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how gullible these people were, and how close she was to puking her guts out right there.
Every movement cost her a supreme act of will, but she hid that fact as best she could.
She had to get out of here, and fast. They d be getting suspicious and checking up on her
story, sooner or later. She d rather not be there when they did. She needed to cover her
ass, and quick.
Four hours later, Tamia leaned her head against the wall of her hotel room bathroom with
a groan. She d just puked her entire digestive tract into the toilet. God, she hated
morphine, for good reason. Ever since drug Detox, before Basic Training, morphine
made her queasy and light-headed. But she d never been so violently ill from it before.
They must have OD-ed her on the stuff. Now that the effects had worn off completely,
she could feel the reason they d given it to her. Her head was throbbing. She vaguely
remembered being cracked on the back of the head. They must have hit her with the butt
end of a rifle, and hard. She felt around the back of her head with tentative fingers, until
she found the lump. God, she hoped she didn t have a concussion. A sharp, stabbing
pain in her abdomen drew her attention away from her head for a moment. Must be the
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effects of throwing up so much. She felt miserable.
The phone in the bedroom rang, and Tamia groaned again. Slowly, using the wall
as a prop, she walked her way to her feet and wound her way into the bedroom. Picking
up the phone, she mumbled,  Yeah? Who s it?
 Tamia?
 Oh. Hi, Rick. She sat down on the edge of the bed, before she ended up on the
floor.
 You okay? You don t sound good.
 I don t feel good either.
 What s wrong?
 Aside from a lump the size of China on my skull and the after-effects of a
truckload of morphine, nothing.
She heard his sharp intake of breath.  Tamia, what the hell s going on down
there?
 I found everything we need. I ll try and be back day after tomorrow. Tell you
then, okay?
She heard a swish of static from his end as he gave up his line of questioning.
Thank God.  Okay, but take care of yourself...
She smiled.  I will. What d you need?
 We ve been piecing together some pretty deep shit over the past couple of days.
Seems we ve got more to worry about than I first thought. About four years ago,
according to the records we were given, the Banhauste employed a new doctor. One Dr.
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Juan Perosulo...
 We ve met. Tamia grimaced.  And I dug up that fact on my first day in the
country. Seems it s common knowledge down here.
 Yeah, that s what Gypsy said, too. Do you know the rest? His history?
She shook her head, and the room spun.  No.
 Let s see, Rick s voice trailed off for a moment, and Tamia heard pages being
flipped in the background.  Graduated from Princeton in  03, with a degree in
experimental medicine. He was thrown out of three hospitals and twelve clinics after he
began experimenting with biological mutations. During the Divide he worked as a CIA
field surgeon, defecting to COSEC in  10  not long after the war started. He served as
head of the COSEC Medical Development Team until Baraman Banhauste offered him
his own research department in 2116, right before the end of the Divide.
 Banhauste himself hired Perosulo? Tamia asked, alert with surprise.
 Yeah. Strange, huh? Banhauste always prided himself on working for the
betterment of humanity, and then he goes and hires a two-bit gene pool scientist as head
of research. Wouldn t be surprised if Perosulo s involved in some kind of genetic
experiments.
Tamia shivered.  He is. Rick, do me two favors. Send someone to IA to get a
dossier on a Karl Haslunas; supposedly, he s Second Commander to Banhauste, now.
And get in touch with Kyato Hoshimiro at EP headquarters in Rio de Janeiro and tell him
I need to speak with him.
 Tamia, we can t contact the Patrol! Rick sounded stunned.  You re a US
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operative in an area of the world you shouldn t be!
 I know. Trust me on this one, Rick. Tell Hoshimiro that Kuan Tamiasa needs
his help, and give him my number here. Tell him what s going on.
 Why can t you...?
 Because I promised Kuron I would never contact Hoshimiro directly.
She heard Rick s sigh.  Okay. I just hope you know what you re doing.
 I do.
 All right. Now, what have you found out?
 A lot. Poco Nanches is more than a forward post. It s their center for research
and development.
 Why do you say that?
 Because I was told so. Because Perosulo s there.
She heard him swear.  Anything else?
 Yeah. They ve got mechanized defense, biologicals, and thermals.
 What kind of mechanized? Tanks?
She shook her head.  I don t know. All I know is that they have forty-six
armored units. For all I know, they could be personnel carriers, or they could be Devil s
Dice.
 Okay, that s going to have to be enough. Get back here ASAP 
 Two days, tops.
 ...And we ll add what you ve dug up to the stuff we already got. Hopefully, it ll
start making sense soon. Jen s pulling her hair out over this already.
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Tamia smiled wryly.  None of it makes any sense to me, either, Rick. Maybe
Banhauste s just gone sour in his old age.
 Maybe. See you soon?
 Yeah, she murmured.  As soon as I can.
She heard the line click, and fell back on the bed, setting the handset back in the
receiver, groaning. She felt like she was going through Detox again. Her last thought
before she succumbed to sleep was that she had twenty-four hours to start feeling better.
There was no way she was letting James Dalton, or whoever the hell he really was, see
her like this.
Damn. What was going on down there? Rick paced away from the phone,
plowing his hands through his hair as worry ate at him. When Chelsea had called in her
report two days ago, Rick had been mildly worried by the lack of information available
on Poco Nanches. He d sent Jen scrounging for a full profile of Juan Perosulo, and that
file made his blood run cold. The man was a cloning freak, and Tamia was down there in
the thick of things.
He d been waiting impatiently for her to report in, anxious to hear that she was
okay. Finally, he hadn t been able to stand the silence any longer. He d called her; and
found out that all his nightmares were true.
She sounded like hell, and her comment about injury and morphine scared him
half to death. His mind still painted terrifying scenarios of how she d been injured. And
the morphine& God, he didn t even want to think about that. Tamia was a recovering
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drug addict; it wouldn t take much of any drug she d ever taken to bring the physical
cravings back. He knew her medical records contained an extensive list of prohibited
drugs. Morphine, an opiate similar to heroine, was on that list. God& [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]