Trance. Part 16

McNally drummed her fingers against the side of her mug. "Then, we do it pretaped. We give the studio one hour advance notice, go in quietly, tape the interview, and then leave. Simple, sweet, and a much smaller audience."

"Can we preapprove the questions?" I asked.

"I'll see what I can do."

"It's a deal-breaker."

"Then, I'll make certain of it. Anything else?"

I took a moment to study my team. Gauge their reactions. William and Marco listened attentively, giving no nonverbal cues as to their thoughts. Gage kept picking at his sandwich with a half-frown on his face; I wanted to rea.s.sure him this was a good idea-as soon as I convinced myself.

Renee alone showed keen interest in the interview. She watched McNally with what I could only describe as fascination. Maybe a little bit of awe, as if she couldn't believe someone would go to these lengths for us. Perhaps she was simply contemplating her fifteen minutes of fame.

"I want the girl from the site," I said. If she refused, we'd be off the hook. "The blonde from the newspaper. Dahlia something?"

"Why her?" McNally asked.

"Because she was intimidated by us. She won't be tempted to go off on a tangent, or manipulate the questions. If we're boosting our own credibility, might as well boost someone else while we're at it."

"So, ten minutes, pretaped, you write the questions, and she asks them. That's the deal?"

A round of nods from the others sealed my answer: "Yes."

"Then, I'll see what I can put together." McNally's chair sc.r.a.ped as she stood up. "I'll let you know as soon as we've made arrangements."

"I can't wait." Beneath the table, Gage's foot kicked mine. "What? That wasn't all sarcasm."

McNally chuckled and left with her coffee.

"Well, that was quite rude," Renee said. The annoyance in her voice caught my attention, but amus.e.m.e.nt danced in her eyes. "Can she just take our coffee mugs like that?"

William wadded up his napkin and threw it at her head. He chuckled, Renee giggled, and I sighed with relief. I bit into the turkey sandwich, and my appet.i.te ignited like a spark to gas. I polished it off quickly, along with my soup and some crackers Renee didn't want. I was about to go get a second helping when Marco stood up-leaving.

The food could wait.

"Can I walk you out?" I asked, standing too quickly and knocking my chair over. Gage caught it with one hand and set it upright.

Marco nodded. I followed him to the disposal, and we dropped our plates. Awkward silence accompanied us into the corridor. He turned toward the elevator bank. I zipped past to cut him off before he could press the b.u.t.ton.

"How are you?" I asked, and fixed the wounded shapes.h.i.+fter with my sternest stare. "Really, Marco, how are you doing?"

He studied me a moment, the glow of his lime-green eyes rising and falling like waves in an ocean. Did the color react to his emotions? "If I say I am fine, Catalepsia, you will call me a liar."

"Not if you're really fine."

"I am fine."

"Liar."

"What do you wish me to say?"

"Tell me the truth, Marco," I said, practically begging. Hedging bothered me beyond words. Straight talk or nothing. "Tell me that you're p.i.s.sed as h.e.l.l at me for sending you up there to get hurt. Tell me you hate that I got out of it without a sc.r.a.pe, while everyone else I care about was injured. Tell me I'm not my father, and I'm a terrible field leader, and Gage should be in charge like before. I don't care, just be honest with me."

Deep lines creased his forehead, darkening the camouflage coloration of his skin. A cloud of sadness settled over him like a thunderhead, and I found myself both repelled and intrigued. We'd traded more words in the last few days than in the two years I'd known him prior to losing our powers. He'd been held captive and abused before coming to the Rangers, and hadn't talked much to me or anyone else, preferring to spend the majority of his time as a panther. I couldn't begin to imagine what losing his s.h.i.+fting abilities had done to him, or the difficulties he faced because of his fur-mottled skin.

"I am not angry at you," he said. "I am only angry with myself."

I blinked hard, startled by his answer. "Why?"

"Because I charged into a situation without first a.s.sessing it, and that is why I was caught and injured. I was careless."

"I told you to go ahead of us."

"I should have been more cautious. Now Janel is dead, Ethan is fighting to live, and perhaps I could have prevented it. I could have done something differently. Better."

"We all could have done something differently." I gently grasped his wrist. Better to avoid his hands for now. "I could have killed Janel sooner. Ethan could have taken two steps to the left. Gage could have not stepped into that doorway. Regardless, we did all of those things. Second-guessing battle decisions won't help us do better the next time. Examining them will."

McNally's voice rang through my head. d.a.m.n her, she was right.

"What is the difference?" Marco asked.

"The difference is we accept the choices we make and learn from the mistakes. Besides, if anyone on this team is going to second-guess, it will be me. It's the leader's prerogative. Just like it's my prerogative to cheer you up."

"Find a healer who can fix my hand." He gave no sign that anything I just said made a bit of difference. "I cannot s.h.i.+ft until the bones heal, so I am useless to you and this team."

I had no comeback for that one, and an overwhelming sadness struck me. I'd been around these people for days and, except for Gage, had taken no time to get to know them or understand their history during our separation. I hadn't taken the time to be his friend.

"I'm sorry, Marco."

He tilted his head to one side. "For what?"

"For the things that hurt you that no one was there to stop."

A sad smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Anything that happened prior to a week ago was never your fault. You cannot be sorry for it."

"Yes, I can, and I am. None of us really talk about those years we were apart, because most of us had pretty awful times of it. I know I didn't have the best years of my life, and I'm glad to have left it all behind. Good or bad, I'm sorry because I'm your friend."

He turned, and I let go of his wrist. I couldn't stop him from walking away and not accepting my words. He surprised me by pivoting back around and sweeping his strong arms around my waist. I tossed my own arms around his shoulders and hugged him back. The superfine hair covering his skin tickled my cheek, soft as velvet. We held each other for a few moments, drawing strength, creating unity.

"I am sorry to be such a gloomy pain in the a.s.s," he said, his breath puffing against my ear.

I laughed. "I'm not so easy to get along with myself. We can start a Pains-in-the-a.s.s Club, if you like. Definitely invite Dr. Seward to join."

Marco chuckled. His grip loosened, and I stepped back. "Thank you, Catalepsia," he said. "Perhaps one day we will tell our sad stories over a bottle of tequila."

"Something tells me we'll need two bottles."

He smiled, and the sight warmed my heart. I swatted him on the shoulder, then pressed the elevator's call b.u.t.ton. It chimed right away, and the doors slid open.

"I'll see you later," I said.

He nodded and stepped into the elevator.

As the doors slid shut, I thought of my promise to Gage. I didn't want to search for Dr. Seward and explain about my sight. Lab Rat was not a t.i.tle I needed attached to my name, thank you very much. But I said I'd go, and I didn't want to start lying to Gage. Maybe Dr. Seward would be busy; I could say I tried. Or maybe he wasn't even on base, since it was the middle of the night.

And I wanted to see Ethan.

The exterior of the Medical Center looked like it had been scalped, a monument to how badly our safety had been violated-and how horribly I'd screwed up. Carpenters and technicians created a steady stream in and out, even during this late hour. The top floor was missing windows and a roof. The copter wouldn't be making any emergency landings up there for a while; it would have to stick to the helipad on the roof of the Base.

I found Dr. Seward's temporary fourth-floor office empty. He had kept the bulk of his medical files in the central computer network, saving him the work of going through mountains of water-damaged paper files.

Since Seward could be anywhere on the property, I counted my blessings, skipped past the lab-turned-office, and headed for ICU. None of my most recent trips to Medical had landed me there, only one of my teammates. Another teammate that I didn't know very well. I wanted to know him. I wanted to know all of them again.

No one was monitoring the outer station. I spotted a white-coated shoulder in the office behind it, barely visible behind a white- and red-checked curtain. Either Julie Dent, one of our two on-call nurses, or Dr. Adam Morgan himself, the trauma surgeon they'd borrowed from Cedars-Sinai specifically for Ethan. I slipped past, toward the closed door. The latch unlocked, and I pushed as quietly as I could.

My entrance garnered no attention from the person in the office (or break room, it was hard to tell). On the other side of the door was a short corridor and four divided cubicles. Gentle whirs and beeps came from the slot immediately to my left, and I gravitated toward it.

Ethan lay flat on his back, a thick cloud of white bandages obscuring his chest. Some blood had seeped through straight up the middle, as if a child had dragged a red paintbrush across it. Bruises and cuts covered his arms and face. His hair stood out starkly against his pallor, visible even to my lavender-hued eyes.

He wasn't on a ventilator. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose, and a pulse monitor created a steady staccato beep. A variety of tubes and wires crisscrossed his body, and I couldn't hope to know what each of them did or what medicine they provided.

I picked up the chart hanging from the foot of the bed. I couldn't make heads or tails of the handwriting scrawled across the page. Medical doctors either wrote in another language, or this was done up by a drunk spider after walking across an inkpad. The little cubicle had no chairs; nothing that said it welcomed visitors. Even if a nurse complained, I doubted she would try to force me out.

"Well," I said, "the good news is that you're going to live. Getting squashed under a collapsed ceiling is usually something that happens during the fight, not after, but I guess you're not one for rules. Gage and Marco are okay, too. You came out of it with the biggest scratches."

Nothing. Not like I expected a response, but sometimes ... "If I start to nag you about waking up, will you sit up and argue with me?"

Guess not.

"William and Renee are home, and now McNally is insisting we do a news show. I think it will be a painful exercise in futility, but she seems to think good press is better than no press. Since Rangers have had no press for this long, I suppose I should agree with her."

I picked at a lint pill on the edge of the blanket. "You know, I think I miss the dull responsibility of making my rent every month, working three jobs to eat, and carrying the burden of being an ex-con stuck in the same state for two more years. Did you know that about me? I know Gage does, and it doesn't seem to bother him, and I can a.s.sume McNally and Grayson do, too.

"Yeah, your heroic leader is a criminal. How's that for ironic? I got two years on an accessory charge and served twelve months, courtesy of the lying a.s.shole I thought I was in love with at the time."

After the unfortunate incident with my virginity, I'd barely dated for the rest of high school. Or after the foster care system booted me out at the age of eighteen to face life on my own two (unbalanced) feet. But I couldn't protect my heart forever. I was twenty when I met Kirk. He'd been a regular at one of the two places I waitressed at. He'd chat me up while ordering and leave big tips, and he always had a sweet compliment about my hair or my smile. Somehow he made it seem like I asked him out, when I'm sure it was the other way around. He made it seem like s.e.x was my idea, too. It was great, really great, for almost a year. I was too stupid in love to wonder where he got his money when he never seemed to work.

Three days before my twenty-first birthday, he asked me for a favor. I agreed without hesitation. I still agreed to do it after I found out he wanted me to drive a getaway car, in exchange for a share of the stuff he stole. He said the score would be enough to get us both out of Portland, down to somewhere warm and sunny. I fell for it.

The sound of my prison cell door slamming closed for the first time was the second most terrifying moment of my life. I didn't cry the first night, like they say most people do. My incarceration didn't sink in until the second day, when I had to take a lukewarm, five-minute shower with nine strange women, watched over by two CO's. I'd never felt more naked, more vulnerable or ashamed of myself for ending up there. For the first time, I'd felt like I had completely disappointed my father and p.i.s.sed on everything he'd taught me-everything he'd raised me to be. That second night, I cried until I threw up, then I cried some more. My cellmate thanked me in the morning by punching me in the eye.

Yep, that was the woman currently in charge of the last of the Rangers.

"I don't want to do the interview," I said, shaking out of my macabre memories. "If we have to do it, though, it's on my terms. I don't want some nosy reporter matching me up to my mug shot and asking about it."

I laughed without amus.e.m.e.nt and studied the monitors without interest. "It would be almost worth it just to see what sort of lather McNally gets into. She's got this hard-on for controlling our public image. I guess she lived through the brunt of our negative publicity during the War, and she wants to prevent that now.

"But what kind of publicity can you get for a group whose ex-con leader kills one of their own?" I said, thinking of Janel.

"Bad kind."

I turned, heart pounding. The m.u.f.fled voice hadn't come from behind me. Ethan's eyes had opened a fraction, twin slits of dull color. Looking at me. He licked his lips beneath the mask.

"Hey." I reached for his hand and held it as tight as I dared. His skin was cool, too cool. "Eavesdrop much?"

"Talking to me. Only heard some."

"I was just babbling, trying to make myself feel better. Should I call the doctor? Are you in pain?"

"No."

"No to which question?"

"First."

"So no doctor, but you're in pain?"

His eyes closed, and then opened a bit wider. He breathed hard, creating a cloud of vapor inside of the mask. I pulled it down to his chin, freeing his mouth.

"Thanks," he said. "Others okay?"

"Yeah, a little banged up, but they're fine. We were all worried about you. Renee was pretty jealous about how you flew us down to that construction site, and I think she wants a ride of her own when you're better."

The left side of his mouth turned up, not quite a complete smile. "See what ... can do."

Now that I had a captive audience, the words wouldn't come as easily. I dragged the toe of my sneaker across the glossy floor. "Is there anything you need?"

"Coffee?"

I grinned; he didn't. In fact, his smile melted away completely, overtaken by stubbornness.

"Coffee," he said again.

"Ethan, I don't think the doctors will allow you to have coffee three hours after major surgery. Besides, you need to sleep, not stay awake."

He shook his head, fear creeping into his eyes. "Stay awake."

"You need to rest, you almost died up there."

"Specter."

I scrubbed my hands over my face. Specter would not come after us again, not for at least a day. He had to recharge his psychokinetic batteries. I could figure out a way to have guards posted in the ICU if it made Ethan feel safer. Anything to help him get some rest, to relax and ... oh, no.

"You don't want to sleep," I said, picking my words carefully, "because you don't want Specter to use you like he used Janel. Is that it?"

A tilt of his head confirmed my suspicion. He looked away, finding the blanket more interesting to stare at. My heart broke for him. A grown man who looked like a boy and had no one to protect him, except friends just as lost. I perched on the edge of the bed and braced my hands on either side of his arms. He ignored me a moment, and then looked up.

"Specter can't come after us right now, Ethan. It's only been half a day. He doesn't have the strength. Sleep for a few more hours and get your own strength back. Then, if you're still afraid, we'll discuss other options. Just don't let fear make you hurt yourself, okay?"