“Great.” Zachary shifted in his chair, then mumbled, “Butt still hurts.”
“I imagine so. Zachary, I want to personally thank you for saving my”—Mr. Parker looked at Jane and his eyes became very serious—“my intern’s life.”
It was all Jane could do to keep from bursting into tears. She wanted to leap from her seat and throw her arms around her da…Mr. Parker.
“She did the same for me, sir. I could have bled to death.” Zachary turned to Jane. “I still can’t believe you teleported me and I wasn’t awake to enjoy it.”
“You lost consciousness because we teleported you.” Jane slid her chair so close to Zachary’s that they might as well have shared one.
“I still can’t believe you got shot,” Michael said, shaking his head.
“Stopped the destruction of a city and took a bullet for the girl.” Nolan kicked back in his seat. “007 has nothing on you.”
“007 never got shot in the butt,” Michael said.
“Since when does the Mastermind Complex have its own hospital?” Zachary poked Jane in the ribs. “And why wasn’t it part of my tour?”
She squeezed his finger. “Top secret. You don’t have clearance.”
“Do I now?”
“No, I’m afraid we’ll have to wipe your memory.”
“Somebody already tried. It backfired. Instead of losing my memory, I found my dreams.”
Mr. Parker smiled. “To answer your question, Zachary, the Complex is self-sufficient due to the nature of ORDER’s work. We could hardly take you to the Quantum City Hospital with a gunshot wound. The police would get involved, and the paperwork would be a nuisance.”
“Can I ride the teleporter again?” Zachary leaned against Jane. “I want to see what I missed.”
“Teleportation is rough, that’s what you missed.” Jane loved the feeling of his shoulder against hers. “It had never been tested with four people. Warping the time-space continuum around that many took less power than we anticipated. The setting was too high. When the continuum snaps, it’s normally disorienting, but with your blood loss and the extra power, it caused you to black out.”
Zachary sighed. “At least we shut down HAVOC, right?”
“Classified information, Zachary.” Jane shook her head. “HAVOC doesn’t exist, as far as the public knows, and we can never talk about it. The outside world believes that the Large Hadron Collider is an experiment sanctioned by Quantum City University for the Young PhD Program. The tractor beam, had we not defeated it, would have been undetectable. The asteroid striking Deer Lodge would have been explained away as an unfortunate anomaly of nature. And Professor Mamont would have used it to threaten the civilized world. But the papers will report that he has retired from the university for health reasons.”
“Zach came too close to being retired,” Nolan said. Then his eyes lit up and he turned to Jane. “I hear that you have a mean right hook.”
“She was amazing!” Zachary clapped his hands. He leaned his head on Jane’s shoulder. “Neanderthal.”
Jane smiled. “He’s buying me a club for my birthday. He thinks it’ll come in handy on our next mission.”
“I already know what our next mission is,” Zachary announced. “It starts tonight, and involves popcorn and a movie.”
“You’re taking Jane to see Star Wars?” Nolan said.
Zach shook his head. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“I was hoping to watch The Princess Bride.” Jane smiled.
“Really?” Zachary brought his face closer. Jane couldn’t take her eyes off his lips.
“Get a room,” his brothers yelled.
“I hate to cut your celebration short,” Mr. Parker said. “But you actually do have a next mission. There is a new threat. This time, the entire continent is in danger.”
“HAVOC?”
“Not this time. I have a meeting with the president to get the details. Jane will be accompanying me.” Then he got up from his chair and left the War Room without another word.
“He’s really got to work on his social skills,” Zachary said. “Who’s hungry?”
Jane smiled at him and raised her hand.
“Me too,” Michael said. “To the café.”
Zachary got up to follow but Jane took his hand and tugged. He turned to her, his eyes questioning. She did a double eyebrow-bounce. His face lit up. He turned to his brothers. “You guys go ahead. I forgot something. We’ll catch up.”
Nolan’s mouth twisted into a grin, and he said to Jane, “My brother has an eidetic memory. He never forgets. Are you leading him astray, young lady?”
Jane put her hands on her hips. “You have a problem with that?”
“No ma’am. Move out!” Nolan ushered the others out of the War Room.
When the door closed, Zachary leaned back in his chair. “Is this the first time we’ve been alone since I got shot?”
“It is. I have so much I want to say to you.”
“Me too.” Zachary’s face became serious. “I wish I would have said it while we were in the tunnels, but we were sort of caught up in staying alive.”
“I know.” Jane looked deeply into Zachary’s eyes and held his gaze for all she was worth.
“I’m sorry,” they both said at once, and started laughing.
Jane shook her head. “I should have told you what I had done right from the beginning. Hiding it wasn’t right.”
“And I should have known my brothers are boneheads. Nolan showed me the police transcripts while I was in the infirmary. How did they possibly miss the most important part? Boneheads!” He paused. “Jane, I wish I had never said those nasty things to you. I am so sorry.”
They sat in silence. Then Zachary reached out and took her hand in both of his. “You remember when I said I loved you?”
“You mean when you were delirious from blood loss?”
Zachary smiled. “I wasn’t delirious.”
Jane’s heart skipped. She felt warm all over, and it wasn’t from the sun. “You know when I said I loved you, too?”
“You mean when your brain was still scrambled from Darkside?”
“Darkside is the reason I know it’s true.”
Zachary raised a brow. “Not following.”
Jane thought back to the moment she began to vanish inside that dreadful machine. “I was fading and knew I was about to die, and the worst part was the feeling that I was so totally alone. I tried to think about you, but I couldn’t. It was like you were so, so far away. Then I swore I saw colored lasers tearing through the darkness, and there you were, holding me, fighting against that gray nothing that was trying to take me. The lights connected us somehow. The bond was so totally overwhelming that there weren’t two of us any longer. We had become one, and I saw that you were willing to die with me if you couldn’t save me. That’s when I knew I was in love with you, Zachary Keen.”
Zachary said nothing, his eyes distant as though he was trying to remember. “Wow. For me it was when I saw you in yoga pants. You were so hot.”
Jane huffed but couldn’t hide her smile. “Oh, you are impossible!”
“Did we just make up without fighting?”
Jane pulled his hand to her cheek. “We did.”
“I thought so. Calling me impossible, though, that’s a problem.”
“Oh?”
“Impossible is a non-provable concept, Miss Lew. No way to conduct an experiment. I propose a different hypothesis.”
“Oh, do you, Mr. Keen? And how would you phrase this hypothesis?”
“Simple. I believe we’re in love.”
Jane moved closer to Zachary. Her gaze drifted from his eyes to his lips. “I feel a burning need to collect data, Mr. Keen.”
Zachary smiled. “I concur, Miss Lew.”
“May I show you to my
laboratory?”
“Lead the way.”
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Acknowledgments
So many people to thank and so little space! Thank you Lydia Sharp, Editor Extraordinaire and inspiration for the supercomputer of the same name (although figuring out what the Y in the acronym meant took some doing). Without your brilliant mind and incredible patience, this story would not exist. Thank you Judi Lauren for your amazing ideas during the edit process. The fun twists and turns could not have happened without you. And thanks for continuously suggesting that I “try for a deeper POV.” Thanks to Gina Detwiler for your insight and talent and graciousness for being my beta reader once again. You gave the story the oomph it was missing! Thanks to Nancy Cantor, who has line edited all of my books. You have such a flair for fixing my goofs and I love you for it! Thanks also to the entire Entangled Team for making this possible. You are a gift to the publishing world. And to my agent, Super-Nic Resciniti—without you I would still be trying to figure out how to write. And how to get people to like my books. And how to find a publisher. And all those things that I never knew before the day you called and asked for that first manuscript. I still haven’t wiped the smile from my face. A special thanks to Heather Braham for those long, grueling hours standing in the oceans of North Carolina debating plot points and character quirks. I know it was agonizing for you, soaking in the warm salty waters, frosty beverage in hand, but you’re a trooper. And, as always, thank you God. I still haven’t figured out why you made me, but I’m happy that you did.
About the Author
D. R. Rosensteel is a research consultant who had no intention of writing anything but technical papers describing his theories of metaphysical psychometry. But when a hoodied teen showed him a device that turned her thoughts into weapons, and told him about a secret society of protectors who trained her in their underground Academy, he knew her story had to be written. Rosensteel has put his research on hold to document the adventures of a girl whose face he’s never seen and whose real name he’ll never know.
Also by D.R. Rosensteel
Psi Another Day
Live and Let Psi
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