Dee nodded, not liking where any of this was going. Were they about to explain to her that they’d mixed magic and technology to transform her into something more like them?
“It’s something like that. Personal energy transference. Very focused. Very difficult. We lost so many in the learning—” It was her turn to cut her thoughts short.
Dee was numb, staggered by the callousness maintained to ruin countless lives over the ages for their experimentation. The mystery of the science behind it was irrelevant.
“I might have died. How many others did die? How long have you been trying this? Why did it work on me?”
Each question was articulated more quietly than the last, so her final words were barely a breath of voice pushed into the room.
Zosma sat forward. “It worked on you because you were the one. You were the one meant to complete our family.”
Dee closed her eyes against the ridiculousness of it. Rage mixed with sadness mixed with despair and just a little nostalgia in the swirling foam of sentiments his words conjured.
Trying to maintain perspective above the rising surge, Dee kept talking. “I had a family.”
Regina was sympathetic. “Yes, you did. They have moved on. You have moved on.”
A strange pain struck Dee from throat to womb. It was the sharpness of loss like her father’s death left buried inside her, mingled with the wistfulness of changed relationships that was Mike. What might he have done or been; who might he have met, or where might he have gone if he’d only let her go? Her time away had changed them. No matter what the future held, she’d never be as close with him as she’d been. That she’d run after her father died had shattered something in them both.
Maybe there was no other life for her but with these Beings. Maybe the circumstance of how she’d gotten here was irrelevant.
She looked at them again, the pair in front of her, comparing the idea of relevancy with what she felt in her heart. But there was too much warring inside her for her to understand her own feelings.
“What about the others?”
“The others will learn to accept it. You do not belong to them. You are a part of us.” Zosma’s words were clear and confident, brokering no room for argument.
“You tried to kill me.”
“No.” The force of his words underlined the seriousness of his answer. “We never meant you harm. We sent a test. That one would never have killed you.”
Dee frowned, remembering her fight in the cemetery. “I think maybe it was confused about its mission.”
“Did it attack then run off?”
“Yeah, but—”
Understanding crossed his face. “You chased after it.”
Dee clamped her mouth shut against the retorts rising inside her, realizing his truth could very well be just that. “What about the others?”
The Rishi sat back with a sigh. “We sent one more. The rest—we’ve been trying to find out.”
Dee gulped, swallowing the fear this mystery implied to focus on what was known. “Okay. But how did you know to send them there? How did you find me?”
“Mike put out a missing person report when you disappeared. When you showed back up, he updated the case. We were alerted.”
Dee was getting a headache. “But how did you know it was me?”
“We can thank DOT’s superb data analyzation skills for that.”
“It took me months to compile and sort all the information.” DOT’s voice sounded self-defeated rather than proud. “My apologies it took me so long.”
Zosma continued as if DOT hadn’t spoken. “We don’t want there to be any secrets. We want you to understand—we’ll show you what happened. Just know, this is going to be hard for you to watch.”
Dee sat straighter, wondering what exactly she would watch.
“DOT, bring up the footage from the lab.”
“Of course, Rishi. Should I load audio as well?”
“Yes, on mute. I’ll control what we hear as necessary.”
“Of course, Rishi.”
With an electronic click, a massive television rose from the floor, the large screen’s display broken into six quadrants that displayed different angles of a bright, sterile environment. Dee’s eyes flashed across each scene until understanding of what she was looking at crept over her.
She moved from her seat, plodding steps taking her closer so she could touch the images that opened a portal into a past she couldn’t remember.
Tears of another source welled in her eyes.
Laying on a hospital bed, propped on white pillows, covered in stark white sheets, Dee stared at a past-self she barely recognized. Hooked to clear fluids and a heart-rate monitor that showed a steady pulse, she wasn’t sure how to process it all.
When Steve walked towards the bed from beneath the camera, Dee fell to her knees. Her fingertips brushed the screen, her breath caught.
Another camera shot the scene from the other side of the room, but Steve’s face was dropped too low for her to see his expression while he stood over her in silent vigil.
When Ray came into view to stand across the bed from Steve, she turned to Zosma. “Can we hear what they’re saying.”
He shook his head with a sad glint in his eye. “Not yet. That will be for a later time. For now, I want you to see how you came to be what you are.”
Disappointed, Dee turned back to the silent scene.
While the Rishi fast-forwarded the footage as he deemed appropriate, Dee’s eyes danced across the images, taking in all she could until the play resumed its normal speed.
A trio of Soldiers moved through the lab, trailed by a nervous-looking Steve and Ray. They checked on a second patient before moving to where Dee lay in her partitioned area.
Recognizing the second patient, Dee gasped. “Kim?”
The girl who’d been her best friend was laid out in that second bed, hooked to the same IVs and equipment. Dee stared hard at the sleeping face, waiting for her brain to reinterpret the image, to see someone who looked a lot like Kim, but wasn’t. There was still hope that not all of them had been there when the fire ravaged the building.
Without a doubt, Dee knew that’s what this place was.
Attention back on herself, Dee shivered at the weird disassociation she felt from watching things happen to her that she didn’t remember. Unsettling put it mildly. As the newcomers touched and prodded her, she couldn’t ignore the phantom sensations that trailed over her skin. Whether memory or psychosomatic, she didn’t dwell long enough to determine. Instead, she watched with tense muscles, waiting for something dramatic to happen.
But, nothing did. There was very little to see. Nothing in the footage gave any clue to what was done to her. Nothing she saw gave any indication there was some merging of science and magic taking place. A Soldier unhooking her from an IV while another checked her chart was the most action to watch. The time stamp on the footage told that weeks had passed since the first image.
Still, she knew how this ended. She knew there would come a point that would be hard to watch, so every passing second was more suspenseful than the last.
Ray stepped forward towards the Soldiers, his mouth moving in speech she wasn’t allowed to hear. Whatever he said, was ignored.
She smiled to herself. Being ignored would have infuriated him. That he made no indication he was bothered by their disrespect meant he was more than a little afraid of them. Another point that told much about the situation her friends were in.
She clamped her jaw, reminding herself that this was the past. Her friends were dead. The self she saw lying in that bed was no more.
Matching the tightness in her face, her stomach knotted with pangs of loss and grief. She crossed her hands over her middle as if to compress those feelings inside while she watched the video of the past.
Some subtle change in the expressions of those watching the unconscious form set her upright. The doctor and two Soldiers surrounded the bed, while Steve and Ray looked
on from the edge of the room. The group stared at her prone form, and, from the future, she did the same. A weird mix of excitement and dread pushed her body taut. She was afraid to look while refusing to look away.
Again, there was no climax to the drama, so Dee was left feeling strung out from the tension.
The footage sped up. Dee watched the past progress in a whirl of motion that was tedious in its chaos of rapidity. Suspense continued to twirl a tight coil inside her.
Steve spent a lot of time in vigilant watch at her bedside, the look on his face something she’d never seen in person. As this scene played again, her heart tumbled. She’d known how he’d felt about her. She’d known and hadn’t been ready to accept it. She’d refused anything in her life that might require real attention or commitment or feeling.
Because of that expression on Steve’s face, she struggled to believe he was responsible for this. That look told of the impossibility of his involvement in putting her there. Yet, even if he wasn’t directly at fault, despite Zosma’s claim to the contrary, there was no overlooking the point that he continued to be a part of holding her. Even Ray, the selfish, wild friend they all questioned why they kept around, hadn’t seemed the type for kidnapping and mad science.
Her mind ran with all the ways they might still be innocent in all of this, regardless of the facts laid out.
She watched the doctor enter the frame where Steve and Ray conversed at her bedside. He spoke to them, and they left, expressions telling of their surprise at whatever they’d been told.
Dee almost ordered Zosma to let her hear.
When the doctor rolled her onto her stomach, ungracious in his handling, she forgot the request. Bare ass exposed to the room from the medical gown barely tied at the back, she watched, face burning, while he pulled instruments on a rolling stainless steel tray towards him.
Blocked from view, Dee couldn’t tell what was on that tray.
Breath strangled with apprehension, she watched the doctor hammer a tool that resembled an ice-pick into her hip. Shivers ran along her skin as she watched the process, phantom pain blooming in real-time while she watched the procedure on screen. Her fingers itched to rub the spot, but she refused the impulse so the pair behind her wouldn’t be clued into her discomfort.
Eyes pinned to the screen, she watched the doctor screw a tube, similar to one used to take blood, onto the top of the piece now sticking out of her. Mesmerized, she watched it fill with red liquid. Once full, it was replaced so another could be filled. Over and over this happened until she wondered if they’d drained her dry.
Her skin crawled. A tremor moved through her as she warred with the wish to turn away; to close her eyes; to run away sobbing.
Sudden movement on the edge of another camera-view grabbed her attention. She watched Ray spin to the ground, caught by an unexpected punch from Steve. Eyes wide, Dee was more than glad to follow this drama instead of watch her marrow get harvested.
Steve and Ray exchanged heated words before Steve re-entered the curtained room where she lay. His first reaction was to step to the bed and cover her with a sheet. The doctor looked at him like he was crazy, but Dee sent her thanks from years in the future, heart stuttering.
The video resumed a fast-forward pace.
When a Soldier came to her side, followed by the doctor who pulled a full syringe from his lab coat pocket, the video again fell to a natural speed. Dee glanced at the time-stamp to see that a few days had passed.
The doctor took the protective cover off the needle and inserted it into Dee’s arm. Seconds ticked by in tortured silence. They waited, those in the past and the present sharing a moment in time, while they waited for the sleeping form to react.
Some sound she couldn’t hear or a movement she couldn’t see must have occurred because suddenly, those at her bedside were more alert. Dee’s eyes flashed around the large screen to take in the other camera views, checking to see who else was in the lab, or what they might have responded to.
There was no visual cue to explaining, so her eyes returned to where the others clustered.
The girl-that-was-her rolled her head to the side, face furrowed in what might be pain or disorientation.
In the present, Dee’s heart raced.
On-screen, her head rolled to the other side, paused, then came forward, lifted off the pillow before releasing back.
The Soldier spoke into his collar. She was too eager to see what was happening with herself to move her attention to other cameras and see who the Soldier called to the scene.
The eyes of herself-on-the-bed popped open, gaze settled right to the camera that locked gazes with her. An electric jolt shot through her and images tumbled through her mind’s eye, too fast and disorienting to pin down.
She blinked fast to clear her vision, to pay attention to what happened on screen.
Head indented into the pillow with the pressure in her body, eyes wide, present-Dee winced at the obvious discomfort.
She wasn’t ashamed to step back from the screen to retake her seat next to Zosma and Regina. Perched on the edge of the chair, she leaned forward, forearms rested on legs, eyes staring as if waiting for two speeding trains to collide.
When the trains hit, her breath stopped.
13
The Soldier hit the floor, head wrested from his body.
The doctor cartwheeled over the bed.
Fixated on the decapitated form bleeding puddles at her feet, the Desiree-in-the-past straddled the body, hands pushing into its chest until they split through ribs, and she was forearm deep in gore.
Present-Dee’s brain found the footage too horrible to be real, so her mind didn’t register what she witnessed, missing the horror of it in the shock of its suddenness.
Distracted by movement from another camera, Dee watched the pair of missing Soldiers move into the lab, followed by Ray, whose body language told Dee he was pestering them with questions.
Her eyes scanned the various video, searching for a sign of Steve who was nowhere in sight. She let out a breath of relief, hoping this fact stayed true as her eyes moved back to where her past-self caught wind of the newcomers still unaware of the carnage beyond the curtain.
The doctor managed to scramble away. Dee didn’t see him, her worry for Ray and the Soldiers walking into a grand surprise too great to search for him.
Lucky for the Soldiers, the animal in Desiree’s skin wasn’t patient enough to wait to spring a surprise attack. She pounced through the screen of curtains, scattering the trio. The curtain pulled from the ceiling, allowing enough confusion the monster could not land a killing blow.
She was fast. Faster than Dee ever moved, the creature blurred with motion.
Even moving as dizzyingly as she was, the Soldiers managed to pull their weapons, zeroing semi-automatic rifles at the girl who took a few bullets from mere feet with silent snarls before darting out of the line of fire.
Pain blossomed across Dee’s torso in the present, and this time she couldn’t stop herself from rubbing at the spots. Her eyes never left the screen.
The frantic turning of heads explained that none knew where the monster went. Ray ran to the wall of computers, frantically punching keys, yelling over his shoulder.
Then, Desiree was there, slamming into him, so he crumpled uncomfortably against the counter. Before she could dispense more damage, gunfire spun her around. The assaulting Soldiers became her targets while Ray slid to the floor, hands pressed to his stomach as he rolled in agony. The computers above him exploded in a spray of stray bullets.
Watching uselessly from the present, Dee cringed, eyes darting from view to view, trying to absorb all that happened, attempting to follow the chaotic movements of the demon that wore her face. Flickering lights, damaged from gunfire, made it all the more difficult to focus.
The thing-in-Dee’s-skin streaked towards the Soldiers peppering her with gunfire. As she came closer, they switched their grips on their rifles, so the munition ordnances bec
ame melee weapons. When the closest Soldier swung, aiming for her head, her hand was there, catching it mid-swing and ripping it from his grasp. As if a long-practiced parry, she stabbed the stolen weapon through the astonished Soldier before he’d reacted to the theft of it. Impaled by an object never meant for such trauma, the Soldier stared, stunned, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
He was still crumpling to the floor when Desiree whirled on the second Soldier, who’d stepped around his comrade to come at her from the side. He managed to hit her squarely with a solid two-handed swing.
She stumbled, but the Soldier’s follow-up attack was too slow. Her chaotic speed left her too much time to pounce, and her fingers gouged and ripped as she rode him to the ground. Somehow, the Soldier maintained his grip on his rifle-turned-bat, using it to block her flurry of mauling attacks, but it didn’t look like he’d last long against her tantrum.
Someone moving into view in another frame brought Dee’s attention away from the dying Soldier.
Crouched low, slinking against the wall, she watched Steve move across the lab. Her heart dropped. She’d hoped he’d run, got to safety so she’d be able to find him alive at the end of all this.
She scanned the other views frantically, wondering what else she’d missed as she’d focused on the fight. Ray was no longer in view. She assumed he’d crawled away to hide in the darkness that had taken over the room, the fluorescents shot out to flicker in random burst of illumination.
Dee’s eyes strained to make sense out of the strobed imagery.
The doctor was now at the smoldering computers where Ray had been attacked, but Dee couldn’t tell what he was doing, so her eyes snapped back to where her possessed-self now sprinted through the lab to fling herself at a sealed door. Dee watched herself flail and rage at the sturdy structure that barred her path, mouth agape at the frenzied monster masked in her image.
Dee found Steve crouched next to Kim, sprawled on the floor, dumped when her bed had toppled. Dee blinked fast, surprised she’d missed the event as it happened.
We Are Forever (Rishi's Wish Book 2) Page 10