The New Haven Incident - Part Fifty-Two

Sebastian’s eyes snapped open. He blinked, staring up at a ceiling in a room that was not his. The greatest source of light came from the mid-morning sun that shone cheerily through the window. The ceiling was white, an array of chequered panels, with inset fluorescent lights. They were on, but did nothing to brighten the room further. Sebastian thought they were off at first. A hospital, then.

Memories of waking up in a dark hospital slammed into Sebastian, stuttering his heart. He sat up with a sharp inhalation, ready to leap out of the bed. It happened again. Not again.

“Whoa, whoa!” a familiar, deep voice with a peculiar cadence said. Unable to see beyond his immediate panic, Sebastian felt a large, strong hand on his left shoulder. He scowled up at the friendly, tanned face wearing a thick mop of wavy dark hair. Kind, dark eyes looked at him with obvious concern.

“Mendez,” Sebastian croaked, wincing at the effort it took to wake his disused voice.

“Oliver,” Mendez corrected. “Or Olly. My friends all call me Olly.”

Sebastian relaxed back into his cot, closing his eyes briefly while he grappled with the panic still pressing on his chest, and the flurry of unfocussed, disjointed thoughts clouding his mind.

“I told them a hospital was a bad idea. Should’ve let me take you to the cabin to recover.”

Sebastian opened his eyes and looked over at Oliver. He wore a simple white T-shirt and jeans. Out of his tactical gear, he looked different. Though, the scars of having lived through an escape from an infected city had worn new lines into his face, etching a sadness into the depths of his dark, kind eyes. His right hand was in a cast that reached halfway up his upper arm.

“You slept a long time,” Oliver noted, offering a small smile to the agent. “Longer than…” He let the words trail off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

It was too late. The memory had been unlocked. Sebastian reached up and pressed his hand to his neck where Lilith had tranquilised him. He stared down at his lap a moment.

“They’ve bombed?”

Oliver sighed, then nodded, finding meeting Sebastian’s gaze difficult. It was one of the few times those blue eyes of his friend were so unguarded. It pulled at his heart.

Sebastian paused. “Did she…” He clamped his mouth shut, struggling to ask a question for which there could only be one answer. “Did she make it out?”

For a long time, Oliver wrestled with the answer. He wanted to lie, to ease the pain already so evident in his friend’s pale eyes. Finally, Oliver’s frank honesty won out and he sighed, his shoulders dropping.

“I don’t know,” he relied softly. “It’s… we were barely away before the bombs started dropping, Sebastian.” He didn’t need to say anything more.

Sebastian closed his eyes and turned away. Mendez reached over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. They sat like that, neither moving, for some time as Sebastian fought a losing battle against grief.

“She might have done,” Mendez murmured half-heartedly. “She was a clever woman.”

Sebastian nodded, kept his eyes closed unable to trust the tears not to spill if he opened them.

“Listen, you need to rest up,” Mendez said. He rose and patted Sebastian’s shoulder. “I’ve got a few things to do. I’ll be back.”

Again, Sebastian nodded, his eyes still firmly shut.

Mendez nodded and turned reluctantly away.  He walked to the door of the private room, then stopped and turned. “You should be damned proud of yourself, you know.”

This caught Sebastian’s attention. The agent opened his eyes and turned to Mendez with a frown. Offering a small smile, Mendez explained, “You saved a lot of people.”

The small jolt that twitched at Sebastian’s extremities told Mendez he had achieved the desired effect. For a moment, the blond man stared down at his hands, then he lifted his gaze to Mendez.

“Thanks,” Sebastian said.

Mendez smiled, lifting only one corner of his mouth, and shrugged. “That’s what friends are for.” The smile broadened into a brief grin. “Be right back.”

Sebastian watched the man leave, then settled back into his pillows. He closed his eyes and, with his exhausted body silencing the confusion in his mind, fell into a fitful sleep.

Oliver Mendez sat at the café table, staring down at the thumb drive in his hand. Through the entirety of his stay at the quarantine facility, with all their interviews and medical check-ups, he had managed to keep it a secret; the drive that Dr. Liu had hidden in the small pocket on the inside of his trousers’ waistband.

Gathering his faculties, Mendez slipped the drive into the laptop before him and opened the files. He scanned them, not sure what he would be looking for, until he saw an icon labelled ‘Roger Harding.’ He hesitated, then opened it.

The sounds of the café faded as Mendez read the contents of the file. His brow furrowed. Cancer… Late stage Leukemia… inoperable… Mendez felt his heart sink into his stomach. That’s what happened. That’s how they got him. By promising to cure him of a terminal illness. 

“You should have told me,” Mendez whispered. Harding had told no one about his diagnosis. Not a soul. How had Dr. Reinhert known about it? Mendez read on; treatment schedules, medical notes and reports written for the benefit of an unnamed research sponsor, and then the effects of the experimental serum that promised to cure his cancer and make the man into a super soldier.

“Jesus.”

Unable to stomach reading any more, Mendez closed the file, ejected the drive and slumped back into his chair. He stared at the empty laptop screen.

Someone had funded Dr. Reinhert. Someone who took great pains to remain hidden. Mendez was determined to find out who. No one turned his friends into monsters without some kind of retribution. He sighed, shook his head, closed his laptop and rose. There was something else he needed to do today.

Previous Part                                                                                                                                                                          Next Part