I heard a clatter, and I figured Dr. Nikas had backed her into a counter or something.
“I…I don’t understand,” Charish said, for the first time sounding a little afraid and genuinely perplexed. “You were going to terminate him tomorrow. And…volunteered? What do you mean? For what?”
“Terminate?” Utter astonishment laced the word. “I never had any intention of terminating him! You don’t terminate your own people!” Dr. Nikas drew a shaking breath, obviously struggling for calm. “Why did you give the accelerant instead of stabilizer?”
“I didn’t!” she cried.
“You are lying,” he said through clenched teeth. “The two are kept in separate locations, look completely different from each other. Tell me why you sent an operative back into the field with a substance that could damage him and his mission.”
“I thought he was just a mule,” she replied, voice cracking in a way that told me she had tears going on now. Bitch. I glanced around the room to see that I wasn’t the only one carefully eavesdropping. Brian stood by the wall, arms folded over his chest and eyes closed, but his jaw was clenched so tightly I thought he might break a tooth. Kyle’s eyes were on the doorway, brow ever so slightly furrowed. He probably wasn’t tanked up to where he could hear it all, but enough to get the gist.
“I didn’t know he was an operative, I swear,” Charish continued, crying now. “You said you were going to ‘take care of him,’ and I thought you meant kill him.” She sniffled. “Ari, I was so tired that night, and upset that he’d come to the lab. Anyone could have followed him!”
Like me. Bitch.
“Because you thought him to be an expendable grunt, you chose to punish him. For a brilliant woman, you are remarkably stupid,” Dr. Nikas said, voice tight. “Brian,” he called.
Brian pushed off the wall, face instantly composed into a neutral mask that completely hid that he’d heard everything and how pissed he was. He moved to the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
“Remove Dr. Charish from these premises until a decision can be made as to her…disposition.” He paused, and I heard Charish suck in a shocked breath. “And in the meantime,” he continued, “she is to have no more than three hundred calories a day.”
“Ari! No!” Charish gasped while I silently cheered. Three hundred calories a day? I knew damn well Dr. Nikas ordered that so Charish would get a hint of what real hunger felt like.
“Yes, sir,” Brian replied evenly. “Secure cell, sir?” he added, emphasizing the word “cell” a bit, and I had no doubt he’d done so simply to fuck with her.
“Most definitely,” Dr. Nikas replied.
“No, Ari…oh god. Please! You can’t do this. Pietro will…oh, god.” She was crying for real now, which surprised me. She struck me as the type to go cold and shut down. Maybe the thought of what Pietro would do scared the ice right out of her.
“I made the grievous error of trusting you with my interests,” Dr. Nikas said with undisguised reproach in his voice. “I will not do so again.”
I heard a muffled whimper, and then Brian said, “This way, Dr. Charish.” A few seconds later he came through the doorway, escorting her with a firm grip on her upper arm. Her hands had been secured behind her back with zip-ties, I noted as they passed. I didn’t bother to hide the fact that I openly watched her be escorted out. No one in the room was hiding it, Philip included.
Halfway to the exit, she began to struggle and tried to pull away from Brian. “No. No! This isn’t right!”
Brian visibly tightened his grip, fingers digging in. “Walk or be dragged.”
She let out a low cry. “You’re hurting me,” she said, stumbling forward again. “Ari didn’t say to hurt me.”
“He didn’t have to,” was his utterly calm reply as they exited. A few seconds later the outer door clanged shut.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer person,” I muttered.
Philip made a low noise. Shifting up onto one elbow, I peered down at him. “Is it getting any better?” I asked quietly.
“Really dizzy…all of a sudden,” he said, voice definitely sounding more clear than earlier.
“Dr. Nikas?” I called.
He stepped into the doorway, and I was shocked to see that he looked anguished. He liked Dr. Charish, I realized with a start. Or at least he had before today.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around the kind and gentle Dr. Nikas finding anything at all appealing about that woman, but obviously there’d been something there. He’d called her brilliant. Had that been it?
Straightening his shoulders, he moved to Philip’s side and crouched. “What is it?”
“He says he’s really dizzy all of a sudden,” I told him.
Dr. Nikas checked the IV and monitoring devices, looked into Philip’s eyes. “Other than the dizziness, better or worse overall?”
“Thinking clearer. Pain’s easing some too, maybe,” Philip said. “Hard to tell, but I don’t think it hurts quite so much.”
“All of your vitals look good,” Dr. Nikas said with an encouraging smile. “I’m going to slow the drip down a bit, and I’ve started a mild sedative. If you can sleep, do so. It will be a few hours until you’re back to your normal level of stability.”
Philip managed a whisper of a smile. “I’m more than ready to sleep. Thanks for having my back.” He took a deeper breath. “I’m sorry, Dr. Nikas. For all this. Two days ago, Saberton cut out all real brains for me…and Tim and Roland. Only gave us their current alternative. I wouldn’t eat them, didn’t dare,” he said. “I used up everything you’d left for me, then was starving. Should have signaled. Wasn’t thinking straight and got desperate.”
“Understandable,” Dr. Nikas said. “We’ll take good care of you now. I’m sorry you didn’t get what you needed when you came here last night.” He gave Philip’s shoulder a light squeeze, then looked over at me. “Angel, may I speak with you a moment?”
I glanced down at Philip. The corner of his mouth twitched in a mild tic, but the general tremors had stopped, and he almost almost looked at peace. I checked in with my zombie-mama intuition, but it seemed to agree and didn’t urge me to stay by his side. Giving a nod to Dr. Nikas, I pulled a blanket over Philip, then stood and followed him as he passed through the doorway, down the hall, and finally into a small office.
He closed the door behind us and opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.
“Why didn’t y’all put a stop to the testing Saberton was doing?” I asked, frowning. “Those people didn’t volunteer. That fake zombie shit really fucked them up. A woman died because of it.”
He let out a low sigh. “We were working on it, Angel. That was part of the reason Philip was undercover with them.”
My eyes narrowed. “Working on it? Really?” I liked Dr. Nikas, but that didn’t mean I was going to let this slide. “It looked more like Philip was undercover to steal their results and pass them to y’all.”
Dr. Nikas exhaled and rubbed at his eyes. “Yes, but part of what he passed to us were details that we hoped would help us undermine their operation as a whole, not merely that small segment.” He dropped his hand, expression pained. “The research was happening whether I liked it or not. To refuse to use the data for some misguided moral reason and leave it to Saberton exclusively would be…irresponsible.”
I fell silent for a moment. The low tick of a clock on the wall seemed to reverberate through the small room while I tried to make everything fit into a pattern I could handle. “Was it useful?” I finally asked, voice low. “The data—was it worth it?”
He gave a grave nod. “Every bit of data, every sample helps. I know the direction they’re going with their research and have projects underway based on it and to counter it. Invaluable.” But then he shook his head, looking suddenly weary. “Was it worth the death of Brenda Barnes? No. She was an innocent.”