“Shit.”
“Piled higher and deeper. Yes, sir. But I’ll talk to him, break the news, see if we can come up with a plan. It won’t be fast, though, extracting him and getting him back there. And there might not be a good way to do it at all. We might just have to ride it out.”
“Yes, I can see that. Keep me posted; I might be able to expedite things, with the connections I have, once you get him extracted, if you can.”
“Right.”
“Oh, dear God,” Ashton whispered, paling almost white. Honda had waited until the other man rose and got some coffee in him, then broke the news to him as gently as he could, making sure he was sitting first. “She could die?! The baby could die?? No, no, no! Not my Cal! Not our baby!”
“Calm down, Nick,” Honda soothed. “From what Director Carter told me, he, his wife, Cally’s parents, and most of The Team were going to see to it that she’s coddled from here on out. She’s in the hospital now, probably sedated to keep her from getting upset and worrying, and if all goes well overnight, they’ll send her home tomorrow – which will be sometime tonight, our time. If they can’t get her hormones and whatnot straightened out with nanites and meds, they’ll go ahead and deliver the baby and put it in NICU, then work on getting Cally straightened out.”
“So they can probably save the baby?”
“Pretty much certainly.”
“But Cal?”
“As long as she stays calm and behaves, she oughta be good.”
“I should be there, Rick. I should be there!”
“I know, pal. But it is what it is. You have a job to do here, at least for a little while longer, and if you don’t do it right, you won’t be going home to Cally at all except in a box. And she needs you alive and healthy. For her sake, and the baby’s.”
“But–”
“Look, calm down, man. You have to go to work soon, and you need to keep your wits about you. You already had Niebecker wondering about you after that incident the other day. If you’re too distracted today, you’ll get him started thinking again, and that’s not good. When you come home tonight, we’ll sit down and see if we can figure out what to do.”
Ashton drew a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, then nodded.
“Now let’s go fix breakfast.”
“Aw, man, I’m not hungry now.”
“Hush that. You’re eating breakfast, then taking a nice relaxing hot shower, getting dressed, and walking to work. Calmly. Look at the stuff around you while you walk. People-watch. Think about anything but Cally, anything but the case and the consulate. Spend the time getting your head together. Cally wants it to stay on your shoulders, Nick. She needs it to stay on your shoulders. Try to relax and think about other things.”
“…Yeah. Okay.”
Afterward, Ashton was never able to tell anyone how he got through that day, because he honestly didn’t know. He simply did as he was told, having long since decided that Niebecker wasn’t likely to ask him to do anything against Sintaran law… except for the espionage. And he was serving as a mole on that, passing the information back to Carter to give to Daggert.
He couriered two data devices to other consulates, dropping them into the pockets with the hidden readers, and he fetched a take-out lunch for Niebecker, as well as accepting a document that Niebecker sent him in VR and making the format “pretty,” as the receptionist called it.
Midafternoon, Niebecker came into Ashton’s office.
“Nik, are you feeling well today?” he asked, concerned. “You’ve seemed… distracted. All day.”
“Oh, well, yeah, I guess I am, a little,” Ashton replied, thinking fast – the best lies contained a bit of the truth, after all. “I’ve got a little residual headache from getting beat on the other day, and that’s making it hard for me to concentrate. But also Rikky got some bad news this morning; his favorite aunt may be dying, and he’s… pretty upset. So I’m a little stressed, I’m afraid.” He’d only substituted Rick’s fictitious aunt for Cally and the baby, so it wasn’t really much of a lie.
“Oh, I am sorry,” a sympathetic Niebecker said, keeping his voice quiet. “Do you need to go to the infirmary for some analgesics for the head? At least the nurse has arrived… the day after that damn Beaudelaire nearly knocked your head off.”
“No, I… well, maybe I should,” Ashton changed his mind. “It might make me feel a little better, at that.”
The truth was, the stress had indeed given him a headache, which wasn’t hard after the backhanded fist he’d taken only a couple of days before, and he thought a good analgesic might help relax him.
So with Niebecker’s full permission, he did indeed run down to the infirmary for some painkillers, the consul calling ahead and explaining to the nurse what was needed, and why.
Ashton stayed in the infirmary only long enough to wash down the medication Niebecker had recommended to the nurse; it had a small amount of muscle relaxer in it as well, to ease any neck tightness from the whiplash that might be contributing to the headache. Then he came back to his desk. By the time he sat down, he was more relaxed, and the headache had in fact eased.
The rest of the day went a little bit better, though he still had to hide titanic amounts of worry.
To: DirLCarter
From: DXA
Subj: Cal
Lee, I just got off work at the consulate and I’m walking back to the apartment. Rick told me about Cally this morning. Do you know if she’s awake yet, still at the hospital, at home…? I wanted to try to talk to her, if I could.
