CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE <br><br>Adric glanced at Dalton and shrugged, then moving stiffly, made his way to the wall-mounted intercom and thumbed the call button. "Adric here."<br><br>"Adric, it's Nykita." Tension carried in her voice, raising gooseflesh on Adric's arms. "I'm in the detention cells. There's been an accident down here."<br>
<br>"Explain." <br><br>"The guards just finished their rounds. Adric, I'm afraid they found the spy dead in her cell." <br><br>"Ah Judes," Adric growled deep in his throat. "How did she die?" <br>
<br>"That might be better left unsaid until you can get down here. But Adric, there is something you should know," her words dragged, hesitant and unsure.<br><br>"You can speak freely, Nicki." <br><br>
"This is an open channel. I wasn't certain...."<br><br>"Nicki, say what's on your mind."<br><br>"Very well. The spy. It was Sinda. The woman you brought in last month."<br><br>Adric's forehead thumped softly against the wall. He'd never have suspected Sinda. Not for a minute. "Okay. Understood. I'm on my way."<br>
<br>Pushing away from the wall, Adric met Dalton's icily prohibitive stare. "It doesn't get any easier to take, does it, my friend? All the death and destruction. It doesn't ever get any better?"<br>
<br>"Not from where I'm standing," Dalton said, his hand gentle on Adric's arm. "Not at all." <br><br>Startled by the other man's comforting touch, Adric searched Dalton's guarded gaze again and for a mere heartbeat saw some foreign, flickering emotion he daren't put a name to within the depths of that familiar, chilled stare. And then it was gone. Imagined?<br>
<br>"Your woman said this Sinda had only been with you a month. How much access does a new recruit have, as a rule?" Dalton wanted to know.<br><br>"Very little, actually. I don't usually allow anyone past the first level without undisputable proof of their loyalty. In fact, nobody gets access to anything that might be passed on to hostiles except on a need to know basis. You, on the other hand, were a different case entirely, but then we have a past, don't we?"<br>
<br>"One would think so." Dalton frowned, smoothing his fingers in a slow, petting fashion. "Adric, this woman went through a great deal of trouble to infiltrate your operation. Why do you think she would call in her troops and reveal herself unless she had hard evidence?"<br>
<br>"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "Our faces are pretty well known, though. Maybe she recognized me, or you, or one of your squad, and panicked." He sucked in a shaky breath and scrubbed his hand across his mouth. "I really have to check out this mess. Want to lend a hand?" <br>
<br>"For old time's sake?" Dalton chuckled grimly. "I wouldn't miss it."<br><br>* * * * * * * *<br><br>There were no security guards to be seen patrolling the dismal hall that lead to the detention cells, Dalton noticed, and no scanners either, for that matter. In fact, there were no security devices at all. Just Adric, who trudged silently at his side, and Adric's so very mysterious lady without a past waiting for them before the open door of a dimly lit cell.<br>
<br>The perfect setting for suicide. Or possibly murder?<br><br>Stepping into the cramped and dingy room, Dalton cast a dispassionate glance over the skin torn, blood-saturated body that lie slumped half off, half on the soiled cot.<br>
<br>She must have been a strikingly lovely woman in life. But not now. Not with her short-cropped blonde hair stained a gruesome rusty brown. Semi-crusted blood trailed from her mouth and wound in thick twin rivers from her ears. And a single red teardrop pooled near her right eye.<br>
<br>The bizarre death, he imagined, was the result of a massive hemorrhage. Not a very pretty way to end it at all. No, this was most decidedly not the way an attractive young woman would chose for a self-imposed death.<br>
<br>"What the devil happened here, Nicki?" Adric demanded, drawing Dalton's shuttered glance by jerking a brown woolen blanket over the grisly sight. "Who was in charge of her questioning?"<br><br>
"She wasn't tortured to death during interrogation, if that's that's what you're getting at, Adric," Nykita told him softly. "I know because she hadn't been questioned yet."<br><br>
Adric pivoted slowly around on the balls of his feet. "No?"<br><br>"No. You see, I'd wanted to be at her questioning myself, but I hadn't had time to arrange it."<br><br>"Why would you want to do that?"<br>
<br>"Guilt, I guess," she said, shrugging. "Our screening process involves a lot more than your loyalty tests, Adric. I monitor the initiates heart rate, core temperature and any number of bodily responses during the primary interrogations. But she never flagged red. Somehow she was able to slip the bios and that bothers me. Bothers me a lot.<br>
<br>"Bearing that in mind, I thought her questioning was important enough to warrant personal attention and you've had too much to contend with already. That made it my duty to find out how they were beating our screening process." Her shoulders lifted in a defeated shrug. "Now, I guess we'll never know."<br>
<br>"No, now we will never know," Dalton said with a tight grimace, his hands convulsing into white-knuckled fists. "A pity, but we are left with nothing but a bloody mess."<br><br>"It is that," Nykita agreed. "An ugly, bloody mess. And it's also a waste, her dying without answering a single question" &#9;"Nothing can be done about that," Adric said through a tired sigh. "But this sure as hell doesn't fall under the category of death by natural causes, does it?"<br>
<br>"That would be highly unlikely, I must admit," Nykita said.<br><br>"Well then, have you had an opportunity to form an opinion on how she did die?"<br><br>She tapped her forefinger against her lips. "Near as I can tell without a full autopsy, she was carrying a suicide cap."<br>
<br>"Suicide? You must be kidding." Adric's harsh fingers bit into her arm, making her flinch away from him.<br><br>"I assure you, I am not."<br><br>"How could she have gotten a death pill past the body check? Or wasn't she even scanned before she was incarcerated? Dammit, Nicki, was she given even the most cursory of searches?"<br>
<br>"Security was not at fault."<br><br>"Really? Well, who in the hell was then? How did Sinda get that capsule past the scans?" <br><br>"I made a preliminary examination of the body while I was waiting for you to get down here." Nykita hesitated, chewing on her thumbnail.<br>
<br>"Go on."<br><br>"She met his angry stare. "There was massive corrosion of the inner mouth area. I found several broken and jagged teeth. Little more than shells, actually."<br><br>"And what does that tell us?"<br>
<br>"I think she might have concealed the poison inside those hollowed out teeth." <br><br>A curious frown wrinkled Adric's high forehead. "That would have been rather dangerous, wouldn't it?"<br>
<br>Nykita shook her head. "Not in this case, Adric. There are certain safeguards built into this type of cap. The bite has to be executed in a way that can only be deliberately made. There's no way to break the sealant by accident."<br>
<br>Dalton arched his brow slightly. "You seem to know a great deal about it."<br><br>"It's standard knowledge in the medical fields, St Moritz," she drawled, her voice dripping honey. "Adric, there is one more thing. The poison had to be incredibly fast-acting. We had a guard checking her cell every twenty minutes. If she had been discovered in the death throes, perhaps we might have saved her. Or at least taken a memory scan. As it stands now, we've got nothing. Aside from another senseless death."<br>
<br>Dalton shook his head. "Oh, I don't know how senseless it was."<br><br>"What's in your mind, haurride?"<br><br>"I've been thinking, if this was a suicide, which I am not entirely convinced it was, this woman chose death by her own hand instead of risking her secrets to questioning. And she chose a rather grisly death, at that. In my mind, her decision tells us something we should have suspected before."<br>
<br>"Just exactly what do you think it tells us?"<br><br>Dalton crooked his thick brow at Nykita's sarcasm, chuckling softly. "It tells us, woman, that perhaps the prisoner held knowledge of vital importance to our survival. Information she felt she could not risk under interrogation."<br>
<br>"For instance?"<br><br>"Well now, any answer I supply would be no more than supposition and I tend not to trust hunches." Dalton smiled darkly. "But under the circumstances, I'd hazard a guess."<br>
<br>"What sort of guess?"<br><br>His smile faded. "I suspect her purpose for being here goes deeper than the obvious. I also think it highly probable she may have been murdered and her death made to look like a not very convincing suicide."<br>
<br>"Why ever would you think that?"<br><br>He pinned Nykita with his harsh cobra's gaze. "Perhaps there is another traitor, a mole, on the base. Her death could well have been staged to protect an accomplice."<br>
<br>Nykita's pale hand fluttered to her throat. "An accomplice wouldn't want to be identified."<br><br>"I would expect not. Especially if this accomplice is active."<br><br>"You're serious, aren't you? You really think there may still be a traitor active on the base." Nykita cast a look of despair at Adric. "Adric, he can't be right."<br>
<br>"Let's hope I'm wrong then," Dalton said, crossing his arms over his chest. "But it does seem to the most likely answer, don't you think?"<br><br>"You have to be wrong. If you are right we're not any safer here than we were on Alpha Base. But Lord help us, Adric, we'll have to work under the assumption he's right. We have to play it safe."<br>
<br>"Play it like you see it, woman. I intend to."<br><br>"Just exactly what do you intend to do?" she demanded. <br><br>He gave an impartial shrug. "Survive. I intend to survive." <br><br>
<br>end part 23<br><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>PEJA<br>The wwomb archive <a href="http://www.squidge.org/~peja/cgi-bin/index.php">http://www.squidge.org/~peja/cgi-bin/index.php</a> accepts all fandoms, all genres. Come create your personal page with us<br>
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