Reborn(50)

She shifted, and her hair parted an inch. One gray-blue eye looked up at me. “They say I’m a monster.”

And then she was moving, moving so fast I barely blinked before a cloud of white snapped at my face, leaving split flesh in its wake. Blood trickled down my cheek.

She’d snapped the bedsheet at me, turning it into a whip. She snapped it again, breaking the skin above my eye. Blood clotted my vision. And then she kicked me in the balls.

My head hit the tiled floor with a whack, and everything went dark.



I braced myself on the doorjamb, sucking in air. It’d been a long time since I’d had a flashback that strong. I could still feel the blood running down my face, and I brought a hand up to check.

Nothing.

“Nick!” Trev called.

“Yeah?”

“I got in.”

I tried to shake off the ghost of the flashback as I stumbled through the maze toward his voice. I kept checking over my shoulder, the hair at the back of my neck standing on end, like the girl from the past was stalking me in the present.

Who was she? She had Elizabeth’s dark hair, but all I’d gotten of her face was one eye, and that hadn’t been enough.

When I found Trev ten minutes later—after a few wrong turns—he gave me a look like I really did have whip cuts on my face.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. What’d you find?”

“Got into the system and dug up the lead scientist’s logs. She made audios.”

“She got a name?”

“Dr. Turrow.”

That name had been mentioned in my files. Trev cued up a recording marked AUGUST 12. A female voice with a cold, clinical edge sounded through the speakers.

“Patient 2124 is reacting better to the Angel Serum than I ever could have imagined. We continue to monitor her progress. So far, there appear to be no adverse side effects. We have a test scheduled for August 16. It is my sincerest hope that she survives.”

The recording cut out, and Trev selected the one labeled AUGUST 16.

“The test was a success! Patient 2124’s results were everything I’d hoped for. Zero activity phase lasted six minutes. We’ll perform another test in one week, and increase the time frame.”

We listened to three more recordings, and in every one, Patient 2124 continued to outperform Dr. Turrow’s expectations. Her last zero activity phase—whatever that was—lasted thirty-two minutes. The doctor nearly squealed with excitement.

On the sixth audio, though, the doctor’s voice cracked and wavered. Trev and I looked at each other. Something had changed.

“Patient 2124 has grown uncontrollable. Defensive. Stubborn. Rebellious. I worry that there is a shelf life to the Angel Serum. I can see her degeneration with every test, as if her body is healing, but her mind is not.”

On the last clip, Dr. Turrow had a hard time speaking without sobbing. “Patient 2124, during today’s test, stole Agent Riker’s gun and shot herself in the head.”

Static filled the rest of the recording. That was the last one.

“Fucking hell,” I said. If Patient 2124 was dead, then it ruled out the possibility of Elizabeth being her. But why hadn’t Elizabeth been mentioned in the logs? Based on my files, I’d come here in October. Which meant she would have been in the lab in August.

“We have to find out what this Angel Serum is,” Trev said.

“No shit.”

And, more important, I had to find out who that girl from the flashback was, and whether or not she was Elizabeth.



Anna and Sam had us on speakerphone, and Trev did the same on our end. We’d already filled them in on what we’d found in the lab, and Anna had some new information from my files.

“Target E,” Anna said, “was to be killed by decapitation, the body incinerated thereafter.”

I dropped onto the bed in Trev’s hotel room and lay back. Trev was on the couch near the phone. I still had a raging headache from the flashback. The more vivid they were, the worse the aftereffects.

“Why go to such lengths?” Trev said. “The Branch is brutal, but decapitating someone just seems like one too many extra steps for them.”

“You decapitate vampires,” I said, my eyes covered with a hand. The light was too damn bright.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Trev said.

“Think about it.” I sat up. “Why do you decapitate someone? And then burn them?”

“To make sure they’re dead,” Sam said.

I nodded at Trev. “What was it the doctor kept saying in the logs? ‘Zero activity phase.’”

Trev’s face went as white as the sheets beneath me. “Shit,” he muttered, and started to pace the room.