Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

"I hate this plan."

Garin chuckled as he flew Dom's ship directly into the maw of the Wate Group station's docking bay. "You'd be surprised how many times this has worked."

"If the answer is anything greater than zero, then yes, I would be extremely shocked." Dom white-knuckled the armrests of his chair as they approached the entrance scanners.

"I can think of three times off the top of my head." Garin glanced at the screen displaying their transponder code, ensuring it was scrambling through options like he expected.

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

Granted, the stations Garin had infiltrated before were much shoddier than anything owned by the Wate Group and with security measures to match. But he also hadn't been using a spoofing algorithm developed by Dominic Turner and running on a Turner ship then, either, and those were both best-in-class.

Specifics aside, the idea was the same. The station had minimal security. It was masquerading as a simple relay server, meaning it shouldn't need much security, and clearly the Wate Group hadn't wanted to bring extra attention to it by contradicting that assumption.

But the station still needed workers and supplies. Instead of manually checking every ship that came in and out of the docking bay, the security system scanned the ships for the correct private transponder codes.

So Garin had spun up the spoofing algorithm and sailed on in.

"This is insane," Dom hissed, not for the first time, even as the console beeped its success. "Our ship looks nothing like a worker's ship. Someone is going to realize who we are."

"Of course they will, but not before we get inside." Garin steered them to the nearest open slot. "And if we're lucky, not before we destroy that data you're after. And if we're really lucky, not before we're on our way out of here."

"We'll be lucky if we dock before they realize it," Dominic muttered, tearing apart the crumpled sheet of paper he'd been worrying at for the whole short flight.

"Well then, we are off to a great start, because we're in." Garin powered down the ship's engines and hit the button to release the airlocks. "I hope you know where to go."

"I have an idea." Dom unstrapped himself and headed for the exit, fingers tapping wildly against his thighs.

Garin hoped he had something a little more concrete than an idea, but he kept that to himself. Dom was used to sitting behind a computer screen. This was all more action than he'd seen in his life and if he functioned even passably well, Garin would be impressed.

"They'd store the data in a climate-controlled room under heavy security, probably in the center of the station. That's what we do in our secret server stations, at least." Dom let Garin precede him out of the ship, then pointed to the exit on their left.

"What kind of security are we talking about?" Garin pulled his sidearm as they hurried to the door, head on a swivel. There were probably cameras watching every inch of this place, but the only live people he saw were a cluster of workmen on the far side of the bay.

"Keycards. Retina scanners. That sort of thing." Dom stuck to Garin's heels, almost too close, threatening to trip them up.

"What about passwords?" Garin gently pushed Dom back a step so he wouldn't tangle their feet together as they reached the exit and ducked into the hallway.

"Maybe. Why? Would that be bad?" Dom gave Garin the required space for all of five seconds, before suctioning himself to Garin's side again.

Garin pressed his shoulder to a corner and peered around it. Finding the long hallway empty, he grabbed Dom's wrist, and they booked it. Sneaking was too slow for the time pressure they were under. "Passwords are a lot harder to take by force than keycards or retinas."

Dom stumbled at Garin's words. "Wait, what?"

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Garin dragged Dom forward until he found his feet again. "Let's go. We've got a mile of hallways before we get to the center of this place."

Dom obediently shut his mouth and ran along by Garin's side. Any other laboratory scientist and Garin would worry he wouldn't be able to keep up. But generations of careful breeding and the best nutritionists and personal trainers money could buy had blessed Dom with an athletic build and decent cardio, even if he'd never had occasion to put his physical prowess to the practical test.

Well, Garin would worry about any scientist other than Sazahk.

Garin had felt the muscles of Sazahk's body under his own hands, but he was still certain the man ran on pure insatiable curiosity. He wondered if?—

A human form appeared before them and Garin lifted his gun and fired on ingrained muscle memory.

Fuck, he needed to not be thinking about Sazahk right now.

The heavily armed guard—thank god it had been a guard and not a civilian—fell dead before the gunshot finished echoing down the metal corridor. Behind him stood a wide-eyed, red-haired slip of a scientist, her mouth open in a perfect O.

"Don't move." Garin pinned his gun sights on her when she swayed back, twitching to run. "What's your clearance?"

"A-a-a-a-A!" the woman managed, answering too quickly and with too many tears welling up in her eyes for Garin to think she was lying.

"That sound high enough to you?" Garin asked Dom, shoving down the part of himself that didn't like making people cry or fear for their lives.

"Yeah, that sounds right." Dom's voice sounded strangled and Garin glanced at him to see his blue eyes darting between the dead man on the ground and the trembling scientist. Luckily, he'd already found his conscience, so Garin wouldn't have to deal with him having an existential crisis as he realized how terrible death and terror were and that he'd built his life and career peddling them.

"Take us to your data center." Garin jerked his chin down the hall in the direction he was pretty sure they were supposed to go.

Fear and indecision flashed through the woman's teary eyes. "I can't?—"

Garin dropped the barrel of his gun to the woman's leg. "Take us to your data center on your own two feet or I'll blow out your knee and you'll have to point as we drag you."

"Garin," Dom hissed, horror in his breath.

Garin felt that horror deep in his soul. Fuck, he hated this. He'd always hated this. There was a reason he'd gone into protection instead of classic mercenary work when he'd finished his service.

"Please don't." The woman burst into sobs, the tears trembling on her eyelashes spilling over her cheeks. "I'll take you. I'll take you. It's this way."

This was protection, Garin told himself as he and Dom followed the sniffling woman. This was protecting Dom as he made a colossal life decision and supporting him in his mission to make the world a better place. And if Garin had to break a few knees to make that omelet, he would.

But he really hoped he wouldn't have to.

They reached a heavy metal door without an alarm sounding, but the hairs rose on the back of Garin's neck.

"No guards?" Garin raised an eyebrow as he raised his gun to point at the woman again.

"No." The woman lifted her hands and shook her head. "No, every scientist that has access is accompanied by a guard from the moment they set foot on the station to the moment they leave. So the doors aren't guarded. But you—" the woman choked up. "You—Mine?—"

"Just open the doors." Garin steeled himself against the onslaught of guilt. He didn't have time to hope the scientist and her guard hadn't been close.

The woman clasped her hands together, bit her lip, and glanced at the keypad and scanners beside the door.

Dom made an urgent sound from behind Garin. "Just open it so he doesn't tear your eye out. No one wants that."

No one wanted that indeed, and also Garin wouldn't have to do that. A little thing like her he could grab and force to look into the scanner, no eye-plucking required. But the woman made a horrified gasp and turned to the keypad. She quickly typed in her code, slid her keycard, and stood on her tip-toes to stare into the retina scanner.

So, there had been a password. It was a good thing they'd run into a scientist that was so easy to intimidate. Garin winced. Two weeks ago, all he'd been dealing with were geysers and critters and none of those he'd had to scare within an inch of their life. Hell, the critters had even liked him.

Dom dashed into the room as soon as it slid open, and Garin's heart stopped as he disappeared.

"Wait!" Garin rushed after him, but, fortunately, the room was empty except for rows and rows of humming electronics and various screens with which to access them. Footsteps echoing behind him yanked Garin back again. "Shit."

He lunged into the hall, but the woman had made the most of her three second head start, sprinting away as fast as her legs could carry her. Garin could catch her, but that risked leaving Dom uncovered for too long.

"Okay, I can access everything I need from here." Dom's voice floated out from inside the room. "They've got some security, but they stole their algorithms from us anyway and implemented them worse, so I already know how to get around them. If I'm too heavy-handed, I'll set off the alarm, but I can disable it?—"

"Don't bother, the alarm's already been raised, or will be as soon as that woman finds a panic button." Garin returned to the room and planted his back to the doorframe. "Just wipe that data as fast as you can before you get locked out."

"Shit. Okay. Okay, I'm going." Dom's fingers shook as he typed. His whole frame shook, but he didn't take his eyes off the screen and his lower lip stayed firmly between his teeth.

That was more composure than most people would have in this sort of life-or-death situation. Though if Garin were honest with himself—which he could be, even if he wasn't ready to be honest with Dom—the outcome was looking more and more likely to be of the death variety. At least for him, the bodyguard, if not for the financially valuable son of an oligarch.

Garin swallowed as a mass of black emerged from around the corner at the end of the hall. Speaking of death… "We've got company."

"I'm not done." Dom's voice spiked an octave. "Garin, I'm not done! What do I do?"

"You keep going." Garin fired off a shot into the center of the mass of guards to let them know he was there, and they all dodged to the side and slowed their advance. "I can hold them off."

For a while.

Garin saw the flash of light glinting off the barrel of a rising gun and ducked into the server room in time to avoid the hail of bullets that followed.

"Okay, I got it!" Dom shouted, triumph in his voice. "What can I?—"

"Get this door closed!" Garin shouted back before Dom finished. He leaned into the hall to fire two shots down the corridor, catching one man in the knee and another in the shoulder. He tucked in before they answered, bullets whizzing past the open entrance. Damn, they were closer than he'd expected.

"Closed?" Dom's voice jumped with panic. "But we need to get out!"

"There is no getting out of this Dominic." Garin only managed one shot when he leaned out before returning fire forced him back in again. "There's only not getting killed right now."

Dom didn't reply for a second and a distant part of Garin that he didn't have time to indulge felt for the younger man as he reckoned with the sort of danger he'd never been in.

Garin snuck one last glance around the corner and his heart thudded in his chest. He pressed his back to the inside wall of the room. This was about to be a close quarters fight.

When Dom finally spoke, his voice was hard and determined. "I'll get it closed." Garin heard the click and clack of Dom's fingers flying over the keyboard. "Just get me twenty seconds, Garin."

"I can do twenty seconds." Garin rolled his shoulders and focused his hearing on the nearing stampede of footsteps.

When they sounded a split second from running him over, he swung through the doorway, gun blazing.

Instinct guided his shots as he emptied his clip into the men two feet away from him. A few of them fell, some of them dodged, some retreated screaming. When his gun clicked in his hand, Garin turned it into a club, bludgeoning the first man to lunge at him.

He caught the man in the temple and cracked his head back. He caught the second in the mouth, bursting the man's lip across his teeth.

But the third man slammed into Garin center mass, driving them both into the server room. The room with Dom.

"Garin!" Dom yelled from behind him, but Garin barely heard him over the blood pounding in his ears.

Garin roared and snapped his head forward, smashing his forehead into the man's nose. The man reeled back with a scream, clutching at the bloody mess of his face.

"Garin, I got it! I got it! It's closing!"

Garin cocked his leg up, then slammed his boot into the man's chest, throwing his entire bodyweight into the blow.

The man flew through the closing doors.

But something knocked Garin's victorious bellow from his lungs.

"Garin?"

He stumbled back, hand going to his stomach where it felt, distantly, like he'd been punched.

"Garin!"

Garin knew what he'd see before he even pulled his fingers back from the warm wet of his clothes to look at them.

Sazahk wanted Garin.

He didn't want to want Garin, and he didn't want to admit it and he wouldn't admit it, but as he walked beside Patrick down the gleaming main thoroughfare of the Qeshian Tazal Station, he wanted Garin.

For ten years, Sazahk had fought for this moment. A quarter of a mile before him, an operating room waited for him, ready to insert the piece of himself the Senate had taken from him. And a quarter of a mile behind him, his pardon percolated through the vast Qeshian bureaucracy, scrubbing his so-called sin from history.

But for ten years, Sazahk had woken in a cold sweat from the nightmares and his scar had throbbed with pain whenever someone touched him too firmly. And a quarter of a mile—no, a fifth of a mile given his and Patrick's pace—across the station waited a room with restraints and paralytics and surgeons with scalpels and all the things that made Sazahk's breath rattle in his chest.

He'd never told anyone about the trauma of the event. Only the indignity. The more observant of his companions, the ones that recognized his brand of trauma because they'd felt it themselves—Bar'in, Zyk—had intuited it. But he'd never told them.

He'd never told anyone until Garin.

And he wanted the man with him now. He didn't want to go into that operating room alone. He wanted Garin by his side, steady and soothing and supportive.

"You alright?" Patrick asked in a low voice as they crossed into the station's medical district. He couldn't tell what was wrong, not like Bar'in or Zyk could, but he knew something was, and caring commanding officer that he was, he'd insisted on accompanying Sazahk to and from the operating room himself.

"Have you heard any word from Dom or Garin?" Sazahk appreciated Patrick's concern, but he wasn't interested in sharing. He kept his skin clear for the same reason. No one would believe that he had no feelings about his pardon or his implant, but they didn't need to know what those feelings were. They didn't need to know that all he felt at the moment was fear.

"No, nothing." Patrick shook his head as he opened the door into the surgery center and held it for Sazahk. "They both seem more likely to reach out to you before me, though."

And yet it had been two days since Garin left and neither of them had. Sazahk could understand Garin's lack of communication. After all, they had no acknowledged reason to keep in touch. In fact, Garin might not have a reason at all. Garin might have contentedly moved on with his life, and it was only Sazahk who pined.

But Sazahk had expected Dom to make contact. He was sure the human had been at least half as excited about the prospect of Dead Zone research as Sazahk was. He wouldn't have disappeared without even a cursory analysis.

"And you haven't heard anything about them from anyone else?" Sazahk pressed as they passed clusters of nurses, doctors, and surgeons, all in the crisp green uniforms of medical professionals that haunted Sazahk's nightmares. "You have contacts in the Resistance, the official government of Tava, the Klah'Eel, the Qesh. You know more people than anyone of your rank could be expected to. Have you heard anything from any of them?"

"No, Sazahk, I'm sorry." Patrick stopped outside a door and turned to Sazahk. "But I will ask around for you, alright?"

Sazahk reluctantly stopped beside him and glanced at the door with the number of his operating room. "Alright. Thank you."

Patrick looked between him and the closed door. "You sure you don't want me to come in with you?"

Purple escaped Sazahk's control and bloomed across the back of his hands. "I am very sure. I don't require assistance or hand-holding for the task of lying still."

"Fair enough." Patrick no longer reacted at all to Sazahk's indignant rebuffs of offered help. "I'll make those calls for you while you're in there."

"Thank you. I'll be with you shortly." Sazahk spun on his heel, opened the door, and stepped into the room.

He didn't require assistance. He didn't require hand-holding. And he didn't require Garin.

"Hello, sir, you're right on time."

Sazahk didn't hear the smooth baritone of the nurse addressing him. All he heard was the beep of surgery equipment that must have been an auditory illusion, because all the equipment was behind the pane of glass he stared through into the operating theater.

It all looked exactly the same. Mind-flaying technology apparently hadn't advanced in the last ten years.

"We'll just need to shave off some hair and sterilize the location before we get you in there." The nurse took his forearm, and Sazahk clenched his jaw to keep from yanking away.

But Garin loved his hair, Sazahk thought as he let himself be sat in a chair and the nurse's cool fingers on his scalp tilted his chin down to expose the back of his neck.

And it'll all still be there, Sazahk replied to himself as the buzz of the clippers filled the air. Except for this one little part. And he was assuming Garin still had an interest in running his fingers through Sazahk's hair like he'd seemed to so enjoy. Sazahk wasn't the only man within touching distance now that they were back in civilization. There were plenty of more normal men with hair Garin could caress.

Sazahk flinched as the frigid metal of the clipper blade brushed his skin. But before the expression had even settled on his face, the nurse flicked the device off. The clippers clattered on the table beside them and the nurse pinned Sazahk's locks away from the shaved portion.

"And that's it. It should grow back in no time, and no one will see it when you have your hair down, anyway." He kept his hand on Sazahk's head, holding his chin down. "This is cold, but it won't hurt. It's just a disinfectant."

An icy wetness swiped down the back of Sazahk's neck, right over the scar Sazahk had brushed with his fingers more times than he could count.

"And now on to the theater and I'll pass you off to the anesthetist." The nurse took Sazahk's arm again and tugged him from his chair as the glass door slid open.

The anesthetist. Sazahk's least favorite person aside from the officers that had dragged him into the operating theater screaming and struggling.

Except there were no officers this time, and this was a different anesthetist. Sazahk knew because he'd never forgotten the first one's face.

"Hello there." The woman smiled when the nurse lead Sazahk to her. She nodded to the tilted bed with the opening in the headrest. "Lie down and I'll get you ready for the surgeon."

Sazahk forced his limbs to obey him and ordered them to lay him face down on the table and rest his forehead against the cushion. He looked down at the tablet set up in his field of view.

"The incision point is so small that all we'll need is a local anesthetic." The woman flicked a flex metal tentacle out from the base of Sazahk's table and pulled a rolling cart closer to her as she spoke in a cheerful voice. "But we'll also need to give you a short-lived paralytic to ensure no unintended movements while the surgeons are working on such a delicate part of your body. The paralytic won't affect your breathing or heartbeat or anything like that, and you'll still be able to speak, though it may feel a little odd to do so."

Sazahk closed his eyes and braced himself.

"I'll start with the anesthetic so that it has time to do its job. Small pinch."

Sazahk winced as a pinch a little larger than small bit the base of his skull. A cold trickle, then tingling numbness, spread down the back of his neck. But that wasn't what Sazahk dreaded.

"And now the paralytic. It's fast-acting and should take hold as soon as the drip is set up." The woman twisted Sazahk's arm enough to expose a vein to her needle. "But it'll also stop working almost as soon as the IV is removed."

But only if the IV was removed. Only if the officers present didn't decide he'd be easier to handle if he couldn't move.

Except there were no officers present.

There were no officers.

"Good morning, everyone!" A jolly tenor boomed as the far door opened. "And how's my patient doing today?"

Sazahk's fingers went limp and his shoulders dropped as the needle in the crook of his arm sapped the agency from his body.

"Sazahk, right? You doing okay there?" Sterile-booty-covered feet entered Sazahk's field of vision and a young qeshian man crouched down to peer into Sazahk's face.

Sazahk blinked, realizing the man expected an answer from him. But his mouth was dry when he opened it and he croaked his reply more than said it. "I'm fine."

"I'm sure this is a little nerve-wracking for you, but you're in good hands." The man clasped Sazahk's shoulder as he stood. "We'll be done in a jiffy. Assistant, prepare yourself. Nurse, if you would?"

The nurse that had cut Sazahk's hair sat down in front of him and lifted the tablet. "We're just going to make sure your basic mental faculties remain intact throughout the surgery."

"Scalpel."

Sazahk's heart raced.

"What shapes are these in order from left to right?"

He couldn't move.

"Making the incision."

Pressure. Right at the base of his skull. Right at the entrance to his mind, the core of his being.

"Sir? Can you tell me what these shapes are?"

Goddess, if they took his ability to name shapes he hoped they took his ability to recognize the shame of it. "Regular quadrilateral, equilateral equiangular triangle, circle."

"Oh, um, yeah, I guess that's right."

"Suction."

"How about these colors now?"

"More suction. I need to see this scar tissue better."

What if they couldn't put his implant back? What if his body was too ruined? What if they'd taken that piece of him away forever?

He wanted Garin.

"The colors, sir? Of the, um, regular quadrilaterals?"

"Red, green blue."

"Very good."

"Okay, that's better. Inserting the implant now."

More pressure, rustling, brushing, itching, like feathers all the way down his spine.

"Could you read this simple sentence out loud for me?"

"Attaching the nerve endings."

Energy surged through Sazahk's mind. Wholeness. Knowledge.

"First one down. The rest should be easy."

The lines of data from his experiments. The papers he'd written on cell functioning and mutation. The questions he'd had and the evidence he'd gathered to answer them.

"And another one. Just one more."

Memories. The subtle quirk of his parents' lips as he'd graduated with every academic honor available. The look on a little girl's face when he'd told her she had three more weeks to live than she'd thought. The look on her father's face when she'd died, right on time. His brother's scowl. The sneer on the face of the captain sent by the Senate to arrest him.

"And done."

Power.

Sazahk exploded out the flex metal tentacles at the base of the operating table. He reached them out in every direction, knocking away the surgeon and his assistant, the nurse with his asinine tablet, the anesthetist with her needles and tubes.

"What the fuck?"

"How—"

"Sir! Calm down, please!"

Screams at various levels of alarm echoed in the small, glass operating theater as Sazahk threw everyone away from him. Apparently, no one had bothered to revisit the permissions granted to his implant. After his fall from grace, they'd taken his implant, locked it up, and never worried about the fact that it was a key to every system on every major Qeshian station.

Sazahk wrapped a tendril around the tube pumping the paralytic into his system and yanked it out. Immediately, life leeched back into the tips of his fingers.

"Sir, please calm down. The surgeon needs to stitch you up." The nurse recovered first, closing in on Sazahk despite the maelstrom of tentacles he whipped up around himself. He felt the nurse fighting to take back control of the flex metal tools of the operating room, but Sazahk's access overrode his.

Sazahk flicked his gaze through the surrounding cameras, seeing the world again in a way he hadn't in so long.

He saw himself, sitting up from the operating table, blood dripping down his spine and soaking into his robes.

Expanding outwards, he saw Patrick pacing out in the hall, oblivious to the chaos Sazahk wreaked within. But if he was oblivious to Sazahk's mayhem, why the concern in his face? Concern that on anyone else's face, Sazahk would read as panic except that Patrick didn't panic.

But the anxiety in his eyes was close, and something deep in Sazahk's gut hardened into the cold weight of fear.

He stumbled to his feet, catching himself with thick tentacles as he swayed and tripped, still weak from the paralytic they'd pumped through his veins.

Patrick hadn't been concerned about anything when Sazahk left him. And the only things he was supposed to have learned about in the brief time Sazahk had been out of commission were the whereabouts of Dom and Garin.

And now he was concerned.

Sazahk ordered the sliding glass gate of the operating room to open, then shoved through the door into the hall and staggered out.

"Sazahk!" Patrick spun around, his blue eyes wide and his jaw dropping. "Are you okay? What are doing? What happened?"

Sazahk shook his head and fended off Patrick's advance with a tentacle to his chest. "You have news."

"What are you talking about?" Patrick swept his gaze over him, over the blood smeared across the side of his neck, his hair pinned in disarray, the thick tentacle holding his shaking frame up, and the three thinner ones he kept poised around himself like guard dogs. "You don't look done?—"

"About Garin and Dom, you have news. I know you do. What is it?"

Patrick opened his mouth, visibly debated with himself, then closed it. He swallowed and that display of nerves from Patrick snapped the last thread of Sazahk's hope. "It's not good."