“Penelope?” Sami asked, her heart thundering as she took in the newcomer, a petite woman she’d once barely known.
The doctor nodded, her black hair flying, her dark eyes wide. She wore striped pajama bottoms with a pink cami, and her feet were bare. The doctor had been in bed. “Sami. What the hell?”
Sami coughed as Jax started CPR again. “I thought you got free.” Penelope had been the doctor who’d planned the escape with Sami, having only arrived a week before Sami had come up with the escape plan. She’d had no idea what was going on at the Bunker and had just wanted to get home to her family.
Penelope shook her head. “They caught me three blocks out.” She ran for the computer system. “We have to open the jail cells. I promised.”
Jax grabbed her arm and yanked her down easily. “You know CPR?”
“She’s a doctor,” Sami confirmed, her heart aching. “Well, she had just finished medical school when Scorpius hit, so she’s as good as a doctor these days.” The woman hadn’t had any practical experience when they’d met, but she probably did now.
“Good. Keep him alive, or I shoot you in the head.” Jax shoved Penelope down toward Tace and rose for the door, his gun out. “Which one of those vials holds the vitamin B enzyme thing?”
Penelope shook her head. “I don’t work in the research department. No clue.” She started compressions on Tace’s chest.
Jax cocked his gun and held it to her temple. “Get a clue.”
She looked up, her black eyes clear. “I’m a medical doctor, kind of, and I patch soldiers up. The only time I’m on this floor is when I’m escorted into the labs to fix whatever damage these bastards have done.” She turned back and blew into Tace’s mouth, counting out compressions. “There’s a computer bank right there, and Sami is the best at what she does.” Penelope looked up. “There has to be a master code, right?”
“I don’t know.” Sami skidded toward the computers and flipped one on. It whirred to action, and something inside her eased. “It works.” A real computer. The generators in the Bunker were phenomenal. For now, anyway.
Penelope stopped.
Jax turned and pointed his gun.
“I’ll keep working on him, but you have to let me open the cells,” Penelope said, her mouth pinched.
Sami winced and waited for the computer to boot up. “If I remember right, the experiments all wanted death.”
“Not this time,” Penelope said, focusing on Jax. “Deal?”
“Deal.” Jax turned for the outside door, partially opened it, and fired.
A man screamed in pain from outside the lab.
“Get a move on, Sami,” Jax ordered. “There are more soldiers coming.”
A cursor blinked. Sami started typing in code. God, it was like coming home. Her fingers flew as she accessed private data, coming up against a firewall almost immediately. Lowering her chin, she started to tear it apart.
“He’s breathing on his own,” Penelope said from behind her. “But his vitals aren’t good. No eye movements. He’s slipping, Sami. If he drops into a coma, it’s over.”
“You know about the vitamin B rejections?” Jax asked tersely, his focus on the hallway outside.
“Yes. I read the data early in my time here, but I haven’t treated a patient with it. In fact, I don’t think we’ve had a patient with it since months ago,” she said. “The lab techs would know more than I do about that side of the business.”
“Fuck.” Jax stomped over to the closet and ripped it open to face the women Sami had secured. “Either of you know what the numbers of the refrigerated vials mean?”
“No,” a woman said, crying. “We just do the data collection and don’t work with any of the samples.”
“Great.” Jax slammed the door.
A Bunker soldier shoved inside, shooting.
Sami half turned in time to see Jax shoot the guy between the eyes.
Penelope jumped up and rushed for the man. “You didn’t have to kill him.”
“He shot at us,” Jax returned. “Get back to Tace.”
