Death Touch novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Assigned

Mara learns the soldier who resents her was requested by name, and neither will back down.

The infirmary doctor saved Talmadge's hand.

She did it with four injections, a cold pack and a lot of swearing.

I sat on a bench outside the glass with my glove back on.

Nobody sat near me.

The black had stopped at his wrist, and the doctor said he would keep all five fingers.

He would not feel two of them for a long time.

"Lucky," the doctor told the room. "A second longer and he'd have lost the arm."

I stared at my gloved hands.

I could still feel the pull in my fingertip, small and hot and hungry.

It always felt like that, like my own body wanted more.

"Hargett."

Colonel Edwin Strake had a soft voice and a silver crew cut.

He stood in the doorway with his hands behind his back and did not seem upset at all.

That frightened me more than shouting would have.

"Cadet Talmadge will report that he slipped," he said. "You will confirm it."

"He tore off my glove in front of four hundred people."

"And four hundred people will remember that he slipped."

He looked at me kindly.

"Dr. Fenn's Institute pays for this academy's new gymnasium, Miss Hargett. We understand each other."

I did not, but I nodded.

Fenn had taught me long ago that nodding was cheaper than arguing.

"You'll live in the staff wing," Strake went on. "Away from the barracks, until your handler signs you off."

"My handler."

"Staff Sergeant Dalton. He has the room beside yours."

The soldier from the field was leaning against the corridor wall with his arms crossed.

He had been there the whole time.

Up close he was bigger than I had thought.

He had short dark brown hair and a scar that cut his left eyebrow in two.

His jaw looked like it was chewing on something it hated.

"Sir," he said to Strake. "I put in for a transfer this morning."

"Denied," Strake said pleasantly. "Walk her to her quarters, Sergeant."

He left.

The corridor got very quiet.

Dalton pushed off the wall and started walking without a word.

I followed him down a hall with a green floor and fluorescent lights.

"I was supposed to ship out," he said, not turning around.

"I didn't ask you to stay."

"My unit shipped out two days after I got pulled at the airfield. Do you know why I was pulled?"

"Because of me."

"Because some doctor in Nevada wrote my name on a form."

He stopped at a plain door and finally turned.

The folder said he was twenty-four years old.

He looked at me.

"You're a posting, Hargett. That's all. A posting for a year."

"I'm eighteen."

"You're a high school senior."

"I'm eighteen," I said again, "and I can read, and I can tell when someone wants to leave. So leave."

For one second something moved across his face.

Surprise, maybe.

"Get some sleep," he said.

He pushed open the door.

The room had a narrow bed, a desk, a window that looked out on the parade field, and a small potted plant on the sill.

A bad joke, I thought.

Somebody wanted to see if I'd kill it.

Dalton went to his own door across the hall.

He stopped with his hand on the knob.

"Don't touch the plant."

"I won't."

"I mean it."

"I said I won't."

He went inside, and the door shut harder than it needed to.

I sat on the bed and looked at the window.

I had spent eighteen years in one room, and this was a better room.

It was also, somehow, lonelier.

On the desk lay a folder with my name on it.

I opened it because I could not help myself.

The first page was my medical history, with my birthday in August and my age, eighteen.

The second was a training plan signed by Colonel Strake.

The third page was a request form, clipped in the corner, in handwriting I knew.

It read: Handler requested by name, Staff Sgt. Forrest Dalton.

It was signed by Dr. Myrna Fenn.

I read it three times.

Fenn had never asked for anything by name in her life.

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