She Who Sees Through Darkness

Part Nineteen

She woke up in the hospital, strapped down once more. Vaguely, she wondered if the constraints were due to her sketchy psychological history or if the scientists now saw her altered body as their personal property. At least Payaa had room to move when they caged her. A bevy of unfamiliar nurses came and went, staring at her eyes, prodding her with needles. She twisted her right hand until her bare skin touched the fraying cloth strap. The navy fabric was old and cheap, dotted around the edges with blood. It would burn easily.

She tried as soon as the nurses gave her a minute's solitude. Shawn had described it once like flexing a fifth limb, an extra set of muscles that simply came to you one day. She hadn't felt it when she'd awoken, but there'd been so much new to see that it could have escaped her notice.

Payaa was up in the den with her whelps—Katrina knew that much, could glimpse the tiny creatures crawling over her hide. Deliberately, Katrina pulled her thoughts backwards, creating a fog around her thoughts to obscure her intentions. It wasn't the kind of thing that would stand if the wyvern pushed against it, but, for now, a pair of whelps attacking her tail held her attention.

Burn, Katrina thought, willing the heat to slip from her skin to the cloth and ignite the old fabric. Even a seventh generation pyromancer could do that much. Nothing happened. Nothing moved inside of her, like Shawn had always described. The potential of magic, like always, remained stillborn within her.

Her flat hands hit the metal table so hard something broke inside them. Her heart rate monitor went crazy. A nurse poked her head in.

"Get me Dr. Harper!"

Dr. Garyali appeared five minutes later, to inform her the restraints were for her own good.

"We need to assess your metabolic rate. Sooner or later, we would have needed to collect this data—"

"Screw that. What about my DNA? What did you change there? What did you find?" Had they found magic in her? Her instincts screamed at her to ask—but she didn't know if he knew the truth about magic. If there was one piece of discipline she could cling to, it was that Katrina Harris would forever preserve the Seal.

"I'm not a geneticist, Ms. Harris. I can share their findings with you when they arrive—"

"To hell with that. Let me up." She didn't have magic, would never have magic, and the loss of it hurt just as badly as it had every day her powerlessness was drummed in during her days as an agent. Indigo, focus on Indigo, she thought. She could still make it back with the information, regain her position, carry out her duty. That meant more to her than any magic. But hope died painfully, and her brain knew two solutions for the pain: alcohol and exercise. There was only one she could persuade the doctor to give her.

The emotions attracted Payaa's attention. What's wrong? she asked. Katrina slammed her broken hand flat against the table, and the wave of pain sent the wyvern retreating.

"You have no history of anxiety attacks, and we have no history working with creatures like you. We're concerned something might have malfunctioned."

This wasn't working out as she'd planned. In her rush to get away from Payaa, to keep the Seal and all other vulnerable corners of her mind concealed, she'd convinced them their experiment might have malfunctioned. "Please," she begged. "I need to move. It's driving me crazy." Her body might have been their creation, but it was her home, and she had to know the limitations they'd given her as well as the supposed benefits.

He sighed. "I suppose there's nothing preventing us from starting in on the physical tests."

They escorted her back up to the track and told her to run, to take things easy and stop if she felt sick. She made it through a mile and a half before her legs gave out. Stupid. Her lungs felt perfectly fine, but her legs were trembling. After all she'd given up, did she really have to add running to the list?

"A good deal of the weakness you feel is a side effect of spending five days in bed," Garyali told her. "With time and practice, you might build up the muscle mass to run long distances again."

Might. "It'll never be the same." She wished Kyle was there, or anyone from home. It felt like a wall had descended between her and her whole world, leaving her stranded with strangers in a strange body.

You aren't alone, Payaa whispered in the back of her head.

Shut up. You're part of the problem.

She felt the wyvern pull back from the link, hurt. Damn, that creature was sensitive! How could you grow up as a lab rat in a place like this and still believe there was some good in people, that this random woman dropped into your mind wanted to be your friend? Katrina liked her friends loud, sarcastic, and distant enough not to ask about depressing stuff like the jobs she'd lost or the now-absent scars on her thighs or why she didn't want to come by the bar. What had Dr. Harper been thinking when she joined them?

"Ms. Harris?" Captain O'Brien held out his gun. "Would you like to try shooting?"

She donned ear protection and took the weapon over to the range. Her eyes locked in on the target. The world shrank down to a pinprick. She saw the angle at which the bullet would fly, her brain informing her of the breeze from the heaters and the weight of gravity.

Five shots thudded into the center of the target.

A warm glow built up in her stomach. This, she could do. This was a skill Indigo would want, especially when they learned what they were facing here. I'll deliver the enemy's most potent weapon into their hands—

"Look!" O'Brien shouted.

She turned to the window, where Tayamlaa looped and spun like a car on a roller coaster. Kyle clung to her back, lashed tight to the harness.

That's what we're up against.

She'd never seen anyone look quite so happy.

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