Page 78 of Unrest
“The DRI. I heard . . . your signal.”
“You’ve been there at Nellis all this time, with the DRI?”
“Yes, sir,” he whispered.
“Why did you leave?”
The man closed his eyes, his head drooping. “I thought . . . they were . . . fighting the enemy, but I was wrong. I think . . . I think theyarethe enemy. They . . . they’re killing people.” His eyes opened and he turned enough to eye First Sergeant pleadingly. “If you’re with them, kill me. I won’t let you use me.”
This guy wasn’t with them. Nobody’s act could be this good.
“How exactly have you been used?” First Sergeant asked, never softening, never lowering his weapon.
The man was quiet. His head fell forward. First Sergeant pressed the gun harder into the side of the guy’s temple, making me wish I’d left the room with the others.
A quiet sob, almost like a choking cough, issued from the man, and he shook his head. “Just kill me.”
First Sergeant’s hard face remained impassive, but he lowered the gun to his thigh. “What’s your name?”
The man paused a long time before answering. “Michael King.”
“Rank?”
“Ca—captain.”
First Sergeant gave a nod to the dentist, Captain Ward, who then got up and left the room, I assumed to pass along the man’s identity to someone who could check the military database. Two minutes later, Linette stepped into the room with her arms crossed.
“Fighter pilot,” she said.
Both mine and First Sergeant’s eyes flew to the man. My heart was suddenly in my throat with trepidation.
“Tell me what work you’ve been doing these past two months, son.”
The man shivered. Shook his head side to side. Then his chest began to rise and fall too quickly, his breaths turning from ragged pants to gasps. He grabbed his chest. I leapt to my feet and took his head in my hands, feeling down to his jumping pulse.
“Sh. Michael King, right?” I murmured. “It’s okay, Michael.” I eyed the First Sergeant and whispered, “Panic attack.” He could fake the hyperventilating, but the out-of-control pulse told me this was authentic. I gave Top a pleading look and his lips pursed.
He sighed. “Let’s get him dried and dressed.” Relief flooded me.
Captain Ward, Tater, and Rylen came back in to help me, while the armed soldiers watched from the doorway. We got Michael dried and dressed, and the dentist and I bandaged his toes and fingers. Then we wrapped him in blankets and got him comfortable in one of the medical beds in another room. He was given hot tea and chicken broth, then locked in the room.
To my surprise, I looked up and found the chaplain coming down the hallway. First Sergeant greeted him.
“We need to find out what this man’s done, and what he knows about Nellis and the DRI there. He’s a fighter pilot. Captain Michael King. He’s tired and injured—came in with hypothermia and frostbite—but find out as much as you can before he’s allowed to rest.”
“Yes, sir,” the chaplain said.
Once he disappeared into the room, First Sergeant looked to the dentist and me. “Captain Ward, you’re on shift now. Tate, come back at sixteen hundred for the evening shift.
“Yes, sir,” we both said.
I walked down the empty, long hall with a lightness in my heart that didn’t match our circumstances. Despite whatever disturbing situations surrounded the new guy’s arrival, and the fact that we were all hiding underground from aliens, I was hope-filled in a way I couldn’t ever remember being.
It was because of Rylen.
Because the secret I’d held in for so long was out there, and he hadn’t turned me away. Just the opposite. It made me want to laugh, or maybe cry. I wanted to run and tell Mom . . .
I paused and rested a hand against the wall.
