return to excerpt link page Hidden Steel ©2008 Doranna Durgin ISBN: 978-1594146817 July '08 Chapter 1 Sound first invaded her cocoon of awareness.  Beeping.  Really annoying beeping.  Something tightened snugly around her upper arm… and when it went away, so did she. When the beeping returned, it came with odors.  Astringently offensive odors of new plastic and antiseptic, and the earthier odors of unwashed hair and barely washed body.  It came with the trickle of a thought: hospital.  And the more worrisome question: What am I doing here? Nothing hurt particularly, aside from the ache of being too long in one position.  No pain in her limbs, her torso, her head… although every thought came surrounded and obscured by thick mist.  So then… Why? Voices came from beside her bed.  Murmurs, just barely loud enough to make it through the mist.  A demanding question.  Something beside her head gave a plaintive beep, and with a hiss, the snug feeling returned around her arm.  Blood pressure cuff, she realized.  And again—what am I doing here?  She tried to say the words out loud; her dried lips didn't so much as twitch. The voices rose again—a man and a woman.  SomethingsomethingsomethingMICKEYsomething. Mickey. Must be her. * * * * * Mickey opened her eyes.  She hadn't thought about it, hadn't planned on it… just suddenly found herself awake.  Chaotic images struck her with the force of a physical blow; she flinched and closed her eyes.  As she tried to sort out what she'd seen, she realized she wasn't alone.  At least, not quite.  Two voices hovered in another unhappy discussion, far enough away so they might not notice her new awareness, close enough so she couldn't discount them. Hmm.  What a suspicious way to think. She cracked her eyelids open again, keeping it slow.  Abstract shapes resolved to objects, most of them white in tone.  Over there, the slats of closed blinds.  The walls.  The ceiling, sound-absorbent tiles pocked with little holes.  Her skin, lightly tanned and freckled arms emerging from a gown of definite hospital vintage.  Hospital.  Made sense, with the woozy pounding in her head and the mist that loomed not far away, threatening to close back in on her.  The black blood pressure cuff wrapped her upper arm, stark against her skin.   A boxy blue monitor on a pole sat beside the bed.  It gave a familiar plaintive beep and the cuff automatically inflated. Hospital. Why? She couldn't see the man and woman who conversed; they seemed to be just outside the door.  She considered opening her still-dry lips to ask, suddenly overwhelmed by the taste of morning mouth.  Ick.  And as she hunted the room for any sign of ice water or maybe even randomly placed toothpaste—because hey, one could hope—other details impressed themselves upon her. She lay on a fancy cot of some sort, not a hospital bed.  There was no television in the corner, no privacy drapes around the bed.  A stethoscope and a brand-new box of latex gloves sat on a rickety fake-wood table not far from the bed—no sign of a hospital bed tray in sight.  None of the ubiquitous identical supplies one seemed to find in a hospital room—no dull pinkish-rose plastic emesis basin, no matching pitcher, no box of scratchy generic tissues.  A flattened, empty IV bag sat undiscarded on the floor beside the table, along with a battered box of vials and syringes. And then there were the handcuffs. * * * * * Handcuffs. She'd had reason for her suspicious thinking. She just had no idea what it might be. Mickey took a sharp breath as the fear hit, a great wash of unknown that flooded through her body in a jumble of panic and adrenaline and goose bumps.  Acutely vulnerable in the oversized but still immodest gown, handcuffed to this aluminum-frame cot, and… no idea why. No idea what she'd done, how she'd gotten here… Who she was. Mickey. But only because she'd heard them say so. Right on cue, their voices rose again. "You said it was a sophisticated form of a Mickey Finn!" the woman snapped, the indefinable trace of an accent barely evident in her voice. Mickey Finn.  It hadn't been her name after all.  But at the moment it was all she had, so she thought she'd keep it. "It is."  The man responded with a combination of deference and annoyance.  "She had a reaction to it.  That happens even with the old-fashioned chloral hydrate—it's not predictable." "She's not of any use if we can't question her.  That was the whole point of acquiring her, was it not?  Of using the 'sophisticated delivery timing' of your absorbable drug?"  High heels landed on thin carpet with a muted firmness of tread. The man remained placating.  "I have no doubt you'll be able to speak with her soon.  I'd be more certain of her recovery if I had real facilities for her treatment." The woman responded with a genteel snort.  "We were lucky to have arranged this much without attracting attention."  And then her voice dropped back to a murmur, though it still held command. Great.  Whoever Mickey really was, whatever she'd been up to, she'd attracted the attention of this woman and her people—and they'd gone to great effort to get her here so they could question her.  That didn't sound like fun, not at all. But it was more than she'd known just moments before, and it was enough to give her some goals—to find out who she was… who they were… why they'd imprisoned her here.  To escape. In any order she could get it. She realized the hallway conversation had ended and the man—a doctor, perhaps—stood in the doorway shuffling through papers.  Mickey quickly closed her eyes.  The longer they thought she was out, the more time she had to gather information before the unpleasant-sounding questioning began.  The more chance she could plan her escape. Escape.  Just what kind of life did she lead when she wasn't cuffed to a cot awaiting a meeting with a woman who'd had her drugged so as to conduct a conversation? "I know you're awake," the man said, quite conversationally.  Somehow he'd made it to her side to fiddle with the machine while her mind wandered the edge of the still-lingering mist.  He tapped the machine.  "You've left behind a very revealing spike in your pulse and blood pressure." "Bother," Mickey said crossly.  She opened her eyes to regard him with unconcealed interest.  He turned out to be a sallow little man in turquoise scrubs with bags under his eyes and a sagging jaw line.  He took a step back at her immediate and direct response.  Maybe he'd expected her to flutter her eyelids and ease into the situation with some demure decorum.  Instead she met his washed-out brown eyes with a demand.  "What did you do to me?" "You're fine," he said. "I'm not," she told him.  "I obviously haven't been for… what?  Days?  Weeks?"  She flexed her unsecured arm and eyed the tight, lean muscle there. Thin, but… "Not weeks, surely." "No."  Startled all over again, he still managed to shake his head.  "A few days.  You had a bad reaction to a drug." "Your drug." By now he seemed to have given up on being surprised.  He pulled a chair in close to the bed, an ancient office chair on wheels.  If he tried to touch her, she could literally send him flying.  Hmm.  Do I do that sort of thing?  But he gave her no such excuse.  "I'm helping to test it, yes." "Was I allergic to it?  Should I get a little bracelet to warn all future kidnappers?" "I—that is—"  He took a breath, pressed his lips together.  "Literally speaking, you weren't allergic to it.  But it was a serious reaction, and I'm relieved to see you so coherent." Mickey nodded wisely.  "It'll get her off your back, anyway." "Among other things."  He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, his sheaf of papers—notes and records about Mickey—threatening to spill from his grip and scatter.  Did he have a key to these cuffs somewhere?  He wasn't the jailor, but surely he'd have it in case of a patient crisis.  Something to think about. Something to think about.  Good God, how could she be so cool?  Kidnapped, handcuffed, no idea where she was or who she was… Then again, what did she have to go on but instinct?  She'd have to trust it… to trust herself.  And when instinct told her to panic, she would. He hadn't followed her train of thought—had she hidden it so well?  He narrowed his eyes and nodded at the door behind him, presumably indicating the woman who'd just been standing there.  "Don't play these games with her." She took the warning to heart.  He might be working for the enemy, but he'd evidently not intended to hurt her.  He seemed genuinely concerned that he had.  The realization, the awareness of such sympathy in this cold, frightening situation… it released her fear in a sudden burst, turning it into a burning impulse to ask the most important questions of all—the who am I question and the when will I remember myself question and even the most frightening of all—the will Iever remember question. But she didn't.  The woman wanted her for something.  A discussion.  That meant that Mickey had information… and it was the information that had made her valuable.  If she'd lost the information… then she'd lost her value. She didn't want to think what that owner of that cold, angry voice would do to an acquisition who had lost her value. 1743 Monday September 28 2009