Seventy-two: Brain fried

Everything was veiled in a thin black fog. Somebody was carrying me in their strong arms. What I think was a rifle bumped against me with every step.

"I told you so," said Dr Eisor's sour voice.

"Shut up," Kiran snarled, his voice reverberating through his chest. "You've already said it a thousand times."

"If she wasn't in withdrawal, she'd be long gone," Dr Eisor said.

"We should just kill her," Whistlor muttered.

"Don't you start as well," Kiran growled. "It's bad enough that she betrayed me. That's not her. She wouldn't have betrayed me without a pressing reason. Somebody said something to scare her. What was it? Something about maiming and raping or drugging her into a coma? Don't think I don't know, Doc. You too, Whistlor. She would have been fine if you didn't keep threatening and scaring her."

"That, brother, is where you are wrong," Whistlor said. "The only upside to her is that at least we know she's loyal to whomever she owes loyalty to. Now we can only go the family threat route to keep her under control, now that we've lost the agent."

"Somebody find out how they even got to the overpass in the first place and got all the way over here," Kiran said. "We have to move base now, but I still want to know how this happened. Send word ahead and start moving everything to the next location. I'll take her straight there with Doc so he can treat her, before the withdrawal kills her. Seriously, Doc," he said in a lower voice, "I wish you'd have warned me you were going to turn her into a drug addict so that she'd have to be reliant on us. I didn't want things to have to come to this."

"You'd have disagreed, whatever I said," Dr Eisor said. "You didn't even want to even entertain the thought she might betray us."

"She was trying to do what was best for her," Kiran said.

Black and white and then coloured sparks exploded in my vision.

"Convulsing -"

"Hold her down -"

"Give a shot -"

"Hold her still -"

~~~

Floating out of the dark, my body wakened to the feelings of being bruised. My brain felt as if it had been fried and although I was waking up, I wanted to burrow back into the unfeeling dark. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn't about to let me do that.

"Hello, darling," his brown eyes had a nasty edge to them. "I hope you enjoyed that little trip. It will be the last you do for a long, long time. Kiran is so upset that he doesn't even want to see you for a long, long time."

"Stop that," Kiran said, striding into the room and glancing at me and then away again. "I don't want to be married to a drug addict, so get her off the drugs and when she's clean, let me see to keeping her here. I don't need you scaring her again. Your plans are too extreme. I got you this," he held up something that looked like a watch, speaking to me. "It's so I know where you are all the time," he strapped it onto my wrist and pulled it tight, so it lay firm against my skin, "and whether you're alive. It can be cut off," he spoke before the doctor could speak, "but I'll know if you do. Even if you do end up back on your side, tell them that if they cut this off, it will hurt them more than ever before, because a bomb will go off where they think they're safe. In case you're wondering, this city is as far as we want to take this invasion of your country. We only wanted our land and people back. You may have contacts among us or someone may contact you. Tell them that, will you? If they give us the land from our current border and this city, the war will end. I underestimated you once, I'll not do that again. Believe me when I tell you that your safety is my concern after the safety of my soldiers and the other civilians. As you likely already know by now, I will use you if I have to in order to achieve my goals, but it doesn't mean that I don't love you."

I just stared at him, wondering what on earth he was talking about when my brains were still scrambled and I had a lightning bolt type headache. I'd have to remember all that for later, but wasn't sure if I would. Hopefully he'd be nice enough to repeat it for me later when I did have a functioning brain.

The doctor tilted his head and Kiran made a frustrated sound when I gave no change in expression and checked my vitals.

"Her vitals are stable, but her brain might not be back to normal after those seizures," Dr Eisor said in a hesitant voice, "so she might not have been able to understand everything we just told her."

"Just heal her. Do whatever you have to do. Make her better," Kiran growled and stomped out.

"You aren't, by chance, trying to trick me, are you?" Dr Eisor asked me and then sighed when my eyes followed moving fireflies that he couldn't seem to see. I tried to catch them, but they seemed to slip through my fingers. Plus, my arms felt heavy. All that talking had made me tired.

I yawned and Dr Eisor slapped his forehead before I closed my eyes to go back to sleep.

The next few days were full of sleeping. My brain got tired easily if I stayed awake for too long.