Turn & Turn Again - Chapter Eight: tell us all that you have seen
Chapter Eight: tell us all that you have seen
“We're just ash in a jar.
So turn and turn again,
We are calling in all the ships,
Every traveler: ‘Please come home,
And tell us all that you have seen’.”
- “Turn & Turn Again” by All Thieves
Sophie straightened her back and leaned over the counter just inside the entrance of the Mynas facility, smiling at the security guard behind it.
“Excuse me, Erik asked me to come in today to inspect the medical facilities,” she said in a soft purr, arching her back, knowing that the man’s eyes were more focused on her cleavage than her words.
She heard Sterling’s soft sigh of irritation in her ear, but she ignored him. The guard swallowed and turned to the computer; he looked back at her with a sheepish smile.
“I’m sorry, miss, but Mr. Mynas doesn’t have any appointments scheduled for the day.” His eyes flickered back to her chest, and she adjusted her glasses.
She glanced at his name tag and leaned a little closer to him as she said, “Well, Samuel…can I call you Sam?” When he nodded his head, she continued, “Erik is, of course, a very busy man, and it probably just slipped his mind that I was coming. After all, this is very last minute because I’m in town for today only. So, do you think you could let it slide?”
She watched him carefully, looking for any sign that he recognized her. He probably wouldn’t; she didn’t remember him, and even the guards who followed her around would hopefully have a hard time seeing past the tight bun, glasses, and thick make-up. She gave him another smile and glanced back at Sterling who was tapping his briefcase against his legs in a nervous rhythm.
“I think it will be all right,” Sam piped up behind her, two laminated passes in his hand. “These are your passes; you’ll have access to the facility. Do you want me to let Mr. Mynas know that you’re here?”
She shook her head and clipped one of the passes to the bottom of her jacket. “I talked to him before I came in.”
“Let me know if you need anything else,” Sam said eagerly even as she was walking away, Sterling in tow.
Sophie flashed him one last smile, and the second they were around the corner, she pulled off her heels and shoved them into Sterling’s hands. He opened the briefcase and tossed her a pair of pants and flats. She stripped off her skirt and jacket and slipped into the loose, comfortable pants, stepping into the flats as she pulled her hair out of the bun and shook the waves free. She whipped the glasses off her face and took the gun Sterling held out to her, grabbing an extra clip and shoving it into her pocket. He stuffed all of her discarded clothing into the briefcase and closed it; he raised his own gun and nodded at her.
“Where to first?” he asked as she checked to make sure the safety was off.
She turned to her right and headed for the staircase that would lead to the courtyard door. “First, we let in Parker and Hardison. Then, we check the holding cells for people before moving onto handling Mynas.”
He nodded his head and trailed after her. She moved like a shadow, almost like she was trying to avoid the cameras placed on the wall, though he didn’t think it really mattered if they were seen. Still, he had to work to keep up, taking a right down a narrow corridor, then a left that led straight to the staircase. They reached the courtyard door, and Sophie pulled it open slowly. Parker bounded through with Hardison right behind her.
“Took you long enough,” Parker remarked. She looked curiously down the hallway and pulled Hardison behind her. “Come on.”
Sophie motioned for Sterling to follow after them; they were headed back the same way they came, and Parker had already turned a corner. When Sterling tried to take a right, Sophie had to reach back and drag him after her to the left. They continued on for awhile, their footsteps and breathing the only sounds, and Hardison stopped and looked around.
“Okay, so it’s way too quiet,” he said softly. “Is that bothering anyone else?”
“It is odd,” Sophie agreed.
“Well, if we are walking into a trap, there’s really nothing we can do about it,” Sterling pointed out.
Hardison turned to him with an irritated look. “You’re such a bright little ray of sunshine. What are you doing here again?”
Sterling started to respond, but Sophie stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest. “No time for arguing. Let’s keep going and get this done. Eliot and Nate are halfway done with their negotiations.”
They kept going, another left that took them down a staircase and to a short hallway that separated into a fork; Parker and Hardison split off to the right while Sophie stayed to the left. Bearing straight ahead, they reached the holding cells in less than a minute. She peered through a window in the door and jerked back with a cry.
“What?” Sterling asked as he stepped up to look. He took in the scene; dead bodies were piled in the center of the room. Some looked to have been nurses, others the prisoners. He sighed and moved back. “Well, that’s that.”
Sophie had crouched down against the opposite wall, breathing hard, and she looked up at him with wide eyes when he reached a hand down to her.
“Up you get. We still have things to do,” he told her calmly.
She looked like she was about to argue, but thankfully her common sense caught up with her tongue, and she took his proffered hand, letting him pull her to her feet.
***************
Parker paced out the room and looked around for a moment before moving to a spot that was a little off the center.
“Here,” she declared with a decisive nod of her head.
Hardison pulled one of the bombs out of the bag and placed it on the ground, pushing the sequence of buttons to activate it. He waited for the red glow of the display and smiled a little when it showed up.
“Okay, we are active,” he said. He caught the sound of Sophie’s cry of alarm and paused. “Hey, what’s going on?”
Sterling’s voice floated in his ear, which was something he didn’t particularly like. “No survivors. We’re on our way to Mynas. Get a move on. We don’t want to get trapped here.”
Parker rolled her eyes at Sterling’s instructions, but she grabbed the bag and took off at a jog out of the room. Hardison followed after her, listening intently to Nate’s conversation with some CIA agent.
***************
“So, what you want in exchange for keeping our secret is to be left alone?”
Nate eyed the man, Christopher, sitting across from him and gave a terse nod. “Yes. I want assurance that my team will be safe from any further…activities conducted by your organization.”
Christopher rocked back in his leather chair and pressed his fingers into a steeple under his chin. “Deal. I assume you’re going to keep the files as insurance?”
“Of course,” Nate replied; he could hear Eliot shifting restlessly in the background. “I wouldn’t want for you to forget and slip up.”
“Fine, fine. Now, get out.”
They were waved out of the office, and Eliot moved closer to Nate as he muttered, “That was almost too easy.”
Nate’s eyes were already narrowed as he sifted through the details of the meeting. “I know. We’re going to the facility. Something’s not right.”
***************
Christopher dialed a number and waited for the person on the other side to pick up. “Are any of them there now?”
“The rest of Ford’s crew, sir,” Sam replied. “They’re planting bombs, and the brunette woman is headed after Mynas. Do you want me to stop them?”
“No, let them keep working. We don’t want to tip our hand.” He paused and scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “So, they’re going to take care of Mynas as well? That might just be perfect. Tell me, do you know how they’re going to set off the bombs?”
“Our technicians hacked into one and said that they’re set to be detonated by a remote,” Sam explained.
“So, that can be overridden?”
“Of course, sir. What would you like for us to do, sir?”
He grinned. “Well, I did promise that we would leave Ford’s team alone. Of course, I never stated exactly how many would be left.”
“We can detonate them now, sir.”
“No, Ford is on his way there now. Wait until you see a second black van pull into the parking lot, then override the bombs. Maybe even give them a few seconds to try and run.”
“Yes, sir.”
***************
Mynas didn’t look away from the screens when he heard the doors open. “So, you’re here to kill me.”
He turned around to see Sophie and Sterling behind him, Sophie holding Joseph at gunpoint. She shoved Joseph forward, and he stumbled into Mynas.
“Not a hard deduction to make,” she remarked.
Joseph turned to her. “You’re not a killer. You can’t do this!”
“I might not have been a killer,” she said slowly, a dangerous smile playing with her lips. “But, that was before. This is right now, and I think I just might be one.”
“I guess it was too much to expect to live through this,” Mynas said with a sigh.
“On your knees,” Sterling ordered.
Joseph obeyed immediately, whimpering when Sophie stepped forward and pressed the barrel of her gun against his forehead.
“Do you understand now?” she purred, her eyes narrowed to slits.
Mynas rolled his eyes. “I don’t kneel.”
Sophie turned on him and shot him in the knee; he screamed and dropped to the floor, falling on his face. Sterling dragged him up by his collar and forced him to kneel.
He pointed his gun at the back of Mynas’s head while Sophie pressed hers back to Joseph’s forehead.
***************
Nate winced at the sound of the two gunshots as Eliot pulled up to the facility.
“Just put the last bomb in place, boss,” Hardison reported cheerfully. “On our way…”
When his voice trailed off, Nate straightened in his seat. “Hardison, what’s going on?”
“The bombs are doing something funny,” Hardison muttered. Then, his voice was suddenly very loud in Nate’s ear. “They overrode my control.”
“What does that mean?” Eliot growled, already unbuckling even as he threw the van into park.
“Thirty seconds on the countdown,” Hardison replied. “We have to get out now.”
There was a faint roar in Nate’s ears, the feeling that he had been here before. He listened to Sophie and Sterling running their way through twisting hallways; he struggled with his seatbelt until he finally managed to rip it off. Eliot was halfway to the building, but he stopped short of going any further, body tense as he waited.
The sounds of a struggle caught Nate’s attention. “What’s happening? Soph? Jim?”
“Go, Sophie, I’m right behind you!”
The doors flung open, and there were Parker and Hardison sprinting away from the building, Sophie only a few steps behind them. Eliot was counting down in his ear.
“Four, three…”
“Jim, get out of there!” Nate shouted, already starting to take off at a run.
He could see Olivia emerging from the other van as he passed it, Maggie hot on her heels, then everything exploded into a brilliant white light. The ground shook, and he fell back, skidding against the pavement. He blinked, a loud ringing in his ears; then he heard all the screaming.
He pushed himself upright and took in the scene in front of him. What was left of the building was on fire, and debris was still raining down out of the sky. He looked around to find the screaming.
“Let me go!” Olivia was struggling against Eliot’s iron grip. “Dad! He needs me! Let me go!”
Nate turned his head back to the building and saw three crumpled forms. He struggled to his feet, stumbling and scraping his hands against the pavement before he found his balance. Maggie was making a beeline for the inferno, and he thought for a moment he was going to have to stop her, but she stopped when she reached Hardison, shoveling the piles of concrete that pinned him down to the side.
Then, he heard a high-pitched keening scream that cut him to the core. Sophie. His eyes latched onto her, and he took off at a run before he even registered what was wrong. She was trapped under a large piece of something that was burning, and as he skidded to a stop beside her, he grabbed hold of it without thinking.
The pain was almost unbearable, but he gritted his teeth and flung the piece of wood as far as he could. The sickening stench of charred flesh invaded his nose, and he wasn’t sure if the smell was from both of them or just her. She clutched at him blindly, her cries of pain catching in the back of her throat.
He could hear sirens in the distance, and he looked back over the scene. Parker and Hardison weren’t moving; Olivia had collapsed into hysterical sobs in Eliot’s arms; the right side of Sophie’s face was bloody and blistering, and all he could do was pull her up into his lap and wait.
When a paramedic tried to pull Sophie out of his arms, Nate lashed out on instinct, but there was a quick jab of a needle in his arm, and he couldn’t remember anything after that.
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