Hush (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 1) (38 page)

He spoke to her, trying to be
calming and relaxed about the whole thing. It wasn't hard, since all he had to
do was keep the people alive, and clean enough they didn't get an infection.

Inside, the older woman didn't
look too good. She'd been there for a while now, being kept by the people that
he was working for. He'd never been told why, but the woman looked a little
familiar to him. Not enough for him to actually place a name to her. He had a
picture in his head, which did seem like someone that Cin had seen before too.

When she cross connected to the
woman, she got it. The whole idea made her blink for several seconds. Then she
double and triple checked the whole thing.

Standing, she yelled.

"Marcia! Get in here,
now
!"

Then she sat at the computer and
tried to take notes, making certain she didn't let go of any of the people involved
as she found them. This was too big for that.

Way too big.

The next several days were
intense, and largely lacked in things like sleep, or even exercise for Cindy.
She was liberated for a single hour each morning by Hobbs, who alternated
running while meditating, with fighting while doing the same. It would have
been nearly fun, if she wasn't starting to lose her mind after the first few
days of the situation.

On the sixth morning, sleeping on
the floor of what was pretty officially her office now, she woke up being
stabbed. There was no ceremony to it, and whoever was going for her had failed
to hit any vital organs at all. Then, the crazy bitch was using needles, and
didn't stop even when she woke up, gasping.

Dr. Burrows smiled down at her,
with a gleam in her eyes. It really let the insanity she held inside show
through. More to the point, it let her inner brilliance come out. That she had
very little concern for people as people was in there, spilling out as she
stabbed with fresh needles even as Cin tried to struggle. Causing pain wasn't
really her end game, however. Fixing the broken woman who had tried to sleep on
the floor was.

"Hi, Sleeping Beauty. This
is the first of your treatments. You'll need three sets of them. It will take a
few months to really kick in, but we'll probably know if it's going to kill you
long before that. Two weeks or so? Now, let me finish here and you can get back
to sleep?" There was more stabbing, but after her current work load, she
really did drift back off. Even with pin pricks of blood all over her in
different places.

Later, after Hobbs and Bridget
came to get her for a meditation session that involved simulated drowning, she
got yet another surprise. Brian Yi.

Cindy hadn't seen him for so long
that she'd started to wonder if he was coming back at all. She knew he was
alive, having checked on his story a few times, but he'd been off trying to
find the people that were locked in the boxes. With Darryl Lancaster, who she
still wanted to kill. Not as badly as before, but that was probably all about
exhaustion, rather than the treatments being extra useful for her or something
like that. They really should work about the same as they did on the men, she
knew. It was all over Burrows story, every time the woman came into view.

She was still outside, and
covered with a fine mix of sweat and water that had been poured over her face
while she'd been strapped to a board with her head tilted back. That meant her
shirt, a white and blue t-shirt that was too cold for the winter really, was
sticking to her chest as she walked, and Brian jogged over, looking at her
seriously.

"Cindy?" He was about
to ask if she remembered him, only being half serious about it. After all,
she'd spent so much time working in the past week that it was kind of clear her
mind had been stressed to near the breaking point. Not that anyone cared. Not
after what she'd found.

She glanced over and tried to
fake smile at him, her face barely registering the movement.

"If you want a blowjob, come
back tomorrow. I can probably manage sex,
if
you don't mind me lying
there like a corpse. That sounds sexy, right?" She yawned, and then gasped
a little, the memory of being tortured for meditation purposes hitting her
about then. That part was insane. Hobbs was always like that too. In fact he'd
been being extra nice to her about the whole thing, since she'd been pushing
herself so hard.

Proxy looked at her, seeming not
much better rested than she was really, which made sense, given that he
literally hadn't rested for more than a few hours in the last week, either. His
entire life had suddenly become about finding the prisoners in their little
cells. Their coffins.

Rather than reject her offer,
which was real enough, he nodded and went on, seeing it as a joke. At least he
tried
to. A part of him wanted it to be real, regardless of anything else.

So Cin shook her head.

"I'm
not
kidding. We
told the press that we're going out, so we both get all the dating perks. I'm
just..." She yawned and flinched again. He didn't get it, just thinking
she was embarrassed about being tired.

For a moment he felt bad about
asking her to do anything, but also had to help the people that they'd found.

"We hit a dead end. We think
we have the right town. Rockton, in Illinois. It isn't very big, as far as the
number of people go. The thing is, we don't know where to start looking. An
isolated underground facility." He really was stuck, but she smiled, and
took his hand, then started walking back toward her office. She smelled, but he
didn't care about that, being too concerned about helping people.

That was the way to his heart,
she knew. It was printed right there above him, scrolling on the fake computer
screen of his mind.

"They get groceries delivered,
a few times a month. The man that works the facility there that I found, and
his partner, both have seen the kid that brings the stuff out, a few times.
They don't really know where they are, I don't think. There seems to be other
people there, but they don't interact with anyone except each other and the
prisoners. Mainly to keep people like
me
from finding them. It's clever,
really." She'd written all of that down, including the next bit. "The
guys have seen the delivery happen, once, when things got a little mistimed. It
isn't enough for me to cross connect to the driver. He was just too far away
from them for that kind of thing."

The man next to her, who badly
needed a shave, his red rimmed and bloodshot eyes trying to close on their own,
nodded. It was a slow thing. One that showed that he was nearly as far gone as
a person could be, without just falling down.

"Rockton isn't that big
though, and only has two stores. We were wondering if you'd go in with us, and
identify the right place? Then..." It was his turn to yawn, but she got
the idea on her own.

They went in, found the right
person that did the deliveries, and got the location that way. Then an invasion
team could be sent to free the people being kept.

It wasn't like they weren't going
to have the might of the entire government behind them. After all, one of the
people was, as far as either she, Brie, or Christian Pours could tell, the
President's wife. Mary Lawrence. His
dead
wife. She'd been drugged for
so long that her mind was more than a little bit gone, and it could all be a
trick, which everyone already knew. That being the case, it had been a hard
call as to if they should inform the man about it or not.

Director Turner was inclined not
to, until they had the woman safely back. Brian Yi had called it in to the man
directly in the first ten minutes that he'd known about it. After all, he'd
watched her die, himself, and was friends with the man, on a personal level.
Like, he got invited to the family barbeques and all that. Even the unofficial
things, for some reason.

So there was a bit of pressure on
about the whole thing.

Cin looked at him, her eyes dead,
getting what it was he really wanted from her. It was just a trip into the
field, and should be safe enough really, as long as they had a guard detail for
her. At first she figured that it was all about keeping her from escaping, or
killing another innocent victim. It wasn't that however. He was just used to
all the telepaths and psychics insisting that they weren't needed in the field
really. Most of them never left the base, so he expected her to do the same.
Like a wimp.

She shook her head.

"We need drugs then.
Something to keep us awake. I need a gun, too." Then she stopped and
shrugged. "Also for Darryl Lancaster not to be there with us. On the good
side, as long as I'm fixated on him, I shouldn't go after anyone else,
but..." She spread her hands. "I really,
really
want to kill
him. So much I can taste it. Other than that, I can do this. Is he going to be
all right with that? I know he was told, but he probably can't see me as a real
threat." Mainly due to the fact that she just wasn't to him. If she tried
for him, she died.

That didn't mean he wouldn't be
distracting to her.

Proxy gave her a tired, but dead eyed
glare, then let it soften.

"He knows the score there,
and is going to be four states away. You're actually willing to go in?"

She smiled, and let herself feel
a bit smug, then nodded.

"Yep. I'm in. I wasn't
kidding about those drugs though. That, or twelve hours sleep first. It's still
early in the day though, so..."

The man waved at her, and started
jogging, toward the medical center. Once inside he didn't wait for the desk
nurse to log them in or anything.

"Burrows, or Klein. We need
uppers of some kind. It's mission relevant." That was enough to get the
man, her arm carrying friend, to run off, coming back with another man in blue
scrubs a few minutes later. He had tablets for them, and shook his head, on
seeing them.

"Take these. One pill every
six hours. You have eight of them. If you need more than that, then... Well,
you'll probably be dead by then.
Don't
double up on them. Both of you
are small enough that each one of these is a risk to your health. I'd recommend
sleep instead." It was mission critical however that they get things done
then, so Cindy popped the top of her little two day supply and took one without
water. It wasn't her favorite way of doing things, but would work.

Brian did the same, then tucked
his bottle into his pocket.

"I know. This is either
huge, or it's nothing much at all. Just like always. We'll try not to die of
heart failure." He wouldn't, being in really good shape, but the doctor
didn't know about her that way. Though when she checked, she decided that it
would be fine. The man was being a worry wart, more than anything else. She was
in shape, the drug was just speed. Harsh on the system, but manageable for a
few days.

It wasn't even addictive. Not
physically.

She was in running gear, and
still damp, so waved toward the door of the place.

"I need a shower and fresh
clothing. Plus weapons. Knives and guns, in case I get to kill someone."
She was about to explain that the only person she really wanted dead was
Darryl, so the rest of the world would be mainly safe, unless they got in her
way, but Yi nodded at her without hesitation.

"We
shouldn't
need
that, but just in case. If we can find the facility, we're taking in everyone. I
can get them there. There's no real need to do that yet. As odd as it seems,
the safe people for this are actually the Infected, for once. As far as the lab
people can tell, the mimic virus doesn't let people copy powers directly. Just
appearance and skills. So if we take our own people, we'll know who we have
with us. That means leaving the agents out, for the most part, unless you,
Trivia, or Mind Reader check them out first." The drugs hadn't kicked in
for him yet.

Worse, he was still a bit hurt,
having gone off to fight several times over the last week. Normally he would
have been healed by Phoebe, but the traitor was off in a different city, having
vanished already. That meant there was a spy on the base somewhere. It was
Chris Pours job to find those, but it was harder than it sounded like really.
The mimics were good at their jobs, if it wasn't just someone being really
careful mentally, doing the work needed to not be caught.

Well, unless it was Chris
herself.

If so, then they were screwed,
since the woman would know if Cin tried to read her. On the good side they knew
that she wasn't a copy of herself, her powers being fully intact. Blinking,
walking in the bright, but cold sunlight, she nodded.

"Hey, do you know that ghost
girl? The one that lives with Christian?" That was a boy's name, to her
mind at least, but for the life of her she couldn't care at the moment.

Brian nodded.

"Molesty the ghost? I do
know her. She used to live in my head, actually. Why do you ask?"

"So that we can rule out
Chris as the spy. Then she can vouch for me, and so on." She stopped
speaking then, getting the story of how Becky Young, the ghost, had literally
molested Brian in his sleep. Probably more than once. That kind of thing had
happened to him several times in his life, which didn't leave him feeling all
that happy with women in general.

That wasn't fair, since she
hadn't done that to him yet, but she was still roughly lumped in with the
others. Then, he didn't think of her as being too bad, even if it was kind of
clear that she'd started out using him, and probably still wanted that. Which
was the simple truth. That whole staying alive thing would be nice, if she
could pull it off.

He had a room there like everyone
else, so ran off to shower himself, taking less time on it than she did,
somehow. When he showed back up he had on normal clothing and a warm blue
jacket. She was dressed to go to work, at the library, herself. As she slipped
her coat on, the long warm one that she'd brought with her, he pulled out some
goodies for her.

A black nine millimeter, which
she only knew how to use from his thoughts, and several large knives. Those she
was more familiar with. Getting the shoulder holster on meant removing her
coat, as she stood in the door to her room, and reading up on it all several
times, getting instant corrections from the man in front of her, before he
could speak. It made her seem nearly like she knew what she was doing.