Under My Skin

Under My Skin - Part 33

Rachel had locked herself in the storage lab containing the remnants of Retten's machine, the shiny twisted metal panels looking more like a pop sculpture gallery than evidence. So far her attempts to reverse engineer the machine had been hopeless. Though curious to it's workings, she doubted such a thing should be allowed to work again. The lock for the room was under her and Cetz's strict access; no way could Zachs come in here. And at the moment she needed security from snooping eyes. The Head of Watch Security was relentless in his inspection and had his men scanning all accessible parts of the base with their wands. She didn't know how they stayed awake without coffee, unless they were on the caffeine pills so popular with certain military groups.

Caffeine pills were for the weak minded that did not know the importance of sleep. Once she got done looking through Will's scans she promised her aching body a nap of no less than 45 minutes.

The blonde Med Tech brought up the BT-10's most recent scan on the lab screen. Getting the data downloaded onto her portable drive had taken an hour, but she had managed it in peace. She reminded herself to get Grant a present for getting the BT consol powered up while under lockdown. Maybe a box of fresh, un-straightened metal slinkys.

She zoomed in on Will's torso, ignoring the bruised flesh from the cave-in he survived. There was slight bruising on the front of his stomach wall which was strange. But when she narrowed the scan down to his digestive system she grimaced in sympathetic pain. There were pencil-line thin tears in the pyloric sphincter, and she could guess that by now the passage was swollen and sore, possibly bleeding, unable to pass anything to the small intestine. The swelling could be treated with medication and time, but the tears couldn't be aggravated anytime soon, else they would worsen. And with Louis in Will's stomach, unaffected by the acids that worked to sterilize whatever went through the younger agent's system, infection was a possibility.

She mentally noted to include bacterial changes next time she put Louis through tests.

Rachel sighed and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. There was no way to get Louis out without Will fighting. She could put Will under with chloroform or anesthetic, but she did not want to use either of those methods with Louis inside him. No one, even asleep, could resist fighting against something being pulled from inside them unless their whole body was paralyzed.

Her head jerked up. Paralyzed. That was it. It was a scary idea, and it would depend on a device in sterile storage that hadn't been activated in years, but if it still worked...

Forget the nap, she had an idea to work out.

***

A fellow agent woke from her cot and meandered back to Main Tech. She saw Reese, his black jacket hanging on the back of his chair, and he was still glued to his screen with a can of Monster in one hand and his headphones on, looking like a slightly deflated black white and red balloon. Beni trailed a headphone wire while still arranging figures on a large map, her Asian eyes squinted like she was trying to shoot lazers out of them.

"Have you guys had a break at all today?" said Agent Teegan. "It's already three in the afternoon."

"Nope," said Beni.

Reese lifted his energy drink without taking his eyes off the screen. "Don't need to."

Beni held her floral red coffee mug out to Reese and he, still glued to the screen, tipped a few dollops of the fizzy drink into her mug.

"What about you and Meg?" asked Beni as she paused her audio recording. "How's the kidnapping case going?"

"Since we're not live with reports coming in from the police stations now, we've been taking turns going over the past reports," said Teegan checking her watch. "And now it's my turn. Good luck guys."

"Right back at ya, Teeg." Beni sipped her mug and returned to her map and the dull audio track. There was very little conversation going on between the men working on Kore's base of operations, especially at night, but someone had to let something slip eventually. It all took patience.

A lot of patience.

God damn she wanted to strap these guys to the front of her truck and go off-roading.

"Say something!" she hissed.

"There!" said Reese.

"Not you."

"No, I think I found something." Reese scrolled back the video and pointed to the corner of the screen. The video was from Will's headset camera and showed a distant view of a car coming up a dirt road through the forest. The video of the car was short, only three seconds, before the camera turned with Will and showed the quickly passing forest as he trekked away from the road.

"Let me zoom in on this," muttered Reese. He went back to the car and toggled the image enhancers, making the car window bigger and the shadows and light less blurred.

"Try the infrared overlay," suggested Beni.

Suddenly chatter erupted from her earphones and she had to rewind it make out what was said. One sentence in a gruff southern accent rung out to her like a warped bell.

"Find that hawk-nosed son of a bitch and get him back here now!"

"Beni," said Reese. He leaned back and on the screen was the image of the care's driver; a balding, beak-nosed man in horn-rimmed glasses. "It's Palmer."

"And I think I got Kore screaming in my ear." Beni looked at the timestamp on the video and checked it with the one on her audio. "He's driving towards the cave, and then two hours later Kore had his whole depot after him."

"He's running," realized Reese. "Where's Cetz?"