Dark Matters_ Shadow of Heaven (Book 3) - Christie Golden [23]
"We will, Ulaahn," she told him, fiercely willing herself to believe the words as she spoke them. "I promise you."
CHAPTER 6
IN A DISTANT, LOGICAL PART OF HER MIND, THE PART THAT was not obsessing about food and dwelling on die agony coursing through her veins, Jekri Kaleh marveled at the efficacy of the Romulan penal system. In just a few short days, she wasn't certain exactly how many, they had come close to breaking even the former chairman of the Tal Shiar. How did lesser mortals manage to hang on to their sanity?
The dispassionate physical exams and experiments. Waking her at odd hours while she tried desperately to sleep, to steal time to repair her injured body. The thrice-damned guard, shutting off the forcefield, firing his weapon at stronger and stronger levels, reactivating the field, then walking off laughing. The pitiful food.
Her logical self latched on to that thought In the food had come her chance of salvation. Each meal brought something new. She was no technical expert, but the equipment was not unduly complicated. Besides, she welcomed the mental stimulation of trying to assemble the tool her mysterious benefactor was sending her. By this point she realized it was a laser scalpel. She had hoped it was a small disruptor, one of the tiny ones the Family of the Blade sometimes carried, but she would gladly accept whatever weapon she could get. Thus far, she could detect no energy cell. Whoever it was obviously planned to save that for last. If there were any investigation of the process by which her food was sent to her, it would be more easily detected than simple metal.
If only her wrist would heal. But it gave no sign of doing so. The doctors had embedded something just beneath the flesh and it was becoming infected. From time to time, they would check on it, but made no move to stop the infection. It itched, and hurt, and the flesh was a sickly puffy green. It was hot to the touch.
Jekri steeled herself and began to probe her left wrist with her right fingers. The pain was excruciating, but she pressed her lips shut against the shriek that wanted to escape and continued. The object was hard, round, and artificial. A tracking device, in case she should escape?
The thought unnerved her totally. Escape was what was carrying her through the hours of torment. It was the light that kept her focused, kept her from going mad or committing suicide. She had to remove the thing embedded in the soft, infected flesh of her left wrist.
Of course, she might do nothing more than hasten her own demise. She was no doctor. She did not know which veins lay where, or what tendons could be damaged if she tried to remove the foreign object. And once she removed it, provided she was successful, they would notice it right away. What would they do then? Probably insert another one, perhaps in her back, where she could not reach it.
Perhaps it wasn't a tracking device. Perhaps it was a pellet of slow poison. Maybe it was-
She shook her head. "No," she whispered fiercely. Panic and flights of terror-riddled fantasy would avail her nothing. But the thing in her wrist could be trouble if it was not removed.
The only thing missing was the energy cell to operate the laser scalpel. Otherwise, she was ready to make her move. Every day had brought a piece of the scalpel. Surely today the final piece would arrive. Jekri made her decision. The thing in her wrist had to come out. Now.
Jekri looked around her cell. Everything was filthy, even the little bit of water they gave her once a day. She'd have to risk further infection.
She recalled a Vulcan meditation, one that Dammik had told her would help her control her reactions to pain. True, pain was a physical thing. It was the body's reaction to something amiss, a way to alert