By the following week, Ryan was experiencing a new level of stress he hadn’t faced in his thirty years. Emily had gone home with her parents to a small town in rural Iowa to get reacquainted. He couldn’t blame her. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do.

He didn’t try to stop her. In fact, he encouraged her to go. But that didn’t change the fact that she consumed the majority of his waking thoughts. Now, she was twelve hours away, and he was surviving in unchartered territory.

After spending half his life with his head buried in books, he was in limbo. Sure, there were seven other diseases his team was working on, but until recently his entire focus had been on AP12. He had dreamed about the body’s ability to absorb vitamin B-12, the causes of iron deficiencies, and the blood cells that should be produced in bone marrow.

Now, he dreamed about a certain dark-haired woman whose smile lit up his life. He missed her to the point that he couldn’t remember exactly what he used to do most evenings before she was reanimated.

He was glad he’d given her a smartphone. She had mastered the use of his weeks ago, but he wanted her to have her own so she could easily contact him. And she did. Every day. Short texts throughout the day and then long chats late at night.

He hated the fact that tonight’s phone call wouldn’t be as benign as every other night. He had information she was not going to like hearing.

He wished he could address what was really weighing on his mind—that he wanted to pursue a relationship with her. That to him, they were more than friends. That he hated being twelve hours away.

He had to remind himself every day that it wasn’t appropriate to put that on her plate. She’d needed to reconnect with her family, and he couldn’t leave his parents with their impending reanimation. A date hadn’t been set to revive the next person, but it would be soon, and it would be his father.

Now that the team had a better grasp on what to expect with each reanimation, they were preparing by hiring more staff and bringing temporary trailers to the site. There was only one reanimation chamber, and each preserved body needed to spend the first four weeks inside the chamber before being moved to a real bed and spending the next four weeks in an induced coma.

That meant only one person could be revived each month. At that rate, it would take two years to bring everyone back. After the successful revival of Emily, plans were now being put into action to build more reanimation chambers. It would take time, however.

Ryan couldn’t leave the bunker for long stretches. And Emily needed to be with her family and then go on to find herself. There was no guarantee when she made life-changing decisions they would include him or this bunker in Colorado. He had no choice but to work around this problem and hope someday in the future they could figure something out and reunite. It was a longshot. He knew it. It kept him from facing the future head-on.

And it wasn’t just her life changes. He had his own to face. Once they resuscitated his parents, his world would change drastically too. He would want to spend time with them. Get to know them again. Their health would be his number one priority. He didn’t have time for a woman right now.

With this depressing reminder and this evening’s new development that he didn’t want to have to tell her about, he flopped down on his bed and called her. It was late in Iowa, but that was when he usually spoke to her. By ten o’clock she retired to her childhood bedroom to speak to him in private.

She answered on the first ring in that sultry voice he was coming to recognize she only used with him. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. How was your day?”

“Exhausting as usual. Every new person I face deals with the same weird level of shock when they see me. ‘You haven’t changed a bit’ is my favorite line, though it’s getting a bit old.” Her soft laughter made his body tingle with the need to touch her.

He’d taken things slowly with her for a multitude of good reasons, but he had grown accustomed to at least having her near him where he would hold her hand or set his palm on her thigh or her neck or her back. And he really preferred to end his days sitting next to her in his suite or hers instead of whispering through the phone.

“I can’t even begin to imagine how stressful that is.”

“And everyone is older, while I am not. It’s weird.”

He sighed. “I hate to add to your stress, but I have bad news.” He’d put this off for two hours, but he had to tell her.

“What?” Her voice rose.

“The media is in a frenzy over you. They’ve been camped outside the compound for a few hours.”

“Not surprising. I listened to the press release. We all knew as soon as the world was clued in to the fact that someone was reanimated at the bunker and actually survived, it wouldn’t take long for the media to go berserk.”

“Yeah. And it’s only a matter of time before they figure out it’s you. They don’t realize you’re not here yet, but they will soon. You’ve reacquainted yourself with a lot of people. Even with the precautions you’ve taken, any one of them could leak who you are and where your parents live.” They had known this would be a problem. No matter how fervently she requested that her closest friends and family keep her existence under wraps for the time being, it would inevitably get out.

He could hear her sigh. “I don’t want anyone to dictate how I live. It will drive me crazy if the media hounds me for the rest of my life. I won’t be forced into seclusion.”

“Well, for now, you don’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, two government agents are going to pick you up at six in the morning and take you to a secure location. They want to brief you on what you can and can’t say to the media.”

“Seriously?” Her voice rose. “We’ve already had this discussion a dozen times. I’m super clear on what’s classified.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. They just left here about an hour ago. They at least permitted me to be the one to tell you. Besides the need to protect the classified aspects of your existence, they’re also worried about your safety.”

“My safety? Why?” She had met with several government officials a number of times both before contacting her parents and since. She was well-aware of the need to protect the ongoing security of Project DEEP. She would never in her lifetime reveal anything classified. She hadn’t before being preserved, and she wouldn’t now. Ryan didn’t doubt her at all, but this was out of his hands.

He sighed. “They don’t like the picket signs.”

She gasped. “The media is holding picket signs?”

“No. The media has a following already. Protesters.”

“Protesting what?”

“Honestly? Your existence. Religious zealots who think we shouldn’t be playing God inside this bunker.”

“What?” she shouted.

“It was expected. You aren’t the first person to be reanimated. It happens every time. Protesters are always looking for something new to bitch about.”

“Shit,” she murmured.

“Exactly. Not a single soul outside of our tight group has any idea what the circumstances of your preservation were. And the government will do everything in their power to keep it that way. In the meantime, people will question every single aspect of your revival in an effort to get a story. And your answers need to be consistently rock solid.”

“Ryan, we’ve gone over all this.” She lowered her voice. Not even her parents were privy to the specifics of her vitrification. There was no place in the United States where it was legal to suspend life before the patient was clinically dead. The government had made this choice anyway. Everyone on the team had agreed it was the right decision in this case. None of their families had been informed of that detail.

“I know. It’s a precaution. Religious zealots will always exist. No matter how you slice it, there will always be some people who think we’re going too far.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone in the world to know what we did, Ryan. Ever. It would mean the end of my freedom. You know I won’t breathe a word. The government and the military have to realize I’m not that stupid.”

“Here’s the thing. I’m nervous about this too. I want you to be safe. It’s not forever. They’re just going to bring you to a safe location until they can get a handle on the situation and take the pulse of the protesters. They need to create a safety plan for you too.”

“You want me to go?” she asked. He couldn’t read the tone of her voice.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Please. Do it for me.”

“Okay,” she returned in such a soft voice he almost couldn’t hear her. “But, Ryan?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you meet me wherever they’re taking me?” There was a moment’s hesitation, and then she rushed to continue. “Never mind. It was a stupid idea. You need to be in the bunker. I know that. I wasn’t thinking. I—”

“Emily,” he interrupted.

“Yes?”

“I’ll be there waiting for you.” He would move a mountain to get to wherever they intended to take her by morning.

“Thank you.” He could hear tears in her voice, and they clawed at his heart. Pushing to his feet, he headed straight for Temple’s office. He needed permission to take a day off, and then he would make his way to the small gym housed inside the bunker. He’d been working out more than usual for the past week. It occupied his mind while Emily was away.

* * *

Ten hours later, after a lengthy discussion with his superior, he was pacing the floor of the lobby in a secure building at the air force base in Omaha, Nebraska, when Emily walked in.

She looked exhausted, which was comical since he was the one who hadn’t slept a single hour to get to her. But he didn’t judge her for that. She was mentally stretched to the max.

Her shoulders relaxed when she set her eyes on him, and she hesitated a moment, blinking, before running forward the last few feet to reach him and flinging herself into his arms.

Heaven.

“Thank you. Oh. My. God. You. Came. Thank. You,” she stammered against his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She felt amazing. Every inch of her seeming to fit against him like she was made to mold to his body.

He had no idea what the future would have in store for either of them, but no way in hell was he going to squander this opportunity to be with her. They were temporarily stuck in Omaha, Nebraska, which wasn’t exactly his idea of a vacation spot, but he didn’t care. He intended to spend every waking moment with her.

It didn’t escape his attention that she was wearing a pair of jeans that hugged her slim body to mouth-watering perfection. She also had on a navy tank top that was form-fitting and showed off her perfect breasts. In all the time he’d known her, he had yet to see her in regular clothes.

She also hadn’t seen him in street clothes. He’d worn his favorite pair of dark navy jeans and a white designer T-shirt.

She lifted her face, striped with tears, and set her chin on his chest. “Thank you,” she repeated, totally ignoring every other person in the room, most of whom were high-ranking air force. To be fair, Emily had once been a ranking lieutenant in the army. But Ryan was not. He’d never even considered it.

Even though his parents met in the military and devoted their lives to serving their country—literally, for all intents and purposes—Ryan had never had a moment to consider the possibility. He’d been fifteen when he found his passion, and he’d been running full steam toward curing the world of anemia AP12 ever since.

Someone cleared their throat, making Ryan lift his gaze.

“If you’ll follow me.” So formal. But then again, this was important.

Ryan slid his hands down Emily’s body and threaded their fingers together, easing her away from his chest to lead her down the hallway. He did his best to keep up with the officer who had nodded his head in this particular direction.

Moments later they were in a private room. The officer shut the door and left them inside without a word. Ryan had no idea what they were supposed to do next, but he pulled out a chair and guided her to sit.

She was struggling for composure, taking shallow breaths while her eyes filled with tears.

He sat next to her, cupped her face, and held her gaze. “You’re okay. Take a deep breath.”

She sniffled instead. “You’re here.”

He smiled. “I told you I would be.”

“But it wasn’t really possible.”

“I pulled some strings.” He shrugged, forcing a fake nonchalance. “It turns out if you work for the government on a secret project in a bunker in the middle of nowhere for several years without ever asking for anything or taking a vacation, they’re pretty lenient about arranging for some time off in the middle of the night and will even magically come up with an early morning ticket.”

She wiped tears from her face. “Seems fair.”

“Plus, I’ve been kind of in the way for about a month. It would seem the project I’ve been working on half my life is almost complete. I’m between assignments and can’t seem to focus on any of the other projects I should be researching. People are tired of my moping.”

“But your parents…”

“They can wait.”

Her eyes went wide.

He chuckled. “I don’t mean to imply anyone is holding off because of this. I’m just saying not everything is in place. No one intended to start the process of reviving them this morning. It’s fine.” He slid his fingertips down her arms and grabbed both of her hands, glancing around the room.

There wasn’t much to it. Gray walls. A window that showed the hallway—also sporting gray walls. There was nothing in the room except a cheesy oval table and six fiberglass chairs.

“Do you think someone is going to come lecture me in here?” she asked.

He met her gaze. “I doubt it will be a lecture, but Temple is here.”

A shadow went by the window a moment before the door opened. General Levenson stepped in. He’d thought of her as simply “Temple” for most of his life. Even though he addressed her properly in public, she had never expected formalities like that in private or with the team.

Her smile was warm. Friendly. Understanding. For a high-ranking general, she was soft when the situation called for it. She held out a hand to Emily, who had stood with Ryan the moment the general entered the room. “So good to see you again. I hope your time with your parents has been amazing.” She wrapped Emily’s hand in both of hers.

Emily’s entire body relaxed. “It’s been great. Still strange for them. They keep staring at me.”

Temple smiled broader. “Please. Sit.” She released Emily’s hand and pointed at the chairs they had occupied before taking a seat at the end of the table.

After a deep breath, she spoke, glancing back and forth between the faces of her audience of two. “I’ll be honest with you, this is unchartered territory. We simply don’t have any experiences to fall back on. So, every move the government chooses from now on is going to be a result of reacting quickly to whatever obstacles we encounter.”

“I understand,” Emily murmured. “And I intend to cooperate fully. I don’t want my family in danger, nor do I want to face repeated attempts to stalk me.”

Temple nodded. “Thank you for your cooperation. Our biggest concern is fringe radical factions of the population who reacted negatively to the first few people who were revived at the cryonics facility in Arizona. These people don’t even know there’s a difference. In their eyes, they’re simply morally opposed to anyone being preserved and later brought back to life.”

“Makes sense,” Emily agreed.

Temple sighed. “And then there are the conspiracy theorists—those who say it’s all a hoax.”

Emily lifted a brow. “A hoax? I get having some weird religious reasons why people don’t want anyone tampering with the natural order of things, but a hoax?”

Temple smiled. “Yep. It’s crazy. Not going to sugarcoat it. But there are definitely people out there who will say we made the entire thing up for publicity. It won’t even make a difference to anyone like that after we revive all twenty-two people and post their stories. The entire thing will still be a lie in some people’s eyes.”

Emily sat up straighter and faced her superior. “General Levenson, no matter how long I’ve been in suspension, my memory came back fast. Even before my body chose to participate. I’m strong and I get it. You don’t have to worry about me revealing anything to the media. It would be far more detrimental to me than to the country or the military.”

Temple cocked her head, narrowing her eyes in confusion.

“I wouldn’t want my family to be harassed, have media camped out in their driveway. They didn’t ask for that. Nor do I wish to spend my life answering the media’s questions with cameras thrust in my face every time I walk out my door.”

Temple nodded. “There are options, and it’s time we start discussing them. Not just for you, but everyone else on your team. For example, we could arrange for you to be transferred anywhere in the world to protect your anonymity,” she suggested. “We could also give you a new identity and set you up in a new life. Those are just two of the ideas we’re floating.”

Emily cringed almost imperceptibly. “Honestly, at this moment, I’d really like to spend a little more time with my family before I make any decisions. They haven’t seen me in a decade. We’re just getting to know each other. My parents still haven’t stopped staring at me like I’m an apparition.”

Temple smiled again. “I totally understand. And we’re going to do our best to make sure your transition back into society is as smooth as possible. Please bear with us as we piece together what that might look like. Not just for your sake but the sake of the other members of your team. Mass chaos will ensue if we don’t have our ducks in a row.”

Ryan watched as Emily wiped her hands on her jeans in a nervous gesture. “Of course.”

“My superiors met many times lately to discuss our public stance on the matter of bringing all of you back to awareness. The unanimous agreement is to keep it simple. Most people in this society have not had any experience with AP12. It’s largely been confined to several countries in the southern half of Africa. And I only point that out to propose that some vague noncommittal language can go a long way toward keeping the true nature of your preservation a secret from the rest of the world.”

Emily nodded, still rubbing her hands on her thighs. If it weren’t so inappropriate for Ryan to reach out to her in front of Temple, he would wrap his arms around her for support in a heartbeat.

“I’m fully aware of the situation,” Emily pointed out without sounding condescending. “Trust me. I get it. We were studying a patient who was brought to us with a new and rare form of anemia that affected both the ability of the body to absorb vitamin B12 as well as the ability of the body to produce new blood cells. Unfortunately, we were unable to save General Winston Custodio’s life.”

Temple nodded.

Emily continued, sitting up straighter. “Because the disease affected the blood, we knew that General Custodio’s brain and heart were still in perfect condition. Therefore, we made the decision to preserve his body.

“Five years later when a vial of the live virus exploded in the lab due to an equipment failure, the virus became airborne, and everyone working in the facility succumbed to the disease.

“Fortunately, time and medical advancements have made it possible for the twenty-two souls suspended in a safe room under the facility to be revived and cured of their disease. After all, this is what the relatively unknown government bunker was built for. Curing disease and saving lives.” She tipped her head as if she were taking a bow, her perfect speech memorized.

Ryan was proud of her. She knew her shit well. No way would she give away a thing of interest to the media.

A slow smile spread across Temple’s face. “Well, you don’t need me, do you?”

Emily flushed.

Temple sobered. “The point is that we need you to stick to that story as succinctly as possible to avoid giving any indication one way or the other about the state of death of the victims. If by chance you’re specifically questioned about your legal death, you should respond that everyone was legally dead at the time of preservation. I realize we’re stretching the truth, but it’s true that we didn’t start the process of perfusion on living individuals. That would be inhumane.”

Ryan knew everything about what steps had been taken for each patient, and Temple was right—every individual was clinically dead at the time the process of preservation began. What was unstated was the manner in which each person became legally dead.

“Got it.” Emily sighed. “Trust me, I don’t want anyone to question me any further than you do.”

“And your family is completely unaware of your state at the time of death, correct?”

“Of course.”

Ryan knew Emily well enough that he would bet his life she would never compromise the government’s classified information. Especially because doing so would draw even more attention to herself as well as present the possibility that medical professionals around the globe would come out of the woodwork wanting to study her. Emily wasn’t a lab rat.

Emily took a breath. “Have you contacted the other families?”

Temple shook her head. “Not yet. We will soon. I’m still working on a script. It would be ideal if we could get away with waiting until after Tushar is revived. Our confidence will be higher that most will survive.”

Emily shivered. “I can’t think of anything worse than giving someone hope and then taking it away. That’s why I didn’t want my parents to know until last week.”

Temple stared at Emily for several more moments and then tipped her head to one side. “Well, then, I think you’ve got a solid grip on things. I have about ten other places to be today. Did someone arrange for you to have a room here at the base hotel?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

Huh. Ryan hadn’t thought much past arriving here, setting his eyes on her, ensuring she wasn’t about to have a nervous breakdown, and then holding her close. He would also need to secure a room in town.

As General Levenson stood, Ryan and Emily stood also. They all shook hands, and then Temple eased from the room.

Emily sighed as she turned to face him. “Well, that went well. I’m not sure why I needed to come here at the crack of dawn for that little chat.”

Ryan set a hand on her biceps and slid it down to her wrist. “I’m sure Temple wanted the opportunity to see you for herself and get a reading on where you were mentally. No matter how you slice it, you’re still a guinea pig as far as the military is concerned.”

“I can see that.” She squared her body with his and tipped her face down to set her forehead on his chest. “I have a room,” she whispered.

“I heard.” He set both hands on her biceps and rubbed them up and down. “Is it ready now? We could get you checked in and have someplace to talk privately.”

She flattened her body to his and wrapped her arms around him. “Sounds perfect.”