Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
“It’s not over until I say it’s over,” he snarled, taking an aggressive step toward her. “You took everything from me, and this doesn’t end until I’ve returned the favor.”
“I’d have thought you to be above petty revenge,” Ziva said, fighting away the faintness she felt creeping through her head. How far away was her gun? “If I were you, I’d be trying to figure out a way to get out of here instead of wasting your time here with me.”
“Just shut up!” Dasaro screamed. He thrust his weapon at her, eyes crazed with hatred. He was going to pull the trigger again, and this time his sights were on her head.
Ziva commanded her body to move, telling herself that recovering her pistol was her only chance. But perhaps she had moved too quickly, or maybe locking her knees had been a mistake. The blood drained from her head and her legs turned to liquid. She found herself once again falling blindly backward, body frozen just as it had been at the relay station. But this time, instead of a muddy riverbank, her head met the solid concrete landing pad. The resulting explosion in her brain was enough to drown out the pain of being shot, at least for a few seconds. She blinked and clawed at the landing pad’s surface, unable to move and unable to orient herself.
Dasaro’s shadow crossed over her face and she squinted up into the space above her, straining to see past the stars that jumped around in her eyes. She gasped for the air that had escaped her upon impact and was rewarded with only a soft gurgling as blood rushed into her left lung. For a very brief moment, she thought she could feel something – the slug, a bone fragment,
something
– within her body, but it was barely noticeable when Dasaro’s boot suddenly came down against the entry wound.
The ensuing pain was enough to snap her out of her dazed stupor. Ziva gasped and pried at his foot, managing only a tiny breath past the foamy blood she felt creeping into her mouth. She kicked wildly – or at least she thought she did. Her legs barely moved, and she had to settle with establishing a firm grip on his ankle.
“Maybe you were right,” he said, his face becoming undefined as Ziva’s vision swam. “Maybe it
is
over, at least for you. It’s been a hell of a ride, but it has to end sometime.”
She wasn’t sure what triggered it – perhaps another memory of herself strung up in the Cobian prison, alone and helpless just as she was now – but she found herself standing in Aroska’s kitchen, admitting she wasn’t invincible. The kitchen…her kytara! The dish she’d moved while hiding from Dasaro! In the brief moment of clarity, she remembered the gun she had been trying to reach only moments before, as well as the round that already waited in the firing chamber. How far was it…two, three meters? Although it was out of her grasp, it certainly wasn’t out of her
reach
.
Ziva coughed and turned her head, spitting a monstrous glob of bloody saliva onto the landing pad. She saw a blurry image of her pistol in the distance, and the knowledge that it could still be put to use caused her to inhale so forcefully that she actually felt oxygen enter her lungs.
“Killing me won’t solve your problems,” she sputtered with that precious air.
“We’ll see about that,” Dasaro said.
Ziva mustered all of the energy she could to fling her arm toward her gun. It was in her grasp a split second later, delivered to her by her own mind. She raised it above her head and took aim, conscious enough to revel in the look on Dasaro’s face just before she pulled the trigger.
Hot blood sprayed her face and she turned her head to avoid looking at the captain’s brains as he fell forward onto her. Try as she might to get out of the way, the butt of his pistol still caught her forehead, sending another jolt through her skull and down her neck. His body settled beside her, with his legs and one arm still draped across her. She allowed her own gun to slip from her hand.
The subsequent silence was a relief for her pounding head, though it still throbbed enough to make her nauseous. She placed her palms flat against the landing pad and pushed as hard as she could, successfully sliding herself about half a meter thanks to the puddle of blood she was lying in. She pushed again, crying out when the pain became excruciating, and managed to escape Dasaro’s clutches once and for all. Three more pushes carried her an additional body length, but the extra effort sent a fresh stream of blood gushing from the wound.
Ziva allowed herself to take a break, squinting upward at the clouds that spun in a slow, hazy circle. She forced herself to continue breathing at a steady pace, despite the fact that it didn’t feel like she was actually taking in any air. She tried lifting her legs to see if that was any more comfortable, but the effort only hurt worse so she let them slide back down.
Let’s just survive another day, shall we?
She was trying. She searched her mind for options, though it was hard to break through the cloud of seemingly random thoughts and intermittent periods of black nothingness. Nobody would be missing her for at least twenty minutes when she didn’t show up at the rendezvous. Now that the jamming signal was offline, she could always try to raise someone on comm, but the razor-like shards poking her side where her communicator had been told her the device was no longer functional. She vaguely remembered hearing it shatter when she’d fallen.
Her eyes were watery, though whether it was sweat, tears, or her vision playing tricks on her, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t think she was crying – she couldn’t breathe well enough to cry. But it was the only thing that made sense. She lifted a shaky hand and placed it over her wound.
Everything just felt so much better when she shut her eyes.
Aroska looked up from what he was doing when he heard the shot. At first he thought it might have been one of the response ships, but when no other sound followed he felt himself begin to sweat. It was impossible to tell where exactly it had come from – all he knew was that it was in the general direction Ziva had gone.
He handed a medipac to the woman he’d been helping and rose to his feet, staring down the street and listening. Without even realizing it, he had his communicator in his hand. “Skeet, did you hear a shot?”
“Sounds like it came from the west,” the sergeant replied after several seconds.
“That’s where Ziva went.”
“Maybe she ran into another merc.”
Something didn’t feel right. “Probably; I’ll go check it out.”
Aroska began walking, still bothered that Ziva hadn’t told them about Kat. Everything had worked out okay of course, but even though she’d been in her final days, he hated to see a friend die. Based on Ziva’s behavior following the explosion, he imagined it must be commonplace for the spec ops agents to lose allies. He wasn’t sure if he could ever handle that, but he was beginning to understand what she’d said about forming attachments when they’d talked on the balcony. On the bright side, they’d actually found a use for that mysterious map. They may have lost Kat, but Argall could still be redeemed.
He lifted his communicator again and entered the code for the device Ziva had been using. When the transmission failed to connect, he tried again, still to no avail. “I’m not getting her on comm.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a second shot rang out. He heard Skeet curse and broke into a dead run, angling toward the field and docking area. When he caught sight of the two bodies on the landing pad, his heart skipped a beat. Even from a distance, he recognized that HSP riding jacket.
“Oh no, oh
sheyss
.” He felt his breathing quicken. “I’ve got her! West landing platform – send medical!” He swore again and continued moving. “Skeet, you’d better get over here!”
She found herself standing in a vast expanse, a field that stretched as far as she could see in any direction. It was comprised of nothing but pale green grass, each blade a uniform length and perfectly straight. There was no sound when she walked – the grass bent under her boots, and the moment she lifted her foot it turned brown and died.
There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky above her, which was such a light shade of blue it seemed almost white. The sun was visible, but she couldn’t feel its warmth. In fact, she was quite cold, freezing even. She noticed that the sun was dropping lower in the sky, and as it did the already-pale landscape continued to lose color. She could only stand there watching, wondering what would happen when it finally disappeared below the horizon.
A distorted, unfamiliar voice echoed across the field, startling her: “Ziva!” She recognized that it was addressing her, but it sounded distant, somewhere far behind her. She turned to locate the source, prepared to retrace her trail of footsteps, and ran headlong into a glass barrier she hadn’t noticed before. The impact sent her reeling backward, dazed. She couldn’t actually see it – there was no reflection from the sun, no line in the grass – but she could place her hand on it, feel its surface. The voice had come from beyond it.
As she stood there trying to wrap her head around it all, she realized the sun had paused in the sky when she’d heard the voice. It was just now beginning to drop again, slower than before but still steady. Somehow she knew something bad would happen if she allowed it to disappear completely.
“Hello?” she called, pounding her fist against the glass. Neither action made any noise. The only thing she heard was the voice as it called out her name again.
“Ziva!”
The sun slowed its descent once more. This was good. She peered through the barrier, barely able to make out a figure walking across the field in the distance. It was difficult to make out a face, but it appeared they were wearing the same clothes as she was. Was she looking at a copy of herself?
“Hello!” she screamed again, still unable to hear her own words. “Over here! Help me!”
The other person looked in her direction, smiled, and waved. “Ziva!” they called again, beckoning for her to follow as they turned and started walking away in the direction from which she had come.
“No, no, no, no!” she said, feeling panic start to set in. She slammed both hands against the barrier. “Don’t leave me!”
There, she’d heard herself! The sound frightened her at first, and it hadn’t been as loud as she’d expected, but she’d done it nonetheless. Her words travelled forward and bounced off the barrier, sending a massive crack straight up the middle of it. The ground began to shake and shattered glass rained down around her. A large crevice opened up where the base of the barrier had been, and try as she might to scramble away, she felt herself begin to fall.
The grass wasn’t substantial enough to take hold of, and everything else she touched crumbled under her fingers. Just when she’d made the decision to stop fighting and let go, a hand appeared over the edge of the cliff and grabbed hold of hers with an iron grip. She couldn’t see who the hand belonged to, but somehow this picture seemed familiar and she knew she needed to hang on.
“I’m here, okay? I’ve got you.” It was the same voice that had been calling to her earlier, clearer this time and much closer.
Ziva wasn’t sure which was real – the grassy field with the barrier and the crevice, or the bright golden light she saw when she finally forced her eyelids apart. Her vision was still blurry, watery, with strange sparkling shapes floating around against the yellow background. As near as she could tell, she was looking straight up, covered in something warm and sticky. The only thing that remained constant, the only thing she could actually feel, was that hand that still held hers so tight. She reestablished her grip on it, clinging to it as if it were life itself.
She was vaguely aware of several different voices around her, some of which were shouting. Then came the sensation of something pressing firmly against her upper stomach. It hurt more than anything, but she was too numb to protest or do anything about it. Despite the pain, she somehow understood that this pressure – whatever it was – was meant to help her.
A face, hardly more than a blurry shadow, hovered over her for a moment. “She’s still here,” said the same voice that had comforted her a minute before.
Who’s here
, she thought.
“The medical transport is here,” someone else said.
Someone must have gotten hurt.
“You hang on, Ziva. You hear me?”
She squeezed the hand even tighter, not daring to look down into the crevice for fear that she’d slip. “Okay.”
“Did you hear that? She’s still talking.”
“Just get her onto the stretcher.”
Ziva blinked, catching a brief glimpse of that face as it appeared above her again. It was Aroska, pressing a blood-stained palm against her ribcage. He disappeared after only a second, blocked from her view by a pair of bright red shield doors. Several sharp objects were jammed into her arm and some unseen force began to pry her hand away from the one she clutched. She grabbed at the grass, the cliff, anything she could hold on to, but it was no use. A high pitched beeping filled her ears and she fell.
Skeet snapped to attention when the door to the recovery ward hissed open for the umpteenth time, as did Zinni and Aroska. He tried to remind himself that he was sergeant of HSP’s Alpha special operations team – the best of the best – but he was so physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted that he couldn’t help but let his guard down. Besides, it seemed that everything had finally quieted down – he didn’t anticipate seeing much action for a while.
It was only another medical bot passing through, just as it had been the past six times – counting had helped keep him awake, at least for a while. He returned to his position against the wall and watched as Zinni continued massaging her forehead and Aroska buried his face in his arms where they were folded across his lap. The two of them had resigned to the little cushioned bench against the opposite wall after standing and pacing for two hours. Skeet was determined to remain on his feet.
He couldn’t help but think back to three years ago when they’d rescued Ziva from the Cobians. They’d been by her bedside rather than stuck outside the operating area, but the whole concept of waiting in a med center was still the same. Waiting right now was actually a relief in comparison to the amount of running around they’d done after leaving Argall. They’d started with a journey to the nearest trauma center in Seran, during which Ziva had apparently coded three times in the medical transport. Upon arrival, she had immediately been referred to their horribly understaffed intensive care unit. They kept her there long enough to stabilize her before shipping her off to the Severe Cases Center in Haphor, where they’d received a special circumstances message from Emeri ordering the SCC’s
best operating staff to accompany them back to HSP’s med center in Noro. That was where they stood now, almost a day later.
According to the medics aboard the transport, the only reason she’d even made it onto their ship was because Aroska had arrived in the nick of time and had managed to slow the bleeding. Skeet took a moment to just stare at him as he sat there, face hidden in the folds of his jacket sleeves. This was a man who had wanted nothing more than to see Ziva dead a mere two months earlier, and now it appeared that he had come to care for her as much as Skeet or Zinni. Better yet, Ziva seemed to trust him to some extent, strange considering their rocky past. Gaining Ziva’s trust was not something that could be done overnight – if Skeet remembered correctly, he’d said almost those exact words to Aroska during the Dakiti mission. And yet the man had somehow pulled it off.
The double doors down the hall slid open and Marshay and Ryon appeared, looking frazzled. Skeet had been in touch with them since leaving Argall, but they’d always been a step behind as Ziva was moved from place to place. Here they were, back where they’d started, having been almost to Haphor when they’d received the call to return to Noro.
“We’re still waiting,” Skeet said, shaking Ryon’s hand and embracing Marshay. “The surgery should be done soon.”
“Are they trying to kill her, moving her around like this?” the housekeeper said, teary-eyed but firm.
“She was stable the whole way over here,” he assured them.
There really wasn’t much else to say, given that they didn’t know anything past what they’d seen for themselves. Ziva had been shot and had a gaping wound just beneath her left breast. Only the surgeons knew the full extent of the damage at this point, hence the reason they were all waiting so earnestly for any news.
Zinni and Aroska exchanged silent greetings with the newcomers, vacating their seats so they could rest. Everything was quiet once again, with Zinni resuming her pacing from earlier and Aroska taking up a stance similar to Skeet’s across the hall.
Skeet just felt himself starting to doze again when the door opened for the seventh time. He almost didn’t bother to look, but every time he heard that hiss, everything that had happened in the past day came flooding to memory and his eyes opened involuntarily. To his surprise – or maybe his horror – it was actually the doctor this time, immersed in the data pad he carried.
They were all on their feet in an instant, hovering before him with bated breath. It was difficult to tell what he was going to say based on his facial expression, making Skeet wonder if he even wanted to hear it.
“The surgery was a success,” the man said, pausing while they all exhaled. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but she’s expected to make a full recovery. She’s starting to wake up now, so you all can go inside in just a minute. Please keep it brief – she’s been through a lot. I’m going to get cleaned up and I’ll be in shortly to talk to all of you.”