Page 47 of Redstone
“’m fine,” she whispered, even though she wasn’t. “Take me to the general infirmary, not the private room.”
“Tamara—”
“I need to see if someone is there. Please.” She wasn’t too proud to beg. She’d have kept at it until he agreed out of sheer exhaustion, but Demarcos just rolled his eyes.
“Of course, you do,” he said. “You’re more cryptic than the president himself, you know that?”
“There’s no need to be rude,” Tamara said, but she smiled a little bit regardless. “Thank you.”
“You owe me so many explanations.” He sounded angry, but he was gentle as he assisted her to her feet and put one of her arms over his shoulders. It was a bit of a stretch, but she didn’t say anything, just let him lead her like a docile little child into the larger treatment room in the infirmary, where the Regen beds were kept.
She actually went a bit limp with relief when she saw Wyl lying there, one hand rubbing his throat, looking around curiously. He smiled politely when he saw the two of them, giving no indication he’d ever seen either of them before. “Hi there. What the hell happened, huh?”
Fortunately, Demarcos set Tamara down right next to Wyl, where she could make a bit of conversation about what really interested her. “Where’s ZeeBee?” she asked almost soundlessly.
A slightly panicked look came into Wyl’s eyes. “ZeeBee was supposed to find you! Didn’t … what about …”
“ZeeBee did find me. He was very helpful, but he ran off at the end! Something about alpha protocol; I thought that meant ZeeBee would be back here with you.”
Wyl frowned. “Alpha protocol comes into play in case of imminent physical damage for the primaries; that’s me and Robbie. But I’m fine, and Robbie should be …” Wyl didn’t just panic this time, he went completely white. “Oh, fuck. Robbie’s on duty. He’s on fucking duty, and now there’s a riot; what if he was in the Pit when the gas went off? When did ZeeBee leave?”
“Right after we finished with the visual feeds.”
“ZeeBee must have seen something happening to Robbie.” Wyl got up like he was going to march off into the penitentiary himself, but Tamara jerked him back onto the bed. Demarcos watched the two of them like they were both crazy.
“Running around busting down doors to go after Robbie will only draw attention,” she whispered. “If ZeeBee saw something, he’ll handle it. Besides, Magpie is in there. He can help Robbie.”
“How?” Wyl demanded. “How can he possibly handle anything without blowing his cover? Robbie is aguard; no prisoner stands up for guards. He’s going to be killed.”
“You don’t know that,” she insisted.We don’t know anything, she thought, a bit helplessly. At this point, all she could do was keep Wyl from ruining the game.
Robbie would have to look after himself.
Chapter twenty-three
Being a prison guard was in some ways a lot like being a marine. There were long, interminable-feeling periods of waiting, usually standing around somewhere checking IDs or scanning screens for enemy movement when you knew full well there wasn’t going to be any. There were random check-ins on various prisoners, there was the occasional bot foray into Redstone’s heart to organize, but mostly? Same boring shit, shift after shift.
Except, in both professions, there were also moments of shock and adrenaline and terror so fierce it felt like fire scouring your guts, turning you inside out in seconds as you fumbled to react.
Robbie could handle both of those things, but he infinitely preferred dealing with boredom to leaping into action. Wyl teased him sometimes, called him dull, old-fashioned, but Robbie had had more than enough of those burning, painful moments to last him a lifetime.
The saying was one that had become passé over the past few centuries: “To last a lifetime.” When a lifetime was so long, what could ever define “enough” of anything? It was a popular thought to debate in certain modern philosophical schools, with various people who had never lived through a war or genuine hardship musing about esoteric suffering.
Robbie was no philosopher, and he knew full well just how awful things could get, so to him, boring was as good as happy most of the time. Unfortunately, this shift he was working with Jora Krighton, Fortay’s obnoxious partner in crime. Krighton was a little more subdued when his louder half wasn’t around, but just being in the man’s presence was a constant reminder that, were circumstances a little different, Robbie could have had him tried for prisoner abuse and locked up in Redstone himself. It would have been brutally poetic and way more satisfying than debating obscure philosophy as far as Robbie was concerned.
But that wasn’t an option, so instead, Robbie had to breathe the same air as the jackass and wait out his twelve standard hours in the Ready Room, the same place he’d stopped these two from raping Kyle earlier. The urge to break things was strong.
Halfway through his shift, Robbie’s day went from bad to worse when an emergency call came in on his comm, pulsing through his ear and straight into his brain: “Guard Sinclair, your spouse has been admitted to Redstone’s infirmary. He is stable and recovering. You will be permitted to join him in five-point-three-nine standard hours at the end of your shift.”
“Bull fucking shit,” Robbie muttered, his blood surging through his veins at double the speed it had been a second before. He got to his feet and then noticed Krighton doing the same thing. There was a wild look in the other man’s eyes.
“What the fuck?” he demanded into thin air. “What do you mean, Fort’s in Regen? What the hell happened?”
Robbie didn’t need to hear the other end of the conversation to put it all together. Wyl had found his way into the infirmary by picking a fight. “God damn it.” He tapped his comm. “Central, I need permission to leave post and go to the infirmary.”
Cray’s voice came back over the comm.“Nope, Sinclair, you’re gonna have to wait. There’s no one available to cover for you right now, and things are starting to get hot in the Pit. We might have to send you and a bot patrol in to cool it off.”
“Myhusbandis in the fucking infirmary, I need to—”
