Fic - Know Your Exits 5/7
Sep. 21st, 2009 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cj2017Title: Know Your Exits (5/7)
Rating: Hard R: violence, sex, huge amounts of bad language, discussion of adult themes, a pretty spectacular body count, casual slaughter of the innocent (including one minor series character), and scenes of a medical nature that might cause queasiness in those with a sensitive disposition.
Word Count: About 30,500 all told. This part 4,750
Disclaimer: Don’t own them. Wish I did. And I have shamelessly pinched some of their dialogue.
~ ~ ~
Know Your Exits 5/7
~ ~ ~
There were no further checks that night. The hatch remained closed, the cell undisturbed. The log book was correctly filled in, signatures attesting to an uneventful shift. The two guards on duty – both agency employees – handed over to the day shift, and then collected brown envelopes from a police officer whose name they didn’t know. Neither of them questioned why someone would want to pay them so much money to sit on their asses and look the other way. It had been an extremely lucrative night for them, and, when it came down to it, that was all that mattered.
~ ~ ~
“Breakfast.” The guard looked down at the tepid white mush masquerading as oatmeal and the cup of greasy coffee on the tray he was holding. “Well, in a manner of speaking.” He unfastened the hatch on twenty-one and took a quick glance inside, ready to slide the tray into place.
“Oh Jesus Christ!”
Hands suddenly trembling, he set the tray on the floor, fumbling for the correct key on his chain and opening the cell door.
“Miss?” It was too early in the morning, and he couldn’t remember her name. “Miss? Can you hear me?”
She didn’t move until he touched her; a soft moan and the slightest turn of her head when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
Shouting into his radio for medics and backup and anyone who knew what the hell had happened, the guard was vaguely aware of the answering clamor, as he knelt in a pool of congealed blood, and – no idea what to do for the best – patted the woman’s shoulder.
~ ~ ~
“The Feds don’t want her moved.”
“The Feds can kiss my fucking ass. We don’t have the facilities to assess her properly here.”
“Ninety-two over sixty. Pulse is around one-ten.” Deanne took the blood pressure cuff from Sarah’s upper arm and watched as she tucked herself back into the fetal position she had lain in since they had cut the plastic that bound her wrists.
The doctor stopped arguing with the guard at the cell door and dropped to a crouch beside her. “Shit. What a mess.” He sighed. “Bring the gurney in here and cancel my appointments for the day; they can all take some fucking Tylenol.” Sarah’s face was ashen, her hair wet with sweat, and she was holding herself so still she was barely able to draw a breath. “Dee, get a line into her before we move her: ten of morphine and whatever you have there to stop her vomiting. She’s been left like this all fucking night.” He laid a gentle hand on Sarah’s forehead. “You, young lady, are certainly keeping an old man on his toes.”
She opened her eyes a little at that, as if to apologize, but they closed again when the morphine hit her, and her face gradually lost some of its agonized tension.
“Okay.” Nodding at the nurse, he motioned impatiently for assistance from the prison guards crowded at the door. “Carefully, on three…”
~ ~ ~
“Fucking animals.” Deanne had finished cutting the top half of Sarah’s jumpsuit away and was staring at the bruising that covered her torso. “I’m gonna clean you up some, okay?”
Sarah nodded, trying hard to stay awake but mostly failing. They had given her more morphine once they had realized the extent of her injuries, and she could hear the doctor talking heatedly on the phone about transferring her to a hospital. She closed her eyes as the nurse worked a warm cloth over her face, scrubbing away the dried blood and making small noises of disgust at the lacerations and contusions underneath.
The phone slammed down and footsteps approached the bed.
“She’ll need X-rays, doc: ribs, couple of fingers on her left hand, right cheekbone. She won’t lie on her back; you need to take a look at that.”
“Yeah, well, she won’t be getting X-rays. We have orders to keep her here.” He laughed bitterly. “They’re afraid she might escape if they permit the transfer. I did tell them to stick their order for restraints up their collective asses, though. Jesus, that’s nasty…”
There was a cool draft on her back, and Sarah realized he had shifted the blanket covering her.
“I’m not surprised she won’t lie on that.” He carefully palpated the area surrounding the livid hematoma that had been her assailant’s parting gift.
Sarah held herself rigid, the pain unbearable. “Don’t...”
It was only a whisper, but the doctor moved his hand away immediately, a frown creasing his brow. “We get the ultrasound back from service yet?”
“Yeah, last Thursday.”
“We need to scan this, see if there’s any renal damage. Get an ice pack on it for the swelling, and hang a liter of saline, keep her pressure up. Then I guess we suture what we can, and try to get her comfortable.” He bent down low so Sarah could see him. “Bet you feel like crap, huh?”
She met his eyes slowly and nodded; nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get you fixed up.”
She didn’t know whether it was the kindness in his voice or his choice of phrase, but a surge of homesickness hit her, and she closed her eyes miserably.
Misunderstanding her reaction, he moved urgently to administer more pain relief, then smoothed the blanket back over her. “We’ll get the scan done, then you can get some sleep, okay?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to sleep, it wasn’t safe, but the drugs were too strong, and when she felt the cold press of the ultrasound on her back she gave up resisting and let them take her under.
~ ~ ~
The speed limit for the road was sixty; Cameron kept the truck at a steady fifty-eight. With a trunk full of weapons and explosives that no permit in the world would allow her to carry, getting pulled over was not an option. There was still a long way to go, but she wouldn’t have to take a break or sleep, and the quickest route was already mapped out in her CPU. Content with her progress, Cameron turned the stereo up; one eye on the road, the other studying the plans of the jail, her face betraying nothing as her lips moved to the lyrics. No-one overtaking her would have suspected a thing.
~ ~ ~
“Three fractured ribs, two fractured fingers on her left hand. Right cheek is probably fractured, but that’s not easy to tell without an X-ray. Concussion, multiple contusions, eight stitches above her left eye. We had to put a catheter in: she was kicked so hard in the back that she’s passing blood.” The doctor looked up from Sarah’s file. “In short, Agent, to answer your question, no, she’s not well enough to be interviewed.”
Auldridge looked slightly paler than he had on arrival at the infirmary. He held a hand up defensively. “I just want to try and find who did this.” He hesitated uneasily. “Was she raped?”
“No. No indication of sexual assault. She remembers everything that happened.” The doctor gestured for Auldridge to walk with him. “Says there were two of them, and apparently one of the bastards will be singing in a falsetto for the next week or so.” He smiled at the thought, but it heralded a darker theory. “Probably forced a change in their plans. Otherwise…”
“Yeah.” Auldridge stopped dead as he reached Sarah’s bed. “Damn.”
She was sleeping, curled on her side. Most of her injuries were hidden by blankets, but her left eye was swollen shut, an ugly criss-cross of black sutures above it, and the hand on top of the bedding was splinted, the wrist heavily bandaged.
The nurse at the bedside looked up from the chart she was writing on, ignoring Auldridge to address the doctor. “She’s had the first liter of saline and the antibiotics. Six hundred mls out and she’s still bleeding. Seems to have slowed, though. She asked for water but I’ve stuck with ice chips for now.”
“Good. That’s fine.” The doctor turned back to Auldridge; he had forgotten the agent was even there. “Would you like me to page you when we’ve weaned her off the morphine a little?”
Auldridge nodded, still looking queasy. “Yes. Please. Whenever you think is best.” He handed his card over, his mouth opening then closing as he looked back at Sarah. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and laden with guilt. “My superiors are demanding that she be restrained. She escaped from a maximum security psychiatric facility. It’s regulation.”
It sounded ridiculous and he knew it, but Auldridge was a career man, and Sarah Connor was a career-making case. He took a set of handcuffs from his belt and closed one link around the dressings on her right wrist, fastening the other side to the bed rail. Sarah stirred, unsettled by the movement around her, but didn’t seem to be aware of what he had done. Auldridge breathed a sigh of relief, unable to meet the nurse’s eyes as she glowered at him and attempted to reassure her patient.
“Was there anything else, Agent?” The doctor’s voice was icy.
Auldridge shook his head, leaving the infirmary quickly and without looking up.
The doctor, taking account of the flush of anger coloring Deanne’s cheeks, broke the silence first. “Coffee?”
She nodded gratefully.
A few minutes later she was wrapping her hands around the mug he handed her, laughing when he poured whiskey into it from a hip flask.
“Fuck ’em. We’ve earned it today, and I’m not putting a dime into that tin of yours.” He tapped his mug against hers. There was a clink and rattle as Sarah tried to turn herself. The doctor drank deeply, then added more alcohol before repeating his declaration loudly and with feeling: “Fuck ’em all.”
~ ~ ~
“Sign here. And another here.” The woman took the paperwork back from the man on the other side of her desk and smiled broadly at him, fluttering her false eyelashes. “Well, Mr. Forrester, your references are excellent, and – as it happens – two of our most reliable employees have just quit the agency. I have a position available on the night shift. Would tomorrow night suit you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” A slight note of wariness crept into her voice. The man was undeniably handsome, but there was something strange and disconnected about him as he observed her without blinking. “You’ll need to report to the front gate for eight-thirty to pick up your uniform, and the shift is nine until six in the morning.”
“Fine.” He stood to leave.
She handed him his copy of the forms he had completed. “Now, you do know where the facility is, don’t you? We don’t like our staff to be late.”
“Yes.” The T-888 had an excellent working knowledge of the LA County Jail. “I won’t be late.”
~ ~ ~
Derek added more wood to the fire and gave the embers a poke, waiting for the new fuel to catch and begin to smolder. Turning as he heard the bathroom door open, he watched John walk slowly over to the sofa.
“Better?”
John nodded; his hair was still damp and unruly, his face flushed pink from the heat of the bathwater. “Much.”
He sat patiently on the sofa while Derek changed his dressings and secured his right arm in a sling.
“Those are looking pretty good, considering.” Derek stood up, collecting the soiled bandages together. “You hungry? We have soup, bagels, and more soup.”
John laughed. “I guess I’ll have soup, then.”
As Derek moved to the small kitchen, John opened his laptop, keying in the code he had been using to hack into the jail’s records. If Cameron were to have any chance of success, she would need to be able to pinpoint Sarah’s location within the complex. Scrolling through the inmate register, he reached his mother’s name and frowned.
“What the hell?”
Unlike the other names in the list, there was no longer a cell number designated to Connor, Sarah, just a symbol that he didn’t recognize. His heart pounding, he clicked on the symbol and stared horrified at the page of dense text that appeared. He had finished reading by the time Derek walked back over, and one look at his face made Derek place the soup on the table and drop to a crouch beside him.
“John?”
John shook his head once, not trusting himself to speak, and turned the computer screen towards Derek.
It took Derek a couple of minutes to read the report which documented Sarah’s transfer to solitary, the assault, and the injuries she had sustained.
“Son of a bitch.” He stood up, striding away from John, one hand clenched into a fist, the other rubbing the back of his neck. The report had been clinical in its language and unflinching in its detail, and he knew that John had read every word of it. He sat back down next to his nephew, who remained still and silent, trying not to cry.
“She’ll be okay.”
John nodded too quickly, rubbing his eyes with his fist. “I know she will.”
“Harder than nuclear nails, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to let Cameron know. Try and eat that, okay?” He went outside to make the call.
John picked up the bowl of soup, stirring the noodles and chunks of vegetables, before putting it down again untouched. By the time Derek returned, John had hacked back into the jail’s systems, the laptop emitting a series of blank beeps as his attempts to completely break down their firewalls failed. Recognizing the expression on John’s face, Derek said nothing, taking the food back into the kitchen and leaning with both hands against the sink. It was a long time before he moved again.
~ ~ ~
“What...?” It came out as a croak, and Sarah sipped carefully at the water the nurse was holding for her before she tried again. “What time is it?” She didn’t recognize the nurse, which meant she had slept through a shift change.
“Five in the morning. How’re you feeling?”
“Better.” It was all relative, but the fact that she could now lie on her back without screaming was a definite improvement.
“Good. I’ll let Doctor Charles know you’re awake. He was seeing to a prisoner who got stabbed, so he might be a while.”
The nurse left her alone, and Sarah watched her speak to the two guards outside the room before continuing down the corridor. Two guards were never going to be enough. Sarah tried to move, needing to know exactly how bad her injuries were. Her attempt to push herself into a sitting position failed at the first hurdle when she discovered that her right wrist was cuffed to the bed and her left hand was a swollen mess of splinted fingers and sprained ligaments.
“Shit.”
She sucked in a shaky breath as pain lanced through her back, and she simultaneously felt the sharp bite of ribs that she hadn’t even realized were fractured. Clammy and exhausted with the effort, she leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes. There was no way she was admitting defeat, but she had to be realistic about her chances.
~ ~ ~
Sitting on the front steps of the cabin, John breathed deeply. Something pulled in his chest, but he ignored it, filling his lungs with the cold, sharp smell of the redwoods that surrounded the clearing. The porch creaked, and he moved aside to make space for Derek to sit, taking hold of the plate Derek offered him.
“Did you manage to do it?”
John nodded. “Yes. Finally. I put her in a cell as far away from the infirmary as I could. If the Triple 8 is accessing the same records, it’ll be looking for her in the wrong wing.” He took a bite of bagel, his appetite creeping back.
“Good. That’s good.” Derek hunched forward, trying to keep himself still. If those last few hours had taught him anything, it was that inactivity really didn’t sit well with him. “What else can we do?”
Fishing in his pocket, John took out a sheet of paper. “Well, I managed to get through another firewall, and, if this is what I think it is…” The paper had one line of numbers and letters scrawled across its center, “…it might just give us the edge.”
~ ~ ~
Cameron left the truck idling while she observed the guard with the German Shepherd dog check in with the guard positioned on the exit marked I1, then continue his patrol around the perimeter. Twenty minutes later, the man would have completed his circuit and would be back at the exit which, according to her plan, afforded the closest access to the infirmary. She had been studying the patterns of the guards for hours now, watching and timing and waiting. The temptation had been there to march straight in, shoot the place to hell, grab Sarah, and march straight out again, but John’s warning about collateral damage had mitigated that urge.
The sun was just setting, the sky ablaze with orange and red which still failed to soften the edges of the immense white walls or the wire fencing. It was eight-thirty. Within the next half-hour, the inmates would be back in their cells for the night, and the staffing levels subsequently reduced accordingly. Fewer guards would mean fewer obstacles and, consequently, fewer casualties.
Putting the truck into drive, Cameron pulled away slowly, heading back onto the freeway, where she passed two exits before leaving at the third and parking up on a quiet street. John answered his cellphone on the second ring, and without preamble.
“What time?”
“Nine thirty-two.” Which would avoid the guard with the dog.
“How long do you need?”
There were so many variables, and Cameron hesitated, despite having processed numerous scenarios. In the end, she took a leap, basing her estimate on the perimeter guard.
“Twenty minutes.”
“Fine. Nine fifty-two.” Then it was John’s turn to pause, and she heard him force normality into his voice. “Good luck.”
With no answer to that, she disconnected the call, sitting motionless and watching the sun as it disappeared completely.
~ ~ ~
Setting the tray down by Sarah’s bedside, Deanne quickly flicked through her chart. “Good to see you with a little more color in your cheeks.” She put the chart down, her hand tipping Sarah’s chin to appraise the swelling around the sutures. “Although, if I’m honest, purple and green aren’t such a good combination on you.”
Sarah smiled and allowed the nurse to help her sit up straighter in the bed. Having refused any further doses of morphine, the pervasive drowsiness had finally cleared, and the food Deanne had brought in was smelling reasonably appetizing.
“Right.” Deanne put the tray on Sarah’s lap, and after a fair bit of maneuvering helped her to balance a spoon in her damaged left hand. “You have some kind of soup that might be chicken, but don’t hold me to that. Jell-O, and a fruit cup. Try and choke some of it down for me. Then, because I notice that the day shift have gotten rid of all your tubes, we’ll see about getting you into the shower. That sound okay?”
Sarah stopped eyeing the Jell-O with undisguised loathing, and nodded, her face brightening. She was desperate to feel clean, but, more than that, she needed to know that she could get out of the bed without falling flat on her face. If she could walk, then she was damn sure that she could run.
~ ~ ~
“Forrester! Hey, Forrester!”
The T-888 rested its hand on the gun in the small of its back and turned towards the voice. The shift supervisor, overweight and sweating with the effort of walking at a moderate pace, was waving a clipboard at it.
“I have you down for C-Block. That’s A-Block you’re heading towards.”
A quick but detailed scan of the corridor detected footsteps one hundred yards around the corner and an empty supply closet with a weakened lock. The neck of the supervisor was flabby and greasy, but one brutal twist was all that it took to snap it. By the time the footsteps rounded the corner, the lock dangled loosely but inconspicuously from the closet door, and the T-888 was continuing to make its way towards A-Block.
~ ~ ~
“Sorry, but he’s FBI, and that outranks nurse.” Deanne shrugged apologetically. “I’ll bring you some warm water. Maybe a hairbrush, huh? He said he’d be five minutes or so.”
“Great.” The word dripped with sarcasm, Sarah making no attempt to disguise her reaction to the news that Auldridge was on his way to interview her. The pain in her back was like the worst kind of toothache, it had taken her over an hour to eat half a bowl of soup, and the promise of being able to get out of bed had been the only thing that had kept the Jell-O on the tray and not against the nearest wall. She turned herself awkwardly, attempting to find a position that relieved the pressure in her back.
“Dammit.”
Lying on her side, she pulled her legs up to her chest, closing her eyes as the injury throbbed steadily in time to her heartbeat. It was making her feel sick, and she was wondering whether or not the soup would make a reappearance in time for Auldridge’s arrival, when she heard the first gunshot.
~ ~ ~
Dropping the unconscious guard to the floor, Cameron quickly cuffed his hands, taped his mouth, and dragged him away from the exit. Her head flew up at the sound of gunfire: distant and off to the right of the complex, but moving as someone, or something, made steady progress in her direction. A Klaxon immediately began to wail, drowning out the voices and cries that were rising in response to the unexpected attack. There was no more advantage to be gained by stealth; Cameron pulled an MP5K and a Glock from her duffel bag, dropped an approaching guard to the floor with a bullet in his knee, and began to walk quickly towards the infirmary.
~ ~ ~
“Sarah Connor. Where is she?”
The guard was bleeding heavily from the bullet in his gut, but he looked into the eyes of the man holding him by his throat and still hoped that he would find compassion there.
“Where is she?” The grip tightened, making the guard choke, blood splattering onto his chin.
“Infirmary. She’s in the infirmary.”
Hitting the floor hard, the guard groaned as something deep inside him tore and bled. Lying still, blood pooling beneath him, he realized he had been wrong to hope; there had been nothing in his murderer’s eyes at all.
~ ~ ~
The bandage around Sarah’s wrist was damp and reddened with blood, and she ignored the pain as the stain grew brighter and spread. She didn’t think that the blood would be enough on its own, but she didn’t have the dexterity in her left hand to dislocate the thumb on her right. Unwilling to give up, she gritted her teeth and continued to strain against the metal fastening her to the bed. The two guards outside her room had already deserted their post to assist their colleagues, and she found herself hoping that the medics had been sensible enough to flee to the closest exit.
Without warning, the door was flung open. Sarah bolted upright, left hand fumbling for something, anything, she could use as a weapon, but it was Auldridge who ran in, gun in hand, his eyes flitting around the room before finally coming to rest on Sarah.
“What the fuck is going on?” she said without preamble, her legs tangled up in the bed-sheets as she tried to kick them off.
He stared at her without answering. Then slowly, as if rousing himself from a daze, he pointed the gun at her chest. “He’s coming for you.” The gun moved, emphasizing his accusation, fear destroying his ability to be logical. “You’ve arranged this, somehow, and now he’s here for you.”
For one fleeting moment, she wondered whether Derek had been crazy enough to attempt a rescue, before Auldridge obliterated that notion in an instant.
“He’s killing everyone.”
Sweat trickled into the hollow of her throat, and she pulled harder at the chain around her wrist. “You have to unlock these.”
Auldridge let out a laugh, high and bordering on hysterical. “And make it easier for you?”
She didn’t have time for this, no-one had time for this. “It’s not here to help me fucking escape! It’s here to kill me.”
He stared at her, unconvinced, his gun hand unwavering. “Liar.”
“It was at the Dysons’, it shot my son, killed Tarissa and the two officers. You fucking know that I didn’t kill them.”
That made him pause, glancing towards the door as a machine gun rattled relentlessly, glass splintered and smashed, and someone called out urgently for help.
“He keeps coming. How can he keep coming?” His voice was barely audible, and she wasn’t sure he was asking for an answer.
She gave him one anyway. “Because it’s a machine. And it’s what they do.”
He looked up sharply at that.
She met his eyes, sensing a breakthrough. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Five, then ten seconds passed, and more people died, more screaming and a small explosion that made the walls of the infirmary tremble.
“No.” Auldridge, his decision made, shook his head once. “You’re staying here, and you can both answer for this.” He checked the clip in his gun and turned away from her. He expected her to start begging, but by the time he left the room she still hadn’t uttered a word.
~ ~ ~
Sarah wasn’t going to beg, and there was no fucking way she was going to sit in bed and wait to die. Using her teeth, she tore at the splints and strapping on her left hand, wrenching the dressings loose and then completely away. The entire hand was stiff and sore, and the two fractured fingers wouldn’t bend at all, but she reached over the bedrail that she was cuffed to and fumbled blindly with the clasp holding it up.
“C’mon, c’mon! Shit.”
She felt the handle give and pushed down, lowering the rail and twisting her right wrist in the cuff as she rolled from the bed and onto the floor. She landed heavily, her breath forced from her, and for a few seconds all she could do was bend double and strain to draw air back into her lungs. She was still tethered to the bed, but at least now she had some freedom of movement. Nothing seemed to be hurting as much as she had expected, and, as the strip lights flickered, she was able to reach above her head and grab her dinner tray from the cabinet, a dish smashing on the cold tiles. She picked up one of the shards to hold in her right hand while she clumsily gripped the metal tray in her left, refusing to acknowledge how completely inadequate her weapons were. The lights popped and buzzed and finally went out, a dim sodium orange gradually burning through as the emergency generator took over.
Crouched low, Sarah pushed herself as far behind the bed as the metal chain would allow. Gunfire crackled close by, the smell of cordite and blood beginning to reach her. Sweat ran into her eyes, making them sting, but she kept them fixed on the door and brandished the tray that she knew had no chance whatsoever of stopping a bullet.
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~
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Re: In before class!
Date: 2009-09-22 10:31 pm (UTC)Alls I gotta do is figure out where exactly they're gonna go ;-)
Bermuda!? Since Lena's never been back and all 8D
Re: In before class!
Date: 2009-09-23 07:19 pm (UTC)*vbg* This is very true. Plus, I can always write one thing and plan another... I can multi-task with the best of 'em.
Well, in the time honoured tradition of writing what you know, maybe I should take them to Huddersfield instead. Cos that's about 20 miles down the road from me and I can do the accent no problems!