Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Why did she use a needle? No one used needles anymore, that was what she’d learned in her science lesson.
“C-cold.” Her teeth clattered as she tried to speak, to tell her grandfather that something had gone wrong and that a burning cold was spreading through her body from the point where Dr. Upashna had injected her.
But she couldn’t form words anymore. Her heart had started to race so fast that she thought it would jump out of her chest. The edges of the world went fuzzy, her spine tried to curve and lift her off the table. And then . . . Nothing.
Chapter 24
You’ve surprised me, Theodora. You might be useful to the family after all.
—Marshall Hyde to Theodora Marshall (9 December 2063)
“IF ALL THESE flashbacks are indeed pieces of memory,” Theo said, while Yakov sat next to her vibrating with rage, “then when I came out of the anesthesia I did it faster than they expected. Looking back, I think it must’ve been because of my brother. He either did something, or that two percent of our bond did something, and I was a little stronger than I should’ve been.”
“What did they do to you?”
“My head hurt. So much.” She lifted her fingers to one temple, pressed. “Through it I heard them in pieces. The only thing I remember now is that they had to stop midway because Pax collapsed on the other side of the world.”
She looked up, her eyes dark pools. “Midway. That means they got halfway through the procedure before my bond with Pax forced them to stop.” Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. “And I have no idea what that procedure was.”
Yakov couldn’t sit in the car any longer. Shoving his door open, he stalked out into the cold night air and all the way to the edge of the lookout. It had no barriers, nothing to protect against a drop, but he was a changeling, the physical natural to him. A bear might not be as graceful as a tiger or a wolf, but they could take a lot of knocks and keep on going.
When he heard the passenger-side door open behind him, he turned to watch Theo walk toward him, a slender woman with golden hair and eyes made of shock—within whom lived a volcanic anger.
It spoke to his own.
“I knew Psy hurt their children,” he said as the wind rippled through that single escaped lock of her hair. “But like this?” Cubs were to be protected; it was one of the founding tenets of life.
“I grew up in that culture,” she murmured, her cheekbones sharp against her skin, “and even I can’t believe my grandfather would do that to me. I still trusted him then. He was such an important part of my life that trusting him was habit. Like the sky is blue and the grass is green, Marshall Hyde knew best.”
She swallowed hard. “Only . . . I’d begun to say no to things he asked me to do. Small things. But I knew they were wrong.” Her eyes on Moscow, as if she’d rather look anywhere than at him, she said, “There are Tks who can affect the cells of the body itself. The rarest of the rare.”
Yakov tried to clear his mind so he could think. “You’re one of them?”
A laugh that was mechanical, a rusty clock left unwound too long. “If only. No, I’m exactly what I appear to be: an ordinary everyday 2.7. I know because I was tested intensively for Tk-Cell status because of what I can do: I have fine control over that 2.7. I could move tiny components with dexterity at an age when most Tks are still accidentally breaking cups or chairs or desks, depending on their strength.”
Theo shoved her hands into the pockets of his jacket again, and only then did he consciously realize she’d put it back on after the restaurant.
His bear rumbled, pleased.
“Do you know how many things a 2.7 can do if they have intensely fine psychic control?”
The day ran through Yakov’s mind. “Walk through locked doors, for one.”
“Yes. At first, he had me practice with locks at home until I could undo almost any. It was a game. I liked it.” Echoes of childhood pain escaped her rigid control. “Then late one night, long after I was asleep, one of his men came, drove me to a small apartment block, and asked me to unlock a particular door. I did it and they took me home.
“It was years later, long after I’d stopped doing anything my grandfather wanted, that I discovered that a man was found murdered in that same apartment. Under ordinary circumstances, Tks have excellent memories—I knew the date, the time I went in. He died within minutes of me circumventing his lock. No forced entry. Nothing to set off his alarm system. Unsolved homicide.”