37. - Corey -
Chapter thirty-seven
- Corey -
I t was really bright. She squeezed her eyes closed a little more and flung her arm over her face to cover her eyes. She felt good. Like, really good. Outside of the fact that she felt like she could sleep for a hundred years, there was no pain, not even an echo of all the hits she’d taken. Her breathing was even, and her stomach didn’t feel like someone had put a hole through it.
She lifted her arm to check the stab wound. Nothing.
She opened her eyes, glimpsing the iron railing in the condo. But that didn’t make sense. She let her head drop to the side and caught an evergreen gaze staring right back at her, a very Kayden-like goofy grin curving his lips, even as his eyes swam with unshed tears.
“You’re awake, Little Fox.”
She reached for him, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling himself into her. He held her tight while everything she’d had to repress broke through. His body was shaking under her, and she realized hers was too with the force of her sobs. She could feel his own tears wet on his cheek as she pressed her skin against his. Her fingers clutched him, worried he’d dematerialize if she didn’t hold on .
He brushed his hands through her hair, whispering into her ear, “I’m right here, baby. I’m with you. I’m never letting you go.”
When the wracking of her sobs finally settled, she asked, “How many days?”
“Just one.”
She pulled away from him, floored that her body seemed completely healed. She lay in a makeshift hospital bed in the middle of the living room. She had a pulse reader attached to her finger, hooked up to a monitor by her bedside. The coffee table was nowhere to be found.
Another hospital bed was set up close by hers, a bunch of wires running to the body under the blanket. Jason .
Her heart tripped over itself, and a whimper escaped her. “Is he going to live?”
“Yes, he’s going to be just fine. He’s in a medically induced coma right now, to help him heal from all the internal trauma to his organs. It will help speed up the healing process. How do you feel?”
“I feel… great.” She swallowed, looking around the room again, feeling a little bewildered. Something wasn’t adding up.
She reached for her shoulder, but found nothing there—no entrance wound from the knife she knew she'd been stabbed with. Her ribs felt fine too, even though the impact from the bullets should have bruised her like a peach. She ran a thumb along her front tooth. It was still chipped.
“I don’t understand. How are we okay? And why aren’t we in the hospital?”
He brought a hand behind his neck, rubbing it sheepishly. “It’s kind of a long story.”
A tinkling laugh had Corey’s head swinging to the kitchen. A beautiful, albeit miniature, woman was sitting on the bar stool, holding a mug. The regular-sized mug looked massive in her small hands. She was breathtaking, with silvery blond hair cropped to her shoulders and bright blue eyes .
She must have felt Corey’s attention, because the women’s head turned, cocking to the side, a big smile on her full, pink lips.
Hopping off the bar stool, she practically floated to Corey's bedside.
Corey blinked a few times, trying to decide if she was hallucinating.
“Oh, good,” she said, “you’re up!” She clapped her hands together lightly, a juvenile expression, though she didn’t look younger than Corey. “I’m Sophie, Sophie Monarch. It’s nice to meet you, Corey. The boys have told me a lot about you.” There was a lovely cadence to her voice, something soft and ethereal, and a little brassy at the end. It swept over Corey, and she felt the spike in her nerves calming, the change in her physiology echoing on the monitor.
Corey shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“I’m a healer.”
“Like, a doctor?”
Sophie’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know?”
“They haven’t told her yet.” It was a gravelly, deep voice that she immediately recognized. The man behind the comms came into view. She hadn’t noticed him in the kitchen, with the other woman’s mystic charm. “Nice to meet you in person, Corey.” He stuck a hand out to her. “Under less dire circumstances.”
“This is Archer Knox. He’s the voice in your ear, our tech guy. Archie manipulates computers,” Kayden explained.
Archer Knox was covered in tattoos, traditional Chinese tattoos looping and swirling with mist and monsters up his toned arms. They climbed the fingertips of the hand she was still shaking dumbly, all the way up under his t-shirt sleeves and then escaping again from the collar and up his neck.
“Damn, you don’t look like a computer nerd.” She eyed him appreciatively, and she could have sworn Kayden’s eyes flashed.
“The twins didn’t know where I lived, in case they were ever compromised, but I was just a few hours away. I started driving over as soon as you guys were back in the car. Luckily, Sophie lives a little closer. ”
The little pixie woman spoke again, her voice a calming salve for the words that came out of her. “You had a kidney contusion, a tear through the deltoid and rotator cuff from a knife wound, bruised ribs and a mild concussion.”
“How did that all heal in one day?”
Sophie looked to Kayden, seeming to defer to him for the explanation.
“Arch and Sophie were in the facility with me and Jason. That’s how we met them,” Kayden said slowly.
“That doesn’t answer my question, Kayden. Just tell me what’s happening?” Her heartbeat started to climb on the monitor at her bedside. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling vulnerable in the hospital gown someone else had put her in.
“The kids in the facility, we were… collected. It wasn’t random. They took us or bought us for experimentation because we have genetic anomalies. We are considered evolved humans. The facility believed we represent a natural evolutionary leap in the human species, and they were studying the cause behind our genetic changes. Because of the mutation in our genetic coding, we have unique gifts. Archie is technokinetic. Sophie is a healer. Jason and I are telepathic. Some had fire, telekinesis, regeneration, all kinds of abilities. The facility was doing genetic engineering and experiments to understand if and how our gifts could be activated, transferred or controlled.”
Corey couldn’t tell if this was just a symptom of her concussion. Had she actually died and woken up in some parallel universe? That didn’t seem likely, since Jason was still comatose in a hospital bed but… this was extreme. “You’re telling me you can read my mind?”
“Well, that’s the thing. Jason and I can’t read your mind. You’re the first person we’ve ever encountered where we can’t. I was a worried Sophie’s gift wouldn’t work on you either, but luckily, it did. Though your injuries weren’t life-threatening like Jase’s, you would have needed to be hospitalized for weeks, and explaining the injuries would have been a nightmare. Not to mention, Kreig probably has hired men scouring the hospitals to find you.”
This was too much. Her head was starting to hurt. “Who’s Kreig?”
“He runs one of the black market manufacturing rings for the opium we import.” She cringed at the reminder of what the twins had their hands in.
“Is he… gifted?”
“No, nothing like that. He’s just a thug. Archie already has private teams taking out his entire organization.”
Corey felt shell-shocked. “Why can’t you read my mind?”
“I don’t know. You neutralize our abilities. Wherever you are, I can’t hear any thoughts around you. You’re like a shield. It’s not something I can control, or turn on and off. We’ve just always heard what everyone is thinking. With you, it’s radio silence and our gift becomes irrelevant. With you, we’re basically normal.”
“I need a coffee,” she groaned, flopping back down on the hospital bed and wincing.
Sophie scooted closer to her, and she felt her hand brush her forehead.
“Are you doing that on purpose?” she asked Sophie.
“Doing what?”
“That calming thing that’s happening.”
“Sort of. I can heal the body, sometimes the mind. It’s likely just residual effects of treating your brain injury, activating your parasympathetic nervous system. Like Jason and Kayden, I can’t control my gift. It’s touch-activated. It finds the issue and heals it. I did my medical training too, after we escaped, just to help me understand better what’s happening, but it doesn’t influence the effect.”
“Can I get out of this bed?”
“You’re one hundred percent healed, so you can really do whatever you want.”
“I like her,” Corey said to Kayden, pulling herself out of the hospital bed. Kayden wrapped an arm around her and drew her into his lap. He nuzzled his face into her neck, and she melted against him. “I thought he was going to die. I thought maybe we both were.” The reality of their survival finally settled into her, and she choked back a new sob, clinging to Kayden and burying her face in the crook of his neck. He held her tight, letting her take comfort in his nearness.
It hit her then, the comment Jason had made so many weeks ago. “Wait, does this mean Belinda is actually invisible?”
“Yup.”
“Oh my god!” She reared away from him, cheeks heating. “Are you kidding?”
“She only comes into the penthouse when we’re not here. Don’t worry, she didn’t see anything she wasn’t supposed to.”
“I was tanning naked for days!” She thought back to all the other things she’d been doing in this penthouse for the last few months and her cheeks got even hotter. The three of them were snickering at her.
Kayden stood up, Corey still koalaed around him. “Archie, can you make us both a coffee? I’m going to take her to get changed.”
She was never letting go of him again, she decided.
“Kayden said coconut lattes were your preference?”
Corey turned her back on the cityscape she’d been contemplating. “They weren’t before. But fancy men drink fancy drinks, so I kind of adjusted.”
“Nothing fazes you, does it?” There was a crinkle in the corner of Archer’s eyes as he held out the steaming mug to her, but the smile was unformed.
“That’s not true.” She took a sip of the latte, the frothed milk clinging to her upper lip .
Archie watched as her tongue darted out to lick it off. It wasn’t in the way she was used to being looked at by men, not hungry or wanting.
He was… assessing her? His dark eyes met hers under his glasses, and she lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Thanks for stepping in for the twins. Is the coffee okay?”
“It’s fine. Jason makes them best, though.”
“Jase will be just fine, Corey.” They’d all told her that at least a hundred times, but she still worriedly chewed her bottom lip. “He’s been through worse.” His voice had that now familiar gruffness, a low treble she’d never be able to forget.
“I don’t think I want to know.” She took another sip of coffee and sighed, leaning back against the balcony railing, tilting her face up to the overcast sky. “Who would round up children like that? For experiments? It’s so fucked up.”
“Dr. Yrene Filipova would.” The hatred he had for her was apparent in every syllable, coating the sounds as they left his mouth.
“You know who it was?”
“Of course I know. I’m not like the Haevens. I wasn’t able to black everything out and move on. I’ve been digging into it for years, ever since we got out.” There was a mix of emotions there, but she didn’t know him well enough to parse them out.
She turned her attention back to him. “I’d tear her apart for them, if I could find her. They did the same for my abuser.”
He had that assessing look on his face again as he perused her. “I know exactly where she is.”
“Tell me.”
“It won’t be that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s still operating. She still runs facilities just like the ones we were in. Underground, privately funded, security, the works.” Archer’s inked hand flitted up in the air, circling to emphasise his point .
Corey’s jaw fell open. “You know all this, and you’ve done nothing about it?” Her voice pitched loudly.
She pushed herself off the railing, stepping towards him. To do what, she didn’t know.
“Woah, easy there.” He lifted his hands up placatingly. “I’m just one person.”
“You’re not, you have Jason and Kayden a boatload of wealth and the tech to support it. I’ve seen what you can do!”
“Like I said, they’ve walked away from it.” His voice was getting lower as hers was getting higher, and she was finally able to recognize his contained resentment.
“They haven’t. Jason can’t sleep without drowning himself in alcohol because of the nightmares, and Kayden thinks he’s all alone. We can do something about that. Tell me everything you know.”
“I knew I liked you.” His shoulders seemed to drop at that, some tension dissipating with Corey’s commitment. “There are two facilities. I’m sure of it. But I’ve only been able to access one. There’s correspondence going out that I can’t trace. It’s like a dead zone, murky. The destination is somewhere my gift won’t go, like it’s blocked….” He trailed off, his gaze shifting over her shoulder, lost in thought.
Then he pulled his attention back from where it had wandered. His eyebrows pinched together, like he’d figured something out.
“What?” she asked.
He hmphed . “Nothing. Was just thinking.” But he kept eyeing her, like a puzzle to solve.
Corey lost her patience with whatever he was calculating. “So are we going on another rescue mission, then?”
“If you can convince your men.”
“Easy.” Her grin was quick and sure, a little feral. “Let’s see all that data you’ve collected with that big brain and magical gift.”