Destruction - The Oasis Project Book 2 (Complete)

Twenty-Three - Ira

"Eva, where the fuck have you-" Nate froze when I pointed my gun at his chest. "Jesus! What have I done?"

"You're going to get out of here safely, but you need to listen to exactly what I say. They're going to be here soon." I walked closer to my former housemate, trying to recall everything as quickly as I could. The jumbled memories couldn't come faster. "I strapped a gun to the bottom of the table. I assume you haven't moved it. Get it and point it at me."

With shaking hands he felt under the table and pulled the gun out, cocking it. He couldn't look me in the eyes, and I felt overwhelmingly guilty looking at him. "Is this what you didn't want to tell me-"

"I see you've put the emergency bag by the balcony. Good." I took a deep breath and gulped before I walked towards him, noticing a stack of sticky notes on his desk. Nate stepped back, still dutifully pointing the gun at me for show, in case Nita and Desmond broke in. At least he was cooperating. My breaths becoming shallow by the second, I felt for a pen on the table while keeping my eyes and gun trained on Nate like I should. Uncapping the pen, I hastily wrote on a sticky note a Mexican address that flew off my pen, Ira K, and in what I was sure was now chicken scratch, I added OASIS HAINAN. Peeling off the note, I stuck it on Nate's arm without even looking at it. "If you haven't looked or thrown them out, there are passports in that bag for you along with that money I left."

"Ira, come in," Nita's voice in my earpiece made me jump.

I ignored her and hurried my speech with Nate as much as I could. "Get the fuck out of here. Take the fire escape from the balcony and get the next cab you see to the airport. Don't waste time. Keep your head down and get to that address."

Nate peeled the sticky note off his arm and stuck it under his shirt. Before I could take another breath, he dashed for the black bag by the balcony. I fired a shot to his right as he ran left for the glass door. He let out a shrill scream.

"One?" It was Desmond this time, his voice urgent. I fired two more shots, one of them hitting the wall, one of them shattering a floor-to-ceiling window. Desmond and Nita took turns at shouting in my ear, but within a few seconds, my housemate disappeared from the fire escape stairs. The door burst open, and Nita and Desmond filed in with their guns up.

"What on Earth-" Nita began before I shot her in the calf. I got another shot in her left arm before Desmond ran a wide angle and took out my own arm. Catching my falling gun with my good hand, I aimed in his general direction and pulled the trigger, not caring where the bullet hit home.

Before putting pressure on my fresh wound, I levelled my breathing and pressed the transmitter button at my ear. "Agents down," I panted. "We need urgent medical assistance."

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Handcuffing me to a metal chair made me feel my injury tear even more, but no one cared to mention it, not even me. The bandages were growing wet with fresh blood behind my back but my heart was content. I was fairly confident that I would have delayed the situation long enough for Nate to get away.

Five pairs of eyes glared at me from across the room, all Chinese people I'd never met, dressed in military uniform. Doctor A paced around in the space between me and them. "She needs to come," her voice echoed in the cool stone room. "We can't afford not to."

"No." Colonel Shao shook his head. He didn't have anything else to add. I lengthened my back and shifted uncomfortably in the chair. The handcuffs made loud clangs as I moved.

"Lieutenant Colonel Dunn, you must be joking. One needs urgent reprogramming," a solemn woman added. It took me a moment to realize who she was addressing; Nita had sometimes referred to Doctor A as Kathryn. Kathryn Dunn was her real name, the one she used before the Oasis Project.

"This was a demonstration of virtue, not risk," someone said behind me. I craned my neck to see Doctor Nita hobbling into the room on a crutch with a thick bandage wound around her left arm. She smiled and thanked the stranger holding the door open to her and walked towards Liana, who immediately pulled out a chair for her.

My heart sank. Nita hadn't been terrible to me, and right now what I did to her looked awful. "Nita, I'm so s-"

"See my injuries? Her aim was specifically non-lethal. She's a good shot; if she wanted to kill Desmond and me and run off, she would have." With effort, Doctor Nita sat down, letting out a relieved sigh as she hooked her good arm around her crutch. Her blue eyes shone as they darted between the Oasis overseers and me. "Ira might look volatile on paper, but I know her. She's loyal to her friends, which is why we're all in bandages in the first place. She wouldn't let a teammate down. Would you, Ira?"

I licked my chapped lips; I was too terrified to speak. Reprogramming wasn't the most delicious word. I knew it meant the room of total darkness, the loss of sensation in my body, and the swimming memories that I wouldn't get back.

"As you know, the two recruits from Hainan we are planning to send will be Americans," Doctor A spoke up, her back straight as a board. "The base is yours, but we still decide what is and isn't fitting for our recruits, and I say if we are going into the Sahara Desert in the dark, we are going to need Ira. She can't be left out of the team for everyone's sake, and I don't want one of mine to get hurt or have worse things happen to him on a mission to save your recruit, mind you, so-"

"Liana," Nita interrupted with something between a plea and a just-shut-up.

"Are you making a threat, Dunn?" one of the older men said in a cold tone that me shiver.

"I'm making a very reasonable proposal, Zong," Liana replied coolly but with force. "Get Ira out of here and make a nice nurse check on her arm. She doesn't need to hear this nonsense."