by Kelly Oram
Ryan stepped so close to me that his breath tickled my cheek. “Caring,” he said softly. “Loyal. Passionate.”
I couldn’t stop the moisture from rolling down my cheeks. He was repeating the personality traits he’d written in my notebook. “Selfless. Thoughtful.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. My eyes fluttered shut at the gentle touch. He wiped away my tears, but new ones leaked from my eyes. “Nurturing. Loving. Compassionate. Fierce. Brave. Strong.”
He tugged me into his arms and brushed his lips over my temple. “I know you, Jamie Baker. I know you better than anyone.”
His words undid me, tugged at a string in my heart until I was completely unraveled. He did know me, because he couldn’t have said anything more perfect. He couldn’t be any more perfect. In my dark, dismal, frightening, lonely life, he was a light so bright he was blinding. He burned me all the way to my soul.
A sob wracked my chest, and a new need washed over me so strongly my body shook. I threw my mouth on his so fast and so forcefully that he stumbled backward until he slammed against the wall. I tasted his surprise, but he caught up to my mood so quickly I was tempted to accuse him of having superspeed. His enthusiasm fueled me, stoking the flames inside me, causing me to lose all control.
I needed him. Needed the connection we shared, whether I remembered it or not. Ryan seemed to understand how vulnerable I was at the moment, and allowed me to maintain control of this kiss. All other times we’d kissed he’d started it, or taken charge, but he was more than content to follow my lead this time. I was grateful for that, and I was not gentle. Or shy.
I took what I needed, and he happily surrendered himself to me. My tongue plunged deep into his mouth, eager to taste him. My hands raked through his hair and explored all of the rippling muscles on his torso I’d longed to touch since the first time I saw him. The thin cotton T-shirt he wore that separated my fingers from his skin tortured me. I trembled with the need to rip it off his body. I was on fire, burning from the inside out.
My energy matched my mood. It burst from me in warm waves that washed over Ryan, making him gasp. A fierce shudder rocked him and he no longer remained subservient. With an almost primal growl, he picked me up, and when I wrapped my legs around his waist he whirled me around, slamming my back into the wall with enough force that we shook the entire hallway. My back dented the drywall, and the lights in the entire hallway surged to blinding limits, but we hardly noticed.
We didn’t snap from our spell until people came running to see what the commotion was. Their shocked gasps broke us apart, but for a moment all we could do was stand there staring at one another, shaking and gasping for breath. At the sound of a throat clearing, reality caught up with me and my jaw fell so far it nearly hit the ground. Had I really just done that?
Slowly, I dropped my legs to the floor and let go of my grip around Ryan’s neck. While my face flamed painfully hot, Ryan’s eyes crinkled with laughter. He shot me a wink and turned to face our audience.
Major Wilks, Johnny G, Shortstop, Smut, and quite a number of other random military personnel stood there, gaping at Ryan and me. There was so much shock in that hall we could have jumpstarted a heart with it. It was the major and my fellow ACEs that had me the most embarrassed. Smut was the first to break the silence, releasing a long, impressed whistle. His eyes flicked to Ryan. “You really weren’t kidding about that superkissing thing, were you?”
Ryan shook his head, laughing. “I really wasn’t.”
When I elbowed him, he grinned and slid his arm around my waist, puffing his chest up. He tried to swallow his grin when he turned his attention to his superior. “Sorry, Major. We accidentally got a bit carried away. Jamie doesn’t seem to have the control over her powers that she used to, and when she loses her grip on it, it’s a little…uh…overwhelming.”
Truth. Obvious truth. Ryan’s face was flushed, his eyes were bright, his hair was full of static, his voice was shaky, and his entire body was trembling from the excess of energy I’d pumped into him. He looked as if he were about to explode. In fact, he needed to be careful. If anyone startled him before he properly released the power I’d pumped into him, he was likely to blow something up.
Still, I wanted to kill him. Yeah, I’d completely lost control, but did he have to say it out loud like that? And, just FYI, he didn’t sound the least bit sorry. He didn’t even sound chagrined. He was loving this!
I wasn’t sorry about that kiss either, but I was completely mortified. It took more courage than I knew I had to meet Major Wilks’s waiting gaze. The man had some excellent composure. I’d give him that. He stood there with his arms folded over his chest and cocked an eyebrow at me. Cringing, I pointed to the wrecked wall. “I can pay for that.”
Smut, Johnny G, and Shortstop all tried their hardest to hold back laughter, but they couldn’t quite stifle the snorts and giggles. Most people present were still too shocked or too intimidated by me to do more than breathe, but the ACEs had already accepted me as one of their own, and they obviously found this situation highly amusing.
Major Wilks cleared his throat again. “I take it you’re feeling better?” he asked me.
“I—um…”
“I certainly am,” Ryan chirped.
His utter giddiness was too much for his team members to handle. They burst into roaring laughter, falling all over one another for dramatic effect. It was humiliating, but they were being so ridiculous I nearly cracked a smile. I wouldn’t admit it, but it felt good that they were willing to laugh at me. Everyone else seemed to be nervous around me, or flat out terrified. That had its advantages, but it was also lonely and exhausting.
Having the ACEs tease me made me realize I had friends. I’d never had any of those before aside from Teddy, and his friendship had always been brittle. Excited to tease them back, I rolled my eyes and said, “Oh, shut up, you morons, or I’ll put you through the wall next.”
I realized my mistake the second Smut wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. “The same way you did Romeo?” he asked.
Shortstop followed this with, “Do you promise?”
And, not to be outdone by his comrades, Johnny G said, “There is a God. Kiss me first, Angel, and don’t be as gentle as you were with Goldilocks there. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
I slapped a hand over my face. “Seriously? I’m surrounded by twelve-year-olds.”
They started laughing even harder. Even Ryan was laughing now. He had no sympathy. “Sorry, babe, you walked right into that one.”
He was right. I did. But prideful me remained stubbornly haughty. With an exasperated huff, I glared at Major Wilks. “I’m going to see Tyson.”
He stepped toward the infirmary with a nod. “I’ll join you. We have some things to talk about.” As he pushed open the door for me, he shot a stern look to his men. “Join us once you’ve all grown up, gentlemen.”
I was grateful for the reprimand, even if he was on the brink of laughter. Which he totally was. I could hear it in his voice, and his lips twitched as if he was using a lot of effort to keep a smile off his face. That he had my back, even in the face of my disgrace, warmed me to the old softy enough to forgive him for ordering his men to tranq me.
Once inside the medical center, I forgot all about the people in the hall. Dr. Haggerty, Blake, and Geek were in the far corner of the room, hunched over a microscope, while Tyson sat in a standard hospital bed playing cards with Abiodun. Relief washed over me at seeing that he was okay. I had a vague recollection of blasting him with a lightning bolt before I went unconscious. Ryan had said he was fine, but I’d needed to see it for myself.
I stepped up to my fellow PACs, wary of how they were going to react to me now, but I needn’t have worried. Both of them shot me smiles. Abiodun’s was soft, but Tyson’s was huge. “Jamie!” he cried. “You’re finally awake!”
The young teenager’s enthusiasm was unparalleled. I’d fried him, and he was still excited to see me. I nodded in his direction. “S
o are you.”
The commotion caught the others’ attention. Dr. Haggerty and Blake came over to speak with Major Wilks, both offering me smiles, but Geek never looked up from his microscope. Whatever he was studying, he was clearly fascinated.
Abiodun rose to his feet, offering me his chair next to Tyson’s bed. Before I could sit, Tyson scooted over, patting the mattress next to him. He was such a cutie; I couldn’t resist the offer. “I was afraid I’d killed you,” I admitted as I sat down on the edge of his bed.
He smirked. “You did.”
“What?”
He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, but he still puffed out his chest a little as he explained. “My heart stopped. They had to bring me back with the shock paddles like in the movies.” He elbowed me with a conspiratorial glint in his eyes. “Good thing we were already at a hospital, eh?”
The lights and monitors in the room began flickering. I was so horrified that I grabbed him up in a fierce hug, and held on as if I planned to never let him go. “Tyson, I’m so sorry!”
If I was squeezing him too tightly, he didn’t complain. “It’s okay, Angel. I’m all right, and you’re obviously feeling better. Everything’s fine now.” He laughed and hugged me back. “Especially now. Hey, Abiodun, it looks like I’ve died and gone to heaven after all.”
Several chuckles rang out in the room. How could they all be so cool about this? Still unable to let him go, I pulled back just enough so that I could see his face. I shook my head. “It’s not fine. Tyson, I blasted you with lightning.”
“Because I stuck you with a tranquillizer dart.” Guilt wiped the smile from his face. “You were freaked out, and I startled you. It was an accident. It’s okay.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Tears threatened to spill down my face again as I tried to remember exactly what happened. “I’m not sure it was an accident. I don’t know what happened, but—”
Abiodun’s low, calming voice cut me off. “You weren’t yourself, Angel. You were being controlled. It wasn’t your fault.”
My eyes flew to Abiodun at the startling revelation. “What do you mean, controlled?”
Major Wilks’s stern voice rang out from behind me. “You were being mind controlled.” He said it as if that sort of thing happened all the time.
I glanced at him, surprised to see that Ryan, Smut, Johnny G, and Shortstop had entered the room as well. Ryan took note of the way I still clung to Tyson and raised an eyebrow at me. He was trying to suppress a smile, but the look still made me blush and I let go of Tyson, feeling strangely guilty. Tyson sighed, disappointed, and Ryan winked at me, making my cheeks flame even hotter. Jerk.
“Mind controlled?” I asked, forcing my gaze back to Major Wilks. “Seriously?”
Major Wilks nodded toward Blake. “It was Edwards who figured it out.”
Blake seemed surprised when I looked to him for an explanation. He gazed at me a second too long and then cleared his throat. “I’d heard of a project while working at Visticorp. They’d developed a swarm of nanobots that worked together in a hive fashion, and could be controlled remotely. As far as I know they’d never tried to combine the nanobots with anything organic, but with Visticorp’s advancements in certain fields, biohacking didn’t seem too far of a stretch for Donovan.”
“It was a good guess,” Major Wilks said. “We ran some tests while you were unconscious and found thousands of those nanobots embedded in your brain.”
Biohacking? Seriously? And nanobots? I blinked. My life was getting more and more sci-fi by the day. And that was saying something, considering I was the girl who’d developed superhuman abilities after taking an accidental shower in toxic waste. “They hacked my brain? And what in the world is a nanobot?”
Geek finally pulled himself away from the microscope. “They’re microscopic robots,” he said. “Amazingly complex nanotechnology. I’ve never seen anything even close to its equal.” He bounded over to the group as if he’d downed a convenience store’s worth of energy drinks. “It has to be the hive mentality that makes it work.”
“Hive mentality?” Ryan asked. He looked as thrilled about this as I felt.
Geek nodded, grinning as if he’d been given the world’s greatest Christmas gift. “Like bees and their queen. I believe the nanobots were all working together like a hive, downloading commands into Angel’s brain through tiny electrical impulses.” His gaze snapped to me again. “Essentially, they were sending you brain waves from a third party. Controlling your mind via a wireless connection. It’s ingenious!”
I was unable to hold back a frown any longer. “It’s creeptastic, is what it is. How about a little less excitement and a little more horror, Geek, please?”
Several of the guys chuckled, and Ryan sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. “Sorry,” Geek muttered, face flaming. “I’ve just never…it’s nonexistent technology. There have been cases where people could successfully control roaches with such tech, but never something as sophisticated as the human mind. To control something so complex… Who even knew something like this was possible? Donovan’s advancements in this field are…” He shook his head in awe. “Frankly, they’re impossible. I don’t know how he’s doing it.”
“All the more reason to stop him,” I grumbled. The thought of Donovan having the ability to mind control people didn’t sit well with me. “So what happened? How come they stopped? I don’t feel the weird impulses anymore.”
Ryan squeezed my hand. “You fried them, Jamie. They’re electronic. When you kicked into Danger Mode, they couldn’t handle the amount of electricity in your brain. They shorted out.”
I took a moment to process this information and shivered at the thought. Ryan slipped his arm around me. “On the bright side,” he said, “even if you were somehow captured, they’d never be able to control you. Not with your temper, babe.”
I scoffed, but he had a point, so I relented with a nod. “That actually is a little comforting.”
“Agreed,” Major Wilks muttered.
“Hey, if you think about it, I’m kind of a hero,” Tyson interrupted, grinning. “If you hadn’t zapped me, you’d still be under Donovan’s control, and we wouldn’t know what was happening or how to cure you. You killed me, but I saved you by doing it, so it was worth it.”
“Tyson!” The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “Please don’t say it like that ever again.”
He completely ignored me, still stuck in his own train of thought. “Hey, I died for you. That’s way better than just taking a bullet. I think I deserve a shot at the boyfriend title.”
As the room erupted into laughter around me, I reached up to rub my suddenly aching head. Ryan, seeing my tension, began kneading the back of my neck. It felt so good I finally relaxed and let out a heavy sigh. Once the room was quiet again, I looked at Major Wilks. “So what do we do now?”
“Now…” He echoed my sigh, sounding even more exhausted than me. “I’m not sure, Angel; you let our only lead escape.”
“Sorry.” I blushed. Mind control or not, I’d completely botched the plan today. And to be honest, I’m not even sure if I’d let him escape because I’d felt compelled to, or if it was selfish because I wanted my memories. Some ACE I was. “He said his name was Dr. Chen, if it helps,” I said pathetically. “And he gave me a phone number. Obviously it’ll be untraceable, but I could call and plan a meeting with him.”
“He gave you his phone number?” Tyson asked.
I’m not sure why everyone was so surprised by that. It made perfect sense to me. “Of course. When I didn’t go with him automatically, he had a backup plan. He offered me proof that he could restore my memories. That’s the serum he injected me with. He knew I’d want to get in touch with him after his serum worked, and gave me a card with his number. So let’s call him. Obviously he’ll demand I meet him alone, but if I pump you all full of energy beforehand, you can stay far enough back and then just follow us at superspeed. I won’t even need a tracker.”
/> I didn’t think my plan was that bad, but everyone remained quiet, and one by one they gave me looks of pity. Everyone except Ryan, who looked like he believed me but just didn’t like my plan because it was dangerous for me. “What?” I demanded.
Johnny G was the first to answer me. “Angel, there’s no way they’d fall for that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because obviously there was no miracle serum. He only told you that story about a cure so that you’d let him inject you with the nanobots.”
I went from zero to pissed off so fast that Ryan yelped and yanked his hand from mine. Two words that I really needed to add to my dislikes list—condescension and pity. I can’t tolerate either, and I was getting a whole lot of both. “Just because I have no memory doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.” I shot to my feet, glaring at everyone in the room. “I’m not gullible, either. A) I’d already been injected with the nanobots before I met him. Someone must have swapped syringes in the hospital when they pumped me full of that stuff for the scanning machine, because that’s when I first started feeling the impulses to bolt. Why do you think I took off the way I did? And when I left, I went out that specific exit because I felt compelled to go that way. Chen was waiting there for me as if he knew I’d show up. And he was really surprised when I didn’t just automatically leave with him. He expected me to go, no questions asked. Offering me the serum was his backup plan.
“And B) I know there’s a miracle serum because it worked. I had a dream after you guys tranqed me into oblivion. I haven’t dreamed since the explosion. I couldn’t. That part of my brain was damaged, just like my memory. Ask Dr. Haggerty, or have her scan my head again if you don’t believe me. You’ll see that at least part of me is healed. Dr. Chen gave me his number because he knew I’d be desperate to call him after his serum worked. I’m sure Donovan’s sitting around waiting by the phone right now. But hey, if you guys don’t want to believe me because you think I’m a desperate, naïve moron, fine. I’ll go without you.”