand.

When she straightened up, the medic moved to each machine in turn. Some, she only glanced at. At others, she pressed buttons and turned dials, making various adjustments. After each one, she studied Sophia closely. Circling the bed like a predator, she continued making alterations until, finally, she seemed satisfied.

And then, with one final cursory glance at her patient, the medic turned away. Faith cried out as she disappeared from view. Seconds later, the screen grew dimmer once again, leaving Sophia in near-darkness.