Page 115 of The Hero Within
Dark eyes cut toward her. Mayhew laughed humorlessly. "And in return I get a booster shot of the hydrogel. This seems to have played out very well for you, Miss McClain. You've finally given me incentive."
The strain got to her then. "It hasn't bloody well played out in my favor at all! You think I want the plague?" The clock in her head was ticking down again. She had a day or two before the fever hit. If she didn't get a handle on this cure, she'd be out of action.
Then what?
Mayhew wiped the sneer off his face, looking pale. He nodded. "Fine. I'm in. What's the plan?"
"You tell me," she replied. "You're the one who knows the military base inside and out. You're the one who can hack the schematics."
Mayhew smiled. "First step: We need a distraction."
"Sureyou got your shit under control?" Arik asked, his eyes roving over the military labs below them.
Lincoln must have told him about the earlier episode.
Johnny checked all his guns, his hands moving over them with unconscious ease as he mentally prepared. "Locked and loaded."
"Just don't want to be going in there with a ticking time bomb," Arik said coolly.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"Can we just focus on the mission?" It was the only thing keeping his heart rate normal.
Arik returned to studying the military base below them. "I get it, you know. When they took Nnedi.... They all told me to mourn her as if she was dead. Nobody could get in and out of the city-states, they said. If I tried, I'd probably die.
"But they didn't know I was a dead man anyway. I never realized how I felt about her until that moment. She was mine. My woman. And I'd let her slip through my fingers. I'd never see her again, unless I got off my goddamned ass. I could feel the warg beneath my skin, all hot rage and blinding pain. I trashed my room and when I came out of it, I thanked my lucky stars nobody had been in there. So I headed for the city, knowing if I stayed they'd have to put me down in the end. I was dead either way; at least if I tried to get her back, we might have a shot."
Johnny glanced toward him. "What's it like in there?"
"Bad."
He scrubbed at his mouth. "It's my worst fear," he admitted softly. "My uncle was a bad man. Broke my will to his when I was barely a kid." He swallowed. "Made me do a lot of things I'm not proud of. You think it can't happen to you, but Iknowit can."
Arik's face remained implacable. "They test you to see if you're truly broken. Make you do things you don't want to do. Put a bullet in a friend's skull. Break your own arm. Any hesitation, any resistance, and they take you away and throw you back in the hole. Work you over again. It's relentless. You start reacting. Obeying." His voice softened. "It took me three years, but I could feel myself bending to them. It’s easy to pretend you're invulnerable when you're out here. The only thing that saved me was Nnedi. I knew she was in there. If I focused on her, then they couldn't break me. Lincoln doesn't get it—thinks nothing's strong enough to break his will down—but then he’s never faced the reality of it before."
Arik glanced at the watch Mayhew had given him. "We've got five minutes."
"How's that distraction coming along?" Johnny asked.
Arik put a hand to his ear, pressing the comm device Mayhew had given him. "We all sorted?"
Static echoed through both their earpieces. "You don't rush a maestro," Mayhew shot back. "Are you in place?"
"Almost."
"Then get your asses in place."
Chapter Twenty-Three
"On my signal,"Derek Mayhew's voice whispered in his ear.
Johnny crouched down by the fence. It felt weird having another man's voice in his head, but he had to admit it was handy.
"Three, two, one...."
A spark flared in the distance. A couple of lights went out along the fence. In the distance a dog barked. Warg dogs. Brilliant.
