Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (21 page)

No one was monitoring the outer station. I spotted a white-coated shoulder in the office behind it, barely visible behind a white- and red-checked curtain. Either Julie Dent, one of our two on-call nurses, or Dr. Adam Morgan himself, the trauma surgeon they’d borrowed from Cedars-Sinai specifically for Ethan. I slipped past, toward the closed door. The latch unlocked, and I pushed as quietly as I could.

My entrance garnered no attention from the person in the office (or break room, it was hard to tell). On the other side of the door was a short corridor and four divided cubicles. Gentle whirs and beeps came from the slot immediately to my left, and I gravitated toward it.

Ethan lay flat on his back, a thick cloud of white bandages obscuring his chest. Some blood had seeped through straight up the middle, as if a child had dragged a red paintbrush across it. Bruises and cuts covered his arms and face. His hair stood out starkly against his pallor, visible even to my lavender-hued eyes.

He wasn’t on a ventilator. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose, and a pulse monitor created a steady staccato beep. A variety of tubes and wires crisscrossed his body, and I couldn’t hope to know what each of them did or what medicine they provided.

I picked up the chart hanging from the foot of the bed.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of the handwriting scrawled across the page. Medical doctors either wrote in another language, or this was done up by a drunk spider after walking across an inkpad. The little cubicle had no chairs; nothing that said it welcomed visitors. Even if a nurse complained, I doubted she would try to force me out.

“Well,” I said, “the good news is that you’re going to live. Getting squashed under a collapsed ceiling is usually something that happens during the fight, not after, but I guess you’re not one for rules. Gage and Marco are okay, too. You came out of it with the biggest scratches.”

Nothing. Not like I expected a response, but sometimes … “If I start to nag you about waking up, will you sit up and argue with me?”

Guess not.

“William and Renee are home, and now McNally is insisting we do a news show. I think it will be a painful exercise in futility, but she seems to think good press is better than no press. Since Rangers have had no press for this long, I suppose I should agree with her.”

I picked at a lint pill on the edge of the blanket. “You know, I think I miss the dull responsibility of making my rent every month, working three jobs to eat, and carrying the burden of being an ex-con stuck in the same state for two more years. Did you know that about me? I know Gage does, and it doesn’t seem to bother him, and I can assume McNally and Grayson do, too.

“Yeah, your heroic leader is a criminal. How’s that for ironic? I got two years on an accessory charge and served
twelve months, courtesy of the lying asshole I thought I was in love with at the time.”

After the unfortunate incident with my virginity, I’d barely dated for the rest of high school. Or after the foster care system booted me out at the age of eighteen to face life on my own two (unbalanced) feet. But I couldn’t protect my heart forever. I was twenty when I met Kirk. He’d been a regular at one of the two places I waitressed at. He’d chat me up while ordering and leave big tips, and he always had a sweet compliment about my hair or my smile. Somehow he made it seem like I asked him out, when I’m sure it was the other way around. He made it seem like sex was my idea, too. It was great, really great, for almost a year. I was too stupid in love to wonder where he got his money when he never seemed to work.

Three days before my twenty-first birthday, he asked me for a favor. I agreed without hesitation. I still agreed to do it after I found out he wanted me to drive a getaway car, in exchange for a share of the stuff he stole. He said the score would be enough to get us both out of Portland, down to somewhere warm and sunny. I fell for it.

The sound of my prison cell door slamming closed for the first time was the second most terrifying moment of my life. I didn’t cry the first night, like they say most people do. My incarceration didn’t sink in until the second day, when I had to take a lukewarm, five-minute shower with nine strange women, watched over by two CO’s. I’d never felt more naked, more vulnerable or ashamed of myself for ending up there. For the first time, I’d felt like I had completely
disappointed my father and pissed on everything he’d taught me—everything he’d raised me to be. That second night, I cried until I threw up, then I cried some more. My cellmate thanked me in the morning by punching me in the eye.

Yep, that was the woman currently in charge of the last of the Rangers.

“I don’t want to do the interview,” I said, shaking out of my macabre memories. “If we have to do it, though, it’s on my terms. I don’t want some nosy reporter matching me up to my mug shot and asking about it.”

I laughed without amusement and studied the monitors without interest. “It would be almost worth it just to see what sort of lather McNally gets into. She’s got this hard-on for controlling our public image. I guess she lived through the brunt of our negative publicity during the War, and she wants to prevent that now.

“But what kind of publicity can you get for a group whose ex-con leader kills one of their own?” I said, thinking of Janel.

“Bad kind.”

I turned, heart pounding. The muffled voice hadn’t come from behind me. Ethan’s eyes had opened a fraction, twin slits of dull color. Looking at me. He licked his lips beneath the mask.

“Hey.” I reached for his hand and held it as tight as I dared. His skin was cool, too cool. “Eavesdrop much?”

“Talking to me. Only heard some.”

“I was just babbling, trying to make myself feel better. Should I call the doctor? Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“No to which question?”

“First.”

“So no doctor, but you’re in pain?”

His eyes closed, and then opened a bit wider. He breathed hard, creating a cloud of vapor inside of the mask. I pulled it down to his chin, freeing his mouth.

“Thanks,” he said. “Others okay?”

“Yeah, a little banged up, but they’re fine. We were all worried about you. Renee was pretty jealous about how you flew us down to that construction site, and I think she wants a ride of her own when you’re better.”

The left side of his mouth turned up, not quite a complete smile. “See what … can do.”

Now that I had a captive audience, the words wouldn’t come as easily. I dragged the toe of my sneaker across the glossy floor. “Is there anything you need?”

“Coffee?”

I grinned; he didn’t. In fact, his smile melted away completely, overtaken by stubbornness.

“Coffee,” he said again.

“Ethan, I don’t think the doctors will allow you to have coffee three hours after major surgery. Besides, you need to sleep, not stay awake.”

He shook his head, fear creeping into his eyes. “Stay awake.”

“You need to rest, you almost died up there.”

“Specter.”

I scrubbed my hands over my face. Specter would not come after us again, not for at least a day. He had to recharge
his psychokinetic batteries. I could figure out a way to have guards posted in the ICU if it made Ethan feel safer. Anything to help him get some rest, to relax and … oh, no.

“You don’t want to sleep,” I said, picking my words carefully, “because you don’t want Specter to use you like he used Janel. Is that it?”

A tilt of his head confirmed my suspicion. He looked away, finding the blanket more interesting to stare at. My heart broke for him. A grown man who looked like a boy and had no one to protect him, except friends just as lost. I perched on the edge of the bed and braced my hands on either side of his arms. He ignored me a moment, and then looked up.

“Specter can’t come after us right now, Ethan. It’s only been half a day. He doesn’t have the strength. Sleep for a few more hours and get your own strength back. Then, if you’re still afraid, we’ll discuss other options. Just don’t let fear make you hurt yourself, okay?”

He nodded, short jerks of his chin to indicate yes. “You’re … good leader, Trance. Smart.”

“Nah, I just can’t afford to lose any more men.” He chuckled, so I added, “Especially the cute ones. Get some rest. Please?”

“What’re you gonna do?”

A good question I hadn’t given serious consideration to. Waiting for Specter to attack again was stupid, but we had no way to locate him. Not until he wanted to be found or came at us again. Knowing he could enter the mind of any of us if we dozed off and use our powers against the others frightened me more than I would ever admit.

We had no safeguards against a psychokinetic attack.
The HQ had all kinds of modern surveillance methods that worked best against active powers and physical intruders. Sensors could not detect one mind entering another. The technology didn’t exist, and none of us possessed that particular ability.

Gage had made an astute observation an hour ago—so much of our past was still hidden from us, and we had no living mentors from whom to learn. Corps archives were tucked away in the basement of the Medical Center—the official storage place of Corps history. Team photographs, plaques dedicated to those lost in the line of duty, commemorative items for battles fought and won—all once proudly displayed in the Base and the Housing Unit—were now packed away in boxes and bins. Covered in bubble wrap and old newspaper, remnants of a glorious past laid to rest. Records and personnel files, old medical histories, mission reports, diaries, any number of documents were down there as well.

I didn’t fear the past, but I’d spent years running from my own, fraught with failures and mistakes. I didn’t need to see the failures of our predecessors neatly encased in glass shadowboxes, testaments to everything we’d lost. No, the past was best avoided for now.

I had to focus on the present, because until we discovered something to help us defeat Specter, we were sitting ducks. I said, “I’m honestly not sure. You don’t worry about it, Ethan. Just get better.”

I leaned down and kissed his forehead. His eyelids fluttered, then closed. I sat a while longer, listening to his breathing even out and deepen, and wished him into a good dream.

We could all use a good dream or two.

S
he sleeps in the pale blue glow, deaf to the whir of machines sustaining her life; unaware of her companion, who is a shape I cannot discern. He sleeps, too. The room is stark, undecorated, sterile. It feels like a hospital but different. They are forgotten here, in this room they have shared for many long years, as they have shared their lives. They only wish to help. It is all they have ever wished.

Help whom?

She sleeps on without reply.

I watch her as before and realize after a time that she is sweating. It dampens her forehead and cheeks. The room is warmer. Hot. Too hot, but I see nothing amiss. I smell something awful, dangerous.

Her companion makes terrible sounds, and then I see. His bed is engulfed in flames. She knows he is dying. He understands why, and he silently curses their killer. Their minds are linked, as they have always been.

Her eyelids fly open. The fire approaches her own bed. Her
luminescent eyes stare in hatred and accusation. Not at me. Through me.

Through the cacophony of voices and colors and lights—

I woke from the nightmare with a shout and fell right out of bed, managing to land hard on my left elbow. I lay there, dazed and panting. Damn it, I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I certainly hadn’t meant to dream of that woman again. My subconscious was really starting to piss me off.

I worked my neck to get the kinks out, then sat up and checked the clock—close to 2:00 a.m. I hauled myself up using the corner of my bed. I’d come back to my room meaning to take a shower. Now all I wanted was more sleep.

My bedroom door banged open, startling the crap out of me, and a distraught Renee stalked inside. She was wringing her elongated fingers in an exaggerated manner, twisting them around into unimaginably gross knots and pretzels. Kicking the door shut with her boot and a bang, she flopped onto the foot of my bed and stretched her long legs out.

“I need sex, T,” she wailed at the ceiling. Her electric blue eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “Really, really need it, so why do I keep saying no? What is wrong with me?”

“I—What?” I just stared at her, willing her words to make some semblance of sense. “Um, Renee, I think you started mid-conversation here. Want to rewind and try again?”

Her head listed toward me, lips pressed tight. Since I remet her, Renee Duvall had struck me as the most carefree,
roll-with-the-punches person imaginable, not unlike how she’d been as a child. Ready with a smile and a saucy quip, I didn’t expect the sadness I saw in her now. Or the utter frustration.

“I really like him,” she said. “Really, really like him, T. I mean, have you seen his ass? And his abs and his pecs, not to mention his yummy brown eyes? And holy shit, he’s a great kisser.”

“We’re talking about William, right?”

“No, Dr. Seward.” She shot me a look. “Yes, William. I mean, we were friends when we were kids, right? And ever since we met again, it’s like … I dunno, saying ‘sparks’ sounds stupid. There’s something there, T, and I don’t usually go all weak-kneed over a guy, but he’s not just a guy, right?”

Faced with a friend and her romantic problems, I came to an abrupt understanding of my own limited love life—I had no real advice to offer her, no previous girlfriend conversations on which to draw for reference. I’d dated casually, sure; however, my usual MO was to keep men at arm’s length. Letting them in—literally and metaphorically—hadn’t been an option for years. Not after being sold out by Kirk. He was why I resisted so hard when Gage made me go all gooey inside.

Renee’s admission that she wanted to sleep with William and hadn’t also made me smile inwardly. I guessed Gage’s veiled annoyance over their burgeoning relationship was a little premature.

I sat near my pillow, drew one leg up, and kept the other foot flat on the floor. Renee just stared at me, silently begging
for advice I didn’t have. I didn’t really know her. And it was a problem—maybe the only one on my plate right now—I could rectify with just a few direct queries.