“It's hard to assume things like that at this point. I haven't actually seen the people they experiment on, but I know for sure they've experimented on probably every creature out there. I don't really think there's anything out there they haven't seen before. Maybe they haven't encountered many like your friend, but I'm sure they've seen at least one before.” I knew this for a fact because I'd read the variations of preternatural entities the PSS have observed and researched from Dr. Maxwell's journal. The only thing that I knew for sure was rare was myself, and even I had no idea what kind of species I classified as. I was sure I was no were, no vampire, zombie, ghoul, witch, or any other thing that could alternate shapes. Unless being able to shift hands into talons meant I was some kind of a shifter with extreme limitations. But a shifter who couldn't shift was weak and, according to the PSS, I was far from that. Unfortunately, Dr. Maxwell's journal didn't mention anything about me. That was a different journal altogether, one I thought I had grabbed when we had left that day from the PSS for my last driving lesson. Ruling out all of the above left me with few options, some of which I'd tried searching on the internet among creatures of myths, but nothing I came upon seemed right.
“What is he?” I asked, not because I was curious, which I certainly was, but because I could tell if he was something special or not.
Logan took a long time choosing his words, but when he spoke, I thought he had misunderstood my question.
“The Society described you as a dangerous specimen to be treated with caution and aggression and, if faced with no other choice, to be terminated on the spot to ensure the threat is nullified. I believe they would consider my friend just as dangerous, if not more.”
My eyes narrowed at Logan suspiciously. “You speak from experience. As if they've approached you with this information before.”
“As a matter of fact, they did,” he answered, unperturbed. “I refused.”
I considered him for a moment. They had tried to hire him to come after me. If he was helping me now, then that meant he had indeed refused, maybe even the act that had prompted the PSS to go after his friend, to pressure him into taking the job. Or, maybe he'd accepted it, invented a story about his friend, and tried to get me to accompany him on a raid to the place where he was supposed to deliver me in the first place. I gave him a level look as the possibility that I had been fooled rolled over me like ice and fire, burning me from the inside, coldly numbing my emotions to act and kill if need be. The jolt and shock of what I was capable of doing came and went without a hint showing through.
“You refused?” I prompted.
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“You're a hired assassin.”
Logan's lips twitched, but this time it wasn't in humor so much as in displeasure. “I've been called many names before, and hired assassin isn't one that I appreciate.”
“That doesn't change what you are. A horse is a horse, no matter what you call it.”
His eyes chilled a few degrees. “I might be a hired assassin, like you call it,” he said mildly, “but I don't go around agreeing on any job offered me without consideration. You can assume whatever you like about me, but I never lose sight of my moral compass.” He smiled at me then, but the smile did not reach his grey eyes, which had turned frigid. “For example, if I sign a contract, sugar, I go all the way through with it.” He gave me a meaningful glance, as if the statement meant something to me, then he added, “Which is something we can't say about you, can we now?”
“Oh? And how did you deduce that?”
“Isn't that why the society is after you? Because you took the money, stole from their archives and skipped out on your contract? Didn't you 'behave' so that when they let their guard down, you could take what you wanted and run away?”
I pursed my lips and considered him. “That's the story they tell you people?” I snorted. “All of you hired mercs are just fooled by a bunch of scientists to do their dirty work, and you think you're so tough and smart?”
I could see I had insulted him. Well, he'd just have to deal with it. “Why should I even believe you? What if this whole thing about your friend being in the hands of the PSS is just a ruse to get me to go with you? Say like, you heard about what happened to the last assassins or bounty hunters that came after me and decided to change tactic? Make everything up and just have me follow you on my own?”
Logan's face grew darker with every word, but his eyes remained cold. “Woman, I don't care what you think about me, if you call me an assassin, a bloody mercenary, or a freaking monster.” He leaned forward, his eyes practically frosting me over, his voice low. “When I take a job, I go about it straight. I can shoot you looking right into your eyes or wait for you around a bend and jump you from behind. But, if I take a job, I don't fool around with it.” He leaned back on his chair and studied me slowly with cold eyes. I didn't flinch. “If I was hired to come after you, believe me, Eliza Daniels, you would have known.”
I believed him. I might be naïve, and I admit it sometimes—to myself only, of course—but I believed him, and God help me, I hoped I wouldn't add fool to my list of flaws. I didn't apologize for my misassumption though. Pride and my arrogant paranoia wouldn't let me.
“You think that the PSS took your friend to force your hand? So you'd have no choice but to agree to come after me?”
He shrugged again, but his eyes remained as cold as winter. “I didn't consider that possibility, but I wouldn't put it beneath them. Regardless of their reasons, all that matters to me right now is that they have him and I want him back.”
There was a long silence before either of us spoke again.
“So, if you didn't break your contract, why are they hiring after you?”
I shrugged once. “I was kidnapped a long time ago. I escaped, they want me back.”
There was a pause as Logan processed my words. “So, let's say that my friend, under the circumstances, is considered more dangerous than you. Hypothetically, if he's also something special, what do you think they'll be doing to him?”
Any answer about what they would be doing to his friend, considering he was as dangerous as Logan thought he was, would stem from my own experience. I eyed Logan for a moment. I didn't think he was fishing for information about my treatment back in the PSS, but any answer I gave him would be exactly that.
“If he's as dangerous as you think he is, then he's in deep trouble.” I could tell my answer didn't satisfy him in the least, but he let the topic drop, at least for now anyway.
Chapter Seventeen
We rented a room in a hotel, but both of us knew we couldn't stay long, so I made the best of it and headed first to the bathroom. However, the thought of just one drop of warm water on my blisters caused my body to break all over with goosebumps, so I just cleaned myself with a warm sponge. Eyeing my bloodstained, rumpled clothes, I wished I had gone to the boutique first and bought myself some new ones—with the leftover money I had taken from Logan's car. (There was no guilt or shame and I didn't question myself). Sighing, I made do with the smelly ones I had been wearing before.
When I emerged from the bathroom, my eyes zeroed in on a small CBC plastic bag dangling off Logan's index finger.
“Let me see your hand,” he said, motioning me to sit beside him on the bed.
I looked at the plastic bag warily. I was always suspicious when drugs and strangers were involved, but I relented after I searched the bag and found no needles. He examined the blisters and charred skin, then began expertly cleaning my hand as if he'd done it many times in the past.
“How fast do you heal?” he asked, studying my hand.
“Faster than normal.”
It seemed to be the right answer, because he began to peel away the burnt skin with tweezers I hadn't seen in the bag, revealing angry, dark pink skin underneath. I shifted every time a small piece came off but didn't complain. Then Logan applied an ointment that cooled the boiling skin and relieved some of the pain and, after it looked dry, he
used another kind of ointment, this one bright yellow. Once he was done, he wrapped it with gauze, got up, and dropped my duffle bag in front of me.
“Oh.” Was all I could say. I opened it and saw that he had tucked my purse inside. Beneath the purse, a baby-blue color caught my attention. My Prada!
“Oh, thank you,” I said earnestly. I extracted clean clothes from inside the duffle, jeans, underwear, a grey shirt, and hurried back to the bathroom to change.
* * *
The sun was setting when we left the town, both of us clean and full.
“Tell me what kind of things they're doing to my friend,” Logan said after we had been driving for a while in comfortable silence.
I had been admiring the sunset in the desert, so different from the sunset in the city where it only served to emphasize the passing of time, the demarcation between night and day. Here in the desert, it was the subject of poetry, the way the sky exploded with colors, atop an endless sea of brownish yellow. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.
I thought about his question for a minute, debated upon an answer that wouldn't be so revealing, but kept hitting the same blank wall.
“It really depends on his circumstances,” I said lamely.
His eyes narrowed at the road, and his lips compressed. He was really concerned, and I sighed, feeling for the first time compelled to answer.
“There was this time, on my earliest days in the PSS, when they wanted to know my limits,” I began telling him.
“It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were labeled the experiment day. Dr. Maxwell waited for me in Building C with another scientist like he did every first Tuesday of the month. The scientist, usually one that was newly employed in one of the PSS's bases around the world, would visit for a lecture, a brief preview of the subject they'd be experimenting on, and later, if they were lucky, would witness something extraordinary. Except this time, instead of being in a lab, they were waiting by the pool.
“I was escorted by the guard in charge of that shift to the back entrance of the building, where access to the swimming pool was easier and we wouldn't need to bypass all the administrative cubicle mazes inside.
“Dr. Maxwell stood by the door and he was arguing vehemently with Dr. Michael Dean, chief director of the PSS, about something being too risky. The new scientist just stood by with pursed lips and listened. I just knew by watching them that whatever was about to happen, I would suffer badly.
“'You'll do as I say, and I say the weights be used,' Dr. Dean said.
“'Sir, if it doesn't work, the result might be fatal,' Dr. Maxwell argued.
“At the end, Dr. Michael Dean got his way, just like every other time.
“They tied some heavy special-made dumbbell weights to each of my ankles, and they were so heavy I had to be dragged by the guard to the pool.
“I protested, I even begged them not to do it, but they wouldn't listen. They said fear and need for survival triggered my other nature and they wanted to know if I could breathe underwater or, at the very least, get free of the weights.
“They threw me in the water and I sank to the bottom, some fifteen feet down. I tried to get the weights off, but they had some kind of thick metal bands firmly secured around my ankles. I broke my nails; I panicked and wasted precious oxygen twice as fast from the exertion.
“My vision blurred, dimmed then went black.”
The last sentence was said in a flat tone, carrying not a hint of emotion with it. I focused my gaze ahead at the road and realized I had been so engrossed in my past I hadn't noticed we had stopped. We were idling at the shoulder of the road, our slow breaths and the running engine the only sounds around us. I looked around at the desert night but, besides a stretch of road that went forever and the desert, there was nothing there. I peered at Logan and found him watching me, appalled.
“What happened then?”
“I drowned,” I said flatly. “When they realized I couldn't breathe underwater, the guard dove to get me, but the weights were too heavy. It took him a while to remove them, and by then my lungs were full of water. They did some CPR, and Dr. Maxwell wouldn't give up until my heart was beating again and I vomited all the water. Then, I spent a couple of hours in the infirmary.”
I watched anger darken Logan's eyes. His reaction warmed me, but I reminded myself that his anger stemmed from the knowledge that his friend might be suffering something similar at the hands of the PSS's scientists.
“Is that what they do when one doesn't behave?”
I looked at him in surprise.
“No. I was cooperating by then.”
His eyes shifted up to my forehead or maybe just a fraction of an inch above my forehead, before he looked away, frowning. Did he just try to read my aura? According to Dr. Maxwell's journal, werewolves couldn't see auras. Could they?
“Why did they think you could breathe underwater? Are you a sea creature?” he demanded, still frowning.
Hmm. Was I? Not if I couldn't breathe underwater. I shook my head and shrugged. “Who knows the mind of mad scientists?”
Logan debated me for a moment before asking, “And when you didn't behave, what did they do to you?”
I glanced around the desert, thinking. Remembering. “The first few weeks, I gave them hell every time they tried something. I punched, I kicked, I bit, I spat. And when I rebelled, experiment day happened three, sometimes four times a week. Then I started behaving, attempting escape only when I saw an opportunity.” Thinking about it then, I wondered if those opportunities were being thrown my way purposefully—to increase the experiments done.
That aside, I found myself envious and wishing I had someone to be outraged and concerned for me the way Logan was for his friend. What kind of friendship caused such loyalty, such devotion?
We eyed each other for a while, Logan with simmering anger in his eyes, me with envy and hurt—perhaps even a drop of resentment. My face was blank though, no trace of the raging feelings entangled inside showing through. Logan looked away first, but I could tell from the hard set of his jaw and the almost tangible anger in the atmosphere that he was far from calm.
I had rattled him.
“This Dr. Maxwell, he seemed to be on your side, the way he stood by arguing with the director, and the way he persisted at the end?”
I laughed, but it was bitter and maybe even a little hysterical. “Dr. Maxwell just didn't want his experiments to be over. He's cautious, he's smart, but he's not sympathetic, and he's not above causing other people pain if he sees a reward at the end.”
I thought about all the times Dr. Maxwell had brought me snacks and new magazines, the way he had talked to me about the world outside. He'd tried to help me sometimes, but after the wolf incident I stopped believing he was a friend. He was a scientist above all else and, to achieve better and satisfying results, he thought ingratiating himself to me would help. Like I said, I was young and desperately needed sympathy. Dr. Maxwell knew that and, in the name of his research and project, he exploited that angle, bribing me to help forward the enhancement of his research.
No, Dr. Maxwell didn't care about me as a person, but as a project, a special guinea pig.
“What if my friend could give them hell, but instead of kicking and spitting he actually manages to injure or even kill one of them?” Logan asked.
I doubted he could, but I considered his question carefully. I remembered the first time I had managed to injure one of the scientists by kicking and dislocating his kneecap, they shot me with tranquilizers, then proceeded with their test by injecting some sort of hallucinogenic spell in my IV while I was still out.
“First of all, you should keep in mind that the PSS have this thing they call 'the blocking bracelet', which they use on preternatural beings to prevent them from tapping into that something that makes them other. But let's say your friend might be able to get to one—maybe two—guards. If he's that dangerous, they'll just tighten his guards, give him a mild sedative—enough to keep him aware but n
ot able to do much harm—then they'll surround him with more scientists to watch the phenomenon. If he's smart, he would rather they experiment when he's lucid.” If I had thought Logan's anger had been overwhelming me before, it all but suffocated me now.
“Is that what they did to you?” he asked in a low tone.
I remembered waking up after I had attacked the guest scientist who accompanied Dr. Maxwell. After I kicked him, one of the guards shot me with a tranquilizer. It was one of those rare experiments in which I didn't need to be awake while they prepared me for it.
I remember waking up in my room (the old one I occupied in my early days in the PSS when I rebelled), which contained only a narrow bed, a small bathroom and—sometimes, a chair.
That day when I awoke, my mother sat on the back straight chair beside me. I had been so glad to see her, I flung myself out of bed into her lap and cried my heart out. I could smell the jasmine scent of her lotion, the cinnamon scent of her hair. I cried, and she held me close, telling me everything would be all right. Then, three guards barged into the room. Two of them grabbed me while the other went for my mother. I was shackled and manacled with a special metal used for those of us with preternatural strengths, and dragged to a small empty room in Building C; a room I had never been taken before. It was a bare, sterile room with only a two-way mirror. I knew instinctively that they were going to do something to me, punish me for misbehaving—so I was ready to plead and shout that they at least don't let my mother see what was going to happen. But, instead of taking her to the room where she could watch me become a monster, they threw her in the room with me. I was horrified by the idea of attacking my mother, but they had something completely different in mind.
The speakers buzzed once, and Dr. Maxwell's voice crackled into the room. “Subject UX01-484, I want you to listen carefully.” He waited for my attention to focus on the mirror where I knew he was watching.
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