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Remaining silent is harrowing when all I want to do is ask questions or scream at the mystery person. Waiting is brutal on the nerves. When I feel the touch of his finger on my shoulder, I nearly jump out of my skin.
“I hear you can heal with a touch.” His voice moves in next to my ear, whispering as if he’s telling me a secret. His breath is stale, and he smells like sweat. Holding back the gag in my throat, I concentrate on the fact that if Holy is alive, he’s coming for me. He swore he’d never let anything happen to me, and I believe him.
The bag is ripped off my head, the room lights blind me, and I must blink several times to get my bearings. “What you think, you’re too good to answer me?” He shifts to stand before me, and I get a good look at the man now.
Dressed in all black, he also has black paint on his face and neck, concealing his features, but what stands out is the long scar running along the side of his face and down his throat.
“No,” I mutter.
Gripping my chin with two fingers, he wrenches my face around. “Then fucking answer me, bitch. You heal people or what?” I continue biting my tongue so I don’t say the wrong thing.
The thing being the truth.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Rage blasts from him, and I anticipate the slap across my face before he moves, so I’m able to deflect most of the impact. It still hurts like hell, though.
“Don’t fucking lie to me. Dr. Graves won’t like it.” Swallowing deeply, I try not to show emotion. My biggest fear is coming true, and it is terrifying.
“Who is that?” Swallowing past the lump in my throat and forcing myself to remain calm is easier said than done. “What do they want?”
“Dr. Graves,” he clucks his tongue and appears thoughtful. “She’s a bit of an extremist.” Fear seizes my lungs. “She’d like to run some experiments on you.” He smiles gleefully. “See if we can’t replicate your abilities.”
Before I can deny their knowledge of my gifts, the door opens again, and this time, I hear several footsteps entering the room. An older woman leads the charge—mid-fifties maybe, wearing a lab coat buttoned up and black low-slung pumps. This must be Dr. Graves.
“Miss O’Neill, thank you for joining us. I’m delighted that you and Ken are finally getting the chance to meet face-to-face.” I was right. “He spent so much time tracking you, I was beginning to wonder if he would ever retrieve you.” I can’t believe this is happening. “I’m sorry it was quite abrupt.” She doesn’t look it. “We’ll begin testing immediately.” The emotions in the room as I glimpse the people who entered with her are just as fearful as my own.
There are two men dressed like the one who has been questioning me, only they have intimidating guns strapped to their chests. The other four occupants range in age from a teenage girl to an elderly man, and I’m terrified of what’s about to happen.
As the first man speaks quietly to the doctor, she frowns down at me. “Ken here says you’re being rather difficult, Miss O’Neill. Are you?” My brows nearly hit my hairline at her phrasing.
“I’m being held against my will. Am I supposed to be thanking you for scaring the crap out of me?”
Ken glares, and I see him about to move forward when the doctor stops him. “She won’t want to help if you keep hitting her.”
“I don’t know how you think I’m going to help.” I will die to keep my secret.
The pleasantness from Dr. Graves vanishes as she grabs a chunk of my hair and tilts my head back. “Don’t get smart with me, young lady. I’ve spent a long time looking for you. Your mother covered her tracks well when she took off with you.”
“My mother?” I hiccup as my chest grows tight, and tears clog my eyes. We always believed she had just abandoned me.
“Yes, she was a drug-addicted whore who sold you to me only to decide at the last minute that she couldn’t let her baby be experimented on.” She sneers like what she’s doing is completely normal. “Boys, if you’d please.”
The other two men lift their guns and point them at the old man and girl and fire shots into their bodies. Screams and cries rent the air, and I must fight from vomiting as I’m finally untied.
“You can save them, or they can die.” She smiles and takes the two others, who weren’t shot, out of the room with her men.
“You can’t do this, they need doctors!” I scream as the door slams shut, and I’m left alone to decide the fate of two people I don’t know. “Please open the door! Someone come and help them!” Shouting and banging on the hard surface gets me nowhere.
Eventually, I turn towards the horrifying situation I’m being forced to face. I can’t let them die, but I can’t save them either. In doing so, I’ll become some lab project and spend my life being tested and used for their pleasure.
“Please come back,” I whisper as I drop to sit on the floor, torn over what to do and knowing I don’t have a choice.
“Help me,” the young girl pleads. The old man is passed out, blood pumping from his stomach. I can already feel his life draining away. He’ll die if I don’t help him. “Please,” the girl cries as she holds her leg, where I notice blood gushing out at an alarming rate. They must have hit an artery, and the longer I sit here, the more likely she is to die.
Scrubbing my hands up and down my face, I pull my shirt off as I move to the girl and tie it tightly around her thigh. “Keep pressure on this,” I tell her as I move the old man.
His lungs rattle with each breath he struggles to take, and as soon as my hands touch him, I’m assaulted with the agony of what his body is fighting against to keep from killing him. I feel the bullet as it rushed through his body, tearing through his organs and nicking his spine. Everything he felt in those terrifying moments before he passed out hits me tenfold because while I experience his wound, I don’t mimic it. My body isn’t being torn apart like his, it just feels like it.
“Oh god.” Bile climbs my throat as I begin to sweat, and my body wants to give out, but I force myself to keep still. To save this man who did nothing wrong. I can’t stop, or he’ll die. “Please hang on,” I cry out as my stomach loses the battle to vomit, and I turn just in time to puke near his feet.
