Chapter Seventeen
Gemma woke screaming.
Cold air slammed into her lungs. Her spine arched off the diagnostic table as hands pressed her down. Lights swam above her, bright, clinical, and real.
“She’s waking.” Doctor Manae’s voice was nervous. “Gemma, stay with me.”
Gemma thrashed against the straps around her wrists, panic flooding her like ice. Her throat burned. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t—
A mask sealed over her mouth and nose.
“Just oxygen,” the doctor said. “You’re safe. Breathe.”
Gemma’s vision sharpened in flashes. Gunner stood nearby, his usual giddy smile wiped clean, his electropad hanging forgotten at his side. Electrodes clung to Gemma’s scalp. Her heart rate blared in a shrill rhythm on the monitor beside her bed.
She sucked in a breath through the mask, then another, until the air stopped clawing down her throat.
“Gemma, can you hear me?” Doctor Manae asked, her voice low but direct.
Gemma nodded stiffly, though her limbs felt wrong, slow and uncooperative. Like her body hadn’t quite caught up to her mind.
“Do you know where you are?” the doctor asked.
Another nod. “The temple.”
“Do you know who she is?” Doctor Manae motioned toward where the Kaizen stood just inside the closed door, her muscular arms crossed over her chest. Even her brown eyes—usually blank and emotionless—were sharp with worry.
Gemma couldn’t stop the word before it left her mouth. “Unfortunately.” Her eyes opened wide, but Gunner just started snickering, and the Kaizen rolled her eyes.
“I think we can say Gemma is still Gemma,” Doctor Manae joked, removing the mask from over Gemma’s nose and mouth. “Can you sit up?”
When Gemma nodded, Doctor Manae released the restraints binding Gemma’s wrists and ankles.
She pushed herself up. Every muscle in her body ached as if she’d gone through a full round of sparring drills with Christian.
Three pairs of eyes stared at her. Her pulse skipped a beat. “What happened?”
“What do you remember from your dream?” Doctor Manae asked.
Gemma opened her mouth to answer, but there was nothing. Her brows furrowed. She’d been plagued by nightmares for weeks. Why were last night’s a blank? She remembered falling asleep, warm and relaxed after her call with Christian, and then she was here.
“I can’t remember anything,” Gemma answered at last.
Both Doctor Manae and Gunner frowned. Gemma shot her gaze back and forth between them, trying to gauge what had really happened. It was Gunner who broke the silence.
“You were screaming inside your shelter. Woke most of us up. Phoebe got to you first. You were thrashing and digging your nails so deep into your palms that they bled. She carried you here herself.”
Gemma looked at the red-haired captain, stunned. The Kaizen had carried her?
“You started convulsing and speaking in another language, like some sort of memory bleed. The only word I could translate was ‘door.’ I think you were desperate to get there. We had to tie you down to keep you from fighting us.”
Her entire body felt cold as her pulse picked up speed again. “I didn’t hurt any of you, did I?” A lump formed in her throat.
“We’re fine,” Gunner said. “You didn’t hurt anyone.”
Gemma’s eyes burned. “I was just . . . I—I talked to Christian and fell asleep.”
“You weren’t asleep,” Doctor Manae said, stepping forward. “Not really. Your neural activity mimicked REM, but the activity levels in other areas were off the chart. Something was overriding your normal function.”
“It’s also probably important to note she’s been unconscious for six hours,” the Kaizen interjected.
What?!
Gemma’s mouth went dry; her heart skipped a beat. She gripped the sheet beneath her to try to still the uncontrollable shaking in her hands.
“That’s not helping, Phoebe,” Doctor Manae scolded.
“Oh, wait, should I have left that part out when she clearly has a right to know what’s happening to her?”
Doctor Manae sighed. “Yes, Gemma, you’ve been unconscious for six hours. But something’s bleeding through. Your brain is active on frequencies we don’t even have names for. And it’s getting stronger.”
The room spun. These were her worst nightmares coming true: losing control of her own body to whatever was rewriting her DNA.
Gunner cleared his throat. “Might I suggest something?”
“No,” the Kaizen said, sharing a pointed look with her brother. “Out of the question.”
“But what if it’s the cure for all of this?”
“Wait, you found a cure?” Gemma interrupted, her pulse spiking.
“Not exactly,” Doctor Manae answered. “But it’s possible the answer to all of this lies through those doors you opened.”
“I told you,” the Kaizen said, “it’s out of the question. If that doorway is affecting her on this level, entering that room could push her over the edge.”
“Whatever is changing her is desperate to get into that room,” Gunner said.
“If we don’t allow her to go, she will find a way.
At some point, that part of her DNA will do anything to get there.
And I doubt we’d be able to stop her. You just saw how hard she was fighting her restraints. You need to let her see this through.”
The Kaizen pierced her brother with her stare.
“He’s right,” Doctor Manae said. “You know he is, Phoebe.”
A pause. Then the Kaizen sighed. “Fine. But I’m coming with you this time. For both your safeties.”
Gemma’s shoulders sank. This was supposed to be a simple mission, to learn what was in that orb and find a cure. Now, she was bleeding from her own hands and losing time and needing restraints to keep from hurting herself—or other people.
This wasn’t just a shift in her DNA anymore. It was a countdown, a takeover. And she was running out of time.
The doors pulsed low and deep as if they were breathing. Every human instinct screamed at Gemma to turn back, but the alien part of her remained quiet, like it knew it had won.
Gunner’s eyes were glued to his scanner as he scrutinized the double doors. “Still stable. Energy patterns unchanged. It hasn’t reacted since the last time we were here.”
The Kaizen stood just behind them, her presence rigid and coiled like a drawn arrow. “Keep your distance, Proctor, unless we say otherwise.”
She didn’t obey or answer. She brushed her fingertips along the seam between the doors, her gaze locked onto the inky darkness beyond. Her throat felt dry; her skin prickled.
Gunner placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”
Gemma frowned, knowing the truth deep in her bones. “Actually, I think I do.” When Gunner let go, she pressed her palm against one of the doors.
Warmth surged beneath her skin. Both doors pulsated, and the seam between them split fully open with a breathless hiss. The air inside was thick and metallic, like blood and ozone. Alive, somehow. Waiting.
“No insane heroics,” the Kaizen warned. “Find out what it wants and get the fuck out of there.”
Gemma nodded despite knowing it wasn’t going to be that easy.
She stepped forward at a slow pace, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The only light trickling in came from where Gunner and the Kaizen waited.
Should’ve brought a torchlight, you idiot. What would happen when she stepped too far for its rays to pierce the blackness?
As if understanding her, the doors to the corridor closed, and the dark engulfed her.
Gemma’s pulse began to sprint. “Okay. It’s okay. You’re just completely alone in the pitch black, where you can’t even see your hands.” Or where to go. She might as well be floating in the vastness of space, with no sense of up or down, left or right.
Her legs began to tremble. I can’t do this.
Panic slammed into her, forcing the air from her lungs. She dropped to the ground, hitting the hard surface without forgiveness. Nausea churned in her stomach; the air around her—cold but charged—refused to enter her lungs.
She placed her hands on her head, sucking in deep, wheezing breaths through her nose.
She couldn’t freak out. Not now. She had to find the solution to freeing herself from whatever had tethered to her DNA, and she couldn’t do it if she was a ball of sweat and tears on the floor of a deathly dark cave.
As if the chamber again understood her thoughts, points of violet light began to shimmer in the ground. One by one, they flickered like stars, forming a thin path ahead, just wide enough for a single person to walk.
Gemma froze, watching the lights come alive as they curved gently through the void, leading forward into the nothing.
She squeezed her eyes closed and repeated back the words Christian always offered when panic threatened to take over: Just breathe. She heard his voice in her head. You can do this. You’re stronger than you know.
Gemma pushed herself up onto shaky legs and released one last deep breath. “I can do this.”
She stepped forward into the dark.
With every stride, a new violet light ignited ahead of her along the path, as if the chamber itself was awakening to her presence, urging her to keep moving forward.
She pressed onward until a hum, just past the edge of hearing, broke the eerie silence. She paused, swiveling her head back and forth, trying to discern the location of the noise. But it didn’t seem to be coming from in front or behind, or even above. It was like—
It was inside her.
The hum pulsed in time with her heartbeat then began to diverge, tingling in her chest, like something inside her was waking up to its own rhythm.
Then the air shifted. Not warmer or colder, but like the rules of the universe had changed behind her back.
Her legs weakened; her hands shook. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered aloud, despite the terror rattling every molecule in her body. Sucking in a deep breath, she took another step forward. Then another.
The violet lights lining her way halted. Gemma’s heart lodged in her throat. Why did they stop?