Chapter 18

If you become as cold as the Psy, haven’t they won?

—Leah Knight (54) to her son, Bowen (23)

“COME ON, TIME’S wasting.” Dr. Kahananui’s voice was absentminded, her attention on the slim organizer she’d pulled out of her pocket, but it was like a rock thrown into a mirror-still pond.

The moment broke.

Red kissing her skin, Kaia walked around Bowen to join Dr. Kahananui. “You had a good sleep?” he heard her asking.

He couldn’t hear the doctor’s answer past the roaring in his ears. He’d thought he’d gotten a handle on his response to Kaia, enough to think past it, but he’d been lying to himself. All he’d done was shut down the part of him that felt far too much, but one look from her and his shields had blown wide open.

Gut tight, he followed her and Dr. Kahananui out of the atrium and away from the magic of that wall that looked out at “the black,” as Kaia had called it. He liked that description, because infinite blackness lay at the heart of the ocean. A place so deep and mysterious that there was no way to see through it unless you’d been born for it.

Kaia was like that, a mystery that swirled with dark currents. “What do you shift into?” The words left his mouth before he was consciously aware of what he was about to ask, his hunger to know her a craving.

No time. He had no time to learn the mystery of her second by second, kiss by kiss.

The look she shot him over her shoulder was a challenge. “You’ll know if I decide to show you.”

At that moment, he’d have sold his soul for the answer.

“Here we go.” Dr. Kahananui put her hand on the scanpad outside the door he’d seen on his way out of this same corridor only ninety minutes earlier.

It felt like a lifetime ago and in that lifetime, a massive earthquake had shaken his world to its foundations. Bowen was used to standing on solid ground, but this ground kept shifting, kept asking him to make new choices, kept whispering at him to live.

Kaia looked back at him after entering the lab behind Dr. Kahananui, her gaze going to his legs. Checking his balance. “You’re not really relying on the cane anymore.”

Bowen hadn’t realized the truth of that until she pointed it out. “I love these bugs.” Delighted at the slow but notable improvement in his mobility, he leaned the cane up against a nearby table and took in the rest of the lab.

It covered a significant area.

His room, he realized, must be on the other side of the far wall.

The space was clean and white with plenty of glass beakers and gleaming machinery that hummed while completing arcane tasks. In short, it looked like every other laboratory he’d ever been in. Except for the mouse currently running along one counter.

He hadn’t seen Kaia put down her pet, but he watched as Hex ran into a maze at the far end of the counter that appeared to be created of stiff cardboard cut, bent, and taped neatly together so as to eliminate all external light and sightlines.

When he walked over to look down into that maze, he was astonished at the complexity of it—it went up in multiple levels and had any number of dead ends, as well as slides that would drop Hex right back in the heart of the maze. “Is he genetically engineered?” It was a serious question.

“No, he’s just a mouse genius,” Kaia said from where she was helping Dr. Kahananui with a large device centered on a chair that glittered with hundreds of lines of the same sensor wire that lay against his skull. “He kept solving the other puzzles too quickly so I made him this one.”

Bowen thought of Toric again, of the simple joy of having a friend who asked nothing from him but his companionship. “What do you do when he just keeps going around in circles?” At this instant, Hex’s nose was twitching as he debated between turning right or heading left.

“He’s too smart to do that. When he’s had enough, he rings one of the bells placed throughout the maze and I pick him up.”

Dr. Kahananui waved Bo over. “Take a seat.”

A tall and almost cadaverously thin man walked into the room before Bo could take a step. He was probably around Bo’s age, though the total lack of fat or muscle on his frame made him appear at least a decade older. His skin was around the same shade as Lily’s, but his eyes were a pale hazel and his hair a lightish brown.

“Dr. Kahananui,” he said. “I went to ensure the med-panel was correctly recording all data and found your subject gone.” A stern look aimed in Bowen’s direction. “It’s inconvenient having a subject who goes for walks.”

Bowen saw Kaia’s lips twitch and felt warmth uncurl within his own stomach. “Just consider me a brain on legs,” he said, feeling oddly young.

Coughing loudly, Kaia turned away.

“Bowen,” Dr. Kahananui said after a concerned glance at Kaia, “this is my assistant, George.” She patted Kaia’s back. “Did you swallow your own saliva the wrong way?”

Bowen saw Kaia’s shoulders jerk, decided to rescue her. “Good to meet you, George.” He held out a hand.

Shooting him a wide-eyed look, George shook it so delicately that it was as if he was afraid to break Bo. For an instant, Bo wondered if George was one of the clumsy orcas who kept breaking things, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. The man looked like a twig Bo could snap in half.

“I have this, George.” Dr. Kahananui patted Kaia’s back one last time before returning her attention to the scanner. “Could you drop by habitat three and help Tansy move across a hydro processor? It’s a bit big for her to manage on her own.”

“I’ll go over now.” George looked again at Bo, his thin lips pressed tightly together before he spoke. “Consider staying put. Dr. Kahananui can’t go around chasing her experiments.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t hire George for his charming personality,” Bo said after the door closed behind the other man.

“No, for his brain. The same reason I want you.”

Kaia had been wiping at her eyes, her lips curved . . . but her smile faded to nothing in front of Bowen’s gaze as he stepped up onto the podium that held the large diagnostic chair.

“Kaia, help me calibrate.”

Jerking at the doctor’s voice, Kaia walked to the chair and took one of his forearms, lifting to position it exactly against the arm of the diagnostic chair. When she would’ve done the same with his right, he cupped her cheek with his palm. She leaned into the touch for a stunning heartbeat before pulling his hand off her cheek and positioning him as needed, his fingertips directly on top of five small sensors.

Her hands were strong and capable—and boasted small nicks and scars that probably came from the kitchen. Warmth lingered everywhere she touched, the sensation deeper and far more wrenching than the lightning that had struck him in the kitchen.

The cells of his body thirsted.

More. More.

Bo could’ve lied, could’ve told himself his response was a result of the coma. But this violent storm inside him, it had nothing to do with anything as ordinary as attraction or desire. In a short ninety minutes, Kaia had smashed his defenses open, aroused him to boiling point and to fury, and made him act the rash youth he’d never been.

Kaia was his reckoning.

And she was the greatest challenge of his life.

His muscles locked at the memory of her allegations, but the cold that seared his mind to razor clarity wasn’t aimed at her. Kaia was fire and love and devotion. Her rage came from losing the people she loved.

What iced his senses was the possibility of evil among his own. Because in one thing, she was right: humans had benefited from BlackSea beginning to look outward.