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eighteen

Icouldn’t even cough. I was dying. I fell to my knees as panic took over. I shook my head backward and forward, desperate to dislodge whatever had filled me.

“What’s wrong with her?”

I’d never heard Coop sound panicked before. Hell, then, I really was dying. I patted my back, desperate, and stuck my fingers into my throat, but nothing helped. Whatever was inside me seemed to have latched on to my body, and it burned.

Dr. Anderson laughed, and that sound was as dark as the shadows consuming me, the same shadows that wavered at the edge of my vision.

I was going to pass out. But that sounded better than this. I could just let go and fall asleep. And I started to. My eyes fluttered closed, but I heard a familiar sound and suddenly my hummingbird was in my head, a rainbow of colors filling my mind.

“I knew you could do it.” Dr. Anderson’s voice shattered my thoughts and the rainbow was gone, leaving my chest too tight again.

I glanced up and met his eyes, feverishly bright, through the gloom. Then I took a slow, ragged breath, the sound wheezy in the quiet.

“What’s happening to me? What am I supposed to do?” Everything hurt still.

“Absorb the dark light,” he whispered, and it was like he was reciting a sacred incantation because he slowly lifted his arms into the air as if he was summoning something. “It’s just like we read. We knew it, you know? We knew.” He beamed at me, and pleasure radiated from him. “Absorb the dark light because that will make the difference. It will be exactly what we need.”

He made no sense, but I focused on drawing another breath. I had to survive. No, I wasn’t going to die here today. This crazy man didn’t deserve to witness my final moments.

He gurgled out a laugh that bordered on hysteria and turned to Coop as he waved his gun in the air. “And imagine,” he half-shouted. “All it took to make her perform wasfear. Do you have any idea how valuable it is to have that kind of simplistic trigger at our fingertips? We can access her ability any time we like.” He smacked his lips together after the last word.

I groaned. My chest still felt like it might explode, like I was having trouble containing something inside me. Something that shouldn’t even have been inside me in the first place.

“What did you do?” I whispered as I clawed at the base of my throat. “Help me.”

Dr. Anderson laughed again and returned his gun to his waistband. Coop holstered his in return then seemed to swoop right to my side, his arms outstretched as he caught me against him.

“Come on, let’s get you somewhere else,” he murmured against my ear. Then he spoke louder. “Are you okay? Do you need a break?”

I shook my head then nodded then shook it again, unsure which question I was answering.

He looked at my face and seemed to know as I struggled to draw another breath. “I think you need a break,” he murmured.

Dr. Anderson typed on his computer keyboard, his movements rapid. Frenzied, almost. He wasn’t paying either of us a great deal of attention.

Coop slipped me a pair of shades. They all seemed to carry spares. “Let’s go,” he whispered. “Somewhere not here.”

He helped me to stand then turned to Dr. Anderson. The doctor glanced up from his screen, but neither he nor Coop spoke for several heartbeats. Then Coop resumed his trek toward the door. Either they had nothing left to say or they managed their entire conversation through some sort of male staring contest.

I leaned on Coop as he escorted me to the door, my breathing still came in gasps and wheezes, and my limbs were heavy. What the hell had Dr. Anderson done to me in there?

“I’m taking you back to the cafeteria,” Coop said, his voice still lower than usual, as though he thought someone might overhear.

I nodded. I’d go anywhere that wasn’t a dark corner.

We slowly made our way to the cafeteria, and if I’d expected to feel better with every step that took me farther from Dr. Anderson, I was wrong. The tightness in my chest didn’t ease, and my breathing remained painful. We didn’t talk, although I wanted to yell and scream. I wanted to make Coop listen to what Dr. Anderson had done to me, but what could I say?

I had a shadow inside me?

That sounded crazy, and I didn’t really know what had happened.

I tried to draw a reflexive deep breath to calm myself as the cafeteria doors came into view, but it just made me want to cough, and I couldn’t do that either. Only the barest minimum of air entered or left my lungs. Just enough to sustain my life, it seemed.

I slowed instead.

I didn’t want to go in there again.