Forsaken Duty (Red Team #9)(88)

He thought about calling an ambulance, but after what had happened to Wynn, he couldn’t risk that. He looked up to see the room crowded with his team. Thankfully, Troy wasn’t there. “Call Doc Beck. I want him over here now. And get the Ratcliffs in here. Maybe they know something.”

As soon as he said that, he remembered them mentioning something about using an app to trigger the nanos’ kill-off procedures. He looked up at Greer. “Tell me the Wi-Fi jammer we’re using here extends to the stable.”

Greer shook his head. “It doesn’t.”

“Get into that app. See what it does,” Owen said, then looked at Wynn’s dad, who’d come into the room. “Tell me an app didn’t just kill Addy. Tell me it isn’t that simple.”

“It can be,” Nathan Ratcliff said. “A self-destruct can be triggered in a dozen different ways. The preferred was via code in the belief it could be better controlled than via hormonal delivery.”

“Find out what the deputy did,” Owen said.

Greer rushed out of the room, grabbing Wynn’s dad on his way out. Wynn’s mom came over to sit beside Addy. She took her hand. Owen was struck by how peaceful Addy was just lying there.

“If her nanos were triggered, we need to act fast. We have to figure which nanos she was given,” Joyce said.

“In what ways could they be attacking her?” Owen asked.

“Again, it depends on the type she was given, but it’s possible they’re collecting in an artery, forming an artificial clot,” Joyce said. “They could cause a heart attack, a stroke, an aneurysm. Other nanos might trigger a lethal chemical change that sends her body into anaphylactic shock. We have to know what we’re dealing with. And for that, we need a specialized lab.”

Doc Beck came in then. Owen cleared out the room so he could do his examination. He took her vitals. “Her blood pressure is dangerously low.”

The doctors consulted each other, rattling off terms and treatments at a mind-boggling speed. They talked about an exchange transfusion, but discarded the idea almost as soon as it had been proposed—they didn’t have the four hours that could take.

Four hours. Addy didn’t have four hours left.

Owen jammed his fingers into his hair. The others had come back into the room. He looked at Kit. “Get my helicopter up here. We’re going to need to evacuate her…as soon as we decide where. Doc Beck is finding an appropriate lab. And tell the sheriff the deputy may well have succeeded in murdering Addy.”

Max came into the room as Kit left. Whatever news he was about to impart didn’t look good. “Heard from Lion and Feral. A couple of helicopters just dropped off Edwards, Mrs. Jacobs, Jason, and Santo. There’re all there. One of the cubs saw Beetle, too.”

Owen closed his eyes. Beetle was there, just an hour away. It was no coincidence that this had happened to Addy right now. “Does Lion know where my son is?”

“No. They lost sight of him.”

“Owen,” Beck looked up from his cell. “I found a lab. It’s near here”—he paused—“but I need you to talk to someone.”

Owen grabbed the phone.

“Son?” came a long forgotten voice on the other end. Owen put the phone on speaker. The room went quiet.

“Dad?” Of all the fucking times for his past to slam into his present, now was the worst. “I can’t talk now.”

“Listen to me. The lab facilities you need are out at the WKB compound, in the silo. Problem is, all the bastards are gathering there as we speak. They did this on purpose to draw you out. You can’t go there. You’ll be ambushed. They’ll fucking slaughter you and your team. You can’t risk the Ratcliffs. It’s no exaggeration to say that all of humanity depends on them for their survival.”

Jax had said the same about the Omnis attempting to draw them out. “Understood. What is it about this lab that makes it the one we need?”

“They’ve been doing human testing there. On WKB bikers. They have a few dozen modified fighters there, plus more they’ve brought in. They do have medical support systems there, but more importantly, they have the software labs responsible for the nano termination coding. They have what you need to reverse what’s been done to Addy.”

Owen lowered the phone, but kept the connection live. He felt sick as he looked at the guys gathered in the room. He had two options: get Addy to a medical facility that could do an emergency exchange transfusion, and hope that the time it took to transport her, prepare the transfusion, and complete it happened fast enough to save her life. Or have his team hit the WKB compound, potentially losing several lives to save one—and there was no guarantee they could even save her.

“I can do the exchange transfusion at the clinic,” Beck said, “but I don’t have enough units of her blood type on hand. I would have to get those up from Cheyenne.”

“We don’t yet to understand what type of nano she was given, what type of termination was coded—we don’t even know if an exchange transfusion would work,” Joyce said.

“Owen,” Val said, breaking through his thoughts. “This is our chance to end the Omnis. This is what we’ve been working toward. We’ll get you and Addy into the labs, then we’ll take out the Medusa heads running the org.”