The Fortunes of Nigel by Walter Scott (good summer reads txt) 📕

sudden sharp pain squarely in his gut. He stared down uncomprehendingly to see a tranquilizer dart still quivering in his stomach.

He knew it immediately for what it was, and sought to yank it out of his belly. However, when he informed his right arm of what he wanted to do, his right arm simply hung there like a lifeless slab of meat. His left arm was, rudely, no more cooperative than his right, and then he sank to his knees and managed to get out the word, “What?” Which was about all he could think of to say.

The world started to haze out around him, and then Betty was there, her face filling the entirety of his field of vision. Betty went to him, helped him to the ground. He stared up at her uncomprehendingly as she murmured, “It’s going to be all right. It’s just going to make you sleep.” He tried shaking his head, but he couldn’t even force his neck muscles to respond, and she continued, “You’ll forgive me, Bruce. I know you will. I didn’t know what else to do.”

That was when he realized what she had done. He hadn’t associated the dart with Betty, because the magnitude of such a betrayal was too great for him to comprehend. But now that he did realize, he felt the beginnings of a green haze settling upon him. He could see it, floating there, bringing with it fury and release and the ability to avenge this wrong, to strike back at his attackers, at his betrayers.

Forgive her? Forgive her? He would . . . would . . .

“To help you, okay?” she continued, although he could barely make it out, for the haze was enveloping him, but it was also beginning to dissipate. He realized it was a race, the narcotics coursing through his body even as his mind tried to fight them off, to send him to a place where the anger would carry him through. Nourish him.

“We’re going someplace safe, where nothing can go after you. You understand, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just let you go.”

But he was going to go . . . go . . . He would show her, show them, whoever they were . . . and . . . whoever he was . . . hard to . . . focus . . . just . . . have to . . . remember . . . remember . . . something . . . what was . . . ?

The door burst open and a uniformed tactical team entered, weapons drawn. Although he could no longer move his head, his eyes shifted toward them and the world became a great blur to him, a great, large green blur. That seemed somehow amusingly appropriate to him.

He looked up at Betty once more, and she was taken aback, because she saw it then in his eyes, the hint of glittering anger, pure as a newborn, and if he had been able to remain conscious for even another three seconds, he might have been able to fight it off, fight through it, and become that which he knew would be able to solve this problem, something that would mow through the mass of green bodies in front of him like a thresher and he would . . .

. . . smash . . . smash them . . . smash . . . sleep . . . sleep . . .

And a blackness tinged with green claimed him.

Betty Ross had never felt so utterly torn in her life.

She told herself that what she had done was good and right and proper, that she’d had no choice, really, none whatsoever. And she kept saying that, right up until the soldiers grabbed the unconscious Bruce as if he were a sack of meat and bones.

“Hold it!” she shouted.

“One side, we’ll take it from here,” one of the soldiers said brusquely, and another strong-armed her out of the way.

They were throwing him around, slamming cuffs and locks and restraints on him, bruising him. Bruce moaned in his drug-induced sleep, and she saw the beginnings of a large bruise on his bare shoulder from where one of them had thoughtlessly banged him into the edge of the sofa.

“I said hold it!”

“Ma’am,” one of the soldiers said with that sort of feigned politeness that was really nothing of the kind, “step aside or we’ll be forced to—”

“Shut up, soldier, and stand down right now! All of you! Now! Unless you’re that anxious to screw with the daughter of Thunderbolt Ross!”

She derived some faint intellectual amusement from the fact that she had something sounding very much like her father’s voice coming out of her mouth. Certainly the soldiers looked stunned, and the entire operation crashed to a halt as they froze where they were.

Betty didn’t hesitate, because to do so would have indicated weakness, and she could afford to display none. “Now listen up! I’m Dr. Elizabeth Ross! Ranking officer, identify yourself.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward, looking at her suspiciously. “Lieutenant Simmons.”

“Simmons, this man here is my find and my responsibility, and I will see him handled with kid gloves or I will see the next man who so much as uses harsh language on him hauled up on charges. He’s got more power in one arm than you have in your entire armory, and if you cause that power to be unleashed, then God help you, because no one else will, including your mama. Do we understand each other?”

Speaking very stiffly, but with proper restraint, Simmons said, “Yes, doctor.”

“Now,” she said with brisk efficiency, “show me what you’ve got.”

He frowned. “Ma’am?”

Rolling her eyes, she clarified, “For transportation and containment. And let’s remember, soldier, this man was eight feet tall and green not all that long ago, and all you troops still couldn’t find him, which makes me think you couldn’t find your ass with both hands and a flashlight. You’re here