“Hello?” I called again, this time looking straight at the ceiling, demanding their attention.
“Captain Harrow, we are glad to see you recovered,” the robotic voice drilled into my ears.
Recovered my ass. They had stitched me together and dropped me back in bed as if I just needed a good night's sleep. Which immediately begged the question.
“Assignment date and time?” I didn’t even think to search for the tablet, my main concern was to find Galenor. Unfortunately, he wasn’t back yet. I burst with rage at the thought of what was happening to him right in that moment.
“Day nineteen, time seventeen twenty-two,” the voice answered, blowing a hole in my brain.
What the fuck? Had I been passed out for a whole day?
“What time did Gal…” I corrected myself and flattened my tone of voice. “What time did the subject leave for interrogation this morning?”
A very long pause told me something was definitely wrong.
“I asked a question,” I blurted out, the anxiety of the weight along with the lack of food mixing with the pain made me feel light-headed. And very, very pissed off.
“The subject has not been returned to the assigned living quarters since his initial departure on day eighteen at ten forty-six.”
The air turned into lead.
They kept him overnight. Those high military men kept him overnight and let me rot in my room. No one thought to wake me up, no one cared about my involvement in this assignment, which had obviously surpassed its trial basis. This wasn’t about me, about showing my skills or extracting essential information. I had been a distraction. Placed in a perfect setting for Galenor to relax and let his guard down for whatever purpose they needed him to.
He could have fought them off, he could have escaped. He could have definitely hurt me and taken his chances on the other side of that door.
Instead, he showed kindness, he showed compassion and spent the night on the floor to keep my nightmares at bay. How easy it could have been for him to kick the first guards that came to escort him once they were out, if he managed to fight off three highly trained army guards.
He probably waited for me, hoped for someone to get him out of this mess and I had just laid here, unconscious and patched up, until I was ready to play nurse again.
No more.
Anger clenched my bones with a desperate need for vengeance, pushing me into action. I would not let this happen. I would not stand and do nothing, like a scared little girl while humans, the unit I had become part of and grown up into, seeped misery and injustice.
With a new wave of adrenaline rushing through my blood, I changed into the uniform I had left abandoned in the wardrobe as the past days with Galenor did not require much clothing on my part.
I combed my hair and filled it with setting gel to arrange it into the all too familiar bun that had become part of my image since I was ten and arranged my epaulettes to display the awards and titles I had received so far, chiselling myself into my status. That of aCaptainof the Intelligence Unit, a person whose position demanded a salute.
Unwilling to ask for leave, I entered the code that would open the door in case of emergency and slammed my boot onto the ground, forcing the floor underneath me to shake under my rage. I didn’t pay attention to the guards stationed in front of the living quarters and ignored their questions as I headed straight for the general’s office.
I passed through a blaze of wandering eyes and whispered questions. Some colleagues even tried to stop me, asking if something had happened to get me out of the living quarters in the evening of a weekend. Apparently, it was Saturday. The day when Milosh hosted a dinner for the other commanders.
Not that I cared.
I climbed the stairs two at a time and stormed through the double doors of his private dining room, making them all turn their heads and glare at me with accusing eyes for daring to ruin their charade of an evening.
Mostly they just sat there drinking until the late hours of the night and talked about how unhappy they were in their marriages and how they would fuck the young women in town. Not that their topic of conversation would have impacted my action in any way, he could have hosted dinner for the royal family for all I cared.
“Milosh!” I demanded his attention as I kicked open the doors, ignoring the other men who looked at me in annoyance, ready to jump and escort me out.
Oh boy, was I ready for that.
“Harrow, out!” the general ordered, looking at me with the disgust one gives a bug that fell into their soup and ruined their appetiser.
“The fuck I am,” I reached at my side pockets and exposed the small gun I had kept tucked away in one of the lockers on the third floor, in case of emergencies.
“You and I need to talk.” I slid both thumbs over the safety, chambering a round in the gun, ready for the blow.
The small tick sound exiting the weapon made Milosh’s features paint a portrait of shock, but I stood my ground.
