48
A shot with a pneumatic injector made her heart physically hurt as the drug slammed into her system.
At least for now they must have finished with the psychedelics and other disinhibitors. This was a dose of pure adrenaline to snap her awake. She was impressed that it didn’t kill her as the shock of it convulsed her body.
Her vision cleared even as the male nurse turned away from making sure he hadn’t stopped her heart.
She looked at her hands in surprise, they weren’t secured to the table. While drugged out, apparently it hadn’t been an issue.
Well, that was damned sloppy. What are we going to do now, Miss Watson?
On the nurse’s table, there was another air injector.
Loaded.
She grabbed it. Pressed it to the nurse’s neck. Thumbed the trigger.
Psychedelic or more adrenaline?
Either way, it should be interesting...
By the way he dropped to the floor and began shaking, she’d go with adrenaline.
A man to the other side of the bed had one arm in a sling. He reached inside his jacket with the other. The nurse’s tray had several interesting items. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide came easily to hand. She managed to loosen the cap as she grabbed it. Just as he pulled a sidearm out of his shoulder holster, she used the power of the adrenaline still surging through her and squeezed it hard with both hands.
The cap blew off and a pint of H2O2 sprayed into his face. He dropped the gun to claw at his eyes; she managed to grab the gun as it fell. She looked at the bottle in surprise.
“Thirty percent solution?” Lab grade, ten times the concentration of the commercial product. Well, at least they were keeping whatever they were up to well sterilized. She tossed it aside as the door to the room opened. Guns were tactless and very impersonal. At the moment she didn’t care and shot the two people rushing into the room in the face.
The echo of the gunshots slapped hard off the white tile walls. Not an operating theater, but not far from it. An interrogation infirmary with everything needed to keep the subject alive after the application of overzealous methods. She’d caught and questioned enough spies and high-value personnel herself to recognize most of the methods on display.
Mr. Screamy Face blindly tried to throw himself clear of the gunfire, which wasn’t aimed in his direction at all. Instead, he leapt full force into a concrete wall, the impact almost as loud as the two gunshots, and collapsed to the floor.
With his hands fallen away from his face, she recognized him. One of the people she’d shot when they kidnapped her in Montana. That explained the sling. If it wouldn’t waste the bullet, she’d put one in his brain.
She hopped off the bed. Or she tried to. Either her body had been abused past reason by the drugs, or her advanced years were catching up with her. She was only eighty-five, so she’d go with the drugs.
For kidnapping her, she kicked him firmly in the face, which hurt her toes badly—next time shoes first, then kick. His nose didn’t resist. The blood followed rapidly. Too rapidly, he must have busted it when he hit the floor and even her barefooted kick had driven it into something critical. Not her problem, other than her aching toes.
Once clear of the fast-spreading blood pool and stable on her feet, she looked through the drug vials laid out. No anesthetic or other knockout drug. She loaded the bottle of lysergic acid diethylamide solution into an injector and gave the nurse a dose of LSD. She administered it directly over his spinal cord at the base of his skull. Intrathecal injection took under a minute for onset; it also provided a far more intense ride in her experience. She gave him a second and third dose for good measure—there were no recorded deaths from an LSD overdose.
“Enjoy your trip.” He’d be completely useless for a long while.
One of the dead people at the door had managed to splatter their brains out into the hall and not all over his dark suit. Lean and close enough to her height. She could feel the clock ticking as she stripped him and pulled on his clothes.
The nurse had the smallest feet, though even tied tightly, the shoes gave her clown feet. Neither of the dead men had been hat people; she tucked her long silver fall of hair inside the back of the jacket. Both the dead men’s IDs went into her pocket. Knife and sidearm with an extra magazine, but she left their phones. She didn’t have time to try unlocking them with whichever face or finger—besides, they were too traceable.
Mr. Screamy Face’s body had gone slack in that most final of ways. The nurse was the only one left to enjoy the situation.
Three observation cameras, which she smashed.
“Now. Where are we?” She dragged the other two bodies far enough into the room to close the door. For good measure, she spread plain petroleum jelly on the outside door handle. Anyone who tried to enter the room might panic at the unexpected sensation and assume they were now poisoned. If she was lucky, it would create more delay before anyone entered to see she was gone.
She considered breaking off a couple of scalpel blades and embedding them in the jelly on the underside of the knob but that would take too much time and wouldn’t cause much additional delay. A quick scouting of the outer guard station scared up two sets of keys for the door lock. She tossed them into the room.
The dead bolt was keyed inside and out. Lock prisoners in. Lock the unauthorized out. She retrieved one of the keys and slid it into the inside lock. Then she took a length of silk suture thread and wrapped it around the key. After closing the door, a quick tug locked the bolt from the inside. A harder tug and she snapped the suture off at the door jamb. Back at the observer station, she found a laptop with a screen of three cameras showing nothing but black. She smashed it on the corner of the desk until she could recover the small hard drive, which she tucked in her pocket.
Her next best action? Motion. Still shaky didn’t matter. It was time to be elsewhere.
