Fight or flight, I guess.
He opened the furnace door, picked up Marco’s body, and tossed him inside. The poor sap did not know what was about to happen. Perhaps it was bittersweet. His unconscious mind would protect him, for a while at least, from the pain that would precede his death. Best-case scenario, he never woke up. Micah pressed a large red button, surrounded by a steel circle, and walked away.
Chapter 21
Two nurses hastily rolled a gurney through a pair of tan doors, which retreated like the Red Sea at Moses’s arrival. The path they traveled now led to an operating room. On the surface, this wasn’t something that should have seemed all that odd considering the occupation of the gurney’s chauffeurs. However, the building they rushed through wasn’t a hospital. They hurried through a medical wing. The rest of the gargantuan collection of steel and glass served a far different purpose than saving the lives of people suffering from various maladies. It was the headquarters for the Organized Crime Agency, OrCA for short. Not the most memorable of names on its own, but theirs was not one whose exploits would be announced to the masses.
A shadow arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, they burst into existence in the early 2010s to thwart the reach of organized crime in the United States. At their inception, OrCA’s reach was expected to remain within the country, barring unforeseen circumstances. It was quickly apparent that their scope would need to expand to a global scale if they were ever to serve as more than an annoyance to predominantly local outfits. One of their most notable operations had been working with Mexican authorities in the capture and extradition of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. OrCA had sent their own operatives out to the coast of Sinaloa disguised as Mexican Federal Police, and it was their people who tracked the infamous drug kingpin down when he escaped capture following the initial raid at a home in Los Mochis.
Operating as the invisible arm of the CIA allowed them to tackle their problems in ways that could seem unethical without concern over the optics. Not being a known entity had its perks. They rarely concerned themselves with the thought of abiding by local and international law. If they needed to apprehend a target, or worse, they took care of business. Their cleanup crew was among the best, ensuring they could move forward to the next target without the possibility of a past transgression coming back to bite them.
Time continued to roll by as the nurses wound their way through the hallways of the hospital wing of the OrCA headquarters. All that mattered in that moment was attending to the task at hand. They had to get the man on the gurney to the operating room immediately. Their patient awaited state-of-the-art treatments, slated to be administered by a highly respected surgeon. That Ross Sheridan had only the faintest idea of what he had signed up for was of no consequence to them. They had a job, and they intended to follow through with it. No questions asked.
It took only a few minutes, but they were down the long hallway and around the corner, pushing through another set of doors before Sheridan articulated the depth of his confusion. They had given him a large dose of sedatives shortly after signing a few waivers. The drugs hadn’t taken long to kick in. Though he was likely aware, in some sense of the word, that life was trudging along, neither nurse expected that he would ever have any clear memories of the moment. It may exist in a dream. A fleeting moment. An out-body-experience. Watching himself guided along to an end he didn’t know, unable to halt the progress. Likely feeling so real that he would wake up in a cold sweat, only to forget it inside of an hour.
“Are we… are we there… yet?” Sheridan hadn’t lost his sense of humor. He had stumbled on his words as his lips parted to get the sounds out. The simple task made arduous.
“We may have to give him something stronger,” the nurses said in near unison. They laughed it off as they secured the gurney.
“Is our patient ready?” The surgeon’s voice startled both nurses. Neither had heard her step into the room. She quickly surveyed the pair in front of her, assessing their capabilities based on their response time. The taller of the two had seemed more perplexed about the surgeon’s arrival than the squat nurse, but neither appeared likely to get in her way. Besides, the surgeon was confident in her abilities. She didn’t expect a moment to arise where she would need to rely all that much on outside help.
“Um, yes,” stuttered the taller nurse.
“Actually, ma’am,” the shorter nurse chimed in.
“Just call me Dr. King.”
“Oh, okay,” the shorter nurse said with a smile. “The sedatives we gave the patient haven’t had the desired effect. We may need to increase dosage.”
“Or go with something stronger.”
Nice save, she thought. “Okay. And you two are? I need to know who to yell at.”
“Mallory,” said the shorter nurse.
“Scott,” replied the taller nurse, his hand raised meekly.
“Rossssss,” Sheridan said, his voice trailing off into an inaudible whisper. His gaze bounced around the room haphazardly before his eyes locked onto a nearby wall. The tile-work was significant to him in that moment.
“Ok, I can work with that,” Doctor Avery King announced. She had finished scrubbing in and was ready to get down to business. “Scott, I need you to find the anesthesiologist. Have them administer something with more bite. We wouldn’t want Mister Sheridan here to end up awake for
