[Makebelieve] Fic: Brothers Of The Blood 23

[makebelieve archive]

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Adric glanced at Dalton and shrugged, then moving stiffly, made his way to
the wall-mounted intercom and thumbed the call button. "Adric here."

"Adric, it's Nykita." Tension carried in her voice, raising gooseflesh on
Adric's arms. "I'm in the detention cells. There's been an accident down
here."

"Explain."

"The guards just finished their rounds. Adric, I'm afraid they found the spy
dead in her cell."

"Ah Judes," Adric growled deep in his throat. "How did she die?"

"That might be better left unsaid until you can get down here. But Adric,
there is something you should know," her words dragged, hesitant and unsure.

"You can speak freely, Nicki."

"This is an open channel. I wasn't certain...."

"Nicki, say what's on your mind."

"Very well. The spy. It was Sinda. The woman you brought in last month."

Adric's forehead thumped softly against the wall. He'd never have suspected
Sinda. Not for a minute. "Okay. Understood. I'm on my way."

Pushing away from the wall, Adric met Dalton's icily prohibitive stare. "It
doesn't get any easier to take, does it, my friend? All the death and
destruction. It doesn't ever get any better?"

"Not from where I'm standing," Dalton said, his hand gentle on Adric's arm.
"Not at all."

Startled by the other man's comforting touch, Adric searched Dalton's
guarded gaze again and for a mere heartbeat saw some foreign, flickering
emotion he daren't put a name to within the depths of that familiar, chilled
stare. And then it was gone. Imagined?

"Your woman said this Sinda had only been with you a month. How much access
does a new recruit have, as a rule?" Dalton wanted to know.

"Very little, actually. I don't usually allow anyone past the first level
without undisputable proof of their loyalty. In fact, nobody gets access to
anything that might be passed on to hostiles except on a need to know basis.
You, on the other hand, were a different case entirely, but then we have a
past, don't we?"

"One would think so." Dalton frowned, smoothing his fingers in a slow,
petting fashion. "Adric, this woman went through a great deal of trouble to
infiltrate your operation. Why do you think she would call in her troops and
reveal herself unless she had hard evidence?"

"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "Our faces are pretty well known,
though. Maybe she recognized me, or you, or one of your squad, and
panicked." He sucked in a shaky breath and scrubbed his hand across his
mouth. "I really have to check out this mess. Want to lend a hand?"

"For old time's sake?" Dalton chuckled grimly. "I wouldn't miss it."

* * * * * * * *

There were no security guards to be seen patrolling the dismal hall that
lead to the detention cells, Dalton noticed, and no scanners either, for
that matter. In fact, there were no security devices at all. Just Adric, who
trudged silently at his side, and Adric's so very mysterious lady without a
past waiting for them before the open door of a dimly lit cell.

The perfect setting for suicide. Or possibly murder?

Stepping into the cramped and dingy room, Dalton cast a dispassionate glance
over the skin torn, blood-saturated body that lie slumped half off, half on
the soiled cot.

She must have been a strikingly lovely woman in life. But not now. Not with
her short-cropped blonde hair stained a gruesome rusty brown. Semi-crusted
blood trailed from her mouth and wound in thick twin rivers from her ears.
And a single red teardrop pooled near her right eye.

The bizarre death, he imagined, was the result of a massive hemorrhage. Not
a very pretty way to end it at all. No, this was most decidedly not the way
an attractive young woman would chose for a self-imposed death.

"What the devil happened here, Nicki?" Adric demanded, drawing Dalton's
shuttered glance by jerking a brown woolen blanket over the grisly sight.
"Who was in charge of her questioning?"

"She wasn't tortured to death during interrogation, if that's that's what
you're getting at, Adric," Nykita told him softly. "I know because she
hadn't been questioned yet."

Adric pivoted slowly around on the balls of his feet. "No?"

"No. You see, I'd wanted to be at her questioning myself, but I hadn't had
time to arrange it."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Guilt, I guess," she said, shrugging. "Our screening process involves a lot
more than your loyalty tests, Adric. I monitor the initiates heart rate,
core temperature and any number of bodily responses during the primary
interrogations. But she never flagged red. Somehow she was able to slip the
bios and that bothers me. Bothers me a lot.

"Bearing that in mind, I thought her questioning was important enough to
warrant personal attention and you've had too much to contend with already.
That made it my duty to find out how they were beating our screening
process." Her shoulders lifted in a defeated shrug. "Now, I guess we'll
never know."

"No, now we will never know," Dalton said with a tight grimace, his hands
convulsing into white-knuckled fists. "A pity, but we are left with nothing
but a bloody mess."

"It is that," Nykita agreed. "An ugly, bloody mess. And it's also a waste,
her dying without answering a single question" 	"Nothing can be done
about that," Adric said through a tired sigh. "But this sure as hell doesn't
fall under the category of death by natural causes, does it?"

"That would be highly unlikely, I must admit," Nykita said.

"Well then, have you had an opportunity to form an opinion on how she did
die?"

She tapped her forefinger against her lips. "Near as I can tell without a
full autopsy, she was carrying a suicide cap."

"Suicide? You must be kidding." Adric's harsh fingers bit into her arm,
making her flinch away from him.

"I assure you, I am not."

"How could she have gotten a death pill past the body check? Or wasn't she
even scanned before she was incarcerated? Dammit, Nicki, was she given even
the most cursory of searches?"

"Security was not at fault."

"Really? Well, who in the hell was then? How did Sinda get that capsule past
the scans?"

"I made a preliminary examination of the body while I was waiting for you to
get down here." Nykita hesitated, chewing on her thumbnail.

"Go on."

"She met his angry stare. "There was massive corrosion of the inner mouth
area. I found several broken and jagged teeth. Little more than shells,
actually."

"And what does that tell us?"

"I think she might have concealed the poison inside those hollowed out
teeth."

A curious frown wrinkled Adric's high forehead. "That would have been rather
dangerous, wouldn't it?"

Nykita shook her head. "Not in this case, Adric. There are certain
safeguards built into this type of cap. The bite has to be executed in a way
that can only be deliberately made. There's no way to break the sealant by
accident."

Dalton arched his brow slightly. "You seem to know a great deal about it."

"It's standard knowledge in the medical fields, St Moritz," she drawled, her
voice dripping honey. "Adric, there is one more thing. The poison had to be
incredibly fast-acting. We had a guard checking her cell every twenty
minutes. If she had been discovered in the death throes, perhaps we might
have saved her. Or at least taken a memory scan. As it stands now, we've got
nothing. Aside from another senseless death."

Dalton shook his head. "Oh, I don't know how senseless it was."

"What's in your mind, haurride?"

"I've been thinking, if this was a suicide, which I am not entirely
convinced it was, this woman chose death by her own hand instead of risking
her secrets to questioning. And she chose a rather grisly death, at that. In
my mind, her decision tells us something we should have suspected before."

"Just exactly what do you think it tells us?"

Dalton crooked his thick brow at Nykita's sarcasm, chuckling softly. "It
tells us, woman, that perhaps the prisoner held knowledge of vital
importance to our survival. Information she felt she could not risk under
interrogation."

"For instance?"

"Well now, any answer I supply would be no more than supposition and I tend
not to trust hunches." Dalton smiled darkly. "But under the circumstances,
I'd hazard a guess."

"What sort of guess?"

His smile faded. "I suspect her purpose for being here goes deeper than the
obvious. I also think it highly probable she may have been murdered and her
death made to look like a not very convincing suicide."

"Why ever would you think that?"

He pinned Nykita with his harsh cobra's gaze. "Perhaps there is another
traitor, a mole, on the base. Her death could well have been staged to
protect an accomplice."

Nykita's pale hand fluttered to her throat. "An accomplice wouldn't want to
be identified."

"I would expect not. Especially if this accomplice is active."

"You're serious, aren't you? You really think there may still be a traitor
active on the base." Nykita cast a look of despair at Adric. "Adric, he
can't be right."

"Let's hope I'm wrong then," Dalton said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"But it does seem to the most likely answer, don't you think?"

"You have to be wrong. If you are right we're not any safer here than we
were on Alpha Base. But Lord help us, Adric, we'll have to work under the
assumption he's right. We have to play it safe."

"Play it like you see it, woman. I intend to."

"Just exactly what do you intend to do?" she demanded.

He gave an impartial shrug. "Survive. I intend to survive."


end part 23



-- 
PEJA
The wwomb archive http://www.squidge.org/~peja/cgi-bin/index.php accepts all
fandoms, all genres. Come create your personal page with us
Need a plot bunny? http://community.livejournal.com/adoptaplotbunny/
ready to commit ten minutes a day to writing?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TenMinutesWithTheMuse
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.chez-vrolet.net/pipermail/makebelieve/attachments/20080826/0fe5d0e7/attachment.htm