Koradonda Chapter 5 Making Choice Pt 1

Everything is becoming far more complicated than Jones expected, and he is force to decision after decision he never wanted to make.

chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4

As Jones stepped from the helicopter, Harrison leaned forward in his power chair and shouted over the rotor noise. “You took your own damn sweet time about it. Sara savaged Colonel Dalton’s leg. They’re trying to save it now. She goes crazy when most people enter the room.”

“Harrison, you surprise me.” Jones pitched his voice over the noise. “Sara does not understand the difference between a contingency plan, and what you are planning to do. Anyone who was even in the area when contingency plans for killing me were being discussed, is her mortal enemy. What she is sure of is, you’re trying to kill me. Unless I’m there to hold her back, she will kill any of you she can find. She even smells any of you, she will go into hunting mode now. I take it you were among the group.”

Shock spread across Harrison’s face. “Yes, damn it, sitting there near Ann, and not even thinking about Sara until she had the Colonel’s leg. Even then, I didn’t put it together. I was thinking along the lines of people that keep dangerous animals as pets. Had he done something to set her off, like kicking her cage by accident? The thought that it was our conversation that did it never even occurred to me. In fact, I forgot what we had been talking about at the time until you brought it up.”

“It has been interesting working with you, but you realize you have to be replaced now. I had been planning to get us all moved to a military base, but that is not such a good idea either. I have a modest estate in southwestern Ohio. We’ll move there fairly soon. If your crosschecking has not turned it up yet, there is a second identity for me under the same name but only thirty-four, born Saint Elizabeth Hospital, Covington, Kentucky. I was working there as a doctor then, so it was easy to put in an extra birth certificate.”

Jones followed him into the rooftop elevator and then to isolation.

Sara roared.

Turning to Harrison, he said, “Send someone with word when everyone who was anywhere near the planning is completely out of the building.”

He turned and faced Sara in her cage. Then, in his own language, spoke. “Sit down and shut up”.

His words had a touch of power behind them.

That made it as close to being punished as she could remember. She backed into a corner of her cage, mewing. In human form, she would have been crying.

It was not pity; the Koradonda had none; it was an emotion totally foreign to humans that caused him to pause and modify it. In English he said, “There are hurt people here. You cannot get out of your cage and kill anyone, so all your roaring is doing is making it hard on the hurt people and those that care for them. I have things to do.”

A doctor, who must not have been present when the things were said, was in the room, and asked, “Does your kind know anything about healing the type of damage that these girls have suffered?”

Jones looked this unknown human over, glad to see that this doctor easily accepted that he was not human. The doctor seemed to be looking at it as a possible opportunity to learn more about healing.

“A few of us do, but it is slow and would not save the other one.”

Surprised he had not realized Ann was conscious, he heard her rasp out, “Lisa.”