Page 116 of Shadow Blind

“Damn right,” Aiden muttered. “They say anything about when they’re going to release me?”

“No. But it can’t be long now. You seem like you’re back to normal.” Kait smiled at him, relief shining in her eyes. “You don’t seem nearly as tired as you did before you woke up, either. You’re never sleeping when I visit. Not like you were before.”

Aiden grimaced. He wasn’t sleeping because he was afraid to shut his damn eyes. He was tired of the fucking nightmares messing with his mind. Dread carved a hole in his gut. If he could figure out what the dreams were trying to tell him, maybe he could address the problem. But those damn twisted people, with their elongated eyes and mouths, never said a damn thing. They just stared at him with their slanted, hollow eyes, like they expected him to know what they wanted.

Like they were waiting for something from him.

Chapter forty-six

Day 23

Denali, Alaska

Dr. Brickenhouse walked into Aiden’s hospital room within minutes of Kait and Cosky leaving. The doctor’s arrival was both a blessing and a frustration. Finally, Aiden would get his questions answered. But dammit, he’d planned to sneak off to the cafeteria for some real food. He was fucking tired of bed rest and namby-pamby meals.

“Let me get this straight,” Aiden said once Dr. Brickenhouse finished his update. “All the healings Kait did on me through the years supercharged my immune system and that’s why the bots weren’t able to infect me?”

“That’s our working theory,” Brickenhouse nodded. His face looked less lined and gray, as though he’d gotten some actual sleep. “Although, realistically, the last two healings your sister did prior to your illness probably had the most impact. Your immune system was already supercharged by those healings, which aided your body in resisting the foreign invasion, which in turn prevented the nanobots from replicating and attacking.”

Aiden frowned at that. “You said you found none of those fuckers in me.”

It gave him the creeps to think of the little bastards crawling around inside him, even if his immune system had squashed them.

“True. Initially, we didn’t find any evidence of them in your tissue and blood work. But the samples we took were limited, and there was no way to check your brain other than the CT and MRI scans. The nanobots only showed up on your teammates’ brain scans because of the size of the clusters. However, there was no indication—and still isn’t—of bot clusters in any of your brain scans.” He pursed his mouth before continuing. “As for the rest of your test results, there were no abnormalities in them either…until recently. And even then, only three of the slides showed abnormalities. Three out of hundreds.”

“Abnormalities.” Aiden’s laugh bordered on grim. “Guess that’s one way of describing them. Are you sure the fragments you found are from the nanobots?”

“No. We can’t be certain.” The doctor shrugged. “But they carry some of the nanobot markers. So, realistically, the most likely scenario is that they’re fragments of bots your immune system destroyed.”

Aiden grunted and thumped his head against the pillow. “So, my immune system, which Kait supercharged, just…dissolved them? That’s what you’re saying?”

If Brickenhouse was right, this news put a big damper on the whole inoculate the world idea. If Kait’s repeated healing was why he’d survived the infestation, while his teammates had all perished, then the world was fucked.

Brickenhouse looked tired again, as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Which it kind of was. “It’s unclear how your body eradicated the nanobots. We’re still figuring that out.”

Great. The docs and lab rats didn’t have a clue how his body had defeated the killer bots. Which meant they couldn’t manufacture a cure. Not from Aiden, anyway. He sighed. They needed a fucking miracle. But he’d take that miracle from his quarters, not this damn hospital bed. He swung his legs over the side and stood. Time to facilitate his own release from the clinic.

“Now that you’ve given me a clean bill of health,” which Brickenhouse had done before the conversation morphed into supercharged immune systems, “it’s time for me to bid you adieu. If you need me, you’ve got my cell number.”

To his shock, Brickenhouse didn’t protest. Guess he really was back to normal.

Afraid the doctor would change his mind before Aiden could escape, he hurriedly dressed in the clothes Kait had left him and stuffed his cell in the back pocket of his jeans. He grabbed a vehicle from the charging station in front of the clinic and drove it to the alcove in front of the corridor that led to his quarters.

He was restless when he reached his apartment. Unsettled. A long, hot shower helped some, but he was too wired to sleep. Hell—he didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to face those damn stretchy-faced people until he absolutely had to. Besides, he’d slept for days. He didn’t need more shuteye.

What he needed was food. He was hungry enough to eat an elephant. He paced to the tiny kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator. Kait had stocked it with his favorite foods. The space came equipped with a two-burner stove and a microwave, along with a cabinet of pots and pans, and another full of dishes, glasses and cups. He could cook himself something, although that seemed like too much work. It would be easier to head to the cafeteria and grab something there. He called in his order of a double-meat, double-cheese, double-bacon burger with a double order of fries, and smiled in satisfaction when the cook promised it would be ready on his arrival.

After he’d filled his belly, he’d hunt down his big bro and find out what Shadow Mountain intel was doing to locate Kuznetsov’s mistress. He’d check in with Dev too. Maybe Dev’s soups and spooks network could find the woman. Although Dev’s contacts had been wrong about where the Russian had holed up.

Benioko’s informant, on the other hand, had been Johnny-on-the-spot with his information. Aiden had a theory about who that informant was. Kuznetsov’s location had come within hours of his plea to O’Neill in the gym. Hell, maybe the Shadow Mountain outcast really was Stargate. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to meet with the dude and see if he had more helpful info to pass along. It was time to take a closer look at Nantz Technology, too. The whole fucking camera thing still bugged the shit out of him.

With newfound energy buzzing through his mind, he started for the door. First lunch. Followed by some head rattling. The door buzzer sounded as he crossed the room. Kait, probably, or maybe Wolf. Although Rawlings was a good bet, too. His former CO was a momma hen.

As it turned out, the one person he hadn’t expected was standing at his door.

“Demi?” He stared at her in shock, drinking her in, as he absently raked his fingers through his still wet hair.

She looked thinner. Her face was pale. Her brown eyes were wide and anxious. He sucked in a breath along with the scent of roses from her shiny hair, which looked freshly washed. The scent, so full of memories and emotions, almost drove him to his knees.

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