“No, sir.”
Do that immediately, I’ll be in standby mode with the channel open.
Rys normally would have done it, but the more Jason was focused on an assignment outside of that closet, the better.
“Rys, what is going on?” By the way that Anne asked that question, she had already repeated it more than once.
“One of my men is in serious trouble. I haven’t gotten the full details yet. Turn right on Cedar Street; it will be the third house on the right. Sorry, I’ll have to ignore you for the moment. I’ve got to keep him calm and focused until we arrive.” Rys would have instructed Anne to disregard any posted speed limits, but she did that as a matter of course.
Jason, have you made contact, and are they responding?
“Yes, sir.”
Rys hadn’t expected any differently, but he had to keep him focused on his orders and above all keep him talking.
How did this situation occur?
“I was running a little behind schedule. Mrs. Sharpe’s car wouldn’t start this morning and it took me almost an hour to get it running again. I had to take a quick shower to get all of the grease off. Anyway, I was in the shower and her son—Lieutenant Kyle Sharpe—banged on the door and told me to get out. I asked him to give me thirty seconds and I’d be out. Sir, I was barely able to get out and get some pants on when he suddenly busted the door down! I was still trying to figure out why he was so mad when he grabbed me and tossed me into the closet.”
Oh for the love of— Rys growled between clenched teeth. None of 01 took more than a three minute shower. (Sergeant Barrett’s well-schooled influence.) Even if Jason had been in there for an hour, it was no excuse for that kind of response.
I need you to calm down and focus, Erksome. I don’t think you did anything to invite that kind of response. What is Lieutenant Sharpe doing there, anyway? I thought he was currently on active duty.
“He is home on leave sir, and is supposed to be here in residence for the next two weeks.”
And where was Mrs. Sharpe when all of this went down?
“I haven’t heard a peep from her, sir.”
Rys was going to have a very long talk with that woman when he got on scene.
“We’re here,” Anne announced, the car skidding to a stop.
He spared a moment to order, “Remain in the car; I have no idea what the situation is inside,” and then he bolted for the front door.
At first glance, the place looked nominal. No furniture over turned, everything appeared to be in a reasonable semblance order. Then he spotted the edge of a door hanging at an odd angle from its hinges further down the hall. “Lieutenant Sharpe!” Rys barked out in his most strident, no nonsense Captain’s voice. “What is the meaning of this?”
The tall man standing in the hallway—and apparently in front of the closet door—snapped to attention automatically at the sound of that voice. When he saw who it was, he quickly morphed from panicked to sullen and angry again. “Who are you?”
“I am Captain Arystair Savar of Special Forces 01, Lieutenant, and if you don’t move
immediately
I will proceed well beyond the boundaries of your worst nightmare.” The words were clipped and little better than a snarl.
Sharpe didn’t look entirely convinced about his course of action, but he backed up three steps, as far as the hallway would allow. Rys stalked to the closet door, like an approaching storm, and grabbed the door handle. What he intended to do was unlock the door and open it, but his anger was so intense that he jerked the door knob out of the door entirely. Either way worked, and suited his purpose.
He grabbed the door by the hole left by the missing knob, and threw it open with a thud, and extracted Jason bodily, hauling him to freedom. For a moment, he just stood there holding his trembling friend close. “Okay?” he whispered into wet hair.
“Yes, sir,” Jason whispered back. His voice wavered slightly, no doubt because he was still shaking. “
Thank you
, sir.”
“Sir!” from the front door Snails burst through on the fly, looking frantic and edgy, ready to kill anything that moved. “Jason, you okay, man?”
Rys propelled Erksome toward Snails, knowing he could trust his usually slow-poke Lieutenant to care for his comrade in arms. Then he turned his full attention to Lieutenant Sharpe. It took every ounce of self-restraint he possessed to keep from launching himself at the man and start delivering punches.
“Lieutenant Sharpe, I want to hear the rationale behind your actions, immediately! If you’re a religious man, I suggest you start praying now, because it’s going to take a bona fide
miracle
for you to conjure up a valid reason for hurting one of mine.”
***
Anne stood frozen in the doorway to this average looking house and stared in awe. A tall, ruggedly good looking man in his twenties was now braced—sans shirt—against the wall. Despite the fact that he was a head taller and fifty pounds heavier than the man administering a severe verbal beat down, he was obviously terrified of the shorter officer.
She didn’t blame him.
Anne had seen Rys in a variety of moods, running the gamut from happy to glum, but never before had she seen him
livid
. What made it even more unsettling was he wasn’t shouting. In fact, his voice never rose above a normal speaking tone. That didn’t mean it didn’t leave a deep impression; it did. In fact, just listening to it was making Anne nervous and consumed with guilt, and she hadn’t done anything but break all of the speed limits getting him here.
I didn’t think Rys could ever be scary. Boy was I was wrong, very, seriously wrong. Right now, he’s scaring me down to the core of my soul. I intend to make it a point to stay on this man’s good side.
For her sanity’s sake, Anne decided to focus on something besides the dressing down Rys was delivering at the end of the hallway. She approached Jason and Dave, with her right hand extended, intending to pat him on the shoulder. “Jason, are you all right?”
“Anne!” The Lieutenant spun away from her, his surprise and chagrin at being caught without a shirt on in front of her almost comical. “I’m fine.”
Snails immediately shucked the coat he was wearing and handed it to Jason, who quickly accepted it with a grateful nod.
“I’m very glad to hear it.” Anne had witnessed seeing him being dragged out of a closet by Rys. In that moment, Jason had possessed all the color of a recently revived corpse. He did seem to be more composed now, however. “Has anyone contacted Admiral Bloch yet?” Rys had been so focused on just getting here she wasn’t sure if it even occurred to him to inform his superiors of the situation.
Both men blinked back at her in a blank manner.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she intoned wryly. “I think one of you better call him, ASAP.”
“Jason, Dave!” Gremlin burst through the door, eyes taking in the still damp teenager with concern and relief. “Jase, you okay, buddy?”
“I’m improving rapidly, now that I’m out of that closet,” Jason replied with a shaky grin. “Did you think to update Admiral Bloch?”
“No,” Gremlin admitted, smacking himself on the forehead.
“I’ll update the Admiral,” Dave said firmly. And then Dave’s expression went completely blank, like he was already a million miles away.
Anne recognized that expression. Rys had worn one identical to it most of the ride over here.
I’m obviously missing some key information. These guys act like they can somehow communicate with anyone, without having a phone in their hand. How? They don’t have one of those miniature ear-phones. I checked! Besides, they’d have to speak out loud to respond to someone.
Or would they?
Obviously I have not been as fully briefed as I thought.
It took a second for her to realize that she had just come to a conclusion using military terminology, and then she rolled her eyes
. I think I’ve been hanging around Rys too long. It’s rubbing off on me, fast.
Rys was still going strong when Admiral Bloch showed up some ten minutes later, looking irate and actively searching for a live target. Rys turned, and braced to attention, as if he had just somehow been alerted to the Admiral’s arrival.
“Sir.”
“Lieutenant Snelson read me in on the situation,” Bloch clipped out. “Is there anything you want to add?”
“I believe Lieutenant Sharpe should answer in his own words, sir!” There was absolutely no humor in Rys’s smile. Arctic water, trapped inside a thousand year old glacier, would have been warmer.
Admiral Bloch stepped in and resumed where Rys left off, only he employed a considerably higher volume, and with more expansive gestures. Rys made a bee line for them, and for an eerie moment, Anne could visualize the outlines of a uniform on him with no problem. Never before had she seen him with such disciplined bearing that was so obviously military.
“Erksome, pack up,” Rys ordered.
Jason paused. “Sir, is that really necessary?”
Rys uncoiled enough to reply, “Jason, Mrs. Sharpe failed to do two important things. First, she didn’t notify me or Admiral Bloch when her son went ballistic on you, and second she made no attempt to stop him. She has lost my confidence, I don’t trust her anymore. Pack up. I will find you a better home.”
“Yes, sir.” Jason actually looked relieved to receive those orders, and headed off to comply with them as expediently as he could manage.
“Snails, go with him,” Rys shook his head, reconsidering that order. “No, on second thought, Gremlin,
you
go with him, we need this done today.”
“Sir, I’m not that slow!” Dave protested.
Rys didn’t even respond to that, just looked at him with knowing eyes. His expression spoke volumes; he obviously didn’t agree.
Gremlin and Jason were fighting smiles as they went to pack up.
Anne felt a little tense as a pair of cool grey eyes pinned her in place next to the door, like a rare bug in a collection. “Didn’t I instruct you to remain in the car?”
“I don’t take orders, Captain Savar,” she replied tartly, not backing down from the heat of his gaze an inch.
His eyes narrowed slightly, the two of them locking lethal stares, seconds oozing by in slow increments. Anne held steady, refusing to blink first. If he thought she was going to back down, he obviously didn’t know her well enough. It was time she schooled him up.
He finally took in a deep breath, and when he let it out again, he was more like the Rys she knew. “No, you never do, do you?” he murmured. “But Anne, next time, you might consider this: it could have been dangerous in here. I didn’t have a good read on what the situation was. I don’t want you to get hurt because you were trying to help me, and I don’t want to get hurt trying to protect you.”
She relaxed. This Rys she understood how to respond to. “Your point is taken. Try to have a look at it from my perspective for a moment. If something had gone very wrong in here, I wouldn’t be aware of it just sitting in the car, looking decorative. If there was serious trouble, at the very least I could have called for backup.”
For a long moment he studied her intently, his eyes so piercing that she almost believed he could read her mind. Perhaps the technology existed, like communicating without talking. And then his eyes suddenly crinkled up in that familiar way she loved. “Am I never going to win an argument with you, Anastasia?”
“Oh, I might let you win one…eventually, just to keep you off balance and guessing.”
That observation made him throw his head straight back and laugh out loud, breaking the tension surrounding them like a block of ice.
If he could laugh, then things were still all right between them. Anne figured that she was forgiven and reinstated to his inner circle. She stayed out of the way as he swung back into Captain-mode, answering Admiral Bloch’s questions, and directing his men to take Jason to the Admiral’s house.
One part of this exchange of orders had her clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle her own laughter. Admiral Bloch demanded, “Lieutenant Sharpe, why are you here at this moment in time?”
“I’m on leave, sir,” the Lieutenant replied defensively. Apparently he didn’t want an AWOL charge on top of everything else.
The Admiral’s frown went a shade darker. “You
were
on leave, Lieutenant, a condition that will be nonexistent in your immediate future.”
Anne had the feeling that his cancellation of leave was going to be least of his concerns. Bloch obviously thought of 01 as his men and like any good commander, he wasn’t amused when someone threatened one of his own. Lieutenant Sharpe’s punishment was going to be that much more severe because he stomped on the Admiral’s turf.
It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes to get everyone moving. Anne and Rys were the last ones to leave the house. She was proud of herself for waiting until they were in the car and retracing their route back to the Admiral’s house, before she started reeling off her questions. “All right, Rys, time for my explanation. How did you know Jason was in trouble?”
He rubbed the back of his head absently, searching for the right words. “I am uncertain where to start…”
She waited, not particularly patiently. Her left hand beat an impatient staccato against her steering wheel.
“There is a reason they call us Special Force
01
. It’s because we have all been …upgraded.”
“You make it sound like you’re a computer,” Anne said slowly, rolling his words around inside her head.
“That’s not too far off,” he admitted ruefully. “About eight years ago, some top scientists and engineers — including Doc — developed a cranial chip. The chip was designed to be inserted directly into the human brain, and allows for a number of different interface connections. By using the chip, the user could access any computer, any network, and any communications device that they wanted to.”
“What you mean is,” she rephrased with slow incredulity, to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood, “is that
you
can access any computer, network or communication device that you want to.”