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Her eyes dropped to his hands, and the color came rushing back into her pale cheeks. “Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”
He retreated to the bathroom and dropped the towel. Leaning close to the mirror, he plowed a hand through his damp hair. It needed a trim and he needed a shave, not that he’d given a damn about his appearance before Ava came onto the scene.
He pulled on his camos and returned to the bedroom.
Ava had moved to the chair and sat with her legs curled beneath her, a look of expectancy highlighting her face.
He’d memorized that face from his quarterly visits with her. Dr. Ava Whitman had been the one bright spot in the dark tunnel of Tempest. He believed with certainty that she had no idea what she’d been dosing them with. At first, he’d been incredulous that a doctor wouldn’t know what was in a formula she was giving her patients, but her story made sense. Tempest sought out the most vulnerable. The agency used blackmail and coercion, and in Ava’s case, hope, to recruit people.
Dr. Arnoff had kept her in the dark, had probably shut down her questions by reminding her that she wouldn’t be working as a doctor if it weren’t for the agency and then using the illegality of that work to keep her in line.
And she’d been good at her job. He had a hard time remembering the two missions he’d been on last year, but he could clearly recall Ava’s soft touch and cheery tone as she checked his vitals and injected him with the serum that would destroy his life.
Ava cleared her throat. “If the blue pills are a weaker dose of the T-101 serum, why are you still taking them?”
“I have to.”
“Because you’re addicted? Why not just ride out the withdrawal?” She laced her fingers in her lap. “I can help you. I—I have some experience with that.”
He raised his eyebrows. She had to be referring to a patient. “It’s more than the addiction. I could ride that out. You saw Simon.”
She drew in a quick breath and hunched forward. “Simon went over the edge. He lost it. The stress, the tension, maybe even the brainwashing—they all did him in.”
“It’s the...T-101, Ava. Is that what you called it? Without the serum, we self-destruct. Another agent, before Simon, before me, he committed suicide. Tempest put it down to post-traumatic stress disorder because this agent had killed a child by mistake on a raid. Now I wonder if that was even a mistake or his true assignment.”
“Adam Belchik.” She drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
“That’s right. I thought he was before your time.”
“He was, but I heard about him.”
“He was the first to go off the meds, and he paid the price. He had a family, so he killed himself before he could harm them.”
“Is that why you were jabbering about cold turkey? You can’t quit cold turkey like Simon did, like Adam did. You have to keep lowering your dosage by continuing with the blue pills.”
“That’s it.” He pointed to the tin on the credenza, the fine line keeping him from insanity and rage. “I find if I take one a day, I can maintain. I tried a half, and it didn’t work.”
“You have only five left.” Her gaze darted to the credenza and back to his face.
“Four now. Four pills. Four days.”
She uncurled her legs and almost fell out of the chair as she bolted from it. “That’s crazy. What happens at the end of the four days?”
He lifted his shoulders. “I’ll be subject to incidents like the one you just witnessed until they kill me or I snap...or Tempest gets to me first.”
“And if they do?”
“They’ll either kill me or I’ll be their drone for the rest of my life.”
She folded her arms across her stomach, clutching the material of her blouse at her sides. “There has to be another way. If we get more of the pills and you take smaller and smaller doses, maybe eventually you can break free. You tried taking a half, but it was too soon.”
“Where would I get more pills? You said yourself you never saw them at the lab. They weren’t administered at the lab. My quick search there revealed nothing.”
She snapped her fingers. “Max, there has to be an antidote somewhere.”
