Flexing the limb for the medic and feeling no pain, Aden said, “You appear to have done an excellent job.” It was simple enough to seal a minor wound with the correct laser, but repairing all the tiny blood vessels, torn ligaments, and other shredded internal mechanics would’ve taken hours of concentrated and careful work.
And Aden’s wound had been far less complicated than Zaira’s.
Finn didn’t speak until after he’d tested Aden’s reflexes on that side of his body. “I’m a qualified and certified doctor as well as a healer,” he said, switching to the other side, “but I’m no neurosurgeon. I can’t guarantee I didn’t miss something.”
Remi stirred, eyes locking with Aden’s. “I don’t want to end up with two dead fucking Arrows in my territory,” he said with brutal frankness. “Call in one of your teleporters, go see an M-Psy.”
Aden had to make a decision—tell the truth and reveal his vulnerability, or make up a lie. For now, he decided on the lie. Remi could’ve killed him while he was down, but the leopard alpha’s assistance could also be a cunning double cross. Remi had been in the same isolated area as their captors, after all. Aden couldn’t afford to trust the alpha or his packmates until he’d categorically confirmed their lack of involvement in his and Zaira’s abductions.
“I’ll need to realign my mind before I can make contact,” he said, banking on these changelings not being close enough to a Psy to know his words meant absolutely nothing. “The insertion of the implant disoriented my pathway to the PsyNet.”
Remi frowned but nodded. “It’ll be at least a day, maybe two before you can get out if your people can’t get in. Rain’s caused landslides lower down the mountain, blocked most of the roads, and last forecast we caught before the systems went down say this weather isn’t going to let up anytime soon.”
There was a massive boom just then, the thunder loud enough that both changelings visibly reacted, Finn with a grimace and Remi by going preternaturally still. Acute hearing, Aden realized, had to be a disadvantage in these circumstances.
“I have technical training,” he said. “I might be able to jerry-rig a transmitter.”
“You’re welcome to try.” Remi folded his arms. “But the conduit lower down the mountain has most likely been fried by lightning and my techs tell me the interference caused by the combination of the weather and our location makes it unlikely any lower-strength signal will get out.”
Aden wasn’t certain that was a drawback—because if this pack was friendly, then he and Zaira had a safe haven in which to recover from their physical and psychic wounds. Their psychic blindness could well be seen as an invitation for further violence in the outside world.
Aden, in particular, couldn’t afford to have his lack exposed. It would pin a target on the entire squad’s back if their leader was shown to be “human” in his vulnerability. Arrows survived not just because they were dangerous but because people saw them as dangerous. Else they were simply threats who needed to be put down.
As PsyMed had once wanted to put down Zaira.
Allowing himself to look toward her for the first time, he made certain to keep his tone neutral as he said, “I heard you note Zaira was stable.”
“She is, but she’ll only be out of the woods once she wakes up.” Finn shifted to give Aden an unobstructed view of the other bed.
Zaira’s body lay motionless in a way it never was in life. The rebellious, brilliant fire in her whispered its continued existence in the way she fought, so quick and smart, in the way she spoke with such rapid-fire intelligence, in the way she protected those who were her own with icy fierceness.
Aden made himself look away before he betrayed the depth of his concern for her.
“You aren’t fully Silent, Aden. You never have been.”
He’d thought it was his contact with Vasic and Ivy’s bond that had changed him, but maybe Zaira was right about his Silence. He cared, had always done so for the people he saw as his own. And Zaira . . . she’d never been just another Arrow in his squad. Always, he’d been drawn to the fire in her, that untamed wildness that was so unlike his own controlled nature.
Aden had been taught discipline from the cradle, been taught to never draw attention or be anything but unremarkable in the eyes of the world. Zaira was like the storm outside in comparison. She’d become the perfect Arrow, but even that, she’d done on her own terms. Since the day they met she’d been disagreeing with him about everything under the sun, never watching her words, never offering him anything but the searing truth and her absolute and unflinching loyalty.
The room suddenly flashed with a shocking brilliance of purple-white light.
“Given your unworried demeanor,” Aden said when neither Remi nor Finn made a comment on the closeness of the strike, “I assume this building is protected from lightning strikes?”
A teeth-baring grin that was very feline. “Careful, Arrow, or I might think you were insulting my ability to look after my pack.”
“No insult intended.” Aden fought his compulsion to hold the alpha’s gaze in a primal power struggle, the instinct one he’d learned to rein in over the years. Instead, he returned his attention to Finn. “Zaira’s condition?”
“She has less severe bruising at the implant site, but her internal injuries were significant.” At Aden’s request, the healer listed those injuries one by one. “I made damn sure I fixed each and every tiny shredded piece—that I can promise you.”
Aden believed him. There was a strong sense of competency about the other man, added to which, he’d picked up on injuries even Aden might have missed. Finn wasn’t just a doctor and a healer, he was a very good one.
Taking Aden’s pulse again after asking him to stand beside the bed, Finn said, “If she doesn’t regain consciousness, though, there’s nothing else I can do at this point except try the drugs I have. None are calibrated to Psy physiology.”
It wasn’t what Aden wanted to hear and he could tell it wasn’t the news Finn wanted to give.
“The best-case scenario is that she wakes on her own in the next few hours,” Finn continued. “At that point, the major issue will be with the site of her gunshot injury; it’ll be tender for a period, and her body will tire more easily for roughly a week, but she’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t do anything to tear open the new skin.”
Making a note on an electronic chart, the healer walked backward several feet. “I had to stimulate growth of her own skin because none of the patches I had would bond to her, so it’s more fragile than she might expect.”
When Finn urged Aden to walk toward him, Aden knew the other man was judging his balance. “Anything feel off?” the healer asked, his eyes intent as another burst of lightning lit up the lightly tanned skin of his face.
“No.” Except for the painful silence in his head.
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
Finn asked him several more questions to gauge the amount and exact type of pain and Aden had to think not like an Arrow but like a civilian to answer him. An Arrow’s pain threshold was far higher than most people’s, but that could be dangerous in this circumstance.
“Okay,” the healer finally said. “Nothing unexpected here, and the pain should ease up after twelve hours. If it suddenly increases in strength, or changes in some way, I want to know immediately.” The words were an order. “Any delay could be fatal if there’s an unexpected bleed.”
“Understood.” Thanking the healer for his work, Aden turned to Remi. “I can’t recall if I ever identified myself to you.” Neither could he place the leopard changeling in any known pack.
“I recognized you,” the alpha said, keeping his hands on his hips rather than extending one. It was either a courtesy because Psy were known to be uncomfortable with the kind of touch the other races took for granted or a sign of reticence because he didn’t yet trust Aden enough to sh
ake his hand. “You’re with RainFire, in the Smokies.”
The pack name didn’t raise a red flag, but neither did it come with knowledge. He did, however, now have a general location. Since the Great Smoky Mountains sprawled across a large area of land, he’d have to gather additional data to figure out the specific location. “This weather is unusual for the region.”
Finn rolled his eyes. “You win the prize for understatement of the century. There was a tornado warning not long before the comm blackout, so yeah, this isn’t usual. Not unheard-of, though—just rare.”
The extreme weather had given Aden and Zaira a critical advantage, one their captors couldn’t have anticipated. Injured as they’d been, with the implants in their heads and their captors in a jet-chopper, they wouldn’t have made it far without the rain hampering the chase by washing away their trail.
“Think you can keep some solid food down?” Finn asked and, at Aden’s nod, left the infirmary to organize it.
Unable to fight the urge any longer, Aden walked around his bed to get to Zaira’s. Her breathing was even, her skin tone back to its normal warm shade between cream and golden brown rather than clammy and bleached of color. When Aden picked up a scanner Finn had left nearby, Remi didn’t protest. Aden checked her vitals, focusing on the areas of injury, and was satisfied the healer had done a stellar job stitching her up. All that remained was for Zaira to punch through the veil of darkness behind which she was currently trapped.
Keep your promise, he said silently. Stay.
Aloud, he spoke to Remi. “Thank you for the assist.”
Remi raised an eyebrow. “Why exactly did you need an assist? Arrows are usually a law unto themselves, from all I’ve heard.”
“Even Arrows can’t heal bullet wounds on their own.” Not strictly true. There was one Arrow who could, but Judd Lauren’s ability was so rare it was nothing most people would ever know.
“It wasn’t a criticism.” Remi shook his head. “I don’t know how you walked on that leg if you came from where I heard that chopper circling.”
Aden had walked on it because he’d needed to walk on it to save Zaira. He’d been hit on his way back inside to her, had quickly bandaged up the wound while searching for supplies. The black of his combat pants had hidden the blood from Zaira, his decision not to tell her a conscious one. He hadn’t trusted her to agree to come with him once she knew he was wounded, too. She’d have fought to stay and hold off the enemy, give him a head start. Since Aden would’ve dug his heels in, it had been quicker to prevent the argument in the first place.
“Do you know who occupies that land?” If the RainFire alpha was willing to share data, Aden had nothing to lose by gathering it. He would, of course, double-check all information after he left the pack.
“No. They fly in and out.” Remi’s T-shirt stretched across his wide shoulders as he leaned back against the wall and folded his arms again.
A relaxed pose if you didn’t notice that watchful, dangerous gaze.
“We’ve kept an eye on them since they moved in about four months back,” the alpha said, “but they don’t impinge on our territorial boundaries so we generally mind our own business.” He glanced toward the doorway. “I can scent food on the way. Eat, wait for your squadmate to wake up, then we’ll talk.”
Returning his attention to Zaira, Aden willed her to wake up, but the brain monitor remained static.
Two hours passed.
Three.
Three and a half.
Chapter 12
ZAIRA DREAMED, WAS aware she was doing so. It was the first time in a decade that her discipline had faltered to this extent, but she was wounded, weak, and the dream pushed its way inside before she could slam the door shut. Only it wasn’t truly a dream but a memory so surreal it could’ve been a figment of her imagination.
“Zaira.”
She looked up from the table where she’d been strapped down. Bruises and cuts marred her legs and her arms, her collarbone still fractured but her ribs feeling as if they’d been fixed. She didn’t wonder why someone had fixed one of the injuries she’d sustained in the fight for her survival yet left others untouched—people liked to hurt her, that was simple fact.
The pain didn’t matter; pain was something she’d learned to handle long ago. It was the confinement, the aloneness that threatened to drive her to madness. The ones who’d come for her after she’d beaten her parents to death had trapped her in matte-black shields she couldn’t breach, the psychic loneliness crushing. “What?” she snapped in response to the sound of her name, willing to talk simply to hear another voice.
“Are you there?” she asked when there was no immediate answer, not sure she hadn’t imagined a companion. She’d done that before, had full-color “delusions,” as her parents termed them. Delusions that had been her friends. Delusions that had made her feel less alone as she existed in the place that was her cage.
“Shh.” A slender boy with dark eyes slanted above sharp cheekbones, his straight hair gleaming black and his skin light brown, walked into her line of sight. He was silent, quieter than anyone else she’d ever met. She didn’t know how he did that. Every time she tried to walk quietly, she stumbled or thumped or gave herself away.
That was why she had a fractured collarbone—she’d made a noise in her ambush and her mother had turned and hit Zaira with the datapad in her hand hard enough to slam Zaira off the chair on which she’d been standing. It hadn’t saved her mother or her father, though. Zaira’s bone might’ve cracked, but she still had a mind that had stealthily grown beyond her parents’ ability to leash.
And she’d still been able to swing the rusty metal pipe afterward.
When the boy who walked so quietly touched her restraints, she began to struggle, the bracelets cutting into her wrists and the manacles into her ankles. “Don’t touch me,” she said in a hiss of sound. “Don’t touch me.” The feeling of helplessness made her want to scream, but beneath was a cold rage.
“Quiet,” the boy said, the command in his voice so strong that she stopped speaking.
“I’m going to undo your restraints,” he told her. “If you start struggling or screaming or fighting with me, it’ll alert the trainers and they’ll come strap you down again.”
Zaira just stared at him. The instant he released her, she’d do everything in her power to take him down. He was bigger than her, but she’d killed her parents. She could kill him. Once she’d done that, she’d escape this place where they tortured her by making her alone just as her parents had done.
The boy with the dark eyes and the silent feet held her gaze. “Don’t,” he said, and it was another order, though one given in a soft, solemn tone. “Do you know where this facility is? Have you looked outside?”
“Mountains,” she said, remembering what she’d seen from the vehicle that had brought her here. “Some green things. No trees.” She’d been born in Jordan and though she’d rarely been permitted out of her cage and never beyond the walls of the family compound, she’d glimpsed enough of the landscape through the bars of the gates to know she was no longer anywhere near the region where she’d been born.
But the air outside had felt as dry, the sun as warm, so maybe she was just in another part of Jordan?
“That’s all there is for miles and miles and miles,” the boy said. “Even if you somehow manage to outwit all the security protocols and escape, you’ll die of thirst and heat exhaustion within hours.”
“So?” Dying was preferable to being trapped.
“So we can’t win if we all die.”
She didn’t understand him, didn’t want to understand him. He was a stranger and even if he was a boy, that didn’t mean he wasn’t allied with the adults. None of her siblings or cousins had ever helped her. Instead, they’d reported on her when she went out of bounds and tried to squeeze through the bars of the main gate. “Oka
y,” she said, just so the boy would do what she wanted.
He moved to the ankle manacles and used something she couldn’t see to unlock them. When he paused at the second one and glanced at the door, she froze. Was there someone there, someone who would stop him before he set her free? But he returned to his task a second later.
Fighting the rage inside her that made her want to scream and kick, she forced herself to pretend to be following his order to behave, even once her ankles were no longer bound. Except the boy didn’t free her wrists. He just stood beside her and watched her.
“What?” she asked, so angry that she just wanted to beat him until he had no face.
“I know you’ll run,” he said. “If you do, the trainers will realize Vasic and I can get into these rooms, and they’ll punish us. That means we won’t be able to help anyone else until the punishment is over.”
What did Zaira care about anyone else? No one cared about her. All she wanted to do was get out of here. “I won’t run.”
“Yes, you will,” the boy said, and then he put his tool to her wrist manacles.
Zaira wanted to stay silent, but he was confusing her. “Why are you letting me go, then?”
“Because,” he said in that quiet voice that made her listen, “I won’t be like them. I won’t use threats or pain to keep you from doing what you want.”
Zaira didn’t understand him again. So she just waited. And as soon as he freed her, she jumped off the table, ignored the throbbing pain all over her body, and bolted.
The boy and the taller one who’d been waiting outside for him went in the opposite direction from her, and then she was through a heavy door on the other end and the alarms shrieked. Her heart in her throat, she kept running, her bare feet slapping the cold surface of the floor.
She didn’t know what made her glance back. When she did, she saw the boy had come back and was now by the doors that had set off the alarms. Their eyes met, and at that instant she knew he was going to pretend it had been him who’d set off the alarm.
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