Chapter 18 | Anna
I awoke to the strong medicinal scent of the room and nearly gagged.
Light pressed against my closed eyes. And when I opened them, I saw I was in the same place. The same ceiling tiles. Fresh. New. Perfect. The same lights burning overhead. Humming. Buzzing. The same IV stuck in my arm. Cold.
My body felt different. Heavier. My limbs were lead. My throat was dry. But there was no pain.
At least, not yet.
I lay there listening to the hum of machinery. Tuning my senses to my surroundings. There was no one else with me. That was likely by design. They wanted me to wake, confused. Perhaps they wanted me to lash out, defiant.
I was neither.
I was calm. Controlled. Restrained.
And deep down I knew that wasn’t mine. That was… not me.
I should have been afraid. I should have been screaming. I should have been trying to rip out the IV and leave.
I should feel something.
There was only structure. Clean edges.
I tried to make myself panic. To find that place inside me to react.
I pictured Kincade in chains. His wrists bloody. The way he looked at me before they took me.
My pulse didn’t spike. My breath didn’t hitch.
The mental image merely filed itself away. As though sliding into a file folder to be referenced later if needed.
That’s when I knew. They made me into something else. I knew that was the plan. But my mind—still fogged at the edges—refused to accept it. To understand it. To believe it.
There was no bandage around my head. No stitches. They did not shave my head. They did not cut me open. Only a slight pressure. A headache that sat too deep to be ordinary.
Whatever they’d done hadn’t required opening me up.
Minimally invasive. Guided. Laparoscopic.
They wanted me whole, intact, functional.
Ready to deploy. That’s what Sebastian said.
Terror arrived, crawling through my gut in a heated punch. I was no longer the same person. Forever altered.
There was a hot tightness in my cheek. Like the wound had closed but started to fester. Like they wanted to keep me wounded as a reminder of what they could do.
The door opened. The shuffle of feet. Someone checked my vitals. The nurse, I realized. I recognized her eyes as I looked up into them. She avoided my gaze.
“I’ll let him know you’re awake,” she said, as if I had any say in the matter.
Her voice was quiet. Lilting.
A moment later, Vormund returned. He leaned over me, his gaze flickering across my face looking for—what? What was he looking for? Weakness? Fear? He would get none of that from me.
His jaw tightened for a flash of a moment, then relaxed. Like he was pleased with the results.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
I said nothing.
He held a tablet, looking at the screen, scrolling through whatever information was there.
“As the first,” he said mildly, “you’ve done remarkably well.”
The first. The test subject.
There were more to come.
“You’ll have some soreness,” he continued. “But otherwise, you should recovery quickly and be fine.”
If I was the first, how did he know that? He couldn’t.
The door opened and closed behind him. “Bring her.”
Sebastian.
“Not yet,” the doctor said. “She just came to.”
“I want to see how she performs,” Sebastian said. “Bring her.”
Performs.
Not speaks. Not recovers.
The doctor turned his back to me and lowered his voice. “No. It’s too soon. In a few hours.”
A pause as the silence stretched. “Fine. One hour.”
And then receding footsteps.
The doctor expelled a frustrated breath.
One hour.
Whatever they’d turned me into, I would find out soon enough.
One hour later, the doctor returned and removed the IV, bandaged my arm. Then helped me to a sitting position. I didn’t want his hands on me, but I didn’t have a choice.
Black pinpricks dotted my vision when I rose. I flinched. Took a deep breath. Expelled it. And then it dissipated.
He forced me into a wheelchair and pushed me out of the room. The hallway flashed by in a haze. As much as I tried to keep my bearings, they were going too fast. And I couldn’t keep up. My mind was still fuzzy.
He paused in a hallway. Sebastian stood, waiting and watching.
“In there,” he said. Nodding to a door.
A guard took my arm, hoisted me to my feet and then pushed me into a room. The door closed behind me.
I was alone.
There was nothing but a long metal bench along one side. No other chairs. I turned to glance behind me. A two-way mirror.
Great. I stood in a fishbowl. And whoever was on the other side was going to watch whatever I was supposed to do.
I glanced at the door. The only exit.
After a long moment, when no one else came, I sat on the metal bench. The cold steel bit through the thin gown. But it didn’t seem to bother me. That should have bothered me. I crisscrossed my legs in front of me, put my hands on my knees, and waited.
I didn’t wait long.
The guard who smashed my face earlier entered the room. Closed the door. Stood there looking at me like I was something to be inspected.
I pushed myself to my feet.
My fingers twitched as I waited. My breath even. My heart controlled. I noted all of it. None of it felt urgent.
There was no panic. There was no fear. There was nothing but calm.
And then he moved.
Not fast. Testing. Trained.
He took one step toward me. Then another. He was close enough I smelled him. Sweat and something sour underneath.
I responded before my thoughts did. My weight shifted. Options surfaced. Immediate. Clean. Efficient.
I didn’t choose one. I tried to stop—tried to find the pause—but my body moved without asking permission. His hand came up into a fist. I locked my hand around his wrist, bent his arm back into an awkward angle. A move that should have taken training I didn’t have.
His eyes widened in surprise.
I shoved him backward to the wall. His back smacked it with a dull thud. My forearm landed across his throat.
Not strength. Accuracy.
Something inside me notated the action was complete.
The room was silent except for his breathing which was fast and uneven. My pulse remained steady. My gaze locked on his. And his—wide, unsure, unbelieving.
“Good.” Sebastian’s voice crackled from the speaker by the two-way mirror.
The world clicked back into place. I stepped back at once. My hands at my side. No shaking. No ragged breathing. No elevated pulse.
I sat back on the metal bench, my hands in my lap. They were steady.
And that’s when the fear punched through me.