Chapter 29 #2
I choked, sputtering. The coffee burned its way down the wrong pipe, and I wheezed, barely avoiding a full spray all over Sky.
He jerked upright, nearly spilling his coffee in his lap. “Whoa—”
“Experiments?” I croaked, pounding my fist against my chest. I glowered. “Really, Sky? You can’t just casually suggest alien experimenting on someone!”
He stared at me for a second before chuckling.
I wasn’t entirely joking, but he didn’t seem to pick up on it.
He set his cup down on the clean table, slanting me a dry look.
“Funny. Not like that. I meant I’d like to see if we can help you remember anything the halix may have conveyed.
Since we have some time this morning. I’ve been brainstorming ways I can jog your memory. ”
I forced another cough to expel the remnants of coffee from my lungs. Breathing much easier, I shook my head. “Sorry, but I told you, I can’t remember anything…”
But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?
Shapes. Lights. The echo of something behind my eyelids when I woke up. Distant and half-formed. I’d had dreams last night.
None of them had made sense. None of the images were coherent or resembled organized information that would, say, be stored in an alien info cache, waiting for humanity to access it.
They were just stress dreams, I told myself again. Stress did weird things to the brain. Science backed that up. Studies. Peer-reviewed journals. Real, reasonable things.
And currently my life was sorely lacking anything resembling reasonable.
I believed Sky that something was happening. After all, the glowy hand kind of made that difficult to argue. Still, it didn’t make it easier to accept I’d been blasted with an alien encyclopedia or whatever he thought.
I took another long sip of coffee to buy time and soothe my scratchy throat.
Elbow resting on the couch’s arm, Sky watched me. Waiting, I realized, for an answer.
It seemed a bit early for alien experiments, but I supposed now was as good a time as any. At least I’d had caffeine first.
“Okay,” I said, swirling my mug to mix in the egregious amount of creamer. “I’m not agreeing, but for hypothetical purposes…how would you do that? Help me remember things, I mean.”
Sky made a thoughtful noise then stretched his arms overhead. His chest muscles and shoulders bunched in the process. The shirt was thin enough to leave nothing to the imagination. Not that I needed to imagine after last night. I’d seen it in all its eight-pack, gym-bod glory.
Did he even need a gym? Or did the synth-skin just ensure he was always ripped like that?
I wrenched my eyes away when he rubbed a hand over his sternum and leaned forward, picking up his mug. “I have a few ideas.”
I was tense, wound up, and suddenly nervous, so I tried for humor. “For the record,” I attempted a sneer, “I’m not on board for probes of any kind.”
“I see.” He tucked his tongue into his cheek and considered his coffee cup. Then he tipped his head my way, and his lips curled up in the corner. “Of any kind?”
If I’d been drinking, I’d have choked again. That smile was just shy of criminal. I opened my mouth then closed it. On second thought, exceptions could be made.
But as if he’d just realized what he was doing, Sky’s flirtatious grin vanished as quickly as it’d appeared. A beat of eye contact passed, during which we both silently acknowledged the boundary-setting conversation we’d had last night, before he looked away.
“Sorry,” he muttered, attention dropping to his mug again. “No. No, ah, instruments involved besides your mind. Minimal touching. If you don’t mind me using…well, the synth-skin’s abilities.”
I froze with my coffee halfway to my mouth. “Like…the memory wiping?”
I lowered the mug slowly, and Sky shifted, glancing away like the reminder of what he was capable of somehow made him uncomfortable. “
Not like that,” he said, rubbing his neck. “Just…just a little bit of its neural interface. Nothing too invasive.”
Oh, just a little neural interface. “Define invasive, Sky.”
“It’s hard to explain…” At my disbelieving huff, he swiped his hand across his mouth and peeked at me from beneath his lashes. “Low-grade electrical interference? Directed through your nervous system to your hippocampal cortex. It’ll stimulate memory pathways and hopefully promote recall.”
My hippo what? He’d just dumped a whole lot of big words on me, and I’d gotten a little stuck on the mention of low-grade electrical interference being aimed anywhere near my brain.
I took a massive gulp of coffee, not even caring when it burned all the way down. My heart pattered against my breastbone. Swallowing, I lowered the mug and took a deep breath. “Okay. So basically, probing my memory banks.” I raised a brow.
“Basically.” Sky seemed to be fighting a smile again, though there was something cautious in his expression. Like he was waiting for me to laugh and say hell no.
Figures. All this stimulating and probing, and none of it sounded like the fun kind. “Will it hurt?”
“No!” He leaned in, serious again when he caught my eyes. “No, Rae. You probably won’t even feel it.”
“Probably,” I repeated, gnawing the inside of my cheek. “You’re really selling this.”
“I know. But I’ve…” He pursed his lips. “Well, I’ve never tried this with someone who actually knew what I was doing.”
Right. Because he’d never told anybody what he was. Belly twisting, I set my empty cup aside again, the thunk of ceramic against cheap faux-wood loud.
I felt Sky studying me. I didn’t look at him. Sitting back, I dropped my chin and twined my fingers in my lap.
He wanted to zap my brain with Pladian skin-suit tech. I should be running in the opposite direction.
But if it helped solve this mystery—if it proved one way or another whether this halix of his had actually stored something—it had to be worth it.
Besides, I was a little curious. And he said it wasn’t going to hurt…
Curiosity was really going to be the death of me. Steeling myself, I raised my head. “Fine. I’m not saying I think this will work, but I’m willing to try.”
“Okay.” Sky’s eyes roved my face, as if trying to glean my thoughts. Maybe he’d be reading those soon, too. God, I hoped not.
“Okay,” he said again, adjusting to face me. He tucked one leg beneath him, the other balanced on the floor. “I’m going to try some light hypnosis. More of a…suggestion for your mind to open itself. Hopefully let things come forward naturally.”
“Light hypnosis?” I snorted. “You’re going to Jedi-mind-trick me? Really?”
“I think I’m flattered you’ve put me in the Jedi category,” he said, smirking again, though this time with much less wickedness.
I didn’t know if I was more surprised that Sky had seen Star Wars or how relaxed he seemed. He was in a good mood. It was a stark change from the tortured, broody Sky who’d shown up at my door last night.
Maybe he was a morning person. I could see it. I normally was, too, when my night hadn’t been filled with late studying and finding out I was at the center of an intergalactic womanhunt.
Or maybe he was just relieved. Maybe, under that tough, alien-on-a-mission exterior, he’d needed to talk to somebody. Maybe, like humans, Pladians sometimes had to get things off their chests. Their wide, muscular chests.
I forced my attention away from the chest in question and back to Sky’s now-focused expression. I needed to know before we did this: “You’re not going to be able to…like, read my mind or anything, right?”
Because the last thing I needed was him finding out just how deep this fascination with his shoulders went.
“No,” Sky said, with a breathy chuckle. I exhaled in relief, and he shook his head, dark tufts of hair shifting with the movement. “Not at all. Like I said, it’s neural manipulation via electrical stimulation. I can’t actually see the memories or anything. I’m just sending electrical impulses.”
I fought the urge to shudder at the wording. “And you know what you’re doing.”
“Trained for years.” He held my eyes. “I’ve never used it quite like this, but we’ll start slow.” Queasy, I stared when he held out a hand. “I want you to close your eyes. I’m going to touch your wrist. Your pulse point. Think of that as grounding. You might feel a little tingle.”
Little tingles were pretty normal when it came to Sky touching me. Big ones, too. I didn’t tell him that.
“We’re going to try to relax your mind and step back into your memory,” he said, when I continued to hesitate. “To the moment you touched the halix. And go from there.”
I gave a sniff at that, settling further into the couch. “Do I want to know how you learned to hypnotize humans?”
He shrugged a little. I took that as a no. Dragging in a deep breath, I tried to tamp down another swell of nerves. I’d never been hypnotized before.
Then again, I’d never been zapped by an alien before, either.
My insides twisted into a knot, and I swallowed hard. I still wasn’t convinced there was anything for us to dig up, but I’d agreed to try. So try I would.
I braced myself and extended my arm. The couch groaned when Sky shifted to face me more fully. The light brush of his fingertips on my wrist sent a frisson of electricity up my arm, and my gaze snapped to his. Was that it?
His eyes were closer to cerulean in the dim morning light. That messy curl slid over his temple when he nodded gently. Encouragingly. The pads of his long fingers pressed against the thin skin over my pulse point.
“Go ahead and close your eyes,” he murmured. I silenced the cynical, anxious clamor in my brain and obeyed. “Good. Now, take a deep breath.”
I nearly smiled, biting it back just in time. His voice was oddly soothing—and he almost sounded like he knew what he was doing. Maybe Sky dabbled in psychotherapy between bartending, battling evil robots, chasing down artifacts, and being forced to rescue me.
I did as he instructed, drawing in a lung-stretching breath, holding it, then letting it out, slow and steady.
“Again,” Sky said, barely above a whisper.