by LeAnn Mason
“I'm going to need the story, but right now, I'm pretty sure the adrenaline has worn off and I'm going to crash.” I looked up at Holden and fluttered my eyelashes in a tired way, not a sexy one, unfortunately. “Catch me.”
The words were like permission, and my legs gave out, my vision tunneling. I was headed steadily toward unconsciousness as my body fought for the control to begin its healing cycle once again. Please, God, don't let me be dreaming, was my last coherent thought before everything shut down.
The battle for my freedom had been won. I was safe. I was going home.
CHAPTER 24
Once we’d safely returned to Minefield and convened at the farmhouse, it was explained. What had gone down in my absence, the extent of the betrayal that I’d—we’d—experienced. I was sandwiched between my parents on the couch, each with one arm around my shoulders and the other touching a leg. Both of them needed to be physically reassured that I was there and relatively whole. I couldn’t help shying away from my father’s touch. That was a new sensation.
My teammates were either sitting on the floor in front of me—Holden and Jade each sat against a leg—or behind the couch like Devlin and Aimee. There was something brewing between those two, but only time would tell if it was love or hate. Steve, Trent, and Tanner had grabbed chairs.
Commander James stood in front of the television and gave me the rundown. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the entire story yet…
“Steve told his father about your healing—”
“I swear, I didn’t know his plans, Nat. It was what he’d asked of me from the beginning, to keep him informed. Naïvely, I thought it was for noble reasons.” Steve went from adamant to defeated by the end of his heated interruption. “I’ve broken ties with him. I don’t want to be associated with his evilness ever again. I’m so, so sorry, Nathalee. I didn’t mean—”
“I forgive you. You are not your father, and now you truly understand the man’s core. I won’t turn against you,” I reassured the newly-reformed Steve as best I could.
“Councilman Davidson alerted both Doctor Parmore as well as his government handlers about your unique status. They’d been funneling people, in one way or another, to the experimental medical center for years,” Commander James continued.
“The medical center?” my dad broke in, the lilt to his question giving away as much as his thoughts would have if they’d been known to me.
“Yeah, Dad. Another secret of yours I learned.” My eyes were flinty as they tunneled into my father’s. I watched as realization filtered into their pretty hazel depths. I watched my father break before my eyes. The room went silent as my father and I had a showdown. Minds all speculated, and the noise made it hard to think, but then my father dropped his mental shield, something he’d only done a couple of times before.
I’m so sorry. It took me too long to realize how far gone she was. I removed myself from the situation… or, I thought I had. He pleaded with me, but I held up a hand to stave off his explanations.
“Did you do it?” I asked him, point-blank. The tightening of his eyes and nearly imperceptible nod was enough confirmation for me. With a deliberate break of contact from my father, I turned my attention back to the room who were all shamelessly tuned in to our exchange. “I’m sorry, Commander. Please continue. I’d like to know the events.”
It was not the time to hash out the ins and outs of my very existence, the fact that my uniqueness was only so because my father had engineered me that way. I wasn’t sure if I could ever really trust him again. So many things he’d lied to me about…
With the mental prodding of Commander James and my second affirmation that I was ready, he continued with what I assumed was a fairly practiced speech. “The medical center is set on the grounds of the Enhanced Prison for our region. They could also pluck any incarcerated Enhanced and perform any number of inhumane testing on them without repercussion, until now. The Doctor had sent one of her students, in this case, a girl named Tori—”
I grunted. My nemesis.
“To see if the rumor was true. She had been the rock launcher. That day downtown.” It made a weird kind of sense now that I knew it had been her, especially when I thought back to the other times I’d been randomly struck with items. Usually, they’d been rocks. I guess someone had seen what they’d needed to that day and Zealot Doc and the councilman had made their move to get me out of Minefield.
My getting shot was a natural conclusion to the next step of the plan.
“A Non-Enhanced purist fanatic had been alerted to your ability to read minds. He hadn’t been told to do anything, or not to, for that matter. Only informed of your Enhanced status. Plausible deniability for anyone else involved. Bonus that he was killed and couldn’t flip on anyone.” Smart.
“The surgeon at the regional hospital only had to be told that he’d have the chance to learn more than he could ever imagine about the secrets of the Enhanced, and he’d allowed for you to be kidnapped from the hospital—with Miller’s help,” Devlin broke in. We all remembered just how drawn he’d been to me. His betrayal wasn’t surprising in the least, but it still stung. And Miller? We all figured him for an asshole.
“Holden broke when you went missing. Flipped his switch at the hospital. I ended up having to put him out—hard. Took everything I had,” Jade said from the floor by my feet, looking at me with large, water-logged eyes and a trembling lip. She was downplaying her own worry, I knew. If the subject wasn’t so heavy, I’d make some crack about her being fine with me missing. But I knew better, and she needed me to. I squeezed the hand she’d laid on my knee and smoothed my hand down her golden hair. She’d feel my forgiveness.
“We basically kidnapped Holden. Made him come back here. We just couldn’t do anything in the city. We had no idea who we could trust. We didn’t know the city. We had no idea of where you’d been taken…” Trent put in his two cents with fevered intensity from the far chair he was draped in. I swear, that man never looked more than mildly inconvenienced. It was a talent I’d never learn.
“Can I do the briefing for a sec, guys?” Commander James asked sardonically from his spot at the “head” of the room. The sight of him was like a balm, though the tone was one I wasn’t used to hearing from him. There he was, in all his formidable and steadfast glory, like he’d known without a doubt that we’d all come home.
When he was satisfied with the chorused agreement from everyone, he picked up the narrative. “I started working on my contacts outside Minefield to see if anyone knew what was going on and, ultimately, who would be willing to help us get you back.
“I was pleasantly surprised with the result. Commander Rogers pulled his men together for the return trip and gave me the number of the FBI Supervisory Agent he knew and trusted. We knew your location, since you’d had the GPS locator implanted in your music player.” He cut his eyes to my mom, a small quirk to his lips. “She knew you’d never leave it and even if it was taken from you, it was most likely still at your location.
My attention caught on one word: she. “You did it?” I turned on my mother in disbelief. I mean, I knew she loved me but she was rarely outward with it. “Did Dad tell you to?”
That would make sense to me. He was the worrier. He was my shadow.
Glossy blue eyes portrayed a depth of sadness I’d never seen in my mother as she took me gently by the shoulders. Her mind was totally open to me, something I knew she loathed. What I found there threatened to break me all over again but put me back together in a way I’d never been before.
She loved me. Fiercly. Worried over me constantly, and berated her previous demeanor toward me. She vowed not to “fail me” again.
“I love you, Nathalee,” was all she managed aloud. The tears running freely down both our cheeks clued the team into the depth of our exchange.
I couldn’t speak for fear of releasing the torrent lingering in my mind. There was so much going on in there. I squeezed her small, soft hand. I wanted
to give her a bear hug that Dane would have been proud of but my body and emotions just couldn’t handle that yet.
Commander James picked right back up the moment I returned my eyes to him. “Both Commander Rogers and his contact at the FBI confirmed that the location was the Enhanced Prison. We worked together with haste. The FBI found and flipped a nurse on the inside, giving us intel and probable cause for an emergency search warrant, because the prison was on federal land and thus their jurisdiction. We sent Tanner in his… meditation mode… to find you, maybe give us some visual markers inside the unit. But you actually made contact, so he was able to tell you not to give up on us.” His stone features softened. “We needed you to not give up on us.”
“I didn’t,” I whispered, another tear trickling down to my chin. It was okay for them to see my emotion. They were my tribe.
Commander James nodded once and cleared his throat of his returned emotion. “Luckily, we were able to get the FBI to move on the intel quickly. Even if it wasn’t as fast as we wanted. We got there as quickly as we could, Nat.”
“I know.”
“Doctor Parmore will be going to the prison she previously plucked subjects from, the hospital doctor will lose his license, and my brother is dead. Nice work on that, by the way.” There was no sorrow in him for the loss of his brother, Holden’s father. Only pride in my ability to incapacitate the man, especially under the circumstances. “As for Councilman Davidson, if he is proven to be guilty, he will be joining the good doc in a prison cell. His involvement is more tenuous, and will need to be testified to by someone else who has been involved. Most likely Doctor Parmore. Until then, he has been placed under house arrest and asked to step down from his position within Minefield.
“Trent was able to sneak into their system and copy a good portion of the surveillance and experiment footage. We have that to use as ammunition to bring the Non-Enhanced down from their high horses, maybe even create enough social outrage that our transition will be smoother than it would be otherwise.”
“We don’t want to use your imprisonment and… torture as a platform. Don’t think that. It’s more of a last-ditch effort to show that Enhanced have just as much to fear from Non-Enhanced as the other way around, and only with express permission. Geez, this definitely hasn’t smoothed things over here. People are even more spun-up about leaving Minefield now.” Trent’s thoughts meandered.
“Well. I honestly can’t say I blame them anymore,” I responded quietly, truthfully.
“Both sides will need to rebuild trust after this, but I think it may open up the eyes of the everyday NE. The road from here will not be an easy one. World-changing events never are. But we can do it. It will take time and it will take trust from both sides,” Dad said with enough conviction to make me believe it. Almost.
It was a long-shot but, to keep my mind from diving too deeply into all the nightmares just waiting to overtake me, I thought I’d try one last time for an answer to a question most of us still had. “So, Commander, don’t suppose you want to tell me just what ability you’ve got tucked away? I didn’t see you leading the war party at the prison…”
This was a good time to play on his guilt, and was probably the only time he would succumb…
With a heavy sigh, he caved. “I have impenetrable skin.”
“What? Like you’re invincible?” Trent screeched, again in awe of an ability.
Commander James held up a hand to ward off further speculation, saying, “Not invincible, just that a weapon used on my skin will have no effect.” He said it so matter-of-fact, like he hadn’t just blown all of our minds with that one phrase.
He looked at me imploringly, “you understand why I didn’t come, don’t you? You know that if I thought you needed me, truly, that I would have let nothing keep me from getting you back… right?”
I’d never seen my commander look so… defeated, so scared. He was sincerely worried that I would not forgive him for not being in on the physical rescue. For letting me be taken in the first place.
“I know. And you did right. Minefield needed its Commander, especially with the rest of us out. You orchestrated it all, I know what you did, and I will forever be grateful that you got me out.” When his eyes began to glisten, he implored me mentally to divert the topic
“And y’all thought my gifts were badass. This man is The Commander of the Enhanced Enforcement Agency for a reason.” I straightened, portraying the seriousness of my next words. “I am proud to have you as my commander, sir. Thank you for bringing me home.”
I looked around the comfortable room, taking in these people. My team. My family. And I knew that together we could handle what the world threw at us and move forward. The realization was probably the only thing that would succeed in pulling a smile from me right then. Together, we would conquer our fears.
EPILOGUE
Everything was different now. We walked down streets that also contained Non-Enhanced. Lookie-Loos who decided to take a day trip into our small and “exciting” town. Come to see how the other half lived. Enhanced did the same, venturing out into the world more and more frequently. It wasn’t without its hiccups, as both sides still harbored deep misgivings for the other and some chose to act on those fears, but as a whole? It was… progress.
The Enhanced Enforcement Agency was now a full-fledged and government-recognized entity. We were still in our start-up and recruitment phase, but we had our own uniforms and a freaking badge! I was actually starting to let myself believe that the world might just be big enough for all of us—together.
My parents and I had a sit-down a few days after I’d been recovered. The talk was hard to hear and things were still strained between us all.
I had, in fact, been “engineered” to some extent. I’d known that it wasn’t unusual for Sages to do some form of embryo transfer because of the fertility issues they faced. Mom had known. They justified the “tweaks” to my genome as wanting to give me the best shot at a happy, healthy, life. I’d argue they made my life that much harder.
You almost ready? Holden grazed my rear as he passed, headed to where a suitcase sat open on our bed. You’ve been standing there with those same two pairs of panties in your hands for like five minutes… He laughed when I looked at my hands in confusion.
There were, in fact, a pair of skimpy undies in each hand. I tossed them both into the chaos of the bag without any further thought. The light caught on my right forearm where, months ago, I'd been skinned as an experiment to see if, and how fast, I would heal. It was as if the incident had never happened, at least physically. My mental state was still a work in progress. At least we hadn’t had to vacate the farmhouse. Instead, the property was becoming a compound, with several more dorm-like buildings for the incoming recruits. If we chose to leave the EEA or discontinue as instructors, new lodging would need to be found, but I didn’t see that happening for quite a while.
The long, drawn out, complicated, and ridiculously frustrating experience that was the trial against those in charge of the “Enhanced Experiment”, as it had been dubbed by the media, was finally over. The verdict of “guilty” for those who'd risked going through with the jury trial had been handed down just this morning. My testimony and allowed video evidence of both my being shot and being an unwilling participant in said experiment, went far with the twelve people—both Enhanced and Non—the verdict reaching decision in just under ten hours. Not a record, but good enough for me.
The light glinted blindingly off another object, this one attached to my left hand. My ring finger, to be exact.
Part of being a recognized government entity meant government wages, which were substantial enough that Holden dropped a pretty penny—or many—on the beautiful three-stone engagement ring that now drew my eye.
My love. I want to hurry to the shores of Grand Cayman where I can dig my toes into the sand and take your hands in mine as I proclaim my love for you and become your ever-devoted husband. But, in order for that fantasy t
o become reality… he stepped up to me and wrapped my arms around his waist, then tipped up my chin lightly so he could see my eyes. His thumb rubbed tenderly across my cheek and jaw where he still held me. You need to stop getting distracted by the shinies unless they're these, he indicated his turquoise irises with his first two fingers shaped like a 'V’, and you're saying “I do.”
Dipping his head enough to meet my lips with his, he proceeded to show me just what waited on the other side of those two words. His kiss was molten-hot but soft and sweet. His lips were perfect. His kiss was perfect. This man is perfect, I thought as I wrapped my fingers up in his messy dark hair, asking for more. His mouth opened to me, and I nipped at his lip in praise before slipping my tongue out to caress his, an invitation to tangle further.
A completely-faked cough filtered through our ears, but we disregarded it. I was over worrying about what my housemates would or would not hear. What they thought about whatever I did with Holden in my arms was their problem. We'd worked out a system. I pressed the button on my phone, a new one that also sported a music player—score! It was a tune I loved by a female-led band about how you need to tell your woman that you love her. The cymbal hits were easy to time movements to.
“Guys, I'm heading to the island with or without your love-struck asses!” Jade yelled with a huff as she lugged her overstuffed luggage past the open doorway. Steve's and Dev's echoed agreements filtered through our haze enough to get us moving again.
Let's get going, Missus James.
I slapped his hard chest that was covered in a short-sleeved grey button-up that did wonders for those gorgeous blues of his. “I'll agree to you calling me that… once it's official. Until then? Your Highness, will suffice.” A returned slap to my butt as I turned toward the door had me tacking on another quip. “Bring the luggage, Stable Boy.”