Remember Jamie Baker (30 page)

Dr. Chen was there, already prepped for whatever they were about to do. I guess he’d gotten the memo that I’d be coming. When he handed me a hospital gown and pointed out a small bathroom to change in, I sighed. Someone, someday, was going to have to explain the point of those things to me.

Both men tried to make small talk with me while they checked my vitals, examined my head—I did have a minor concussion—and looked at whatever else they needed to until they were satisfied that I was ready for another dose of their miracle serum. Basically it was a very long-winded super villain spiel about how the sacrifices of their subjects were for the greater good and that together they were going to make the world a better place and blah, blah, blah…

I wasn’t interested, but they didn’t need my attention to keep themselves talking. They were happy patting each other on the back. I’ll spare you the details, because listening to them was more torturous than the medical testing, but basically it boiled down to a lot of “We’re so brilliant, we know everything, we’re going to change the world, and people will worship us as Gods among men…”

When I got to a point where either they shut up or I zapped them unconscious, I interrupted their gloating. “Okay, great, you’re both a couple of modern-day Hitlers. Congratulations to you both.” They frowned at my comparison. (Though, it was a completely fair one.) “Where do I fit into all these evil world-changing plans? Why do you need me so badly?”

Both men blinked at me, as if the answer should be obvious. “My dear,” Donovan said, as Dr. Chen approached me a gigantic syringe, “you weren’t just born the way you are; you were
created
. If it could happen to you, it could happen to anyone. If we could unlock your secret, we could duplicate it. We could create more like you. Gain your powers for ourselves.”

That was a frightening thought.

Chen smiled as he held up the syringe. “Are you ready to begin remembering?”

I was, until he put the needle against my skin. The fluid in the syringe was clear but had an off-white tint to it. It looked the same as what Dr. Chen had injected me with before, but I felt more hesitant now. Before, I’d said yes, but I’d been struggling with the nanobots. Now, even knowing I’d dreamed, I wasn’t sure I wanted that stuff in me. “It’s just serum, right? The same stuff you gave me before?”

“Exactly the same,” Chen said with a nod. “Completely safe. We use it here all the time. Our formula that gives our soldiers their strength, and speed isn’t perfect. It wears their bodies out.”

I knew that, but I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to give away any hints that we might have the jump on these guys.

“Whenever any of our soldiers gets too physically exhausted, we give them this serum. It repairs anything biological,” Chen explained. “It’s quite miraculous. Once, we even repaired a man’s knee, which you’d completely shattered with your superstrength.”

My eyebrows flew up at that, but Chen didn’t bother to explain the altercation. He was too focused on the science. “There was nothing but tiny fragments left of his bone, but this serum fused the fragments back together and mended the knee entirely. There wasn’t even any scarring. You can’t tell it was ever broken.”

“The same will happen for your brain, Miss Baker,” Donovan said. “The serum will reverse all of the damage done and restore your brain to its original state.”

Dr. Chen grinned a toothy smile. “You’ll be good as new.”

“Well,” Donovan corrected, “mostly. Obviously we can’t heal you completely tonight, or tomorrow you would turn against us.”

I snorted. “Obviously.”

“But we can give you enough of your memory to help you ease some of the frustration, confusion, and depression that has been plaguing you.”

“Gee. That’s thoughtful of you.”

Dr. Chen’s smile fell. “We do want to help you, Miss Baker. We are, above all, philanthropists. We do this because we want to end people’s suffering. And one day, if we can trust you, we will heal you completely.”

None of us had that long, but for now I’d take what I could get. “Okay. I guess that’s fair. Go for it, then. Juice me.”

I held my breath and gritted my teeth as Dr. Chen injected me with four times the amount of serum he’d given me the first time. The cold liquid stung a little as it traveled up my arm and through my body. I shivered at the sensation.

“So that’s it?” I asked, lying back on the bed. The serum was making my body feel heavy. “That’s all there is to it?”

“That’s all there is to it.”

“What’s in the serum?” I asked, covering a yawn with my fist. My eyes were getting heavy. “How does it work?”

“One of our subjects is blessed with a miraculous gift of cell regeneration—self healing. We’ve found a way to use that gift for the good of others.”

I sucked in a breath. Self-healing was Natalia’s power. She was an eight-year-old girl they’d acquired from the Netherlands last year. Her family had been in a devastating car accident. Only Natalia had survived. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they’d thought her wounds would be fatal, but she’d recovered overnight. I didn’t like the idea that they’d found a way to use her gifts like this. “How?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “What have you done to that little girl in order to make this serum?”

Donovan didn’t answer me except with a condescending smile. “Nothing as awful as you’re thinking, Miss Baker. We are not monsters. Natalia is carefully monitored. She is fine.”

Yeah, sure she was. His definition of
fine
and mine couldn’t be the same. “Donovan, if you’re harming that child, I’ll kill you. You have my word on that.”

Donovan sighed. “I will take you to her so you can see for yourself that she’s fine.”

“Yes.” That was an excellent idea. I needed to see Natalia. Needed to know for sure that she was fine. I started to stand, but my head spun and Dr. Chen gently pushed me back until I was lying on the bed. “You’ll see her soon. For now, just get some rest. You need it.”

He had a point. My head felt like it weighed a million pounds, and my eyelids even more. It wasn’t normal. Sleep was pulling me under. I gasped. “You drugged me!”

Dr. Chen shook his head, giving me a reassuring pat on the back of my hand. “No. Fatigue is an effect of the serum. It’s pulling energy from your body to repair the damage. It’s an exhausting process, and we’ve just given you a rather large dose. You need rest. But you will be fine once you’ve slept it off. You have my word.”

Ha! His word. Like that meant anything to me. But, whether he was telling the truth or not, my eyes closed and I started to drift into a heavy sleep.

I didn’t dream
. That disappointed me, and I worried that maybe the serum hadn’t worked, but maybe I’d just been too exhausted to dream. When I woke up, I was still very groggy, and my body felt stiff. It took me a few minutes to think straight. I was still in the hospital bed I’d passed out in, but from the stiffness in my body and the pressing bladder issues, I was sure I’d slept a long time.

Dr. Chen was gone, but Donovan sat in a padded chair beside my bed reading a nonfiction book written by someone with a name I couldn’t pronounce. I found it strangely comforting that he’d stayed with me while I slept, like a parent or a loved one would.

I cleared my throat to get his attention, and his face lit up with a bright smile. “Jamie!” He set his book down. “Good morning.” He glanced at his watch and smiled to himself. “For a few more minutes, anyway. I trust you slept well?”

I sat up slowly, my head swooning a little, but after blinking my eyes into focus, I finally became alert. I looked around for some confirmation that it was morning, but there was no clock and no windows. “What time is it? How long was I out?”

“It’s nearly noon. You’ve been out for about fifteen hours.”

“Fifteen hours!” The serum they gave me better have worked, because Major Wilks only gave me a day. He was probably already on his way. I needed to get as much information about it as I could before I ran out of time.

“That’s nearly half the recovery time my soldiers need after being administered the healing serum.” Donovan scanned me from head to toe and smiled. “You are truly a remarkable young woman, Miss Baker.”

I flushed at the praise, feeling both embarrassed and absurdly proud that he approved.

What the heck? I felt
proud
to be complimented by
Donovan?
That was insanity.

Instantly I flipped into Danger Mode and turned up my energy to the highest possible setting.

Donovan stepped back, eyes wide. “Miss Baker?” he asked warily as he watched my skin spark and my hair whip around my head. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’m just frying your stupid nanobots.”

When Donovan’s eyebrows flew up, I laughed. “The ACEs aren’t stupid, Mr. Donovan. They knew something wasn’t right with me after the way I acted at the hospital. We know I was being controlled. It turns out that your precious robots couldn’t handle my electricity. I can’t believe you’d try to inject me with more knowing that they don’t work on me.”

Donovan sighed. “We figured they hadn’t worked on you, but we didn’t realize you knew about them.” He gave me a sheepish shrug. “Can you blame me for trying again, Miss Baker?”

“No, I guess not.” I snorted and let my energy calm down. I mean, the guy was psycho, after all. You could always trust a psycho to act psycho.

Once my mind was clear again, I relaxed. He couldn’t control me. I had the upper hand here, not him. Reminding myself that the ACEs were coming soon, I focused on the plan and tried to get as much helpful information from Donovan as I could. I took a deep breath and, stretching my arms and legs, tried to sound casual as I probed for more information. “Do you use the serum a lot, then? You must have a ton of it.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he watched me for a few minutes with a calculating expression. I quickly turned my line of questioning to play to his ego. In all the superhero movies Teddy has shown me, egos were always the supervillains’ downfall. “Are you planning to market it to the public? Because, I mean, it’s basically a miracle serum. You would do so much good if you shared it with others.”

Bingo. Donovan’s face smoothed out. Suspicion gone. Replaced with pride. And bonus, he answered my question. Chalk up a point for me. “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “The serum is definitely miraculous and has been perfected for the most part, but the magical secret ingredient that makes it work is in very short supply. I can only make small amounts of the serum and not very often. In fact, Chen gave you nearly the last of our supply last night. I only have one last dose that we save for emergencies.”

“Only one more?” That was disheartening. I wondered if the last dose would be enough to fix me after the ACEs came in and shut this place down. No way were they going to make more if this magical secret ingredient came from Natalia, as I suspected it did. I wanted my memories desperately, but I couldn’t possibly ask for them at the expense of another human being.

“Yes, Jamie—may I call you Jamie?” I nodded absently, and he smiled as if pleased, before continuing. “We used nearly all of the remaining serum on you—as much as was safe for you.”

Suspicion crept into my mind. “Why would you do that? You said yourself that you knew I’d turn on you if you gave me all of my memories back.”

Donovan sighed. “Because we want you to trust us. We want you to be happy here, and to see that we really do want to help you. It’s true we couldn’t fix you completely, but as a show of our faith in you, you should have almost all of your memories back now.”

My heart fluttered. Did I really have my memory? I tried to retrieve a memory, but nothing came. Maybe it was because I didn’t know what memory to recall. Thinking back on all the stories Ryan told me of my life before the explosion, there was one in particular I wanted to remember firsthand. I tried to imagine a warm, cozy cabin, snowstorm howling outside the windows and the fire crackling inside. Just Ryan and me…

When that didn’t work, I tried to remember our last night together, at the Grand Canyon. He’d told me that’s where he’d proposed to me and gave me enough details that I should remember the conversation. Again, nothing seemed to come to mind other than the conversation I had with Ryan a couple nights ago. My heart rate picked up as anxiety blossomed inside me. “It’s not working. I don’t feel any different. When I try to think about my past, it still comes up blank.” I started to panic. “What if it didn’t work?”

Donovan covered my hand and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure it worked,” he promised. “We scanned your brain again just a little while ago and can already see the results. You likely just need something to jog your memory since you’ve been disconnected from it for so long, and I believe I know just the thing to do that. Do you feel well enough to go for a walk with me?”

I glanced down at Donovan’s hand covering mine. There was something soothing about the contact, something comforting, almost fatherly.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Still a little sluggish, though. I’m having a hard time getting my brain kicked into gear.”
Obviously
.
If I’m feeling cordial toward Donovan.
“I don’t suppose you have any coffee or Mountain Dew or something around here? A bathroom wouldn’t hurt, either.”

Donovan laughed. “Of course.” He waved toward a door on the other side of the room. “The bathroom is right there. Feel free to shower or freshen up however you’d like. I believe you’ll find a bag of your things in there.”

My
things? When and how did he get a bag of my things? Seeing my surprise, Donovan explained. “I had a couple of my soldiers visit your parents’ home last night while you slept.” He held up a hand to warn me off before I could accuse him of anything evil. “Don’t worry; we know your parents are with Major Wilks at the moment, and we didn’t harm anything. I simply figured you would appreciate a few changes of your own clothes other than the scrubs or uniform jumpsuits I could provide you with here.”

I wanted to yell at him, but that was actually pretty thoughtful. “Oh. Well, thanks, then, but don’t go creeping around my parents’ house again. They are
off limits
. Got it?”

“Of course. We have no need to disrupt your parents’ lives. However, someday if you’d ever like them to join you here, we could make those arrangements. Or perhaps set up visits with them.”

My mouth fell open. “Seriously? You would let me visit them?”

Donovan smiled at my shock. “Jamie, as you said on the phone yesterday, you are a guest here, not a prisoner. We hope to work with you. Not just a subject to experiment on. Of course, we’ll need to do the occasional test to try and figure out the mystery of you, but we hope to have you join us, be part of the team. Once you can be trusted not to bring Major Wilks and his ACEs to our doorstep, then you will be free to come and go as you please.”

I stood there, completely incapable of moving. He’d stunned me with that revelation. The offer he presented me with wasn’t anything like the cage I’d expected to be put in. Maybe Donovan wasn’t the monster I’d always made him out to be. Still, I was wary of what he wanted from me. “What would you have me doing? What do you want from me?”

“How about we discuss that after we get your needs taken care of? You must be hungry.”

Now that he mentioned it, I was starving. Temper calmed, I hopped off the bed and made my way to the bathroom. Then I laughed at his expression when I came out showered, changed, and ready to go only seconds later. “Superspeed’s pretty handy.”

After blinking a couple more times, Donovan laughed softly and held out his arm to me. “You are truly a wonder. I’m so glad you’ve come to us. Shall we, my dear?”

I almost accepted his offered arm. I reached out, but at the last second, I realized what I was about to do and quickly pulled back. Donovan looked neither shocked nor disappointed. He simply accepted my rejection and waved his arm toward the door. “This way.”

Donovan gave me a tour as he took me wherever we were going. “We have several buildings on the compound. This is the medical facility. Then we also have the labs and the living quarters.” We exited a set of double doors into the lodge I’d warmed up in the previous night. “This is our main reception area. It’s the only way in and out of the complex.”

He led me through the toasty warm area past the fireplace that was once again burning strong, and used a key card to open a set of elevator doors. “Reception area for who?” I finally asked. “You can’t possibly have a lot of visitors to your secret facility in the middle of the North freaking Pole.”

Donovan laughed as he pushed a button that appeared to be one floor down. “True, but my soldiers come and go, and often they are as chilled through as you were when you arrived last night. It’s good to have a place for them to warm up that is near the medical facility.”

We stepped out of the elevator into a long hallway. I was once again staring down a hall with no windows; dim, fluorescent lighting; and plain, boring off-white walls. Donovan and the U.S. government must have hired the same contractor.

“Each of our buildings is connected by underground tunnels.”

“Convenient, considering the weather outside.”

Donovan slid me a rueful glance. “I’m not much a fan of the cold myself, but I had an accident with my desert facility not that long ago.”

I smirked. “Yeah, not going to say sorry about that.”

Donovan pursed his lips, but said nothing in response.

At the end of the hall we took an elevator up one floor into one of the other buildings. I recognized at once that we were in the residential building because I could hear chattering and laughter along with various sounds of dishes clanking, showers running, televisions playing, and other random sounds. We didn’t head toward the noise, though. We turned down a quieter hall heading the opposite direction and came to a door marked
Subject Residence Hall
.
“Subjects?”

I raised a brow at Donovan. He wasn’t the least bit sympathetic. “It’s simply the way of things, Jamie. They are here for research purposes. They are not caged up and treated like animals, though. They are not
lab rats
, as you said.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I kept my mouth shut. There was no point in arguing with a narcissistic egomaniac like Donovan.

I followed him through the door, down a short hall past several small sleeping rooms, and around a corner into a living room/lounge area. It was fairly large, and as lavish as the sitting room I’d just been in. Again, no windows—not that there would be anything to see besides an endless blanket of snow—but it wasn’t bad. Nicer than The Lair by far. And it wasn’t empty.

My heart stuttered at the sight of the elderly woman reading a bodice-ripper romance novel in a rocking chair, and the young girl with hair and skin as pale as the moon sitting at a table, humming softly as she drew a picture. I’d never seen their photos, but I knew who they were. Tyson had told me all about Betty and Natalia. Donovan waved a hand toward them and said, “Do they seem tortured or mistreated to you?”

They really didn’t. They seemed content. But then, looks could be deceiving. And though there were no bars, a cage was still a cage.

Both the woman and girl looked up when he spoke. Or, I should say, Betty looked up. Natalia nearly jumped out of her skin, and grew impossibly paler at the sound of Donovan’s voice. Her fear of him nearly threw me into a rage, but when she saw me she gasped and leapt from her seat, shooting across the room to wrap her skinny little arms around me. “You came,” she whispered. “He said you’d come.”

Startled, I hugged the tiny girl back, careful to be as gentle as possible because she looked as if a feather could break her. This was my first experience with a child, and she was so sweet that I was a goner for her instantly. “Hi, there.”

Her eyes lit up with excitement, but it couldn’t cover their lack of luster. They were a crystal blue, but so pale they were practically the color of water. They were also sunken in and rimmed with dark circles. She wore a white cap-sleeve nightgown that showed off big, ugly bruises ranging from dark purple to green to yellow dotting her arms. She looked frail, breakable, and sick, but when she grinned at me her face lit up. She looked much sicker than the last time I saw her.

When that thought registered, I gasped. “I
remember
you!”

Her pale little cheeks produced two tiny little pink spots as she nodded. “I’m Natalia.”

I shook my head in utter disbelief. “I
know
. I found you in the Visticorp lab. I got you out. The four of you. I sent you up a maintenance tunnel in the air filtration system, and then went to find Carter.” I found Donovan’s gaze. “I
remember!
”