Read Traitor, Book 1 of The Turner Chronicles Page 42

  Chapter 22

  Aaron escaped from bad dreams of ropes and blood and screams. Opening crusted over eyes, he discovered that he lay on a bed while an IV dripped slowly into his arm. There was a window to his left, curtains drawn, faint light radiating around the curled edges. An empty chair was placed under the window. The faint outlines of a holovid appeared in the corner of the room, and he was surrounded by the antiseptic stench of hospital air.

  So he had crossed over.

  Turning his head to the right he saw that a curtain hung on that side of his bed.

  A black man sat in a chair near Aaron's feet. The man's head was bent down to look at a book held in his hands. Aaron shifted his weight; crisp sheets rustled, and the man looked up.

  Aaron stared.

  "I know you," he finally said. "You were with General Mays. Captain something or other."

  "Actually I am Major Samuel Aybarra of National Intelligence," the man said. "I'm afraid your group was conned by a covert operation we have been running for the last ten years. Unfortunately, the only way we can infiltrate some of these little militias is by posing as one of them ourselves. But don't worry. You're not wanted for anything in Jefferson. After all, you haven't been out of the complex since you were a child except when you go to that other world, so you haven't had a chance to break any laws."

  Aaron relaxed at the man's mistake and his lie because Aaron was wanted by the Jefferson government. He just was not wanted for anything he had done that was illegal.

  Wait a minute. They still thought he had never been outside the complex. Apparently they had not put two and two together. How could he have landed in a place outside the complex if he had never been outside of it? Of course, he was assuming he actually had landed in the bus station like he had intended. Then again, how much did the government know of what he could do? Did they know his limits?

  "Not saying much, are you?" Aybarra commented wryly. "Well here is your update. You lost only two and a half pints of blood, most of it right through your skin, but part of it was due to a nosebleed. We replaced the blood and did some other work on you that will probably be explained later. The two women are fine, although both are still under sedation. As soon as they come out of it all three of you will be put in the same suite so you will feel more comfortable."

  Relieved, Aaron sighed. Tension he did not know he felt washed away.

  Aybarra gave Aaron a serious look. "I wouldn't try anything as strenuous as that last leap again if I were you. The trip almost killed you. Next time, I suggest you leave the walls and floors and furniture behind."

  "I'll try to arrange matters differently," Aaron promised.

  "We will be asking you a lot of questions. You must expect that."

  "I can understand why you want to." Understanding did not mean he intended to answer those questions. He wasn't going to answer a single one of them if they made the mistake of putting all three of them in the same room. If they did that, it was going to be one, two, three transport out of here. "I remember seeing you over there. You had a gun."

  Aybarra was bright enough to catch his unasked question. "I hid in your last load of supplies. We knew you were lying about your abilities because you were bringing coins back to Hill and Gore. From the requests you had been making, Hill suspected you were about to bug out. That meant you wouldn't care if you showed your superiors you had been lying, so Hill hauled in extra cargo and the tarp to provide me with a hiding place. I'm afraid he was not too particular as to what he threw under the tarp."

  He grinned suddenly. The grin transformed his face into a happy caricature of delight.

  "You owe me big," Aybarra added with a laugh. "You told us the population was a mixed bag in Isabella. Do you realize how hard it was for me to blend in? I haven't seen such a collection of nothing but white in all my life. Most of the information I gained was from eavesdropping while I was buried in hay or hiding in weeds."

  "Slavery never became popular on the new continent," Aaron explained. "There is some slavery overseas, but it's not color specific. However, there are blacks in the New Land but mostly they live in their own separate country. The few blacks who moved into my area bred back into the population centuries ago, but some of their racial traits can still be seen in the general population. Sometimes you see a person with a darker skin, but nobody thinks anything about it. For the most part, racial bias does not exist in Isabella."

  Aybarra held up a hand to stop him. "I don't care about any of that. I just wanted to kick your ass for getting me in an awkward situation. You haven't noticed, have you?"

  "Noticed what?"

  "You've been using your arm. The left one, and you will be able to walk normal. The doctors didn't like the idea of letting that wound on your back finish its natural healing so they decided to seal it. Good thing for you that they did because they found a neural transmitter buried in your back. I'm told that it had leads going to all sorts of interesting places. Your doctors left all those leads in place, but they deactivated the transmitter and removed a little bomb that was attached to it. Son, it appears that your problems were deliberate."

  Aaron lifted his arm experimentally. It did not hurt. It really did not hurt. It sat on the end of his shoulder, a straight, pain-free, fully usable arm with strong flexible fingers attached. Experimenting, he shifted his legs. No pain.

  "Those bastards," he whispered, soft as a snake's hiss. He had gone through agony. He had gone through fourteen years of hell. How many of those years were unnecessary? How many operations were shams, done so wires and transmitters and bombs could be placed inside his body?

  Damn. And to think that he had kicked himself for not being loyal to the General. That was one internal conflict he would not have again.

  The bastards.

  Aybarra nodded knowingly. "They probably kept going in and changing things until they got your natural teleporting ability strong enough for what they wanted. Now that we have our hands on you, we can figure out exactly what that right thing is so we can repeat it with other people, hopefully without all the side effects."