by Tasha Black
A jolt of fear and the crawling feeling that something was very wrong shuddered through her.
Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut, taking inventory of herself, and wondering what was happening to her. The bite had become something of an enigma. The tooth marks were the first part of the mystery. The shape and pattern just didn’t fit. As much as she wanted to deny it, Cordelia had spent enough time working with animals to be sure of one thing, the bite wasn’t human. She didn’t dwell on the implications of that, suspecting the evidence would have vanished from her arm and her mind by now. Why wasn’t it healing?
A moment later both the pain and the uneasy feeling were gone.
And West was standing.
“It’s been a long day,” he announced, his voice calm again. “I think I should turn in.”
He glanced at Cordelia, and then his eyes flashed toward the house and back to her.
He wanted her to follow.
A warmth blossomed between her legs in the place his hands had been only hours ago. She couldn’t wait to return the favor, to take her time pleasing him the way he had satisfied her.
The look in his eyes told her he was thinking the same thing.
“Yes,” she blurted out, nearly spilling her mug of champagne. “I mean. We probably all should turn in. Since we have an early start tomorrow.”
What did that even mean? How could he have this effect on her?
It was fully dark now. Stars twinkled coldly in the night sky above.
Cordelia watched West jog up the slate ramp and into the house.
What was happening to her?
She was falling in love, but then she was suspicious. Her arm was on fire out of nowhere, and she was predicting bad things. The next moment, she was mesmerized at the way West’s butt filled out his jeans and couldn’t wait to jump into his bed.
She must be actually going crazy. It was the only explanation.
She sighed.
“He’s right, it is late,” she said to Jess. “Let’s go in, kiddo.”
“I’ll get the fire,” her mother agreed.
It was a pleasure to see Jess get herself easily up the ramp and into the house. Going into the yard used to be a production. Her heart swelled again at West’s thoughtfulness. The work he had done on the yard was beautiful. But the ramp for Jess, that one tiny thing, made it truly special.
She gathered the mugs and the champagne bottle and followed Jess inside.
As she washed up, Cordelia thought again about the way West had pleasured her before everyone came home. Her body responded instantly, she felt a blush warm her cheeks. She would to go straight to his room after the others were in bed, and repay him ten times over.
She pictured crawling into his bed, and the delicious feel of his warm skin and cool prosthetics against her skin. She imagined losing herself in his strong embrace, giving herself to him fully. There was no way she could go into that room and come out again her own woman. She would be his, all his.
And she had allowed herself to imagine that he would be all hers, too.
But here at the kitchen sink, out of the starlight and West’s hypnotic eyes, it was harder to avoid the truth.
She had watched West for too long as his assistant. She knew his patterns.
West had wild mood swings. He never stayed in a relationship.
West had cast Peter aside, after knowing him most of his life.
What were the chances that things would be any different for Cordelia?
And then Cordelia got out the imaginary measuring stick against which every decision in her adult life had been considered.
What would this mean for Jess?
As things were, West could offer Jess a chance to live a normal life.
What would happen to Jess’s chance if West burned through his interest in Cordelia too fast, and she got on the wrong side of one of his fits of temper? She’d seen a trace of it tonight, when she’d pressed about Peter, like a dark shape beneath calm water.
The thought of it filled her heart with icy terror.
Cordelia Cross was a straightforward and honest person. She was not given to playing games or toying with the people she cared about.
But she was going to have to move out of her comfort zone. Because the only way she could see around this dilemma was to slow things down with West.
Even though every instinct told her to jump in.
And a small voice in her head asked if she wasn’t doing exactly what she was afraid he might do to her - manipulating him to get what she needed.
But it wasn’t for herself. It was for her darling, her baby sister, her Jess.
Resolved, she dried her hands quickly and went to her own room, pausing only slightly before West’s door.
3
West awoke to the uncomfortable sensation of having slept too long.
The sun’s movement across the room told him it was well past 8am.
He never slept in, not even after one of his trademarked nights of debauchery.
Yawning, he pulled himself up on his elbows and checked the clock. It was 8:37. Based on the lack of hustle-bustle in the nearby rooms, it sounded like Cordelia had left without him.
He’d stayed up as late as he could, waiting for her to sneak into his room, but she never had.
He finally convinced himself to go to sleep by deciding that maybe she had been too shy to come to him with her mom and sister in the house. Or that she was waiting for them to fall asleep first before sneaking into his room, and fell asleep herself by accident.
That wouldn’t be a surprise after the way he’d worked her over in the garden. He was beside himself all over again, just thinking about how good she had felt in his arms and her honey taste in his mouth. He’d loved and been surprised by the graceful way Cordelia relaxed and enjoyed herself, unlike the vain, self-conscious women he was experienced with. Cordelia wasn’t obsessing about what she looked like or where they were. She was very sensibly focused on West and all the lovely things he was doing to her. He couldn’t wait to take his time with her, in a more comfortable setting.
Shaking his head, as if to clear the memory before he lost himself to it completely, he listened once again for her footsteps in the hall.
No dice.
Why would she leave without him?
She knew he was supposed to go in to visit Mallory today about his prosthetics. He had assumed they would ride in together. It was a big day.
Was she still mad about his reaction to her bringing up Peter?
Sure, he had been a little short with her last night, but she knew him, the real West. Cordelia would never have taken that personally. Would she?
He grabbed his phone off the bedside table and very nearly called Dalton, out of habit before remembering that Dalton was going out of town for a few days. He texted for a car instead.
Fifteen minutes later, showered and shorn, and wearing Dalton’s hipster clothes as a disguise, West joined Jess at the breakfast table.
“Hey, bro!” she teased.
He ruffled her hair.
“‘Sup, kiddo. What’s for breakfast?”
She shook a box of Lucky Charms at him. It was a far cry from what he’d eaten at the penthouse, but when in Rome… Breakfast cereals were really growing on him after a couple of months with the Cross family.
He poured himself a massive bowl and turned to see what the kid had on TV.
The news. Great.
A gorgeous woman with an unusually fantastic rack for a newscaster was speaking with an expression of practiced concern. She looked like someone who would have gotten a penthouse invitation in West’s pre-Cordelia days.
Remembering Cordelia, he stopped looking at the woman’s breasts, and looked down to pour the milk on his cereal.
That was when he heard what she was saying.
“—gang is from the Scar, but their activity has reached as far uphill as Cobble Slope.”
West snapped to attention at the mention of Cordelia’s neighbo
rhood.
“Their ‘initiation’ requires members to record acts of violence and post them online, like the one we have here. I want to warn you that the images you are about to see are extremely violent. Viewer discretion is advised.”
The video that followed was shaky, but what was happening was clear enough. An older man was standing on the train platform at the Cobble Slope Station. The station Cordelia used every morning to go to work, even though she had access to the car service.
West and Jess watched as two young men with masks approached the older man on the platform. He raised his hands, but they came after him anyway, punching and kicking him until he fell to the ground.
“Where were the police for all this?” West asked.
“They’re too busy in the Scar,” Jess replied between mouthfuls of artificial marshmallow goodness. “With real crimes.”
The assailants in the video continued to brutally kick the prone man as bystanders watched, doing nothing.
“Why isn’t anyone helping him?” he asked.
“They’re scared,” Jess said softly.
“Somebody should do something about it,” West said, slamming his fist on the table.
“Yeah,” Jess replied. “Somebody.”
4
West was already outside when his driver, Dmitri, showed up, right on time.
The ride to downtown Glacier City was peaceful and silent, just the way West liked it. He’d gone through quite a few drivers before finding one that didn’t insist on idle chit chat.
The drive gave him time to think more about Cordelia. As a matter of fact, West found himself thinking about Cordelia more and more often these days.
As the tree-lined streets of Cobble Slope gave way to concrete and glass, he turned the events of last night over in his head, considering.
Why would she care what he thought about Peter? Maybe it was more than that. Had he gone too far last night?
That last thought made him feel something akin to panic.
No, she had genuinely been enjoying herself. But maybe after some time to think about it, she was repulsed by his… less human side.
He couldn’t blame her. Who would want to be intimate with a cold, unfeeling thing? The prosthetics felt like part of him now, even after such a short time, and Mallory’s nerve work meant that they communicated touch back to his brain. But they wouldn’t seem real to someone else.
Before he knew it, they had arrived at Worthington Enterprises headquarters.
West slid out of the leather seat and onto the sidewalk without a word to Dmitri. The reticent driver didn’t fuss over him by trying to open doors or any of that nonsense.
Pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes, and adjusting the angle of Dalton’s ridiculous hat, West headed through the lobby and took the elevator down to Med Pros, remembering to push the button with his original hand so that it would recognize his finger print.
He entered the lab and immediately a lab coated figure hurled herself at him.
“West!”
West noted that Mallory’s short spiky hair was no longer pink. It was red, orange and yellow - like flames.
She saw him looking.
“Like the hair? It’s a tribute to Palma,” she told him with a wink.
West grimaced.
“What? Too soon?”” she asked.
West figured the time might never be right to joke about the accident that had lost him half his body, and the unhappy fate of the man who had set the fire and wound up half melted into an exo-suit.
“What’s on the docket for today?” he asked her, rather than answering.
She smiled in evident relief.
“I want to run some tests, tons of them actually, so I hope you don’t have any other plans this morning. Primarily though, I want to know if you have any feedback. Have you had any unusual pain or loss of sensation since the fight?”
West thought immediately of the glitching, the complete loss of sensation and power to his new limbs, leaving him temporarily helpless. So far, the episodes had only lasted a few seconds. Did she really need to know about that? What if she wanted to take his new life away while she got to the bottom of it?
He thought about another abnormality instead.
“In the fight with Palma,” he said. “I was cut.”
“I know, I know. I need to look at those repairs,” she scolded.
“I had a really strong sensation of cold when he cut me. Why is that?”
“That would be the warning system working. We designed it so that the prosthetics would report pain like bio limbs - to help the user protect them. Of course, we have no idea how your brain is going to perceive those warning signals. It’s very interesting that you felt it as cold. Was it also painful?”
“Not exactly,” he replied. “But the cold was very intense, and… unpleasant.”
“At least we know it’s working,” she said, mostly to herself as her fingers danced on the iPad mini she’d slipped out of her lab coat pocket. “That’s great.”
He waited while she recorded her thoughts. He loved her enthusiasm. In the boardroom one would never permit oneself to express naked joy at success or discovery. He was beginning to like the lab.
“Okay, come on over, let’s have a look at those repairs,” she said, looking up from the iPad at last.
They walked to her office and she pointed him to a leather chair.
“May I?” she asked awkwardly, indicating at his shirt.
“Nah, I’ll get it,” he replied.
As he began to unbutton his shirt, he couldn’t help but notice some of the scientists look up. His first instinct was that the ladies were checking him out. Then he remembered that he wasn’t exactly his old self. They were more than likely trying to catch a glimpse at the results of their own work.
“I’m sorry. Do you want me to close up?” Mallory already had the remote for the privacy screen in her hand.
Remembering the last time the screen was up, when he had missed Sean’s kidnapping and Cordelia’s panicked messages, West held up his hand immediately.
“No. Thank you. As a matter of fact, these guys look curious and I have them to thank for my new body. Why don’t we let them in on the action?” he offered.
“Awesome,” Mallory said, grinning. “We’ll do your testing out there, then. They aren’t a subtle bunch and you’re pretty much a rock star when it comes to test subjects, so grab a seat so I can look over the repairs in peace really quickly. Then we’ll head out into the fray.”
He nodded and finished removing his shirt.
Mallory looked him over with a expression of extreme satisfaction. When she realized he was watching her face, she colored slightly.
“Sorry, it’s hard not to indulge. I still can’t believe…” she trailed off.
“Look as long as you want. If not for your determination I wouldn’t be standing here,” he told her softly.
“You’re my Galatea,” she chuckled, shaking her head.
The thought made him smile.
“I’m more action figure than marble statue, but yeah, you should be proud.”
He seated himself and stretched his arm out for her to examine.
She sat beside him and turned his arm from side to side. Then she got out what he swore was a jeweler’s loupe and studied the area where he had been stabbed.
“Good, it’s good,” she said at length.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“There were tiny tears but we did a good job stitching them up. They haven’t reopened and I assume you’ve been using the limb as usual?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied, wondering if what he’d done with Cordelia counted as usual.
“Good. We’re working on a nanotech solution that will be able to stitch you back together from the inside, the way your normal cells would heal by repairing damage, only at a much faster rate. Until then, you need to take better care of these limbs,” she told him sternly.
She looked up at him sharply.
“Kidding. I was kidding,” he explained.
“We don’t need you getting some kind of superhero complex about this,” she admonished. “You’re very lucky you didn’t lose everything.”
“I understand, believe me. So, based on how the repairs are holding up, are we still okay for the next procedure?” he asked.
“Pending the tests we’re about to do - yes. You’ll have to come back in a week for that,” she told him.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said.
“Let’s hope not,” she muttered.
5
Dalton awoke suddenly.
Sitting upright, he winced against the harsh fluorescent light stabbing into his eyes.
The room was all cinderblock, painted teal-blue. Stale, humid air added to the surreal feeling of being underwater.
His whole body ached. He let out a slow breath and swung his legs over the side of the bed, but immediately saw stars and had to steady himself. Eventually, the room stopped spinning.
He ran his fingers over the back of his skull, wincing when they found the inevitable angry lump.
He pushed past the migraine that blurred the edges of his vision, to wrench the memory of how he got here out of his addled consciousness.
Gibson.
He remembered the fight, getting on top of Gibson, ready to tear the man to pieces. Then the blow from behind. Then everything had gone black.
Of course Gibson hadn’t come alone. Dalton cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid?
And now, he had no idea where he was.
The panic began to rise within him, and his skin crawled, then rippled threateningly.
He took another deep breath, then closed his eyes and counted backward from ten.
When he opened them again the danger had passed, but his senses were still amped up.
He scanned the room again, allowing himself to pick up on clues he hadn’t noticed before.
