Reborn(62)

“We have to get Elizabeth.”

She nodded. “We will.”

“How bad is it?” Sam asked Trev.

“Not bad at all. He should be fine in a week or two.”

I sat upright and winced when the wound in my side pulled open. “I’ll be fine by tonight. When we go get Elizabeth.”

The longer she was out there, the farther away she’d be. And not just in physical distance. If she was with Riley right now, they could have already wiped her memories. Or brainwashed her into thinking I was the bad guy. Or worse… killed her. And I still didn’t know the answer to the question that’d been nagging me since I arrived here: Why Elizabeth? What had the Branch done to her?

And then it all clicked into place.

The Angel Serum.

The other night, when Elizabeth was cut by a shard of glass from the broken rum bottle. The cut was gone minutes later.

“Hey,” I said, the realization becoming clear. But my call was drowned out by Cas and Trev arguing. I yelled again, “Guys!”

They all turned to me. “Elizabeth was treated with the Angel Serum.”

“Yeah, we already figured that out,” Anna said.

I groaned. Sometimes I hated how smart she was.

“But,” she went on, “that doesn’t explain why they’d take her now, instead of killing her. Why do they want her back? If they created the Angel Serum once, they could do it again. They don’t need her.”

“And based on the audio logs for Patient 2124,” Trev said, “she was more trouble than she was worth.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think Elizabeth was Patient 2124.”

Trev frowned. “No?”

I got a flash of the girl in the cell in the lab, the one who’d whipped me with a bedsheet. I closed my eyes, tried to recall the whole memory. The girl had been skinny. Her eyes were narrow, pinched at the corners, as if there was a drop of Asian heritage somewhere in her past. Definitely not Elizabeth’s big, round eyes. I was such an idiot for not seeing it sooner.

Even though it wasn’t Elizabeth, I still felt like I knew that girl—I just couldn’t place her. The answer was right there, but my head was pounding and nothing made sense.

I lay back down, feeling like I might puke.

“Here.” Anna handed me a plastic cup.

I gave it a sniff. Vodka. I grinned at her and emptied it in one gulp.

“We can debate all this later,” she said. “Right now we need to patch you up.”

Anna, Sam, and Trev got to work while Cas flipped through the TV channels and settled on one of those Real Housewives shows. “This bitch is crazy,” he said, right before he stuffed his face with a handful of popcorn.

Once the wounds were cleaned up, and I’d downed two more shots of vodka, Trev came at me with a needle and suture thread. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

The bullet wound wasn’t too bad, and had been deemed safe for patching up. The knife wounds were another story. Trev started on the one on my shoulder. The pain was searing, like a hot poker in my skin, over and over again.

Fifteen seconds in, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I gritted my teeth. Tried to internalize the pain and swallow it down before I ripped someone’s head off.

Trev was quick and efficient and had the first wound closed up in less than ten minutes. The cut on my abdomen was bigger, though, and would require more stitches. Twelve, it turned out.

“You really should stay off your feet for a few days,” Sam said as Anna bandaged up the last wound with gauze and tape.

I sat up when she finished, swallowed a grimace, and got to my feet. “I can rest once Elizabeth is safe.”

I had a sudden, driving need to find her, a need to protect her. It wasn’t like what I’d felt with Anna, when the Branch had programmed me to defend her at any cost. This felt different.

It wasn’t an automatic reaction, it was a conscious decision.

I didn’t have to protect her, I wanted to, and that was something I hadn’t felt, ever.

“You barely know this girl,” Sam said as he moved in front of me, blocking my way from around the bed.

“I know her enough.”

The room grew quiet.

“Is she worth risking your life for?”

Was she? I’d been with her less than a week, but it felt like forever. I couldn’t stop replaying that kiss over and over in my head, and the wounded look on her face when I pulled back. I’d never felt any lingering attachment to any girl in the past, but Elizabeth was different.

She saw through all my bullshit and accepted me for who I was, broken pieces and all.

I couldn’t leave her in the hands of the Branch so they could wipe her clean.

I knew jackshit about relationships, but deep down, in the darkest part of me, I knew I needed a girl like Elizabeth. I needed her to save me.