Was he going to die?
Just what had he signed off on, anyway? He felt stupid not to have fully read the documents they had handed him to sign — he was a law graduate, after all! At the time, the legalities hadn’t worried him — he simply wanted to help the hospital after what they had done for his friend.
“This is the last test,” Ben told the doctors around him.
“I’m sorry, we have a few more samples that we need to take,” one of the doctors standing next to him said.
She was a petite blonde woman who looked very young, with pretty blue eyes, dimples, and a soft, sweet voice. His mind instantly hated the thought of quarreling with her — but he was fed up, damn it.
“No more,” he said, shuffling to the side of the recliner chair. “Not until you at least tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Her smile was impish and made him wish to hell he’d met her under vastly different circumstances. “My name is Emma Thompson, Doctor Thompson. I’m in charge here. It’s vitally important that we take a few more samples.”
“How much longer, ma’am?” he asked.
“I really can’t say.”
“An hour, a day, a week? What?”
She smiled again, revealing a perfect set of evenly spaced, white teeth, and a tongue ring that suggested, besides her innocent persona, she concealed something much more playful. “I really can’t say, sir.”
“Bullshit,” Ben said, having had enough of the lies. “I know damned well that you’ve found something in my blood and are trying to hide it from me. When I came in here to donate blood after my friend’s motorcycle accident, I asked the nurse if there was anything I could do to help. She told me I could help the hospital by donating blood because they were getting dangerously low on supply. Now I’ve been turned into a test subject. Last time I ever do anything altruistic. Either tell me what I have or I’m gone.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t do that.”
“Then I’m going to walk out of his hospital. And I am never going to donate blood again.”
This didn’t seem to affect any of his army of doctors in the slightest. Maybe they were used to people making protests that they didn’t back up with action.
Ben Gellie wasn’t that type of person.
He stood up, pushed the doctors aside, and headed for the door. He’d taken his shirt off earlier to make it easier for them to draw blood; if they didn’t care about him wandering through the hallways in just his undershirt and trousers, he didn’t, either.
Several hands reached for him, trying to pull him back down on the exam table. Ben just shrugged them off, knocking their hands away. His reflexes were lightning fast. Always had been. Since high school, he’d been the best at every sport he’d ever played, even without any practice.
The two biggest doctors reached for him, pushing past the ones still trying to grab his shirt.
Ben hooked an ankle behind the leg of the bigger one and pushed him into a cluster of white coats. Four people fell down like bowling pins. The other big one grabbed for him. Ben ducked under his arm and charged toward the door like a linebacker.
The doctor let out a whoosh of air as the door knocked the wind out of him, then sank down.
Ben grunted, grabbed the guy’s coat and swung him to the side so he wasn’t blocking the door.
“Sir!” said the pretty blonde doctor. “Please calm down. None of this is necessary.”
Ben reached for the door handle.
It even started to turn.
Then someone grabbed him from behind. It was a gentle hold on his right shoulder. “I’m so sorry that we scared you,” the pretty doctor said.
He turned toward her. “Apology accepted. Now let me the hell out of —”
Then he hissed through his teeth. The sweet, innocent-looking, pretty blonde doctor had just jabbed him with another needle straight into his shoulder.
She pulled the needle out and backed away quickly. A small dot of blood stained the white cloth. He turned to run. No one stepped in his way. A moment later, he felt a sudden warming sensation in his shoulder.
It rapidly spread up his arm, into his torso, down his legs, and into his head.
He blinked, trying to regain some focus. “What have you done to me?”
“We haven’t done anything to harm you, Mr. Gellie,” came the soft, reassuring voice. “We’re here to protect you, that’s all.”
Ben looked directly at her. She had a kind, beautiful face. She was sexy too. “You look like a nice girl, Emma. I sure wish we met under different circumstances. I think you would have liked me.” The words came out slurred, as if he’d been drinking.
The warming sensation spread into his neck. Several hands grabbed him, holding him steady.
Someone said, “Get a chair, he’s going down.”
“Gently, now! You don’t want to hurt him.” The blonde doctor said, “He’s too valuable.”
His knees gave out.
Ben tried to focus, but his head kept spinning. He tried to take a step, but he was no longer in control of his limbs. He tried to grit his teeth, but even his jaw failed to obey.
Someone else maneuvered his body, lifting him back onto the recliner chair. They swung his legs up, and his head gently hit the supportive backing of the recliner.
The pretty blonde face was the only sight he could still see. She smiled, apologetically. “I’m sorry. This has to be done. There was no other choice — you’re too dangerous.”
“Why?” he asked.
She began speaking. Something about Bolshoi Zayatsky — wherever the hell that was. She spoke honestly and for a moment he was certain he was about to get all the answers he desired — but couldn’t seem to understand a word of them.
Instead, he felt a certain peace envelop his consciousness, before swallowing him whole.
Lights out.
Chapter One
Ben Gellie woke up in a new room, one that didn’t look like it belonged in a hospital at all. For one thing, you expected a hospital room to have a bed in it. This one didn’t. All it had was a single recliner, in which he was sitting, feet up.
Another thing you expected in a hospital room was a sink. Maybe an IV. Something that went beep…beep all night long. Maybe a poster on the wall saying, “Hello! My name is ______, and I am your nurse today! Please press your call button if you need anything!”
Instead, it had three blank walls, a closed door, and a pair of plastic Tuff-Ties, the kind that security used to restrain prisoners.
There were, however, more doctors.
It took a while for his head to clear enough to figure out that this was a different setting. That was probably a good thing. If that pretty blonde doc had shown up again, he might have lost it.
How did I get here?
Once he was awake enough to start asking, he did so, for all the good that it did him. None of the new doctors answered him either. They’d expanded their scope from blood tests — although they took a few more samples, just in case the dozen or so they’d already taken turned out to be duds. They took his vital signs, a chest X-ray, and a brain CT scan.
By the time the man in black showed up, Ben had given up protesting, or even asking to use the bathroom. It wasn’t doing any good.
“Hello, Mr. Gellie,” the man in black said.
Ben remained silent, his eyes taking him in at a glance.
He was enormous, built like someone who should have played pro football, and had a broad, blocky face, with deep-set eyes and protruding ears. “My name is Special Agent Ryan Devereaux.”