Chapter 16
John Doe
He leaned back against the wall, sighing heavily. Just when it had seemed she was ready to open up to him, she'd shut down again.
Just what in the hell was this woman's secret? It seemed to be tying her down, stifling and smothering her as her arms shook from the fear of it.
But before John had a chance to delve deeper, he saw the Chief return along the short corridor.
John straightened up, not beyond being polite even if he wasn't going to let the Bakar steamroll over him.
‘We have managed to negotiate a level-wide targeted impediment field,’ the Chief snapped before he'd even made it halfway up the corridor.
John let a relieved sigh rattle his chest. That was the first bit of good news he'd received since he'd clapped eyes on this woman. ‘Full strength, I assume?’
The Chief gave a brief nod. ‘It will come online in five seconds.’ He reached John's side and peered in through the door at the woman.
She had stopped pacing; her body was right back to being as stiff as a board.
John locked his gaze on her.
Then he heard a familiar electronic beep.
The computer had just locked onto her bio signs. Then, in a flickering clap of light, a hum travelled right through the cell, out into the corridor, and presumably through the rest of the entire level.
A level-wide impediment field would stop this woman from running around, jumping off buildings, and slamming her arms into Union commanders. In fact, considering how powerful this one was, it would reduce all her movements to a slow crawl. The computer would dictate when and where she moved, and if she tried to pull anything considered unapproved, she would grind to a halt. It would let her walk forward in the direction it wanted, and nothing more.
The Chief leaned in past John and made a specific hand signal in front of the fields securing the door.
They immediately flickered off.
She looked up, the movement slow and drawn-out. The impediment field had obviously taken effect.
Her body seemed as though it was being dragged down, her arms stiff and heavy at her sides as if the gravity field had just been turned up several notches.
‘Right,’ the Chief growled, ‘move forward prisoner.’
She didn’t make a noise. Her arms shifted forward as one leg stuck out at an odd, awkward angle. She shifted her weight, her hands clutching slowly in the air.
John had seen an impediment field in full effect many times before, and he usually never had a problem with it. This time he found himself turning away sharply though, giving a cough to hide his movement.
She looked like a marionette being tugged around by invisible stings, and John could guarantee if he could see her eyes they would be plastered open in fear and shock.
‘This is going to be regrettably slow,’ the Chief grumbled, finally tugging the gun from the holster at his back. The holster formed an electronic lock with the full body armor under the guy’s uniform, and as it released the gun it did so with a pneumatic hiss.
Running one spike-covered hand along the length of the chamber, the Chief gave it a sharp shake until the thing buzzed into life. The core pulsed a deep red and then settled on a bright blue.
Fully charged.
One blow from that and he would eat a hole through the reinforced walls, let alone tear the woman to pieces.
Not that it would come to that.
She was stuck. Being yanked forward by the impediment field, the flicker of it escaping and crackling over her skin. A few times she tried to bat slowly at her arms, no doubt trying to chase away the terrible sensation. It wouldn’t work. The field was there to stay.
Grumbling, the Chief shifted forward, hardly paying attention to the woman behind him as she jolted form one foot to the other, the movements of her legs forced and heavy while her hands formed the slowest fists by her side, her mouth periodically gaping open and closing again, though it took painful seconds for her lips to shift a single centimeter.
Clearing his throat, John forced himself to keep his gaze locked on her. While the Chief was happy to blithely walk ahead with his gun set to kill, John was playing this by the book.
Plus, he hadn’t forgotten how she’d thrown herself over the railing on the promenade. And he would never forget the moment she had forced herself up from the snow.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he felt obligated to hell her, ‘this will soon be over. You’ll get scanned and get back to your cell, then the impediment field will be shut off.’
John forgot to add what would happen after that. Then again, he didn’t know himself. It all depended on what the scans would show.
They would take about ten minutes to complete, especially considering the systems in Central Security were in the process of being upgraded. If John had received the clearance to take the woman up to the Pegasus, he could have done the whole thing in under thirty seconds. But yanking this woman off Orion Minor would cause all sorts of jurisdictional upsets, and John was only here to refuel before his real mission.
Still, he was going to see this through. Because he really, really wanted to find out who she was under there.
‘Any information on the hood?’ the Chief growled from up ahead.
John opened his mouth to answer, then he realized the Chief’s snapped question had not been directed John’s way. The Barkanian was shouting at one of the scurrying deputies that had just taken up position along the corridor, charged plasma rifle in hand.
‘There have been no reports of stolen Ionian armor, and initial scans do not detect any known signatures,’ the man replied in a small but still clear voice.
The hood. Hell, John had almost forgotten about it. He was so intent on getting the biological scan done, that he’d nearly forgotten the real curiosity here.
He clapped his eyes on her again, his gaze drawing over the strange blue fabric until it dropped to her lips.
She was frowning again. She had every reason to be.
John had been in his fair share of impediment fields. Thankfully not since he’d joined the ranks of the Union Forces, but when John had been ensconced in the slums, he’d been caught up in them numerous times.
They hurt like hell. And the sensation of having your body controlled by the burning field that surrounded your flesh would give you nightmares for a week. A great way to psychologically crush someone, and an even better way to scar someone for life. For that reason John was not a fan of them. If there had been any other way to get the woman to the scanners, John would have done it. Plus, this was no longer his rodeo; the Chief was in charge on this one. John may have brought her in, but unless he pulled rank again – which he had no reason to do – he could not become directly responsible for the woman.
Settling on taking a sharp breath and letting his eyes half close, John tried to push the discomfort from his mind. He also tried to push the memories to the back of his skull. His skin felt tight and cold, a latent tingle picking along it as he remembered exactly what it felt like to be stuck like the hooded woman.
He felt like assuring her it would be okay again, but she didn’t seem to be the kind to take someone’s words on face value. She seemed to be the kind to run away from all contact and hide in the shadows.
It was a slow and painful process, but finally the impediment field forced the woman to walk the length of two corridors and into the main processing room of Orion Minor Central Security.
It was a huge room. It had to be; there was a lot of crime to be processed on this planet.
It had been relatively cleared out, but there was probably no way to completely empty out the officers and the criminals they’d apprehended. They’d all been pushed off to the sides though, the processing desks closest to the bio scanner banks shut down.
Security bots were lined up around the scanner, guns at the ready, their expressionless faces staring out at the woman as she lumbered her way towards them.
To her credit, not once did
she scream or beg for mercy.
John had. Numerous times. An impediment field had a way of eating right into your mind and upping your fear to maximum. Plus the pain of the burning sensation the field induced would send any grown man to his knees.
Not her though. Her hands still groped into the slowest fists ever, and her bottom lip stuck out at a shocked, expressive angle. But that was it. No weeping, no begging, no pleading, nothing.
Once again John got the urge to dart forward and yank the veil back from her eyes. It wouldn’t work of course.
It was all part of the secret. The secret he was about to find out.
The bio scanners flicked on. The woman took one more lumbered step and finally entered their field.
The ground lit up as the scanners began their work, and a bright red light darted out, penetrating her skin and sinking straight through.
It would be barely a tingle compared to the impediment field. The comparison of being shot in the face with a plasma rifle to being kissed lightly on the cheek came to mind.
But as soon as the light struck her body, she screamed.
Deep, powerful, primal. It instantly made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, his body jolting forward form the surprise of it.
It felt like she’d been bottling that scream up since she’d gotten here, and was finally letting it loose. Then again, maybe she’d been bottling it up for years.
‘Shut up, prisoner,’ the Chief barked.
She finally stopped screaming. Though the word stop could not describe the gurgle and gasp she ended it with.
She let her head drop down between her shoulders, as if she’d suddenly gone limp.
It got John’s attention. He stood a little straighter, fear prickling down his arms and legs.
She did not lift her head.