In My Skin (The Obsidian Files Book 3)

by Shannon McKenna

Maybe this was the last time. So be it. There was nothing left to do now but see this nightmare through. All the way to the end.

  Luke dragged his cock reluctantly out of her and set her down carefully on her feet. They showered briefly. Separately this time. Then dried off and pulled their clothes back on, not talking.

  Dani watched him sit down on the bed barefoot, in only his jeans. “Aren’t you going to put on a shirt before we do it?” she asked. “It’s cold in here. You’ll get chilled.”

  He shook his head. “I’m expecting some stim sickness,” he said. “I’ll have a high fever. Don’t freak if I do.”

  “How high? Your standards are different from mine.”

  “I don’t know. A hundred and seven, a hundred and eight?”

  “But that’s lethal!”

  “I told you.” His voice was weary. “I’m resistant to temperature extremes, which includes internal ones. Trust me. It’s not the fever that’ll get me.”

  “Oh? So what will?”

  Luke carefully avoided her gaze. “Try to relax, Dani. The procedure is—”

  “We can stop calling it a goddamn procedure. It’s an assault on your brain.”

  He reached for a small case that he’d set aside and showed her the contents. A jumble of syringes, still sealed in their sterile packaging, and vials of medication.

  “I have fever reducers,” he said. “And anticonvulsants. Don’t know if they’ll work. They’re standard meds, not designed for modifieds, but they’re all I could get my hands on. And it might be tough to stick me with a needle once my muscles are tense, but you can try.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  He reached out and grabbed her hand. “So,” he said. “We’re clear on the plan?”

  “I thread the probe, following the brain-tube map you made for me using the 3D imager until I reach the implant in the zone you specified. Then it’s three quick pulses, keeping the dial at 95. At that point, I reassess. Are you bleeding out your eyes? Or just dead?”

  “Dani,” he said quietly. “Please.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. We’ve been through it, there’s no other way, your mind is made up, blah blah di-fucking-blah.” She held up the probe. “I just don’t understand how this can penetrate a living brain—your brain—without running the risk of massive infection.”

  “There are flexible seals at the end of each tube to prevent contamination,” he explained “Braxton’s invention. Functional, but totally illegal. Which is why you never heard of it.”

  Luke put on the flexible cap, positioning it so that the reinforced holes in the latex corresponded with his data ports, and then reached for the shackles.

  Dani put up her hand. “Wait.”

  “No more stalling,” Luke said, his voice tight. “Please. This is killing me.”

  “I’m not stalling. This is necessary.” Dani rummaged in the kit for some rolls of gauze. “Hold out your wrists.”

  Luke made an impatient sound. “That’s not essential. We’re wasting time.”

  “I’m the nurse here, and I don’t like the looks of those shackles.”

  He humored her, grumbling, as she wrapped a protective barrier of gauze around each wrist and each ankle. Then Luke stretched his long body out on the bed, his head propped up on a foam cushion while she fastened the shackles.

  She stepped back when it was done, unnerved by the sight of him spread-eagled on the bed. “You really think those shackles are necessary?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If this goes south, take the ID and the bank account info and the car and get far away. Fast. Promise me.”

  “And just leave you here,” she said, angry again. And scared. “Alone, at death’s door. Right.”

  “Once you’re a hundred miles away, call 911 from a pay phone.” Luke’s voice was maddeningly calm and matter-of-fact. “Tell them the address and then disappear.”

  “Yeah? And what happens to you?”

  “Whatever the outcome, I accept full responsibility. You need to be far away when the authorities or Obsidian find me.” He gave her a coaxing smile, way too weird coming from a guy chained to a bed. “But it won’t come to that. I’ll be fine. I have a good feeling about this.”

  She scowled. “That makes one of us.”

  After that, there was nothing else to say. Just essential details. The placement of the machines, the adjustments to the cap, the visual of Luke’s disembodied brain generated by the 3D imager. The handling of the thin probe and its almost invisible wire, which she had to thread slowly through the branching tubes inserted into his brain.

  It was a slow, incredibly precise task, but Luke was calm and emotionless, talking her through it as if he’d done it himself hundreds of times before.

  The imager enlarged the brain visual, making all the implants and trace tubes fully visible. Someone had put that crap into his skull against his will for evil, selfish purposes.

  She wanted to find those monsters and crush them out of existence for hurting and using him. For putting her into a position where she had to hurt him, too.

  Fuck them all sideways. This was so wrong. She was really angry now. When she most needed to be cool.

  She knew how to work fast and hard without getting rattled. She’d worked in big city hospital emergency rooms, she’d dealt with gunshot wounds, car accidents, stab wounds, amputations, burns, violent trauma of all kinds. She knew how to stay calm in a life-or-death crisis.

  But this was Luke. This was personal.

  It took forever to get the probe where it needed to be. She showed Luke the image with a hand mirror. He peered at it for a moment, and confirmed that it was as close as his trace tubes could get.

  “Go for it,” he said. “For fuck’s sake. Get it over with.”

  “Don’t rush me.”

  Stay cool, she told herself. Act, don’t react. His life is in your hands.

  “This isn’t goodbye.” He was reading her mind. And he had that raw, naked look in his eyes that made her heart twist and ache.

  She took hold of the wand, swallowing hard, and studied the probe’s position on the imager one last time.

  “Dani,” he said. “I have to say it. Just in case. You know it already, but I—”

  “Stop,” she said abruptly. “Don’t, Luke. Tell me after.”

  His brow furrowed. “But what if I—”

  “Then nothing. Having heard you say it before would only make it worse. Don’t you dare say it. I’ll kick your ass. And you’re shackled, so you won’t be able to stop me.”

  He let out a sigh. “OK. I’ll say it after. Every day, all day. For the rest of my life.”

  “You sneaky bastard.” Her voice had gone thick. “Always getting around the rules somehow.”

  “Always.” His dimples flashed. “Do it. It’s not going to get easier if you wait.”

  “Three short taps,” she repeated, her finger hovering over the button.

  The tendons stood out on Luke’s neck. His jaw was clenched. “Hit me,” he said.

  She hit the button. Held her breath. Tap, tap, tap.

  There was no noise. She felt a faint vibration in the wand, and saw holographic explosions of light on the imager. Wild activity.

  Luke’s eyes went wide and frozen. He no longer saw her.

  She couldn’t seem to exhale. Or even blink, as she watched him. Just waiting.

  Then the convulsions began.

  Chapter 20

  He was floating away from the storm and the noise. On some level, he registered shock waves convulsing his body, but his consciousness was jolted loose, as if someone else was suffering a soaring fever and brutal spasms. Chains jerked and rattled. The bed shook and danced on the floor.

  Worst of all, Dani had to see him like this.

  Then the thought dissolved into pure pain and he was sucked
into a vortex, whipped violently through a vast, unknown inner space. Images, faces, places. Broken pieces of himself flashing by, whirling into blackness—

  He landed someplace solid. He felt it, smelled it. He was in a dark hallway, but it seemed huge to him. The ceiling was so high. The floor very cold beneath his bare feet.

  He looked down at his feet. Small feet. He was small. In Superman pajamas.

  A loud, piercing noise sounded in his ears. Penetrating and desperate.

  The place smelled. Old cigarette butts, unwashed laundry. He picked his way across the dirty linoleum of the kitchen floor. Unwashed dishes stank in the sink.

  The piercing sound came from the bedroom behind him at the end of the hall. A baby crying. He made his way into the living room where the grownups were stretched out on the couches and the floor. He picked his way around the needles on the carpet to where Mom lay, curled up next to the coffee table. He shook her shoulder, calling her.

  She wouldn’t wake up.

  Then he clambered over sprawled bodies of other people, who he mostly didn’t know, until he got to Dad, who was sprawled on one of the couches.

  “Dad? Dad? Wake up. The baby—”

  Dad’s backhand swipe knocked him backward and he fell, sprawling across the sleeping bodies and hitting the coffee table. Rattling the burnt spoons and foil and other stuff that covered the coffee table when the grownups did their long naps.

  “Fuck off,” Dad muttered thickly. “Go to bed.”

  He got himself up and went back to the kitchen. There was a diaper bag by the door. He searched through it, pulling out the plastic bags of powder until he found a spare baby bottle stored in there. He dragged a kitchen chair over to clamber up on the counter, trying to find a place for his feet in the jumble of dirty dishes and straining up to reach the jar Mom used to mix up the baby’s bottle. He sniffed suspiciously when he pried off the lid. There was a lot of white powder around the house. He didn’t want to give the baby the wrong one. This smelled right, though. Sweet and milky. It tasted right.

  He didn’t see any of the special water Mom used for the baby, so he just filled the bottle with tap water and poured in some powder. He closed and shook it the way Mom did, and made his way back through the hall to the back bedroom.

  The wails had gotten louder.

  In the bedroom, the baby had pulled himself up with the crib slats, chubby face looking over the top rail wet with tears, mottled and dark with the hard work of screaming. He wore just a diaper. It was cold. He shrieked even louder when Luke came in.

  Luke clambered up onto the side of the crib and climbed into it, plunking himself down cross-legged on the mattress, and stuck the rubber nipple into the baby’s mouth.

  Instant silence. Fierce, rhythmic sucking. The baby’s huge dark eyes, circled all around with long wet lashes, stared up at him, like it was look or die.

  Luke fished around between the crib slats and the mattress until he found a blanket. Everything smelled like pee and the blanket was stiff with it, but it was dry, so he wrapped it around the baby’s shoulders and pulled him onto his lap. The diaper was soggy and hot.

  But the gurgling sound the baby made was good. Little grubby wet hands clutching his Superman pajama top for dear life, that was good. Even with a heavy wet pee-pee diaper on his lap, this was the best place in the house to be.

  Luke hung onto the long-ago feeling as memory fragments broke and whirled around him. His little brother’s eyes, locked on him like a lifeline. His brother had been alone on the day he’d come home from school and found their parents dead. Killed by rival drug dealers.

  Luke had stayed late at school that day for basketball practice. He’d seen his little brother from across the big gym when he showed up at the door.

  His eyes had been like big holes burned into his face.

  Luke had known in a heartbeat. The coach bellowed at him for missing the shot, but he let the ball roll and ran to his brother, and they went back home to face it together.

  Mom and Dad had been duct-taped to the kitchen chairs. Clubbed to death and they hadn’t died quick.

  Disjointed flashes of the time on the streets afterward. Selling Mom and Dad’s private emergency drug stash for money and food kept them going for a while, sleeping on park benches, in bus stations, eating fast food, dumpster diving. A fat guy in a tailored suit had once offered Luke forty bucks for an hour with his little brother. He could still see the hunger squirming in that guy’s beady eyes. His pink, shiny lips.

  Luke had beaten the man to a pulp and left him gasping for air on the ground.

  He remembered the day Braxton spotted them in a bus station. He’d offered cheeseburgers as he tried to recruit them for what he said was a scientific experiment. The plan had been to score some free grub, get the perv’s wallet, blast outta there and fuck you, too.

  Next thing they knew, they woke up in a cell under a blazing white light, tied down. Realizing too late that this guy was so much worse than the perv or pimp that they’d taken him for. This guy was a monster from the deepest fucking pits of hell.

  Faces, names. Floating and disembodied. Familiar voices blared, faded again. His brother. Other kids, restrained, hooked up to big white helmets. Screaming. A girl’s voice, shrieking over and over again. Jada!

  White-coated researchers were pulling a tiny girl with dark eyes and long black hair away from an older girl who was fighting furiously with a group of white-jacketed guys. Holding her own, too, until one of them stabbed a needle into her throat.

  He still heard the high-pitched, reedy voice of the little girl yelling for the older one, her voice receding as they dragged her away. Zoe! Zoe!

  He saw a battle. Blood, noise, fire. Midlands. Reliving it, remembering the death blows he’d inflicted. Muscle tissue tearing open, bones splintering, hot blood spurting. Their eyes as they died, wide and scared and baffled. Blood and fire, smoke and death.

  Too many memories all at once. Not one following another, but all of them together, rolling over him like a landslide. He was engulfed.

  An eternity later, he heard a sound in the darkness. A bird chirping. A sweet warbling trill.

  His acoustic ASP program flickered into functionality, identifying sounds, frequencies, tonal intervals, volume, distance, the direction from which the sound came. Then the ASP trawled the remaining intact file archives for the bird itself. Western Meadowlark. Sturnella neglecta. He saw pictures in the database. Black, white and yellow. Long beak.

  Pretty bird. Pretty song.

  He just listened, not paying any attention to the data. Just enjoying the tune. A mental jolt started his ASP clock again with a startled flicker. It was 6:48 AM. The bird’s seven note melodic warble was a crystalline rise and fall of sound.

  ASP worked. His ears worked. The archives worked, at least this one. His other senses were coming back online more slowly. Suddenly he could smell again. His own fear sweat. Blood. Disinfectant spray. Chemical compounds. His ASP started to automatically analyze and catalog them, identifying them as the drugs he told Dani to use for fever and convulsions. From the smell of it, not much had gotten inside him.

  Dani. Warm and sweet. Shower soap and shaving cream and stress hormones.

  The thought of Dani hit him like a shot of adrenaline, kicking his faculties into high gear. He came back into his body. Arms and legs still splayed. Muscles exhausted and sore from the cramping, the convulsions. Ankles and wrists bloody and inflamed from fighting the shackles. His head hurt, his jaw hurt, his eyes hurt.

  Everything hurt like a bastard. As if he’d been thrashed.

  One half of his body was warm, the other half was cool. A soft curl of hair tickled his nose. Dani had cuddled up to him on the bed, and she was fast asleep. Dark bruised marks of exhaustion shadowed her eyes.

  His processor went wild at the sight of her. It frantically sorted and sifted
Dani data to make sure she was OK. Temperature, heart rate, blood sugar. He’d scared her half to death. He gazed hungrily at her face, the pen strokes of her elegant eyebrows, her curling lashes, the freckles on her nose, the mole on her temple. The sexy folded indentation in the center of her pillowy lower lip. Not as pink as it should be.

  God, so beautiful. He wanted her so bad. It was a crazy idea, and no favor to her. But there was nothing he could do. There was no way to stop this feeling.

  Her eyes fluttered open at the intensity of his scrutiny. Comprehension dawned.

  “Luke!” She propped herself up onto her elbow, eyes wide. “Oh my God. I can’t believe it. You’re alive. I didn’t think you’d make it.”

  I’m so sorry. He tried to say it, but his vocal cords were swollen and dry. He coughed. It hurt his chest. “Sorry,” he forced out.

  “You? You’re sorry?” She peered into his eyes. “So are you still…”

  “Still me?” he responded, thickly. “Yeah. Think so.”

  “I didn’t doubt that,” she said. “Who else could you be? I just wondered, you know.” She sat up, murmuring in dismay at the bloodstains on the loosened gauze beneath the shackles. “Let’s get these off of you. I hate these things.”

  She fussed over his wrists and ankles as each shackle came off, but he wasn’t concerned about it. They would heal in a matter of hours. By tomorrow there would barely be a mark. He tried to sit up, but sagged back down, wincing. Hurting.

  “Rest,” she said. “I don’t know how you survived. The fever alone was high enough to kill you.”

  “My genetic mods—”

  “Yeah, yeah, resistance to temperature extremes. But the convulsions. I thought your heart was going to explode. And it went on for hours. The meds were useless. It was hell. The fighting, the screaming. And look at you. You open your eyes and ta da! You son of a bitch. You scared the living shit out of me, you know that? All night long.”

  “Sorry,” he rasped again.

  “Stop apologizing.”

  He reached out to touch her hand, noting that his hand was streaked with blood from his wrist. “You didn’t do what I told you to do,” he said. “You were supposed to take the car and escape if I went nuts.”