The Judas Contact (Boomers Book 1) (9 page)

It took her a couple of minutes to set up the syringe and the vials. She didn’t need a lot of blood. She just wanted to look at it under a microscope, run it through the equipment. Reasonably, it would give her a baseline for starting.
Starting what? His microchip isn’t in his blood, it’s in his brain.

She ignored the skeptical little voice of contention nattering in the back of her mind. Garrett stood ready, his gloved hand a fist and a vein already ready for the needle’s invasion. He stared at her calmly. “Why does it concern you, Doctor Blaine?”

“Rory said you came from a bleak future. How bad is bleak?”

“Bad.”

She swallowed. His expression darkened with that one word. The lines around his eyes tightened and his lips flattened together. “And if we find out that my work contributed to that future? Would taking me out of the equation fix that?”

The thought popped up out of nowhere but, the moment she gave voice to it, she realized it was true. The concept of quantum time suggested that, for every action, there was a reaction. Every choice created a splinter in the future. If his future came from one of her choices then, arguably, eliminating her could be a rational solution.

“We’re not going to kill you, Doctor Blaine—”

“Ilsa,” she interrupted. “I’m about to subject you to a battery of tests and get very personal. You should call me Ilsa.”

His expression softened with a hint of a smile, and her heart did another skip. “Ilsa. No one lied when we said we wanted answers. Your work may have contributed to our chips, but technology alone does not design a future. If we’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that our choices have as much effect on what happens as the choices of others.”

“This is insane. And you will feel a bit of a sting. Release your hand when I push the needle in, okay?”

He nodded. She inserted the needle and, as soon as blood beaded on the inside of the syringe, she attached a vial and tried to keep her focus clinical as it filled. Two more vials later, she pulled the syringe out and kept her hand over the insertion site, applying pressure with some white linen swabs. She set the vials into a tray stand and bent his arm upwards. His warmth seemed to penetrate through the thick suit.

Based on his earlier concern, that should probably worry her, but it was strangely comforting. “Are you okay?” She looked him over carefully.

“I’m fine.” He shrugged off her touch gently, but firmly. As he tugged away the linen, she glanced at his arm then gaped. The puncture was closed.

She grabbed his arm again and stared down at the inner fold of his elbow. The natural creases were smooth, not even a faint bruise remained from where she’d pushed the needle in. Granted, needles didn’t leave huge marks, but it had only been seconds.

“We heal quickly, Doc—Ilsa.” Garrett’s voice took on that gentle, patient quality again as though he were talking her down off a ledge.

“That’s not possible. Even in superior healing, you would still have a mark where the needle inserted.” Since the first Gulf War, scientists and physicians focused on battlefield triage sought ways to speed blood clotting and wound repair to minimize lasting damage. But she hadn’t used anything more than some alcohol and linen scraps.

“It isn’t possible
now
.” He gently extracted himself. “Run your tests on the blood, I’ll clean up the syringes. Do not take off that hazmat.” The last statement brooked no argument and she nodded obediently.

An hour later, she stood inside the decontamination chamber Garrett insisted on before she stripped out of the suit. Her mind whirled. She’d destroyed the two vials of blood she tested and stored the third in a secure hazard container in the iso-room’s fridge. Her mind whirled with the possibilities. His blood toxin level was through the roof. He should be dead.

More than dead, his body should be bloated and decaying right before her and not be so healthy, vital, and sexy. He’d been quiet while she tested, saying nothing in response to her mutterings of “impossible” over and over again. As she stripped off the helmet, she met his gaze.

“How are you still alive?” Throughout the 1980s, there had been reports of surgical patients mixing chemotherapy with homeopathic remedies, leading to the release of toxic gas in their blood. More than a few doctors, nurses, and surgical personnel collapsed from the neurotoxins those patients released. Study of their impact on the blood/brain chemistry had actually been the focus of her thesis in school. Garrett’s blood toxicity levels made those patients look like a flower perfumed park.

“I just am.” He’d rolled his sleeves down again. Only the skin of his neck and face was left exposed. “As I said, I can control the toxin. But you just have to avoid casual or unexpected touching.”

Her heart twisted. “No one touches you?”

“No one.” He nodded and took the suit from her fingers. He returned it to the cabinet and hung it up. She stared after him.

“Ever?”

He glanced back at her, his smile tight and self-deprecating. “Don’t feel sorry for me, doc. That’s not your job. Your job is the chip in my brain. You want to start that today? Or do you want food now?”

No physical touching. No human contact. As a general rule, she didn’t like people all that much. But she had the option. She could hug her parents, her friends, and her dogs. How could he function without any contact? There had to be something they could do about that.

The man sighed. “Ilsa?”

“Yes?”

“Work or food?”

Exhaling, she looked at the various pieces of equipment. The basement laboratory held exam rooms at one end, and hospital sized scanning equipment. It was easily the full length of the house above and maybe more. She couldn’t tell. She had another vial of his blood. She could work on that after they did the first round of scans. Whether he was delusional or not—everyone deserved the chance to be hugged.

“Work.”

* * * *

 “Michael, we have a problem.” Rory stared at the paperwork she’d just extracted from the director’s safe. Getting back into the lab system was out of the question, but Director Vidal’s office was located in a downtown building just one block over from the Infinity Corporation. She’d had little trouble making her way up through the levels of corporate security. The safe cracker device Simon provided worked like a charm, too.

“What is it?” Her lover’s voice murmured low and soft through the earbud. He was in one of the stairwells, just a hundred feet from her location. He preferred a sniper’s perch to boots on the ground, but he wouldn’t let her go alone into the seventy story building.

“They’re already using her chips in people. The director has a list of live experiments running right now…including a special ops unit from the military.” A fist clenched inside her gut. Ilsa couldn’t know about the human testing. She was adamant that it wasn’t possible. But Vidal’s spreadsheets included the dollars invested, the project numbers, and the different types of chips.

“Could she be lying to you?” Michael trusted no one outside of his team. And now Rory. He had his reasons and she understood them.

“No. I don’t think she knows. None of the initials on these orders are hers. I don’t think they’re Vidal’s either.” The stylized SJC wasn’t one she recognized. But each report contained sections with those initials.

They appeared on the three death certificates inside the folder, too. She used a small handcam to scan each page and then put the folder back where she found it. They’d need to decipher the medicalese.

“Extract now. Simon says the Director is on the way up.”

“Roger that.” She closed the safe and removed the device from the front. She’d already copied his hard drive. Her gaze split around the room as she debated.

“Now.” Michael’s voice snapped when she didn’t exit immediately. She walked over to the desk and flipped over his phone and slid off one of the stoppers on the bottom. She planted the listening device and switched it to voice activation before covering it back up.

She locked the door on her way out and just slid into the stairwell as the elevator dinged outside. That the director had an entire floor of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper to himself was just one more suspicious layer to the dangerous house of cards they were stacking.

Michael caught her arm and jerked his head at the stairs. She nodded and followed him down. They needed more information on R.E.X. labs, its director, and their military contracts.

She had to call her father.

The doctor was in the lab again. Garrett sighed. She was always in the lab.

“Four days of study have led to the conclusion that subject Garrett possesses a microchip implanted in his cerebral cortex. Upon closer examination, via CAT and PET scans, the chip appears to have organic circuitry. Whether that circuitry was a part of the initial installation or developed through interaction with the brain remains undetermined. Tests have been inconclusive about the nature of the chip’s interaction. FMRI arrived late last night, machine has been installed, and calibration should be complete by lunchtime.”

Ilsa thumbed off the recorder on the computer and leaned back in her chair. She switched screens and began scrolling through charts she’d begun constructing. For four days, the scientist alternated between demanding and completely oblivious. One thing she didn’t do was run, even when he’d asked her. The constant chatter might have been annoying, but he found that he preferred that to the eerie quiet punctuated by her mutters.

She’d woken him twice from the short naps he allowed himself in the chair. By the end of day two, she’d begun to fidget. Whatever detail eluded her kept her from sleeping. He’d asked about the diagram the first day, but she just waved him off. She chewed on a fingernail as she stared at the diagram.

“Ilsa?” It was his third attempt since the previous night to draw her out of the research. He wasn’t used to being ignored.

And he really didn’t like it.

“Not now.” She waved him off, leaning in closer to the screen.

Standing, he walked over and pressed two keys on the keyboard. The screen went black and she jerked her gaze up. “What the hell?”

“You’re exhausted. You’re squinting. You’re going to make mistakes. You need to eat. You need to sleep.”

“I’m sorry, do you have two Ph.D.s? A residency at John Hopkins or a fellowship from Massachusetts General? No?” Her eyes narrowed and fire flared in them.

“No. I have common sense, something you seem to lack. Now get up and head for the stairs. Food. Shower. Sleep. In that order.” He pointed a finger to the stairs and loomed over her. He understood the effect of size and of a firm glare.

She shoved her chair back and stood up, breast to chest, glaring right back. Apparently no one informed her of how this was supposed to go. “I’m not one of your military puppets nor am I blinded by lust like Rory.”

“She has nothing to do with this discussion. We need you sharp. We need you on your game.” He fought to soften his voice. But her breath huffed warmly against his lips and carried the scent of peppermint and coffee.

“You need to let me work my way. I am on to something here. I
need
the time to decipher the layout from what I can read on the screens.” Her voice dropped, low, husky, and rough.

“This isn’t going to save the world today, Ilsa.” He ceded one step back to her. He didn’t like how close she was. It wasn’t safe.

“It doesn’t have to save the world today; it has to open a window that I can look into tomorrow or at least reveal the locks. Then I can work on how to unlock the window, or break the glass, whatever it takes to decipher how those chips work.” It was almost unholy how bright her hazel eyes gleamed, a red flush suffusing her face and her hands clenching open and closed.

Scientists were a weird bunch. His gloved hands rasped against his face as he scratched at the reddish stubble. He needed to shave. “Two hours.”

“What?”

“Two hours. Enough time to eat, shower, and nap.” He folded his arms across his chest and stared her down.

“Fine. Two hours.” She reached around him, almost brushing him to put her pen back on the table. “Not a second longer.”

He didn’t quite control the flinch to back up another step. For a doctor aware of the danger, she acted pretty oblivious to it. She whirled away and stomped up the stairs. Garrett released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She pushed him, ignored him, and amused him in turns.

Glancing down at the sketch she’d doodled on the legal pad, he frowned. Electronics were not his specialty. The diagram, however, looked familiar. Pulling out his phone, he snapped an image and sent it via text to Simon with one question.

Recognize?

The scent of lavender teased his nostrils. The laboratory smelled like her.

He followed her up the stairs, checking the perimeter sensors on his watch. No intrusions or disturbances since their arrival. The distance from the city, coupled with her isolation from prior contacts, seemed to have neutralized whatever threat R.E.X. labs posed. Michael and Rory were working on an angle related to the director’s files. Drake had mentioned they fought over it, too. A flash of humor lightened his exhaustion. He wouldn’t mind a front row seat to paradise lost, but only if it included bulletproof glass.

“You do smile.” Ilsa stood in the middle of the kitchen, in a pool of sunshine, her blonde hair positively shining. Garrett blinked slowly, letting his eyes adjust from artificial to natural light.

 “When the occasion calls for it.” The kitchen smelled of coffee and commercial waffles. The doctor, it seemed, preferred to eat reheated frozen foods. The unusual proclivity seemed to be popular in a time when food was plentiful, but no one appreciated the abundance enough to take the time to prepare it. She leaned against the counter, a mug in one hand and a yellow toasted waffle dotted with chocolate chips in the other.

“It should call for it more often,” she said carefully around the bite she was chewing. “You look almost human when you do it.”

Her flushed and tense expression relaxed into an easier smile. The flames in her gaze cooled to an almost inviting cheer. The difference a flight of stairs and the smell of hot food had on her disposition impressed him. “I’ll take that under consideration. You should eat more than those. We have eggs. And peanut butter.”