Ryan stared at his patient without moving. He’d done so a lot lately. Nearly every waking hour. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her side. He told himself it was because she was the most interesting research subject of his career, but he knew he was partially lying.

She was stunning. Even in a hospital bed with no real shower for ten years, limp hair, and pale features, she was gorgeous. Her smile lit up a room. It was irrational for him to be attracted to her, but if he were honest, he’d already held a torch for her from years of studying her research notes. He understood how her brain worked—so much like his it had always sparked an interest. Seeing her… It was like meeting someone he’d known online for years.

He probably needed more sleep. And perhaps he should have taken more time to date in the last decade. It had never seemed as important as his research, however. His parents were preserved in this bunker. He never once felt like he had the right to be out partying and enjoying himself while they were stuck in the underground facility, waiting for a cure.

He still didn’t have that luxury. His focus needed to be on his parents, reanimating them, and bringing them back to health. A woman had never distracted him from this task before. Why now?

He kept telling himself his attraction had less to do with Emily herself and more to do with the fact that he hadn’t dated in a long time, she was stunning, her brain was amazing, and he was so fascinated by her case. Several factors could explain why he was so drawn to her. Combined, they made perfect sense.

If he managed to bring his parents back to life, they would reprimand him for not living life, but it couldn’t be helped. The few times in college he’d allowed someone to lure him out to a bar or a party had left him feeling restless, guilt climbing up his spine.

So, no. He had not lived life as his parents had instructed. He had dedicated himself to finding a cure and gathering other scientists to help him. The task had been monumental. For one thing, there had been a constant need to acquire funding.

Luckily, the government had made a particular arrangement with every member of the original team to pay out what essentially amounted to death benefits to their families. The benefits would be paid for as long as the twenty-two people were in a state of suspension. The benefits would end when and if the people were able to return to their regular lives, or, in the event of their deaths, the benefits would switch to a lump sum to be paid out to the families.

For Ryan, the money was enough to live off of. It covered his tuition, and it provided him with the means to begin researching on his own after graduating at the top of his class in med school. Luckily, he always had his grandmother to fall back on. She still lived in his childhood home. The two of them were close, and Ryan always knew he had somewhere to get away and someone who cared about him.

For the first year after residency, he’d worked alone, often from the small bedroom in his childhood home. He spent half his time with his head buried in research and the other half pleading with the government to reopen the study and fund him. Eventually, they had acquiesced, giving him three people for the first six months and then gradually increasing his team until they numbered a dozen in total.

He had no illusion that the reason the government let him form a team initially had nothing to do with the twenty-two suspended souls. The reason they’d permitted him to continue the research where his parents had left off was because a cure still needed to be developed before AP12 took hundreds of thousands of lives.

It wasn’t simply the disease that needed to be cured, though. He simultaneously needed cryonicists working on a way to reanimate the team. The cure itself would be useless to the team if there was no way to bring the preserved people back to life.

When Ryan discovered Dr. Damon Bardsley working in a research facility in the fields of cryobiology and cryonics, he’d approached him and brought him on board. The two of them were the only two people on the team who weren’t military. The only two civilians who had any knowledge of the project and its possibilities. The other ten members were all military, as were all twenty-two of the people who had been preserved.

A soft sigh jerked his attention back to the woman lying on the bed as she blinked her eyes open and then smiled. “Is it real? Or am I having a dream? I keep waking up to find you leaning over me. If I’m dead, this is certainly what I would have wanted heaven to be like.”

He blinked, speechless. What had she implied?

Her smile broadened. “You heard me. You’re not hard on the eyes.”

He chuckled, but he did it while brushing a lock of hair from her face and then continuing to stroke her cheek with his thumb. He was drawn to her like a magnet, unable to stop himself from touching her. “Well, Emily Zorich, if we’re having a confessional, you’re not hard on the eyes either.” Some alien being had possessed his body. Since when did he flirt with women?

She rolled those eyes at his statement. “I haven’t seen a mirror yet, but I also haven’t had a shower in ten years. Nor have I had a comb or makeup or a toothbrush or a manicure.”

He glanced toward her hand, lifted it, and held it in front of his face. “Did you get a lot of manicures back then?”

She giggled, the sweetest sound. “I’ve never actually had one. It just sounded like something I should list.” She narrowed her gaze. “Did I know you? It doesn’t seem possible. Obviously you weren’t working here ten years ago. You can’t be more than about twenty-five. And I so rarely left the bunker. You must just look familiar.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m thirty, technically a year older than you. I don’t remember meeting you, but it’s possible you saw me or even interacted with me at some point when I was in my teens. My parents are Tushar Anand and Trish Wolbach-Anand.”

* * *

Emily gasped as her brain processed what she’d been told. “Oh God. You’re Ryan Anand. Are they…?”

“They’re both here. There’s no reason they can’t be revived just like you.”

“So every member of the team succumbed?”

“Yes. Eventually. My father was the last. He preserved my mother, and two cryonicists from another government facility came to preserve my father. They wore hazmat suits so they wouldn’t become infected.”

“I’m so sorry. You’ve been without your parents for ten years.” Her heart hurt for the young kid who’d lost his parents and then gone on to spend his life trying to save them. She also owed him her life.

He shrugged. “Everyone has burdens they carry. At least I always had hope. And now it looks like I’ll be reunited with them soon.”

She swallowed over the lump in her throat, lifting her own hand to cup his cheek, mimicking the way he was touching her. For a long time she stared at him, enjoying the human contact. It felt good, as if it had been a long time since she’d last touched anyone. In a way, it had.

In the months before she had been preserved, she had been too busy to do anything but concentrate on finding a cure. The stress of that workload had increased tenfold when she’d gotten sick. Any human contact had been minimal. Dating had been nonexistent. The last time she’d looked a man in the eye with any level of interest had been… She couldn’t remember when it might have been.

She hadn’t ever had time for men when she was last breathing. The truth was she needed to shake herself out of this trance and get to work. She still needed to receive the cure, and then she needed to oversee everyone else’s.

Someone else stepped into the room, clearing his throat, breaking the weird connection with Ryan.

Emily yanked one hand from Ryan’s cheek and the other out of his grip as if she’d been caught breaking some sort of contact rule.

She shifted her gaze to the newcomer as he stepped up to her other side. He set a hand on her shoulder, shaking his head. “Every time I see you I’m still amazed.” He smiled wide. “I’m Dr. Damon Bardsley. I’ve been working with Ryan in this bunker for two years. It’s about time someone else joined us. We were getting bored with only twelve of us jammed in here with little entertainment.” His tone was teasing.

“Do you all live here?” She didn’t know why she was asking. The answer should be obvious. She’d practically lived there herself a decade ago. Everyone had. Or at least they might as well have. Each of them had homes in the nearby town, but she stood a better chance of remembering her old office and the comfortable, worn, brown leather couch she often slept on than her bedroom in her apartment in town.

“We do,” Dr. Bardsley acknowledged. “It’s easier this way. We’re working on so many projects. In the last few years an entire wing has been built, adding living quarters to the bunker above ground. Everything we need is brought in. Except human company. We get tired of each other.” He smiled, squeezing her shoulder. “But it was totally worth every minute of it seeing you alive and hearing your voice. Everyone is waiting to meet you.”

Ryan spoke next. “A few high-ranking generals will be here to visit later this week too. You’re about to become the most famous human being no one even knew existed,” he joked. “And you’ll remember General Temple Levenson. She was in charge of this bunker from the beginning, and she still is.”

Emily nodded. It would be strange to meet someone she’d known a decade ago. The woman would be older.

“You won’t be able to leave the bunker until the government can figure out how to reassimilate you into society,” Damon added.

“Where would I go?” she quipped in return, and then another thought struck her as she stared at Damon. “My family. My parents. Oh God. What do they know?”

“They only know you were cryonically preserved for future scientific research. No one has breathed a word about reanimating any of you yet. The entire mission has been just as classified as your work was in this bunker ten years ago.”

Grabbing her hand again, though perhaps tighter, Ryan asked her another question. “We read through your file and found you have two parents, Joy and Roger Zorich, and a brother, David. They’re all still living. Was there anyone else special we overlooked?” His eyes drew together, his expression serious.

“No.” She shook her head. Was he asking if she had a boyfriend? Would it even matter? If she’d had a significant other ten years ago, he would have moved on, married, had kids. It would have been devastating to her now. She was grateful that wasn’t the case.

Ryan was still holding her hand during a few moments of silence before several other people stepped into the room. He released her and stepped back, his gaze locked on hers, and then someone fiddled with her IV and someone else began to speak about physical therapy, forcing her to shift her attention.