Page 31 of Shadow Blind

His hand clenched the cell phone. He fought the impulse to hurl the damn thing as hard as he could against the glass door of his isolation unit.

Instead, he dialed her number again, his teeth grinding with every ring that rode the line. By the time he gave up and ended the call, his jaw ached. He paced from one smokey wall of his chamber to the other, while strategies marched through his mind.

If he couldn’t convince her to fly up to him, and he couldn’t fly down to her, the next best option was saddling her with a security team, men he trusted to protect her until he was free to do the job himself.

An old roommate of his, Lucas Trammel, had joined Forged, a San Diego security company, after he’d left his leadership role on ST7. Aiden knew several other dudes from the firm, too, excellent operators that he’d crewed with in the past. An hour later, he had a surveillance team on Demi. Men he could trust to monitor her and step in if anyone tried to grab her. He suspected she’d be furious if she found out he had her under surveillance, so the protection crew was under orders not to engage with her unless it was absolutely necessary.

He’d fly down and haul her up to Alaska in person as soon as the Shadow Mountain docs released him from isolation.

It was ironic, really. While Benioko, the base shaman, had convinced Wolf’s warriors that Aiden was not a health threat, he hadn’t been as persuasive with the base scientists and doctors. No surprise, really. Scientists and doctors dealt with the physical, not the mystical. When the Thunderbird set down in the Shadow Mountain air hanger, a small hoard of men and women in lab coats and PPE had swarmed the craft and hustled everyone off to the isolation complex.

Aiden was relieved the scientists were taking precautions. Although he wasn’t nearly as concerned about infecting people now as he’d been earlier. So far, neither he, Kait, or any of the warriors aboard the Thunderbird were showing signs of insanity. Besides, it shouldn’t take long for the tests to clear him. A day, maybe two, and he’d be on one of Shadow Mountain’s jets—Wolf claimed they had three—heading down to Coronado to collect Demi.

Three days later, he wasn’t nearly as optimistic.

The insides of his arms were an ugly black and blue and looked like a pair of pincushions. He’d been x-rayed, ultrasounded, and stuffed into so many mechanical hollow tubes that he’d developed an itchy sense of claustrophobia.

Yet he was still here, in this damn isolation chamber, with no end in sight.

He knew there were others in the isolation unit—Wolf, Kait, and Cosky, along with the rest of the warriors who’d arrived on the Thunderbird. But he couldn’t see anyone on either side of his chamber.

The walls of his prison were an impenetrable smoky gray with a glass-like texture that flowed smoothly beneath his fingertips. There was an adjustable hospital bed against the back wall, with a small table beside it. An enormous television was mounted above the door, and a bathroom, complete with a pulsing shower, tucked into the left corner of the chamber. The head was enclosed by the same smokey gray glass as the walls. He could adjust the temperature of the room to his comfort level. He even had privacy when he wanted it. By some marvel of engineering, the punch of a button on the control strip embedded into the table beside the bed would shift the front of the enclosure from clear to smokey.

The space would be comfortable enough if he wasn’t locked in, and if he was getting some damn sleep. But no, those freaky, white-faced demons with the elongated mouths and eyes from his nightmares seemed to have an impenetrable hold on him in here. His nights were whacked.

He paced from wall to wall, absently listening to the faint hiss of air circulating through the chamber by the vents along the back wall. Periodically, he’d glare at the clock merrily ticking down the wasted hours above the bed. That damn clock had become an obsession, a constant reminder of passing time, of what he should be doing, rather than pacing the linoleum floor, or pumping out dozens of pushups and sit-ups, or wasting time watching TV.

He should be tracking down the bastards behind that ugliness in Karaveht. He should be down in Coronado with Demi protecting her from whatever nightmare he’d brought to her door.

At least she was safe…for the moment. Tag said there was no sign she was in danger. Nobody was showing interest in her. Nobody was staking out her condo complex—except for the men he’d hired to do so. But his instincts insisted she was in danger. Or that she soon would be.

And goddammit, she still wasn’t answering his phone calls. The frustration of that left a metallic taste on his tongue.

When the pneumatic door hissed open, he expected a nurse in a protective suit, intent on drawing more blood. Instead, Wolf and a small herd of doctors entered his chamber. Wolf had been released from isolation? That was news. Even more newsworthy was that none of his visitors were wearing protective equipment.

“I’m not contagious?” he asked as his lead doctor, Soloman Brickenhouse, crossed the linoleum toward him.

“No, you are not,” Brickenhouse said. “Every test came back clear. We waited an extra twenty-four hours out of an abundance of caution. But after the latest test results, there’s no need to keep you in isolation any longer.”

Huh…

Aiden frowned, absently rubbing his chin. “It’s not a virus then?”

From what little he knew of viruses, they had unpredictable incubation periods. It seemed unlikely the docs could be certain he wasn’t contagious after four days.

“Not a virus.” Doctor Brickenhouse advanced on the bed and unhooked a clipboard from the metal bar stretching across the foot of the frame. He plucked a pen from the breast pocket of his lab coat. A scratching sound filled the room as he scrawled something unreadable on the paper clipped to the plastic board. “Nor is it an environmental pathogen.” A long, silver braid swung against the back of the white coat as he turned and beckoned a short, round dude forward. “Doctor Cole can explain this better than I.”

Aiden turned toward the dude Brickenhouse had gestured at. This new doc was built like a buoy, if a buoy grew arms and legs and sprouted a bowling ball for a head. He was short enough that the white smock hit him mid-calf. Fuck, the dude looked like a kid playing dress up.

The bowling ball of a guy stepped forward, one finger pressed against the old-fashioned square glasses swallowing his round face. His brown eyes looked enormous beneath the lenses. “We’ve identified the…” he paused as though searching for the closest word, before shrugging, “culprit, that caused your friends to attack each other.”

Culprit? Aiden’s forehead furrowed. That seemed a weird choice of words. Still, at least they’d identified what had caused the insanity. You couldn’t solve a problem without identifying it.

“What was it?” He paused, his muscles bunching. “Do I have what they had?”

“No.” The human bowling ball bounced slightly on his toes. His face was earnest yet concerned. “We found none of the nanobots in your blood, muscle tissue, or skin samples.”

“Nanobots?” He froze. “That’s what killed my team?”

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