Carter cried out, more in surprise than terror, but Pierce couldn’t tell if she was reacting to the attack on Lazarus, or warning him. Two more shapes, barely visible in the twilight, rose up from the nearest rooftop, and then swooped toward Carter and Pierce.
He had been wrong about the place being uninhabited. Although it had been abandoned by its original builders long ago, something still lived in the city. Something deadly.
37
Cerberus Headquarters
Almost being devoured by toxic carnivorous plants was not, it turned out, the lowest point of an already very bad day. After sparing her life, Tyndareus had sent two of his goons—both wearing hazmat suits—in through a concealed door to retrieve her. Fiona wondered if one of them had been in the exosuit.
If she had known what would follow, she would have opted to stay in her cell. The men took her to a tiled room where they stripped her, sprayed her with a fire hose, and scrubbed her with stiff-bristled brushes.
Following that violation, she was allowed to dress in a pair of hospital scrubs. The two men dragged her into another examination room and strapped her to a table in five-point restraints. She was then checked over, head-to-toe, by a sneering, wretched woman. As she was poked and prodded, her blood drawn, Fiona retreated into her mind, blocking out the ongoing physical assault.
She felt Nurse Wretched fumbling with her insulin pump and tried to cover it with her hands. The leather restraints stopped her, but the reflex earned her an immediate rebuke from the nurse.
“Stop. Moving. I am refilling the reservoir. You want your insulin, don’t you?” The woman had a harsh eastern European accent, similar to Rohn’s.
What I want, Fiona thought, is to smash your face with a baseball bat. It would improve your looks. But she relented, allowing the woman to finish the procedure.
The insulin recharge was welcome, though it did little to improve her physical condition. She needed to eat—real food, not college dorm crap—and she needed sleep. Most of all, she needed to be somewhere else, any place, as long as it was far away from the Nazi mad scientist who now called himself Tyndareus.
“There you go,” the nurse said, as if expecting Fiona to be grateful.
“How can you work for that monster?”
The woman harrumphed then moved away without another word. Fiona expected to be released from the restraints and ushered to yet another prison cell, but instead she found herself alone once more.
The solitude, while not entirely welcome, was all too brief. A door opened and Tyndareus rolled into the room, sitting in his motorized wheelchair. Fiona rolled her head to the side and glowered at him. “I thought you guys—Nazis, I mean—hated cripples.”
Tyndareus appeared unruffled by the barb. “Tell me more about what you saw on the map, child.”
Fiona let her head drop. She had bought her life—a few more minutes of it, at least—with a promise to cooperate. While she had no intention of helping her captor, she knew that she would have to give him something, or else the opportunity to turn the tables on him might never come. The biggest problem was that it was all a bluff. She did not really know that Kenner was on a wild goose chase in the Amazon, because she did not actually know for certain what he was looking for. Tyndareus was too canny not to know that she would attempt to play him, but if he suspected that she was unable to deliver, that would be the end for her.
“I need to see it again.”
“Dr. Kenner has the original, but I can provide you with photographs.”
“He’s in South America, right? And my Aunt Gus…Dr. Gallo, is with him?”
The old man pursed his lips. “You said that he was wrong about South America. Explain.”
“First, you tell me what it is you’re really after.”
“That is not your concern.”
Fiona shrugged. “If you don’t want to share, I can’t help you.” She rolled her head forward and closed her eyes, as if trying to grab a catnap. Her heart immediately began pounding so loud that she was sure he would be able to hear it. If she was wrong about this…
“Release her,” Tyndareus said, but not to Fiona.
She had to struggle to hide her relief as the two goons came into the room and unbuckled the straps that held her down. When she was free, they stepped aside, saying nothing.
“Come with me,” the old man said, fingering the joystick controls for his wheelchair.
The chair swung around and rolled from the room so fast that Fiona would have had to jog to keep up. She decided not to try, and instead adopted a leisurely pace that forced Tyndareus to wait for her. His men followed, matching her pace rather than his, ready to intervene if she attempted anything, but clearly giving their boss plenty of space in which to do his own thing.