by Nalini Singh
Bo was coming to the realization that he was alive, very alive, and the woman with the gentle hands, frost-coated voice, and luscious scent appeared to be a medical technician or a doctor. If she was, her bedside manner was terrible.
"Of course you're a critic," was the distinctly annoyed response. "And for your information, I'm a cook. An excellent one."
He had to be hallucinating. Why would a cook be taking medical tape off his eyes?
He also didn't recognize either woman's voice, and he knew every single senior medic in the Alliance, knew each and every one of the doctors to whom his grievously wounded body would've been taken. So where was he? Was it possible the Alliance had brought in others to help? They had allies now, friends.
"I'm going to prick your feet. It won't hurt." Words spoken by the woman whose voice didn't make his skin . . . itchy.
His leg jerked seconds later. It had been a test, he realized, to see if he had sensation in his feet. Breath held, he flexed both his fingers and toes.
Everyone had their nightmares and Bowen's was to be helpless. He'd been exactly that once, a long time ago. He'd never forget the agony of the telepath's psychic fingers shoving into his brain while he fought helplessly against her control.
It had all ended in blood.
Hers and his.
He'd made it clear to Lily and his parents that he'd never want to be kept alive only by machines, his body and mind beyond his control. It was the most vicious horror he could imagine. But his brain seemed to be functional, and as the last of the fog flickered away, he confirmed he had no physical blank spots, no numbness.
It was odd but he could also sense hundreds of tiny objects on his skin, and it felt as if they pulsed his muscles.
The tape disappeared. "Okay," said the cook with the smoky, bluesy voice that held an inexplicable anger, "try to open your eyes--don't force it. They may feel heavy."
Bo could be patient when he needed to be, but he found he didn't have that control today. He flicked open his lashes.
Chapter 3
KL: Mal, are you sure this is safe? I know we have to let Attie run her experiment, but Hugo's information changes things. Bowen Knight is a cold-blooded murderer and he's targeting our people.
MR: If he doesn't wake, all we've done is give Attie what she needs. If he does, then we have him under our control.
--Messages exchanged between Kaia Luna and Malachai Rhys
THE ANGRY COOK had huge brown eyes that snapped with electricity against skin of a softer brown, her long dark hair in a loose braid that had fallen over one shoulder. She'd tucked a creamy white flower behind her right ear and her features reminded him of a movie he'd once seen about a Tahitian princess. Except this woman was no princess. She was a warrior. One Bo was dead certain was fighting the compulsion to stab him.
Fingers touched his left shoulder, followed by a small press against it. "That should help clear your head."
Bo went to say his head was fine . . . only he hadn't sensed the other woman's approach. And he was a security chief with supposedly hair-trigger instincts. Which meant the fog hadn't all dissipated.
When he turned to face the medic, he saw that her white-threaded black hair was cut sharply into a bob, her body covered by a white lab coat. His mind caught on the disconnect between her hair and her face-- the white strands spoke of age, but her face was unlined, her light brown skin plump with youth.
Her eyes, however, they were familiar. They reminded him of Lily's eyes, even though the medic's were a dark shade where Lily's were gray. No one knew Lily's past before two years of age, but genetic tests done as part of a routine medical check for latent diseases had put his sister's ancestry as Eurasian. The medic also had a strangeness to her shape. As if she had a bowling ball hidden under her coat.
When the woman with the young face and odd shape held a straw to his lips, he took a draw of the cold and slightly sweet liquid within. "How long?" he asked afterward, his brain sloshing itself back together as it shook off another layer of sleep.
"You've been in a coma for the past eight weeks and four days. Ever since you were shot on the bridge in Venice."
Two months.
As he struggled to accept the lost time, Bo looked right to confirm he hadn't imagined the warrior cook with the deadly look in her eye.
There she was. Crossed arms, scowling face, and dangerous curves.
Around her was a hospital suite. Pure glowing white except for the blue sheet over his body and on the bed. All kinds of lines went from his body to various machines on either side of the bed, and the tiny things he'd sensed on his skin? That hadn't been his imagination. Small objects of a muted silver clung to his bare arms, and he could feel them on his legs, chest, everywhere.
They looked like robotic bugs.
"Muscle trainers," the brown-eyed cook said without warning. "It means you won't be confined to bed because your muscles turned to noodles while you were in a coma."
"They're on my back, too?" He could feel the lumps now.
"Smaller version. Bed's designed to exercise that part of your body and keep the blood circulating." She moved to the end of the bed, touched something on the panel there. "Attie, I've turned off the exercise cycle. It would've started again in an hour."
He became aware of a fine metallic sensation against his skull. "Am I bald?" He could swear she'd brushed back his hair, but the warmth of her fingertips on his skin could've been an illusion created by his sluggish mind.
It was the old-young doctor who answered. "No. I'm monitoring your neural activity through a network of fine wires placed directly against your scalp--there was no need to shave off your hair to get them into position."
Another burst of clarity, another part of his brain roaring to full consciousness. "I need to tell Lily I'm awake." The aftermath of the shooting would've devastated her. He'd put himself in the line of fire to protect her, would do so again in a heartbeat, but he knew Lily--she'd have been beating herself up over it.
Poor Lil. She didn't understand that his choice had been selfish; Bo had seen the red dot on her forehead and felt a rush of terror such as he'd never known. The idea of burying his little sister? No, just no.
Oh, fuck. "Is she alive?" He'd been in a coma for two months--while the chips in Lily's head and the heads of all his closest friends continued to degrade. "The others?"
"No one is dead," the doctor confirmed. "Ashaya and Amara Aleine were able to come up with a solution that slowed the degradation, but it's limited in scope. The person implanted after you has another two to three months."
All of them still dying, just a little slower. It had been the Aleines who'd figured out how to create a psychic shield for human minds--a shield that protected them from telepathic coercion and violation by the Psy--but Bowen didn't blame the two scientists for the countdown to death; he, Lily, and their closest friends and associates had chosen to be implanted over the Aleines' objections that the chip hadn't been fully tested.
Knowing they'd die free from psychic manipulation had been worth the risk. But their choice had a cost. It'd leave wreckage behind.
He fisted his hand. "Do my parents know what's happening to me?"
"No. This entire operation is highly confidential."
"Experimental?" Though it was the doctor who'd answered, his eyes went to the angry-eyed cook again.
She stared back at him in flinty silence.
Lab coat rustling, the doctor walked into his line of sight. She was rubbing her back with one hand. "Are you sure you want to talk about this now? Wouldn't you rather get your bearings first?"
Bo began to push himself up into a sitting position, waving off her offer of help even though his muscles began to quiver almost at once.
Rolling her eyes, the cook with the body of a centerfold--fuck, where had that come from?--walked over to rearrange his pillows so he could brace his back against them.
It was only when the sheet fell to his waist that he realized he was naked
under the crisp blue fabric. His skin, a fusion of his Scottish and Brazilian ancestry, was at least a couple of shades paler than normal--and covered in the silvery bugs that allowed him to move even after two months of nothingness.
The cook froze for a heartbeat before finishing with the pillows and returning to stand by the panel at the end of the bed. A whisper of cinnamon and that exotic flower lingered in her wake, the scent just light enough to be frustrating.
Clenching his jaw, he kept an eye on the sheet to make sure it wouldn't crumple any further as he got himself positioned against the pillows. The wires flowing from his body were just long enough to permit the move, but he was breathing as if he'd run a marathon by the time he got himself into an upright seated position.
Obviously the bugs couldn't totally ward off the effects of two months in a coma, but they'd done enough. An intensive regime calibrated to his current state of health and he'd build himself back up quickly enough. "Who are you?" he said when he could speak. "And where am I?"
"I'm Dr. Atalina Kahananui," said the woman in the lab coat, her focus on one of the monitors beside his bed.
Bo knew he should concentrate on her, but the other woman in the room was a furious force of nature he simply could not ignore. His instincts labeled her a threat--for reasons as yet unknown, this woman saw him as the enemy. And there was something deadly about her, a subtle danger that was prickles against his skin.
Bo couldn't tell if that was because of his current state . . . or because of the visceral physical reaction he'd had, and continued to have, toward her. "Planning to be a woman of mystery?"
A long pause, her eyes unblinking, before she folded her arms again. "Kaia. Dragged into this entire insane situation because I can't say no to family."
"And because you were my assistant before you decided you preferred the kitchen to the lab," Dr. Kahananui said. "Kaia was part of the team that kidnapped you."
Bo considered that revelation, factored in that he'd likely been in a highly guarded Alliance facility, and added in that neither woman moved like a soldier. "Did Lily help you?"
Kaia shot Dr. Kahananui a speaking glance. "His brain's definitely working again."
"You're right about Lily," the doctor said. "Your sister cares only for your well-being. We could trust her to maintain our confidence and to get us the medical files we needed."
Yes, that was Lily. She was blood loyal to the Alliance, but her first and fiercest loyalty was to Bo. She was no politician, Lily, and she'd never learned to weigh up costs and benefits. But who was he to question her choice--had their positions been reversed, he'd have made any deal that promised to save her life.
"Where am I?" Neither woman struck him as Psy; there was too much of humanity in their expressions, their emotions--especially Kaia's--worn as a second skin. They hadn't recently emerged from over a century of coldly emotionless Silence.
Yet . . . they weren't human. He knew that the same way he knew the most effective move during hand-to-hand combat, or the best strategic option in a firefight. Years of experience and trust in his gut. Both of those things sensed a simmering wildness under Kaia's skin, as if her humanity were a coat she could shrug off at any instant.
Not Psy. Not human. Changeling.
Dr. Kahananui slipped her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. "You're on a BlackSea installation."
Chapter 4
Two more of our people have vanished.
--Message from BlackSea security chief Malachai Rhys to Bowen Knight
BOWEN KNIGHT SUCKED in a breath.
Kaia watched him with dogged focus, though she knew he'd reveal nothing he didn't want to reveal. The slightly dazed--and frighteningly adorable--man who'd emerged from the coma was gone. In his place was the hard-eyed security chief of the Human Alliance.
"In that case," he said, "I'd like to talk to Malachai Rhys."
"Cousin Mal isn't on station." Kaia knew Mal had begun to build a relationship with his counterpart in the Alliance, but her cousin could be closemouthed at times. On Bowen Knight, he'd said very little--but he'd said enough that Kaia knew he was taking Hugo's warning dead seriously. "He's on a search for one of our vanished."
Kaia's beloved clan had lost and was still losing too many of their distant and most isolated people. Some of the vanished had already been found dead, while the majority had disappeared without a trace. And the man in front of her was the master of a lethal two-faced game.
"How many after Leila Savea's return?" A razor-sharp edge in his voice.
Of course he'd mention Leila, their delicate water dancer. A human trucker had helped rescue a battered and nearly broken Leila and return her to the sea that was her home. That just meant the human in question was a man with a good heart. It said nothing about the security chief who'd been quietly building a paramilitary force behind the public front of creating a strong business network for humans.
"Three more of our people have been taken." Kaia barely managed to keep her response civil--because one of those three was Hugo. Her friend from before they could toddle. A man with a wicked sense of humor and an addiction to poker that he kept under shaky control. Messy and bright and foolish and handsome Hugo.
Gone without a trace.
"I need to run some tests." Atalina's voice was deliberate, the thin beam of light she shot into Bowen Knight's eyes as deliberate.
Her older cousin believed Kaia was allowing her emotions to get in the way of a groundbreaking scientific experiment. Kaia felt nothing but frustrated affection for Attie's stance--that was who Attie was; for her, science came first. She couldn't care less about Bowen Knight's political maneuvering and ruthless stratagems.
No, that wasn't fair. Attie cared about their lost clanmates just as much as Kaia. She'd cried tears of joy at hearing of Leila's return, but when it came to her work, to her science, Attie shut out the world.
Right now, that was a good thing. Without this experiment to distract her, Attie would be obsessing over her pregnancy--and the bleak possibility that she might suffer another miscarriage. BlackSea's First, their alpha, had greenlit this risky experiment because Attie had been putting such stress on herself with her anxiety.
Atalina couldn't worry if she was preoccupied by an experiment unlike any other.
Kaia was happy for her cousin, but she couldn't shut out reality. She couldn't look at Bowen Knight without remembering the last words Hugo had spoken to her, without imagining her friend's pain and horror. She wanted to shake the Alliance's security chief and demand he tell her Hugo's location. Because Bowen Knight was involved in the vanishings up to his neck.
Hugo had found proof.
Now Hugo was gone.
And Kaia's body had reacted with a scalding rush of blood at the sight of Bowen Knight's bare chest.
As Attie began to test his reflexes, Kaia dug her fingers into her biceps, the pain welcome. It reminded her not to let down her guard and begin to view the man on the bed as just a man. Her physical response to him might be uncomfortable, but it was nothing more than a function of biology. The animal that lived under her human skin was a sensual creature who reveled in skin privileges.
Yet even as she thought that, she knew she was lying to herself. The reason she was standing at the foot of the bed rather than near Atalina was that her response to an awake and aware Bowen Knight had been a violent one.
He was staring at her again.
"I'm going to test your mental acuity," Attie said into the frozen silence before calling out the first of a number of equations. She progressed from there to complex logic puzzles presented on an organizer.
Bowen Knight completed each one without hesitation, his response times faster than the vast majority of the population. No wonder Hugo had been so terrified of him--the man's intelligence was more lethal a threat than any bomb or gun. "It worked," Kaia said to Attie.
"What?" The harsh demand of someone who wasn't used to being kept in the dark. "A straight answer would be nice."
From what Attie had told Kaia, that implant was designed to block telepaths from digging into the human mind because, unlike changelings, humans had no natural shields. The chip worked. It apparently also had a very short shelf life, and when it failed, it'd take Bowen's dangerously intelligent brain with it.
Kaia dug her fingers into her biceps again.
"You have a solution?" Bowen's words were ragged at the edges, the first hint of humanity she'd seen in him. "I was the first implanted, but I'm not the only one."
Taking a step back from the panel, Kaia told herself not to be taken in by his concern for his sister and the others who had the chip. How a man treated his own people didn't necessarily translate to how he treated outsiders.
"We're only in stage one of the experiment," Atalina responded. "In layperson terms, a big reason for your extended coma was that the shock of the shooting threw your already degrading chip into an ever steeper decline. We've managed to not only halt that decline but reverse the attendant brain swelling."
Bowen Knight was too much a strategist not to ask the next question. "Can you freeze the chip in time, so it degrades no further?"
Atalina's gaze met Kaia's.
"I think he can take it." Kaia didn't think many things scared the man in front of them.
"Take what?"
"Stage two of the experiment is intended to stabilize the chip, so that stage three can take place. Attie's run endless computer models stopping the experiment at stage two--they all end up with the chip failing and you brain-dead in approximately three to four weeks." That chip always kicked back in, carrying on in its fatal path until it exploded inside Bowen Knight's brain.
Eyes as close to black as she'd ever seen on a human caught hers, his charisma potent. "What's wrong with stage three?"
Atalina thrust her fingers through hair that had begun to show strands of white when she'd been only fifteen. Most teenagers would've been mortified. Attie had made the pragmatic decision to just accept the change and--quite accidentally--turned it into a fashion statement. "Stage three models all predict success in permanently stabilizing the chip."
