Pack Dynamics by Julie Frost Page B

breaths weren’t an option. Where…? Bright fluorescent light glared down from above, hurting his eyes.
    Shit .
    He wrapped his arms around his head and curled into himself. Wounded, out of ammo, his entire unit dead, dying, or captured, he’d grabbed his M4 by the barrel, blistering hot from firing, to use as a club, prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible. But the insurgents had captured him anyway, hurt people he was responsible for, and now there was a needle in the back of his hand .…
    He didn’t even realize he was repeating “fuck” over and over again until someone gripped his shoulder and a voice said, “Easy, there, ace. You’re all right.”
    Different voice than the one he expected; this one spoke English and he recognized it. Not that place, then. He relaxed marginally, still shaking. Three breaths. He licked parched lips with a dry tongue. Then, “Alex.”
    “Yeah. Bad one? What do you need?”
    “Time.” Ben’s throat was raw. “Water?” He couldn’t look at his hand, and kept his eyes squeezed shut. “And would you get this fucking needle the hell out of my hand? God.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    Alex removed the IV and taped a cotton ball down, and the shakes gradually stopped. Last time someone had poked Ben with needles, it had been an Afghani insurgent addicting him to heroin as part of some plan or other to get him to tell them all the secrets of the U.S. Military—the secrets that, as a front-line grunt, he wouldn’t know, but try convincing them of that.
    Once he was hooked, they’d made him go through withdrawal, cold turkey, before addicting him again. Several cycles of that, and he was wrecked, and “aversion” was a mild word for the way he felt about needles of any kind going anywhere near any of his veins. Or any other place on him.
    “Here’s some water.”
    Ben opened his eyes to find he was on a hospital bed next to a computer desk in a decidedly not-hospital room. Alex’s mansion? Images from the past few hours filled his head, but he hadn’t been in this room before. It was enormous and high-ceilinged, filled with shelves loaded with all kinds of esoteric lab equipment and bizarre machinery. Computers were scattered everywhere, more than one half-open file cabinet overflowed with paper, and sticky notes of various colors decorated one white board, while two others were covered in formulas Ben couldn’t make head or tail of.
    A set of French doors showed him daylight peeking in. The whole place had an air of controlled chaos, and Ben wondered how often Alex slept on the battered brown leather sofa sitting in the middle of the floor with a Navajo-patterned blanket draped over the back of it. Because this, clearly, was Alex’s lab, and Ben was willing to bet he spent more time down here than he did in the whole rest of the house combined.
    Ben raised the back of the bed. “No GI Joe jokes.” He sipped from the glass that Alex pressed into his hand.
    “I don’t joke about people with Silver Stars. Seriously, man, thanks.”
    Ben laid his head back against the pillow and shook it wearily back and forth. “Janni told you?”
    “I looked it up.” Alex moved his shoulder in a gesture that might have been a shrug. “I like to know about the people who work for me. Why didn’t you say anything?”
    “I don’t talk about it.” He closed his eyes again. “Please don’t ask.”
    “I get that. Megan’s always after me about stuff like that.” Alex snorted. “‘How do you feel about it, Alex?’ When I’d just as soon forget it happened. Not that I’ve ever done anything like you did, but falling off a cliff is unpleasant enough without people jabbering your ear off.”
    Considering the fact that Alex had a hard time keeping his mouth shut about anything whatsoever, Ben thought that statement was somewhat ironic, and his mouth twisted into an involuntary grin. “Everyone else okay?”
    “Yeah, they’re all sleeping. Big night.”
    Ben huffed, which hurt