Page 2 of Raze
Gordon turns his smile on me. “Why don’t you have a seat, Raegan? You’ll get a better view from over here.”
Vera glares at me. If she thinks I’m going to make a move on him, then she may have lost her mind. They say people in love sometimes lose all reason. Is this what they meant? “Um, okay,” I acquiesce. I’mtoo aware of anything I say or do at this point with his threat still lingering at the forefront of my mind to respond otherwise.
“You have plenty to work with still. Don’t stop unless I tell you to,” Gordon instructs Vera, and she nods. Her hands are pressed against both the computer and the machine, likely directing them with her gift.
I sit in an office chair and finally look through the window.
Wait…
Dane?
“Are we almost done yet?” Dane’s voice appears out of a speaker in the corner of this office.
“Almost, dear,” the nurse with him replies, patting his shoulder. “The machine will turn off when the doctor has what he needs.”
He frowns and watches the blood from the tube in his arm flow to a machine, then from the machine into the wall. The tube runs through a hole to this side that then connects to the machine Vera is standing in front of.
“What’s going on?” I ask Gordon, fighting to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Just a normal health check. We pull blood every week to study it, just as we do you and everyone else.”
But that’s seconds of a blood draw. A minute or two at most.
Dane’s skin pales, and he slumps in his chair. “Stop it!” I jump up and run to the glass. My fists bang against it to get his attention. “Take it out! That’s enough!” Only, the glass isn’t glass. It’s solid and firm beneath my fists.
“That’s one-sided and soundproof, so please desist,”Gordon speaks calmly when neither of them notices my panic.
I whirl on Vera. Her eyes are closed in focus as her body trembles from the strain of using her gift.
“Vera, stop! You’re hurting Dane. Turn the machine off!”
Gordon sighs. “You’re failing the test, Raegan. Remember what I said.”
“I don’t care about your stupid test!” I cry when Dane pitches forward in his chair. There’s a beep from the machine, and it stops. The nurse pulls him back upright, and the machine begins to whir and hum again.
He’s whiter than a ghost, his lips colorless, and I can’t tell if he’s breathing anymore. All the monitors he’s hooked up to in the room are beeping nonstop.
He’s dying.
I grab Vera, trying to pull her from the machine and find a button to reverse the blood transfer. “Give it all back! Give his blood back or he’s going todie, Vera!”
She grunts and throws me off her. “He’s fine. I’m almost there and then he’ll be back. Just sit down.”
How can she say that?!
“No!” I launch myself at her again.
Vera grabs one of the other machines, and a robotic arm on the counter squeezes me in its grasp.
The beeping stops and changes to a single, low tone.
NO!
My gift bursts free, spreading through my limbs without my control. I grab the robotic arm, and it instantly turns into dust. Myhands shake to clear my gift away, then throw Vera away from the computer. I search the machine and the computer for a back arrow or anything that looks like it’ll return his blood to him. There’s a switch on the machine pressed toward me, and I flip it. The machine beeps, then vibrates as the blood it has collected reverts back through the tubes. I rush to the window and see the nurse performing a defibrillation on Dane to restart his heart.
“What have you done?” Gordon’s voice is filled with horror, and I prepare to accept whatever failure means because there is no test I would pass if it means watching Dane or anyone else die for their ridiculous experiments.
He isn’t looking at me, though. He’s staring at the ground. I follow his gaze, and my hearts stops.
