Starship: Rogue

Chapter Twenty-Three

She was already in plenty of pain, but, just in case, she dug her fingernail into the skin on the inside of her thigh, and, next to the marks left by Nash, she added another deep, deep cut. That should do the trick, she decided, just as a pair of armed men burst through the door. They each grabbed one of her arms and dragged her out.

When they threw her back into her cell at the end of what could have been minutes or hours or days of torture, the only thing she knew about them was that the other Rangers, the ones who had been taken from the School, were there. She'd seen them getting dragged past as they tortured her. They'd used a corner of a hallway, instead of a proper torture or interrogation room–cheapskates.

And Rowan was proud of herself. She hadn't revealed a single thing except what she'd already planned to say. She'd heard one guard remark that she was remarkably stubborn, refusing to talk despite everything he did, no matter how much he hurt her.

As soon as her door slammed shut, Dr. Beech asked, "Did you talk?"

Rowan slumped against the wall, her legs splayed in front of her. She knew she'd cracked at least two ribs, her left thumb hurt for no reason that she could remember, and she was getting more and more sure that right ankle was broken. At least her new knee had held up. Carter would have been proud to hear that.

They'd tried to smash that kneecap, she remembered, but, when they'd hit metal instead, it had been kind of funny to watch their stunned expressions. They hadn't even tried her other knee.

Oh, wait, Dr. Beech had asked her a question, hadn't he?

"Only the things I wanted them to know," she said mulishly.

"Good girl," his disembodied voice said, and there was genuine pride in it.

"Guess you might as well know, now that they do, but my real isn't Rory, like I already said," Rowan told him. "It's Rowan."

She heard his sigh. "Rowan," he said slowly, as if he was testing the word. "That's a pretty name, and it suits you better. Someone once told me about a Rowan he was teaching. One of my former colleagues. He said she was a brilliant student."

He lapsed into silence, and Rowan found herself wondering if he was maybe talking about her. He could have been. He had still been working for the Rangers when she'd entered her training at the Academy and her probationary period.

Which reminded her, if she ever got out of this in one piece, she'd need to assign Fletcher a supervising officer for her probationary period. Every probie needed an S.O. Rowan thought Ripple might've been a good choice, or maybe Slate or Jase. She would have said Gerrit, because he was really good with the newbies, but he already had a probie in Carter, and it was almost unheard of for anyone to have more than one probie at a time.

"Dr. Beech?" she called, suddenly curious about something.

"Yes, dear?" he asked.

"How long have you been here?"

She heard his drawn out sigh. "Too long," he said. "Nearly five years, though I'm not sure the exact amount of time. I'd just retired, and they snatched me. They've been making me work on various projects for them ever since."

Rowan was suddenly alert. "What kind of projects?" she asked, wondering if she might finally learn something. "And do you work with anyone else on them?"

Dr. Beech let out a low humming noise. "Well, that's a tough question," he said heavily, and Rowan imagined him staring into the darkness of his cell, deep in thought. "The work they've made me do, it's everything from engineering jamming signals to creating weaponry to positing new theories, then proving them. Mostly, it's weapons and other tech that could be used in fighting to either disorient an enemy or to lock them down, or to take them out.

"As for who I work with, well, for years, it was just me, a young biochemist and a young engineer. I don't know their names; we never told each other. They knew each other before they were brought here and forced to work. You should know, everyone who does the dirty work is somehow being forced to work. Some of them, the Red Night has their loved ones; others' debts are called in; most of us, though, are prisoners here. We work because they hurt us if we don't. I don't know if they'll make you work. It depends on if you have skills no one else does."

Rowan kept quiet. It was very possible she did, and, if she did, she wouldn't say it aloud. Dr. Beech had warned her about that. But he hadn't mentioned geneticists or environmentalists or virologists, and those were the areas she had training in. Her engineering abilities extended to being able to create makeshift explosions out of lithium batteries, and her physics training allowed her to test ballistics and not much else.

Dr. Beech went on, after a heavy pause. "The other day–at least, I think it was the other day; in this place, it could have been weeks or months–they brought in a whole bunch of new people, scientists, mathematicians, other researchers. I knew some of them... before. But I didn't get to work with them; they put them in other labs. We only got one new person in ours, a young man. They cut off one of his fingers before he complied with what they wanted."

Rowan let out a gasp that echoed Dr. Beech's next words. "If they come for you, girl, my advice is to do what they tell you to do. If you're lucky, you'll get assigned to my lab. If they take you, I'll ask them to put you with us, because they'll only come for you if you have a different discipline than everyone else they've brought in. Do you know where they got all these people? Is that why you're here?"

Rowan wondered if she should tell him, then decided that, since it had been all over the civilian news outlets, she could tell him. "They hit a military research facility," she told him. "Apparently, they took all the researchers and killed all the guards." Close enough to the truth that he would piece it together, but vague enough not to let on that she was a Ranger.

There was silence from the otherside of the wall. Then, after a long time, Dr. Beech said, "I think I'll get some sleep now, if you don't mind."

And then there was nothing. Nothing but silence.

They came for her again after an indeterminate amount of time, and, by then, she had decided to tell them that she was a scientist, and to tell them her specialties. She needed to learn what they were making. No matter how hard they hurt her, she had to do this, for Stark, for Fox Squad, for the Rangers. For everybody.

When they threw her back into her cell at the end of a session worse than the first, Rowan couldn't recall what she'd said. All she knew was what she hadn't said. She hadn't told them anything about her real identity, or about the Rangers.

She couldn't move from where they'd flung her. Her body had given up. Her mind still clung on by a thread, so she said, "Looks like I'll be working with you now."

If Dr. Beech answered, she didn't hear. Her vision went dark and she let her head fall back onto the ground. After that, there was nothing but blessed darkness.