“Anything concerning?” Wolf asked quietly.
“Nothing as of yet.” Yet Brickenhouse appeared tenser than ever.
What the hell was the dude picking up on?
Three minutes later, Nantz stirred. His head lifted, then sluggishly turned to the left and right.
“Wassss haaapaning,” he asked.
Now that nobody was holding him, he slumped so far down his chair, he would have slid out if the cuffs hadn’t held him in place. Wolf dragged him upright again and kept a firm grip on his shoulder.
The doctor checked his pupils, his blood pressure, his heartrate, and his oxygen saturation level before turning to Wolf. “Best ask the urgent questions first. Get everything you need out of him now. His blood pressure and pulse are rising, which could indicate a problem.”
Wolf let go of Nantz’s shoulders and stepped around the chair. “The camera footage on your laptop is impressive,” he said, mildly. “Where are the cameras located?”
“No…no...” Nantz slurred, slumping back down in the chair. “It’s...it’s the NBNNN...uh...prototype...that’s impressive. Even...brilliant.”
“They are.” Aiden forced admiration into his voice. They needed to get him talking. Like sodium thiopental, or scopolamine, Tenthrop weakened inhibitions and increased talkativeness. While it was more effective than the current truth serums on the market, it still couldn’t force the truth out of its subject. It simply allowed rambling and unfiltered thoughts. “Where do you keep your NNB26 prototype?”
The prototype Nantz mentioned must be the nanobots.
“My itty-bitty...uh... soldiers.” Nantz gloated. “Grtest weapon, like ...evr created. Yet...they...uh...they...surpise me.”
“And where do you keep these itty-bitty soldiers?” Wolf stepped in again, nudging the conversation back on track.
“They evn...uh...bing the ...uh ded to life.” Nantz’s eyes widened. “Nevr saw that comin.”
“And where do you keep the dead your brilliant little soldiers have brought back to life?” Aiden doggedly returned to the crucial question.
“Shees...in labs ‘course!” Nantz giggled.
Finally, they were getting somewhere.
“Indeed,” Wolf’s voice was dry. “And where are these labs?”
“His heartrate and BP are spiking,” Brickenhouse said. His hands were steady as they removed the stethoscope from Nantz’s chest and let it hang. “We may not have him for much longer.
“And where are the labs you speak of.” Wolf’s voice remained mild, even as the doctor grabbed a glass vial and syringe from the cart.
“T...bst...m..twer...crs.”The words were so garbled, they were unrecognizable. A tremor swept through Nantz and his eyes rolled back in his head until only white showed.
Fuck!
“Did you catch any of that?” Aiden asked Wolf, and silently swore at the shake of his brother’s head.
Aiden watched the doctor wrap a rubber tube around Nantz’s arm just above the elbow and tighten it until the vein surfaced. Brickenhouse deftly inserted the needle into the bulging vein and injected the contents of the syringe.
“What did you give him?
“Metoprolol. It’s a beta blocker. It will lower his blood pressure and heart rate. Hopefully prevent him from having a heart attack or stroke. We need to get him to the ER,” the doctor added briskly. “And call for Kait. If this treatment doesn’t work, I’ll need her healing ability.”
“One Bird.” Wolf called the healer over.
The old healer stepped forward, his square face calm and grasped Nantz’s head between his hands. After a minute of soft chanting, he simply shook his head and stepped back.
It looked like Wolf’s decision to use One Bird, instead of Kait, had been a poor choice. But they’d both wanted to shield their sister from the more brutal aspects of a warriors’ life had been a poor choice.
“Well, fuck,” Aiden growled. “We won’t be able to question him again for a while.” If at all. “Sure wish we knew what the fuck he was saying.”
