Chapter 46
46
When she revived, when the shroud slowly lifted and her eyes opened, her two guys were before her. Mo was stuck to the ceiling above, and she lay on her side on something soft and padded—a table, judging by the height. A bar ran above the edge, probably to stop people rolling off.
Vargr and Rutger sat a few feet away on shiny steel chairs.
“Comfy?” she croaked.
“Oh hell.” Vargr startled, almost jumped off the chair. “You’re back, babe.”
Rutger inhaled deeply then slowly stood. Was that the shine of tears?
“Babe… is okay,” she said through her numb mouth and tried to smile.
“Huh.” Vargr squatted before her, picked up her hand and kissed her fingers.
Fingers. She blinked at them. They didn’t seem as if they were hers.
“She’s still sick if I can call her babe.”
“Today, only, asshole.” When her tongue ran over her dry lips, those too, tongue and lips, seemed to belong to somebody else.
Squinting, Rutger muttered, “That’s our girl.”
“I feel good just… tired?” She moved, lifting her head off the pillow, letting sound into her ear, and was all too aware that nothing was hurting. Yay team .
This place smelled of that raw alcohol you get swiped with at doctor’s surgeries, just before an injection.
“Good is a big advance.” Rutger rose and strode to the door, which was a few yards down this tunnel-like room. He whistled. “Maura! Willow. Vincent! I think she’s going to be okay.”
“You’d better be okay. We have been waiting so bloody long to hear you talk.” Vargr played with her hand.
“How long?” She swallowed the gunk in her throat, feeling as if she should cough but not sure it was possible, yet.
“Three days. I can fill you in, if you want?”
“Sure. Though if you keep being so cute and wimpy, I may throw up.”
“You already did that. Loads. They had you on oxygen and fluids. The last of what Big D had in supplies. There’s a needle still in that arm.”
“Oh.” So that was the one last hurt. She checked out the arm on top of her body. “Did it happen? Could you fix me? I feel like I’ve been in Lalaland or hell.”
“We think so.” Rutger returned and he pulled his chair closer and sat. “Would you like to sit up? Can she?” He asked Vincent that as the rockman filled the door.
To allow Willow and Maura to enter, Vincent inched in then went to the foot of her table. The two women looked both cautious and curious as they came over to her. Had she been that ill?
Locke was outside and had obviously decided to stay there. She smiled at him.
His nod was grim, as if he wasn’t sure she was alive. The room suddenly closed in on her, as if about to eat her. Her heart rattled out a higher pace.
“Fuck this. I’m sitting up.”
Someone lowered the railing, so that by the time she swung her legs over and dizzily sat upright, there was only the soft edge. Standing was next. Before anyone could think to deny her, she slipped off, landed on her feet, then pretty dramatically collapsed all over Rutger. The tubing that ran to her arm whipped about.
“What the hell,” she spluttered. “Who took my legs?”
The beaster hauled her higher onto his lap, calming her with words—as if she needed calming—and she heard Vargr pull the other chair in to sit beside them. She was calm, just pissed off. Now she had the whole damn room glaring at her.
“What?” She held up her arms, meaning to splay them outward in protest but they failed her and landed on her own lap. “Okay, fill me in some more. Why am I a ragdoll? Why are you all staring?”
“I think we are freaking Cyn out.” Willow grinned. “Let’s give her some room.”
Maura began looking for a seat. Vincent shrugged and perched against the wall opposite the door, a couple of yards toward the front. Past him, further along this wide tubular compartment, a partial divider was visible then a cockpit slash cabin slash whatever the driver’s area was called, where she glimpsed two red-upholstered seats and a pair of steering wheels.
“This is Big Daddy?” She placed her hand over Rutger’s where it lay on her thigh and she realized she was wearing a backless white gown. “Who took all my clothes?”
“Yes, this is Big Daddy.” Rutger steadied her. “He’s not spoken since we arrived, but the vehicle has power.”
“He,” she murmured. Why were all the AIs called he? Okay, with a name like Big Daddy she could see the point. But how big was Big Daddy?
She scanned from the cockpit to Vincent and Willow, then over the table, where a seated Maura met her eyes. Behind her and to her left were a microscope and white cabinets, chairs, lots of dingle-whatsit science stuff she didn’t recognize, further left was another table, and another divider with the door closed.
“So, did you make me better than before? I feel like I’ve turned into a butterfly you stuck in a jar. Can I claim on insurance for floppy limbs?”
Everyone kept staring, their expressions a mixture of pained, sad, or something in between. Rutger squeezed her where he’d wrapped his arms around her to stop her from toppling. After clearing her throat, Willow stepped forward, placing her hand on the corner of the table.
“We’re surprised you’re alive. We did what we aimed to. Maura took samples from several different beasters and she’s cultivated nanites from us. Yours and Vincent’s have similarities, and they grow faster.”
“You grow them in what? Blood?”
“No, in a material I found here, made for the purpose,” Maura answered. “I microtomed and stained the Ghoul Lord sample Vincent gave me and found something that would bond to it that Willow could sense. It was however a potentially deadly chemical. Considering your healing powers?—”
“And that you were dying anyway,” Willow interjected.
Her lips pinched in, then Maura continued. “We injected it via IV infusion. We took a chance, a leap of faith as Rutger called it.”
She nodded and felt him threading his big fingers through hers. “Okay. It was a good call.” She pressed her hand onto his fingers, took a breath.
“And so, then I had to see if I could help you kill off what was inside you.” Grimacing, Willow perched herself on the table’s corner. “I wasn’t sure I could because, when I looked inside you, your brain was lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Oh shit. She blinked at Willow. “But I’m here.”
“Yeahhh, no fucking clue why. Really. Pardon the swearing. I had to hope you could heal what those things were doing, had done to you, plus any damage that might occur when I went after them. Maura decided to inject some of your own nanites into your cerebrospinal fluid. Vincent showed her how. And again, destroying your brain was a side effect we had to consider. I crushed the tentacles as much as I could, I think the deadly stuff that stuck to them did something too. And you and those nanites did the rest.”
“So…” She gulped, thought. “I really did have bits of Ghoul Lord inside me?”
Willow laughed. “That, or I was hallucinating. Whatever it was, our treatment worked. I can’t see anything wrong in there anymore. I figure you must have titanium in your veins, something far beyond what any ordinary human ever had, Cyn. You have a clean brain.”
“Oh hell,” Vargr muttered. “I fuckin’ hope not.” He smiled at her.
She favored him with a raised eyebrow then reached across with her unoccupied hand. Now both her beasters were holding her hands. It felt like she was in kindergarten again with her two best buddies by her side. Which was a little too platonic for her ovaries.
Kindergarten? She searched her memories but nothing else surfaced. Still a nobody, way back in her past.
“I just hope I get to walk again.” She stared at where her hands lay, clasped in Rutger’s and Vargr’s. “Because I need to.” The fire in her heart surged, rebuilt, peaked, seemed to course along the arteries and veins of her body. “I need to stand up and go kill those fuckers.” Killing them would be so satisfying. Did her eyes blaze, because it felt so. She raised her head then pushed herself off Rutger’s lap, slowly. He slipped his hands to her waist. This time her legs held her weight, even if her muscles were quivering. “Are you with me?”
“Mmmm. We all are.” The frown on Willow’s forehead said she was dubious. “First, though, we need to get you a walking frame.”
Her eyeroll did not seem to impress anyone. Maybe she should take this slower? The itch to do something was maddening.
“Have you been through that door yet?” She indicated the closed one.
“Yes.” Rutger stood, his hands readjusting. “Would you like a tour?”
Then it struck her what was missing from this. They’d come here to discover who they were, what those nanites had done to them, and what Maelstrom was. No one looked even vaguely ready to blurt out that amazing information. Had they failed? Or had they been too busy keeping her alive?
It would be, technically, ungrateful to complain if the latter was true. Also technically, if her nanites were this good at healing damage, why not inject them into every beaster?
Because they were afraid to, because they still didn’t understand what she was? Or was she miles ahead of them with that bit of logic?
Fuck-it. Whoever said she had tact?
“First, tell me that you’ve found out what we are?”
Vincent puffed out his mouth. Maura looked sheepish. Vargr shrugged and looked to Willow.
“Why am I the fall guy?” She wiped her hands over her face and looked far wearier than Cyn had ever seen before. “We don’t know, yet. We can access Big Daddy through Little Mo. We know he’s running a program to correct some big system problems. Little Mo is worried it’s stuck looping, but Locke says no. I looked inside him, and he’s just too complex for me to figure out easily.”
“Is this relevant?”
“However…” She nodded at Cyn. “Have patience, woman. This needs context. Okay, bottom line. Big D has nothing about this except the timeline for beaster creation and what I’d call the scaffolding of the experiments. What the nanites are derived from is probably hidden in some paperwork we found back there, beyond that door. It’s not indexed, it’s messy, but then the invasion was happening. It’s mixed in with archaeological stuff the doctor was running. There are thousands upon thousands of pages of hand-written notes in his office. Big Daddy was possibly wiped clean or excluded from this data, on purpose.”
They didn’t know. Still.
This lack overshadowed her own survival and cast a depressing cloak over her feelings.
“Then I guess we have a lot of reading to do?”
“That’s our goal. Rutger and Vargr have started, but we need more time.”
They all murmured agreement. She wasn’t sure who, precisely, she was too busy staring at that door.
Willow cleared her throat. “There’s something else, Cyn. Something I have to tell everyone. At the moment it’s a secret.”
“What’s that?” She was no longer the focus of their stares, Willow was.
“Before I will say, I want to give you time to heal. I really need to find out if you can still control the Lure. It only stopped when you got those GL pieces in you. Right?”
“Okay. Why?” Her thoughts ticked by. Willow must intend to go closer to the Top or somewhere she thought the Ghoul Lords might be.
“Not yet. Please. Go on that tour with your beasters. Shoo. Wait. Get that drip out of your arm first.”
“Oh.” She ripped it out, watched the blood that leaked swell into a tiny dot and stop. She even clotted better than a human. Yet there was always a downside to being superhuman in the movies. “What’s my kryptonite?” she muttered to herself.
“Say that again?” Rutger ducked lower and met her gaze. His horns curled above, as impressive as ever, dripping blue motes that ebbed in intensity as they fell. Her beautiful beaster.
She shook her head, smiled, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Nothing. Thank you, both of you, for watching over me. You went far beyond what I could ever have hoped for…” Or at least, as far as her amnesiac self could remember.
“It was our pleasure.” That was softly said, and he lifted her hand and kissed the back, same as Vargr had been doing. She’d never realized Rutger had some gentleman in his make-up.
When everyone had left them alone and he and Vargr were helping her dress again, because her arms and legs were still being idiotic, he leaned down to kiss her on the mouth. “You’re our pretty fuck-toy. Of course it was a pleasure.”
Vargr moved in behind her, tugging her jeans and zipping them at the front. He slipped his hands beneath the waistline and cupped over her mons, squeezing there. She gasped, closing her eyes. Being a sandwich between these two had to happen soon.
“Fuck, stop teasing me, both of you.”
“Luv, babe… Dream on.” Vargr licked her ear, her neck, the warmth of his breath and voice sifting over her skin. “You provoke us, we tease you. Teasing you is our favorite sport.” His finger curled into her slit and penetrated her enough that she could feel the curl of that finger inside.
“No sex yet?” She felt a little strangled in saying those words.
“Not yet.” Rutger stepped away, and she peered up at him and tried to look wistful.
Then they both abandoned her, apart from Vargr’s grip on her arm to keep her steady. She was dressed, aroused, and wanted to drag them into the nearest corner to get fucked, weak as she was.
“Bastards,” she said, mouth downturned. “Come on, show me Big Daddy.”
Though Rutger headed to the door, she caught him saying something quietly. And was fairly sure it was along the lines of: “I’ll give you big daddy soon, all right.”
Now that had her grinning. They were in as much sexual agony as she was.