Page 33 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Chapter nineteen

Necessary Experiments

T he voice Finn had come to hate with all his heart drifted into his half-waking state.

“Three-inch abdominal incision, fully closed, minimal residual redness along incision site. Auto-closure time four hours, twenty-two minutes. Ten percent drop in healing efficiency. Amputation site stable. Bleeding negligible. Otherwise no closure of site apparent after…five hours, twelve minutes.”

Of course not, you bloody fool! I need my hand back! Finn wanted to scream but the leather contraption they had shoved between his teeth prevented speech. He seemed to recall it had arrived shortly after he had bitten someone, most likely while they sliced his hand from his wrist.

He growled, the only sound he could manage, and closed his eyes to call to his hand, which they had crammed in a jar across the room.

Calling a part of himself back should have been as easy as drawing breath.

Something besides the iron in the room dulled the edges of his magic, muted it, keeping the flows thin and distant.

He clenched his teeth on the leather, concentrating as hard as his dizzy brain could manage.

The brittle shatter of glass warmed his heart.

“Fuck!” The voice was younger than the hated one. “Sorry, sir, but… Damn. The hand’s crawling back .”

“Are we recording? Are we getting this? Fantastic. Utterly fantastic. No, no, let it go. Let’s see what happens.”

Finn’s breath caught and he nearly sobbed in relief when his hand climbed the table he lay on and nestled next to his wrist again. Goddesses of all the waters, that was too hard.

“Spontaneous reattachment begun at seventeen thirty-two.” The sallow face belonging to the hated voice hove into Finn’s vision. “Subject is conscious again. Increase that drip, keep him twilighted. Once we have full attachment, I want the amputation performed again.”

Again? Finn yanked on his restraints, a pitifully weak effort. His eyes roamed the room in a wild attempt to find some sympathetic face, but no one looked at him as anything but an object.

“We have to see if the phenomenon is repeatable.”

Bloody hell.

“…ever do anything like that to a patient of mine without clearing it with me first!”

Dr. Brennan was shouting at someone nearby.

Diego’s heart slammed against his ribs. Stimulant?

Damn it, damn it, how much more can things possibly hurt?

Lights slipped by overhead. He lay on his back on a gurney, rolling down the corridor.

He twisted his head to see who pushed the gurney, oddly comforted to see Zack Morrison there, even with his mouth set in such a grim line.

“You’re overreacting, Doctor.” Black Suit’s smooth voice was not nearly so comforting.

“Am I, Gerry? He could have stroked out while you were playing Guantanamo. How much good is he to you if he’s dead or brain-damaged?”

“He didn’t, and he’s not,” Black-suit, Gerry, answered.

Dr. Brennan made a disgusted sound. “Men are such idiots.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Morrison said with a dry snort.

“Not you, Zack.”

They returned to the familiar hospital style room where another nurse helped Morrison lift Diego from the gurney to the bed.

“I think he’s awake, Doc.”

“No thanks to some people,” Dr. Brennan muttered. “Diego? You with us?”

“Tea,” Diego rasped out through chattering teeth. “Please.”

“I’m on it, ma’am. Be right back,” Morrison said as he hurried out again.

Dr. Brennan shook her head while she checked Diego over. “They nearly kill you, and you still find time to say ‘please’. You’re a rare find.”

“Still alive.” Diego grabbed her sleeve. “Dr. Brennan…need to know. Is Finn alive? They kill him?”

“Easy, there. Who’s Finn?”

It occurred to him in a fuzzy, belated way that she might be there to soothe information from him, since he had been uncooperative in the face of threats. A friendly face, someone he was supposed to trust instinctively, maybe she was the good cop to their bad. “Never mind. Sorry.”

She patted his shoulder with a worried frown and replaced his arm under the blankets.

While he drank the decaf tea and came down from the stimulant careening around in his bloodstream, Dr. Brennan told him what had happened.

Diego’s seizure had apparently scared the living hell out of the techs monitoring his room.

Inexperienced and anxious, they’d failed to find a pulse when they’d burst into the room to check on him.

One of them had had the bright idea to pull out the med kit, which happened to contain adrenaline injections.

“Watching too many movies. Damn kids,” Dr. Brennan concluded.

“So what now? You make sure I’m better so they can torment me some more?” Diego asked. The pained look on Dr. Brennan’s face made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

“I’m going to do the best I can for you, Diego. Though I’m afraid it might not be much.”

The rest of the day passed much like a normal hospital stay, Sergeant Morrison coming and going with meds, vitals checks and trays of food he tried to coax Diego into eating. In between, Diego slept, his exhausted body not giving him much choice.

Early in what he assumed to be morning, since there had been several hours with the lights off, Sergeant Morrison returned with the wheelchair.

“Mr. Sandoval, I’m so damn sorry…”

Diego held up a hand to stop his apologies. “They want another meeting. It’s not your fault, Zack. I just hope I can stay awake.”

“Now, there’s a defense they don’t teach in training,” Morrison said with a crooked grin.

“What’s that?”

“When you’re interrogated, go narcoleptic.”

Once again, Diego suffered through being helped to dress and eased into the wheelchair. His weakness frightened him, the way the simplest movements made his hands shake. He supposed he had never noticed it before because he had always been allowed to rest after a severe seizure.

Sergeant Morrison put one hand on his shoulder as he wheeled him out.

“What’s this for?” Diego patted his hand.

“You pass out on me, sir, I’d rather you didn’t take a header onto the linoleum.”

“Got it.” Diego leaned back and tried to calm his shaking, more grateful for that warm, comforting hand than he cared to admit.

Several alterations signaled an abrupt change in tactics for this second meeting.

A smaller, more intimate conference room housed an oval table where Diego was granted a place rather than being isolated hearing-style.

Only four other men graced the table, the bulldog military man conspicuously absent.

A pitcher of water and a glass stood near his right hand, and a flat screen hung on the far wall.

“Sir,” Morrison clipped out from his place behind Diego’s chair. “Dr. Brennan’s left orders for me to stay with the patient.”

After some shuffling and murmuring, the senior lab coated gentleman nodded. “You may remain, Sergeant. In case Mr. Sandoval has another episode.”

“They normally occur only during moments of extreme stress,” Diego said mildly, wishing his voice were steadier.

“Yes. Regrettable. Some of our colleagues are less…patient than others.”

The remaining military officer spoke up.

A general, perhaps. Diego had never learned which insignia meant what rank.

“Mr. Sandoval, we’re aware of your record of public service.

We know you’re a compassionate, civic-minded citizen.

And this is why some of us are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I, for one, believe you have no idea what you’ve stumbled into. ”

“I don’t have any idea where the hell I am, for a start,” Diego said. By the little furtive looks around the table, he knew this wasn’t what the general meant. Frustration warred with exhaustion and he wrapped his arms around himself, willing his trembling to slow.

“Mr. Sandoval, we’d like to show you something,” Gerry said with a chill half-smile.

He pointed a remote at the screen. Images began to play that sent a prickling rivulet of anger up Diego’s spine.

The first image was of his house in Montana.

Diego watched himself climb out of his truck with groceries.

The front door burst open and a beautiful black dog bounded out, feathered tail waving wildly.

Diego’s heart lurched when the dog spoke.

“You’re home, my hero! At last! Did you bring the cream? ”

Diego glared at the agent. “How long have you been watching my house?”

“For a while now,” was the bland reply. “We’ve been investigating you ever since the CDC sent us a very odd blood sample from a certain clinic in Brooklyn.”

My Finn… For a moment, Diego could only stare mutely, an ache lodged in his chest as more short clips of his beloved pooka graced the screen, Finn’s smile, his laugh, his voice, all caught in snippets by a stranger’s spying camera .

Everything I’ve done, everything I tried to do to help you since the day we met… it all put you in jeopardy.

More images followed of Sionnach and Nathair, in their glamoured forms and in their natural states, caught by night-vision cameras.

Fairy lights in the forest flittered across the screen.

Lugh stepped through the doorway from the Otherworld into Diego’s backyard, though it was a side view, which made it appear as if he had stepped from thin air.

The elderly scientist spoke again, “We’ve theorized that much of their devices utilize nano-technology, since no hardware is apparent even under the highest magnification.”

“You see, Mr. Sandoval.” The general leaned forward, his hands clasped atop the table. “We believe these few caught on camera are an advance force and that you, as the only human at the epicenter of this alien invasion, may hold the key to saving the human race.”