Cursed (17 page)

I sat up and wiped my eyes. There was no place for crying. Only moving forward. I had a gift. I’d caused damage with it, but what if there was more I could do.

I hadn’t given a thought to how I could use it to any advantage, other than destruction and self-defense. I’d obliterated the rock. I’d used my thought-energy as a physical blade. But maybe destroying wasn’t the only thing I could do. I calmed my mind, closed my eyes, and willed myself to still. To think.

With the rock, I’d become part of it on a molecular level. I had been the atoms, seen how they interlocked, and willed them apart. The body was an organism made of cells, all interlocking just like the rock. Maybe instead of ripping atoms apart, I could combine them. Create instead of destruct.

All along, my father had tried to get me to use my thought-energy to destroy and I’d tried my best to resist it. But what can be undone, can be created also. Maybe, just maybe I could use my thought-energy to heal. Julius’s notes from the LearnX were all about healing the original cell back to its natural state. If only I could do the same thing.

I stilled my mind, sat cross-legged next to Julius, and put my hands on either side of his wound. I felt his heart beat beneath my hands. Irregular. Exhausted. I slowed my breathing, letting conscious thought go. Became the moment. There was nothing but the blood. The body.

Consciousness drifted from my mind, down through my shoulders, arms, and hands. As it moved, I saw my skin cells in detail—grow as large as craters as my focus decreased to a pinpoint. I urged my energy through my cells and into his.

I was swept away in a stream of red. Large cells bumped into me as I hurtled this way and that through his veins. It was dark and light at the same time. Everything was glowing red around me. It was absolutely beautiful.

Suddenly, I was caught in a whirlpool. The red turned black. I sensed pain. Nowhere to go. No vein to follow. I’d been tossed into his wound and was a part of the black blood that pooled in the gash. This was where I needed to be.

The cells here were not round and healthy. They had lost their glow and deflated in on themselves. Some were black. Dead. Others were quickly dying all around me. Some were torn and leaked fluid. I felt how sick they were; I felt death. They were screaming, in pain, until they went silent one by one.

I merged with the cells, felt their pain ripping through me until it was like I was dying with them. With the rock, I had sent out my energy as an explosion. Now I worked differently. I sent the energy out from my core, my heart, my loving energy, so that it gently willed each cell to regenerate. I felt them stir and begin to wake.

There was intense light everywhere. And a gentle, calming heat. I flowed into every cell, feeling the walls strengthen, the sides knit back together, reforming their structure. Blood flowed into new veins, it no longer leaked through the broken and dead cells. Death was cleared away. The jagged wound knitted together and grew smaller until all around me was the beautiful, healthy, glowing red color of life.

I was swept away in a fast-flowing river. I was part of it, I
was
it. I was light. I was a part of his body. I let my mind drift, through his skin into mine. I saw the bones in my fingers, the muscles. I came up my arms until I saw something that shouldn’t be in my body. A foreign object. A white plastic square. A red light flashed in one corner. A tracker. Fuck it to hell.

I threaded my consciousness in the spaces between the cells of my skin and split them apart. I felt a distant pain, but I ignored it. The light from the tracker cut through the red around me. I surrounded it with energy and pushed it through the muscles. I slid the tracker into the bright light and out of my body. Then I merged my cells together and watched the skin heal from the inside. At long last, it was time to leave this microscopic consciousness.

I traced my way up my arms, following the bones. As I went, I let my consciousness expand. The cells shrank, and I saw veins, muscles, sinews. Into my shoulders, now following the blue-white lightning streaks of the nerves from the brain, in my head, filling my mind, my body, and cracking open my eyes.

I was back.

I toppled over. The exertion had taken its toll. Oblivion pressed at my edges, beckoning me to let myself slip into sweet, strength-giving slumber.

But I had to check Julius. See if I’d made any difference. I lay half across him, one hand on the ground keeping me steady, my side resting on his body.

I pulled open his shirt. The wound had vanished. There wasn’t a mark on him. I traced my fingers across his chest. His skin was flushed and rosy with the restored blood flow. I pressed my hand to his chest and felt his heart beating steady and strong. He stirred.

The tracker slipped down my skin. It was no larger than the nail on my little finger and wafer thin. Unless I was at the molecular level, I would never have known it was there. It was perverse,
invasive
. I pushed a nail through it, splitting it in half.

I felt the hint of a smile touch my mouth, and I knew it was not a nice smile. I was stronger than I ever knew. Could push my gift farther than I ever thought. The limit of my mind was the only extent of what I could do. I knew I’d come out of the capsule stronger than when I went in, and now I had an inkling of the power that was inside of me.

Julius’s eyes flickered open. His face filled with surprise. Wonder. “I’m alive.”

“Thank God.” I rested my fingertips over his heart. For the first time, I saw my curse as a gift. I could heal. I could save lives instead of leaving a trail of death and destruction. I felt my lips turn up in a smile.

“You saved me.”

It didn’t seem like the right time to remind him that he was, in fact, the one that had saved me. Instead, I nodded slowly. I found his hand and held tight like I was holding on to a lifeline.

“How?” His voice was weak, and it choked me up knowing just how close to death he’d come.

“I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

“I’ll believe anything now that I’ve met you.” His face turned serious, and there was an edge to his voice that I didn’t like. “Katia ... there’s something I have to tell you.”

“You don’t look as though you want to tell me.”

He gripped my hand harder. Tense. “I don’t.”

I wanted to bask in the joy of having him back with me. I wanted to sleep so badly, but I didn’t want to give this up. Not yet. There was something else I wanted to do before sleep. The good feelings slipped away. I tried to hold them, but they slid through me like grains of sand.

“Then don’t.” I lowered my lips to his, took joy in the tingle of heat that traveled right into the center of me. I traced my tongue in the seam between his lips. His hand clutched my nape, pressing me harder as he returned the kiss, thrusting his tongue into my mouth. I savored the taste of him, delighted in the quickening of my pulse, the yearning for more. The knowledge that I wanted Julius with every cell of my body. Every fiber of my being.

“Awww. Now isn’t this nice.”

An arm around my neck yanked me upright. Choking. Dazed. Prick in my neck. Sharp pain. Then oblivion.

My eyelids were leaden, and I worked hard to pry them open. The bright light stung. I winced. My eyes watered until the room laboriously focused.

I was lying on a hard table. I tested my limbs. I was bound tight. I tried to rip free of the bonds. I twisted my wrists. Pulling my hand with as much strength as I could. Skin stretched and split. Warm wetness coated my skin. Blood. I could use it to slip my hands through.

I lifted my head, but a bond around my neck crushed my throat. I worked against the suffocating reflex pain, struggling like hell to ignore it. The bonds started to tighten of their own volition, crushing my larynx, wrists, ankles. I struggled to breathe, gagging and choking.

I sought the energy to free myself. Pain scorched my mind. Burning electricity seared inside my brain. Energy other than my own. My body went rigid, joints locking, muscles tightening, teeth clenching. I crashed beneath a pitch-black wave.

I floated somewhere just beneath the layer of consciousness. A gray world where I didn’t belong to my body. Where the pain receded into a distant part of me. I felt it niggling somewhere close, but at least it was bearable in this part of my mind. I drifted in this abyss.

I detected a light, like a watered down version of a bulb hanging somewhere over me. A portal back to full consciousness. To Julius! I drifted upward. The closer I got to it, the more the pain screamed through me. My wrists, arms, throat. It was a bad move. I drifted down toward the black. It was comfortable here. I let myself hang in the semidark. My little black burrow became a haven away from the pain.

A voice. I heard it as though I were underwater. Curious, I edged closer to the light. There was an edge of pain, but I could cope with it now. I went closer, breaking slowly through layers of consciousness, becoming aware of my physical body.

Beautiful air slipped into my lungs. The bands had been loosened. I could breathe easier. I heard someone groan. Me. My throat was bruised, battered, and sore, but I was alive. Someone prodded my wrists, adjusting the bands, relaxing them. Relief swept through me. I was ridiculously grateful. Two people worked over me. I didn’t recognize either of them, and they gave me as much attention as they would a lab rat. My world spun as I battled the terror that really was just beneath my reserves of self-control.

It was happening again. I was a lump of meat. An anomaly. A
something
to study and poke and prod and find out what made it tick. Didn’t they realize I was a human? I had feelings. I was a person no matter what my body was able to do.

Despair like none I’d felt before swept me up in a vortex where angst and anger and hopelessness attacked me with gaping jaws and piercing teeth. My heart raced, throwing itself against its cavity, screaming to break free just as my body strained against the bonds. Searing pain flashed through my brain, the same foreign, searing energy. Someone screamed. A gut-wrenching sound. It was me.
I
screamed. Pain pounded through me as though I were being ripped in half, and I dove back into the darkness. Found the part of me that could separate from the pain. I huddled in the quiet place until the pain was distanced. I shivered, crumbling into myself.

I tried to use my thought-energy to loosen the bonds, but as soon as I did, the electric pain stopped me. I must be bound by some sort of electrical response to my brain patterns, which meant I couldn’t use my thought-energy. I tested it by allowing a trickle of thought-energy, and the electrical pain swelled to override it.

Better to stay in the cover of semiconsciousness. At least I was safe here in my little gray space. They couldn’t hurt me. No one could get to me here. It was a place where there was nothing physical. Just a space where I could hide. Stay away from their prying eyes. It was a haven. I drifted. Shutting down.

But, didn’t I deserve more than that? Hadn’t I felt what it was like to finally be held with gentle hands? And
loved
? It all seemed so far away here. If I thought too hard, the gray turned to white, and I knew what happened in the light. Pain. Danger. But ... I wanted someone to hold me again. Make me feel human. A
woman
. Desired. Loved. Surely there was
something
about me that didn’t need to be used. Or abused.

Julius. A kiss. So achingly tender it brought tears to my eyes. Gentle hands. Holding me so tight. I couldn’t believe hands could hold me like that. Make me feel more alive than I had ever been before. Discover feelings I never knew existed. That I was capable of that depth of emotion. Good emotion. Loving emotion. Not the feelings that made me worse than I already was. They made me better. Made me smile. He’d made me feel like there was something to live for. Treated me like he meant it.

There was another reason to fight. A sleeping child. No, not asleep. Comatose. In her own private little hell. Just like I’d been. I’d promised to release her. Promised to find her and give her back her life.

I didn’t know if Julius was dead or alive. I didn’t know if I’d failed him after I’d found him. I peeked at the watery light still hovering above me. Knew I’d find the answers I sought there.

Through there was the pain. But I needed to know what had happened to Julius. I cared about him. Hell. More than that. I loved him. If he was at the mercy of their hands ... I just couldn’t sit here and cower in the dark. I grasped the strength I’d found through him, the strength that was the only thing that was going to get me out of here.

I rose tentatively upward. There was pain, but it was tolerable. Distant. If I wanted to know if Julius was alive, I had to open myself up to the light. I locked the pain away, putting it in a part that couldn’t touch me.

They wanted me to cower here in the dark. It would be easy for them to do anything they wanted to my body while I was locked somewhere in the depths of my mind. That couldn’t happen. That would mean defeat. That would be too easy. I hadn’t come all this way to cower at the last minute.

I grit my teeth, rising through another layer. There were hands on my arms. A prick into my skin. A needle in my arm. In my vein. But nothing that was too painful. I could cope with this. If I kept my thoughts in measure, kept my emotions in hand, I could beat the shock of electricity that made me spiral into this pit.

I surfaced. Breathed in through my nose. Careful to keep my thoughts calm. Relax my body, despite the bonds that threatened to crush my bones, suffocate me. If I relaxed, there would be no pain. I could stay conscious. I would have a chance.

I blinked the room into focus, ignoring the technicians as much as they ignored me. I didn’t even know if they knew I was awake or if they cared. They kept going about their business. One came and took my blood, then injected a fluid into the IV. My hand tingled and went ice cold with whatever poison they put in me.

They couldn’t ignore me if I spoke to them. I licked dry lips, monitoring my heart rate. “Where am I?” My voice sounded like I spoke through a grate. Hoarse and dry.