by Jena Leigh
“Calm down, Decks!” Kenzie ordered. “They’re not here. But trust me, Nate’s carrying around enough guilt right now to last him at least a dozen lifetimes.”
“If we lose Alex over this, a dozen lifetimes won’t be nearly long enough,” Declan said.
Kenzie shook her head. “Knowing Alex, I doubt she gave them much choice in the matter. And there’s no reason to think she won’t reappear eventually. When she does, we’ll find her. Until then, we just have to keep waiting… and hoping.”
Waiting and hoping was decidedly not the approach he intended to take.
Declan’s third attempt to sit up was thwarted not by his sister or Oz, but by his own traitorous muscles.
The adrenaline surge that awakened him was rapidly wearing off, and he was now acutely aware of his weakened state.
Declan stopped struggling and lay back, blinking tiredly. “How long was I in cryo?” he asked. “And why?”
“Just over a year is the answer to your first question,” Ozzie said. He was fiddling with an IV stand beside the bed, exchanging one empty bag of red liquid for a full one. “As for your second inquiry, I’m afraid that explanation is a bit more complicated.”
He’d spent an entire year in suspended animation?
No wonder he felt so weak.
Declan’s attention was drawn to Ozzie’s gloved hands as he worked. They weren’t your typical medical gloves worn by a dentist, or your family doctor when he looked you over. These traveled well past his elbows.
He looked to his sister. She was wearing them, too.
“What, am I contagious or something?” Declan asked. “What’s with all the latex?”
Kenzie frowned. “It’s not what we might catch from you, Decks. It’s what you might catch from us.”
His expression turned quizzical.
If his immune system was compromised, then why weren’t they wearing masks?
Kenzie sighed. “Nate and Aiden were forced to put you in cryo, Declan, because Samuel Masterson injected you with a version of the VX-2 that had been tailor-made to work only on Alex.”
“By rights,” Ozzie said, picking up the story, “you should have shuffled off this mortal coil within roughly 48 hours of injection. Lucky for you, Miss Parker is a clever and exceedingly resourceful young lady. By placing you in stasis, she was able to buy Nathaniel, Aiden, young Master Grayson, and myself enough time to research and develop a remedy for your condition.”
Declan struggled once again to pull himself into a seated position on the bed. Resigned, Kenzie didn’t try to stop him this time.
Breathless, but finally upright, he asked, “A remedy?”
“Of sorts,” his sister hedged.
What did she mean by that?
“Are you telling me, Oz,” Declan began, “that you, Nate, Aiden, and Brian have been keeping this entire mess a secret from the rest of us for over a year?! Why? Why not warn us, so that we could stop the whole sequence of events from playing out in the first place?”
Ozzie arched a brow. “Let us just say that your baby brother proposed a very convincing argument for allowing these events to unfold exactly as they were meant to.”
“What sort of argument?” Declan asked.
Kenzie snorted, mumbling, “The kind of argument that involves war, destruction, nuclear holocaust, and the eventual annihilation of both the human and Variant races.” At Declan’s skeptical glower, she added, “Brian allowed me to glimpse his thoughts and see the visions for myself, Decks. He and the others made the right call. Alex made the right call. At least with the way all this played out, we now stand a chance at stopping the worst of it from coming to pass.”
“Only a chance?” he asked.
Kenzie frowned, but didn’t reply.
“And this remedy you found for me?” Declan asked, shifting gears. “I’m awake and more or less alive, so I assume it worked?”
Another frown, this time from Ozzie. “To an extent.”
“You want to explain that?” Declan asked. “Christ. Getting answers out of you two is like pulling teeth.”
Ozzie crossed his arms over his chest, defiant. “Patience never was one of your strongest virtues.”
“Declan has virtues?” Kenzie asked. “Plural?”
The joke fell flat beneath the weight of Declan’s glare.
She sighed. “We couldn’t exactly return you to normal, Decks,” Kenzie said. “The changes the serum made to your DNA before the others were able to synthesize an antidote were pretty… intense.”
“Define ‘intense,’” he said.
“Intense,” said Oz. “As in you no longer carry the genetic traits of a jumper.”
“So I can’t…” Declan swallowed hard. “I can’t jump? Not ever again?”
So that was why he’d been unable to sense any electrical current. It’s not that it wasn’t there, it’s just that he was no longer able to interact with the field surrounding him.
The expression that graced Kenzie’s features in the next moment took him by surprise: she smirked.
“What, Red?!” he all but yelled. “What did that drug and your so-called remedy turn me into?! What am I, now? A human? What did it do to me?!”
Ozzie cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “We’ll need to run a few simple experiments to be certain, of course. But, for all intents and purposes, the drug and its subsequent remedy—a therapy we derived from samples of Alex’s own blood—transformed you into a form of Variant that you’re already quite familiar with.”
And in that moment, it all finally clicked.
“You mean… you’re saying that now I’m like… like…”
Smiling, his sister finished the thought for him. “Yeah, Decks,” Kenzie said. “You’re like Alex. Her blood not only saved your life, it turned you into something just like her. You two are basically the same now.”
He was like Alex.
The emotions that overtook him as he processed that revelation ran the gamut from amusement to outright fear. He’d watched Alex struggle endlessly to maintain her control, being forced to adjust and evolve with each new ability. Would he be strong enough to do the same? Or would he constantly be at risk of hurting the people around him?
Kenzie took hold of Declan’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“Alright, O’Connell,” Ozzie said as he injected something into a tube in Declan’s IV. “I think that ought to be enough entertainment for you for one morning. I’m going to give you something to make you rest for a while. It’s going to take some time for you to get your strength back.”
Hopefully not too long.
Declan needed to be out there—needed to be in the world, searching for Alex—as soon as possible.
Kenzie released Declan’s hand and smiled sadly before leaving the room.
Ozzie finished the injection and stepped back.
Declan’s brow furrowed as he inspected the diminutive man. He was even shorter in person than he’d appeared on the bank of monitors in his London flat.
If Ozzie stood 5’5” on his tiptoes, Declan would have been surprised.
“What?” Ozzie snapped, scowling at Declan’s continued scrutiny. “Why are you staring at me, O’Connell? Have I something in my teeth?”
Declan snorted, shaking his head as a familiar quote sprang to mind. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I just thought you’d be taller.”
Ozzie rolled his eyes and Declan’s world went black.
Epilogue
The only thing that brought Alex Parker out of limbo was the image of Declan smiling down at her, alive, well, and completely cured.
If she reappeared in the time and place she was aiming for, that should be exactly what she’d find.
After a small eternity in limbo, Alex summoned the strength to slip through to her targeted destination.
She’d hoped, foolishly, that Declan and the others would be waiting for her.
For what safer place could there be for a landing, than the Adiron
dacks cabin that had always been her safe haven in the past?
She’d held so tightly to that image of herself in the Grayson home, surrounded by the Grayson family—her family—and Declan in particular, that when she finally escaped from that hellish in-between dimension, the cabin was exactly where she landed.
Alex materialized in Declan’s bedroom, crashing against the floorboards at the center of the room with so much force she splintered some of the wooden planks.
An involuntary cough racked her chest, reminding her of the same pain she’d felt when she landed in the ocean after her first time jump.
It was only after she shook off her initial daze that Alex realized she wasn’t alone.
Only, it wasn’t the Grayson family that she found waiting for her.
Instead, a circle of men in full tactical gear had her surrounded.
Each of the seven agents held a rifle mounted with a blinding white light—and each of those rifles was aimed directly at her head.
“Welcome home, Alexandra,” Director Carter said from somewhere behind them. “I’m glad you made it back in one piece.”
“How long…” Alex began to cough, the action bringing the taste of blood into her mouth. She ignored it. “How long since I first left?”
“Five weeks,” Carter replied. “Now that you’ve returned, I trust you’re prepared to hold up your end of the bargain. You did guarantee your compliance in exchange for my assistance, did you not?”
The bargain.
Nate had pulled it off. Carter had agreed and Alex’s eventual cooperation had been a part of those terms.
Although she was injured, Alex could have tried to fight her way out of that room—wanted to, even—but one thing stopped her cold: the fear that the Agency might still have Declan in their possession. If he was still being held in stasis in the basement of the Green Woods facility then, really, what choice did she have?
In that moment—hurt, disoriented, and woefully outnumbered—Alex Parker did the only thing she could do… she allowed the agents to sedate her without resistance.
Three tranquilizer darts later, and Alex’s world was beginning to blur around the edges.
A flash of light illuminated the hallway outside the bedroom—and then all hell broke loose.
Something exploded downstairs.
Through the fog and the noise, Alex could hear Carter ordering her men to split up, sending two downstairs to check out the commotion.
Before Carter could relay a second command, a second flash lit the room.
This time, the violet light came from just behind Alex.
Baseball-sized orbs of electricity—and to Alex’s surprise, fire—collided with four of the five remaining Agents. In the commotion, Alex watched the fifth take hold of Carter’s elbow and teleport her from the room.
Silence fell and Alex blinked tiredly, struggling to keep her eyes open and to turn her head toward her rescuers.
The best she could manage was to roll onto her back.
Ashes.
Cinnamon.
As Alex clung to her very last threads of consciousness, she stared up and into a beautiful pair of hazel eyes.
Declan.
Smiling down at her.
Alive and well… and completely cured.
He dissolved first the electric sphere in his right hand, and then the orb of fire hovering above his left palm.
Declan had a new ability.
Even in her current state, Alex knew what that meant. She wasn’t alone anymore. She and Declan were the same.
He knelt beside her.
“Hup to, princess.” Declan grinned. “We’ve got a war to win.”
Author’s Note
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About the Author
Jena Leigh is the author of the Variant Series novels Revival, Resistance, Redux, and Reckoning. Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, she spent ten years in the mountains of North Carolina before returning home to the lightning capital of North America. A shameless geek, she loves coffee, loud music, bad sci-fi movies, Skittles, and shenanigan-filled road trips to faraway concerts.
To find out more about The Variant Series and author Jena Leigh, visit her online:
www.jenaleighbooks.com
Also by Jena Leigh
The Variant Series
Revival
Resistance
Redux
Reckoning
Acknowledgments
This book might never have been written without the incredible support and encouragement I received from a lot of truly wonderful people. I owe each of you a tremendous amount of thanks.
Thank you to my family. To Mom and Dad, for your love, encouragement, and for your unwavering faith in my ability to overcome anything. To Mimi, for all of your support these last few years, and for making sure that everyone you knew in Mobile, Alabama had a copy of my latest book. And to my family in Florida, for the laughter, the love, and the home-cooked meals. You all mean more to me than you could ever know!
To my Riverview gang, for helping me stay sane while I wrote this, and for teaching me to smile again. Thanks for the friendship, the music, the laughter, and the fun.
Thank you to Carrie Gambill and Jinnie Brown, for the hours of conversation spent hammering out plot points and filling in plot holes, and for never giving up on this story, even when I was ready to. Without your patience and encouragement during those early attempts at a first draft, I never could have finished this book. You guys rock.
Thank you to my editor (and full-time miracle worker), Rana Williamson, for helping me whip this story into shape.
And last, but certainly not least, thank you to every reader, blogger, and fellow writer that has shown their support for The Variant Series. I never could have done this without you! Thank you!