“I am afraid you have been misinformed ma’am. The doctor just authorized the prisoner’s release. Chief Constable Blaine is downstairs securing the transfer wagon now.”
She struggled to keep the look of surprise from registering on her face at learning that Severn was here. Instead, she stood straighter and tried to sound like the voice of authority.
“If someone has been misinformed, it is you. Policy dictates that I personally authorize all prisoner patient releases from this hospital. I will not authorize a release unless I am allowed to view the patient myself.”
He refused to move out of the doorway. “You may discuss the matter with Chief Constable Blaine when he gets back.”
“You are more than welcome to send Severn in when he gets back, but I am going in now.” She used the Chief Constable’s first name in an attempt to prove she was on better terms with his boss than the man who was only following orders.
She stepped forward and stared at the arm blocking her entry to the room.
He finally lowered his arm. She looked up at him with a mock smile. “Thank you.”
Once inside the room she closed the door behind her. She quietly slid a chair over and wedged it under the door knob. Once she was certain that it was firmly stuck, she walked quickly over to the bed where the prisoner was asleep.
She touched him lightly on the non-bandage shoulder and his eyes popped open.
She placed a finger to her lips. “Shh. The police are coming to get you. If you do exactly as I say, I can get you out of here before that happens.”
He sat up and winced from the pain in his shoulder. “Who are you?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Why do you want to help me?”
“A friend of yours gave me some motivation.”
“You must mean Croft. He can be very convincing when he wants to be.”
“I don’t think I agree with you on his methods of persuasion. Nevertheless, I am here to get you out of the hospital. He also provided a TravelCard to get you on a shuttle and off Voltaire tonight.”
“He’s always been so accommodating.”
She noticed a sheen of sweat on his skin. “How do you feel?”
“Not too good. But the doctor says I’ll live.”
He tried to stand up out of bed and collapsed back down on the mattress with a grunt.
She hooked an arm under his good shoulder and felt the heat radiating off his body. “Can you walk?”
He gave her sheepish grin. “If the alternative is prison, I can dance a jig if you need me to.”
“That’s okay. Walking will be just fine.”
He leaned heavily on her and she struggled to remain standing as they shuffled away from the bed.
He breathed heavily from the exertion. “What did you do with the guards?”
“I didn’t do anything. There are still at least fifteen of them out in the hallway.”
“Then how are you getting me out of here exactly?”
She nodded with her head toward the wall opposite the door. “The window.”
“Oh. I didn’t know we were on the ground floor.”
“We’re not.”
They shuffled over to the window. She slid it open with one hand while still supporting nearly all his weight with the other. He leaned over slightly as he looked out the window and almost knocked her over when he took a sudden step away from it. “I am not going out that window.”
“It’s the only way.”
“We must be a hundred stories up.”
“What is your name?”
“Simon.”
“Simon, we are only ten stories up.”
“Might as well be a thousand. I am not going out that way.”
She struggled to support his weight and hold him steady while he tried to backpedal away from the window. “The Chief Constable is on his way up here right now to take you to prison. Either we go out that window or you go with him.”
“I’ll take prison over being thrown out of a ten story window any day.”
Linda’s head popped up outside the window. “What’s taking so long?”
He let out a yelp of surprise.
Elizabeth steadied him with all of her strength. “You have to be quiet.”
There was a faint knock on the door followed by the muffled voice of a constable. “Is everything okay in there?”
She muscled him toward the window. “I’m not asking you to jump. We have an emergency evacuation gurney just outside the window. Just climb into it and you will be safely on the ground in less than a minute.”
There was another knock at the door followed by a louder voice. “Excuse me, doctor?”
The doorknob turned and the door pushed against the chair, moving it only slightly. The constable outside banged on the door loudly. “Doctor? Open the door. Doctor!”
She maneuvered him next to the window. “I can, literally, close your window of opportunity and let you go with the nice men outside, or you can buck up and climb out onto that gurney. The choice is yours.”
The constables took turns throwing themselves against the door repeatedly, the chair moving slightly with each impact.
Simon looked at the door that was now open a crack, and widening every time a constable hurled his body against it.
He looked at her and then out the window.
She took advantage of his indecision to grab onto him tightly, and they both went out the window together. They landed on the canvas gurney just as she heard the chair splinter into pieces and shouting constables flood the room.
As soon as they were on the gurney, Linda expertly tugged the release rope. They dropped quickly, slowing only when they were a few feet off the ground. The gurney nestled softly into the grass at the base of the building.
Elizabeth looked up and saw a constable’s head retreat back through the window, followed by more shouting. She was too far way to hear, but she had a good idea of what was being said.
Linda helped her get Simon to his feet and they raced across the grass to Linda’s waiting steam car. Together, they placed him in the backseat and Elizabeth jumped behind the driver’s wheel. She held her hand up and stopped Linda from climbing in next to her. “Nobody knows that you helped me. You have a promising future as a scientist and I won’t let you jeopardize that for me. Thank you for your help. And letting me borrow your car.”
Linda smiled and closed the door. “You mean steal it.”
Elizabeth smiled back. “Thank you.”
She released the brake and the car shot forward.
She was out of the city and deep in the countryside in less than an hour. She had not told Linda where she was headed and nobody, not even Severn, knew her well enough to guess.
When asked about her family, she always said that both her parents were dead.
That was not entirely true.
Her mother was dead, but her father was very much alive, even though she had not spoken to him in over fifteen years.
She pulled to a stop in front of a dilapidated farmhouse and Simon sat up in the backseat. “This does not look like the shuttle station.”
She shut down the steam engine. “We still have several hours before your flight and we need some place to hide where they won’t find us.”
He looked around. “Where are we?”
The front door to the dilapidated farmhouse opened up and an elderly man walked out of the house, down the front steps, and squinted in the direction of the steam car.
She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “My father’s house.”
She stepped out of the car as the old man squinted even harder at her for a moment before his face registered surprise. “Lizzie?”
“Hey Pops.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
A smile spread across his face. “You know you’ve always been welcome.”
Simon climbed out of the backseat of the car and her father did a double take. “Who’s your friend?”
“He’s not really…”
Simon took a half step forward on shaky legs and held his hand out. “My name is Simon.”
She darted forward and grabbed Simon’s arm before her father could shake his hand. “He’s not well Pops.”
She shot Simon an angry look. “You might still be contagious. I don’t think you should be touching anyone.”
Simon collapsed to the ground and hugged himself with his arms as he shivered uncontrollably.
She knelt down next to him and checked his pulse with one hand while laying the back of her other hand against his forehead. “Your symptoms are exactly that of Scalars Disease. But you tested negative for Scalars.”
He looked up at her and tried to smile. It came out more like a grimace from the pain he was obviously experiencing. “I’ll be okay, I just need to rest.”
And with that, he closed his eyes and went limp in her arms.
Despite her insistence that he not touch Simon, her father helped drag him into the house and upstairs to her old bedroom. She wrapped him in a wool blanket, placed him on her bed, and pressed a cold washcloth against his fevered head.
As soon as he stopped shivering in his sleep, she went out on the porch and sat in the rocking chair that looked out over the farm where she had grown up. Within a few minutes, her father sat down in the rocking chair next to her, lit his pipe, and rocked silently as he gazed out over the family farm.
“Where did I go wrong, Pops?”
He puffed at his pipe for a few moments before replying. “Near as I figure it, you’re only just now doing something right.”
She turned toward him, the fury building up inside her, because he was continuing the same conversation they had never ended fifteen years earlier. “I am not like you Pops. I follow the rules.”
“Newswire said you helped a terrorist escape from custody.”
She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“We all have choices to make. And we have to live with the consequences of our choices.”
“You weren’t the only one who paid the consequences of your choice, Pops. You protested against the Empire, and your family paid for it. I paid for it. I was pulled out of school, and taken away for my friends, as a little girl. We were banished out here to the middle of nowhere. Your choices affected all of us.”
He held the pipe close to his mouth. “It was a different time back then. I did what I thought was right.”
“But my choices are not your choices. It took me a long time to rid myself of the stigma you placed on me as a child. I had to fight and claw my way to where I am now.”
He puffed again at his pipe. “And just where are you now?”
She was about to tell him she was a senior researcher, at the largest hospital, in the largest city on the planet, when she remembered where she was sitting, and who she was talking to.
Her shoulders slumped. “Right back where I started.”
He reached over and placed a hand on her knee. “For what it’s worth, I’m very proud of you.”
She looked over at her father and gave him a weak smile. She was exhausted, cold and starting to feel the effects of whatever that terrorist had injected into her. She wanted to sit all night long with her father on the front porch, like she used to as a child. But if she was going to put Simon on that shuttle, and get the antidote before it was too late, she had to leave soon.
He did not smile back and looked out over the farm. “I’m sorry.”
She took his hand in hers. “No. I’m sorry. I was angry with you for so long…”
His eyebrows knitted as he continued to stare out into the distance. But he wasn’t just staring vacantly at nothing; his eyes were tracking something.
She looked in the same direction, and saw several security vehicles speeding down the dirt road toward the farmhouse.
Her father spoke just above a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Elizabeth sat handcuffed to the metal chair in the small room, with her head down on the table in front of her, and awaited her fate. Every muscle in her body trembled as her skin temperature alternated between freezing and boiling.
Time had lost all meaning in this tiny room without windows or a clock. From how she felt, she knew that she was nearing the point of no return for an antidote, if that time had not already elapsed.
The door opened and she lifted her head to see which of the several interrogators she would have to talk to again, just like she had been doing for countless unknown hours. She was about to ask them to adjust the temperature in the room again when she saw who walked in.
Chief Constable Severn Blaine closed the door behind him.
She leaned forward in the chair as far as the chains would allow. “I know what you’re thinking Severn, but I had no choice. That terrorist, Croft, injected me with something. He said if I didn’t deliver Simon to him, I would die. You have to find him and get me that antidote, if it’s not already too late.”
Severn sat in the chair opposite her and placed a folder in front of him on the table. He stared at her without any hint of emotion on his face. “How long have you been working with La Guérison?”
She barked out a nervous laugh. “What are you talking about? You know me Severn. I’m not a terrorist.”
“When I first heard that it was you who helped Simon escape from custody, I refused to believe it.”
“I can explain…”
He cut her off. “I came close to losing my commission as Chief Constable over this. I had to convince my superiors that you fooled me just as easily as you fooled everyone else.”
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “No. You have to believe me.”
“How long?”
She shook her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Severn, I never…”
He slammed his fists on the table. “Stop lying to me!”
She clamped her mouth shut and could not believe this was happening.
Severn fiddled with the folder in front of him and laughed. “We stood in line together for the annual immunization. I held your hand while you endured the pain of the treatment. You did all that to keep your cover?”
“Severn, you’re not making any sense.”
“You certainly didn’t do it because you had Scalars.”
“What are you talking about?”
He opened the folder and slid it across the table at her. “We ran the test like you asked. To find out what you claim was injected in you. It was a nice diversion, but I wasn’t going to let you fool me again. I had them take an extra vial; and look what I found.”