Page 10 of He Is Jensen: Part One

The only answer is my own heavy breathing. It fills the trailer, bouncing off the walls and back at me. My body tingles, and my lungs expand without one hint of pain or discomfort. But with the realization that the drug has done something for me, I feel no hope or joy. Any cure Tad offers me is a drug-induced facade and a nightmare.

“Wake up,” I whisper, pressing my hands to Jensen’s body and to his face, so much blood seeping through his clothes onto my hand. “Wake up!” Of course, the demand is illogical, but I need to know he’s still with me.

I check his pulse, and when his beat is steady, I work to pull off his shirt and turn it into a tourniquet, but he’s unmoving. I can’t get it off, nor can I tear it or cut it. I lay my head down over his chest, find the steady beat of his heart, and relax against him. His soft, rhythmic heartbeat is comforting, even as the truck begins to move.

It's the last thing I remember before blacking out.

Chapter six

Jensen

Icome awake abruptly,flat on my chest, but I don’t move, don’t so much as breathe. I don’t even open my eyes, allowing my body to absorb the hard and unforgiving concrete beneath my body. Discreetly, I inhale, reaching with my enhanced GTECH senses to find the familiar scent I’d hoped to never experience again—Groom Lake, now Julian’s Zodius City.

Stickiness clings to my shirt, but remarkably, considering the number of Green Hornets Tad unloaded in me, my GTECH immune system has kicked into gear, and my body feels nearly healed, which requires sleep—a lot of sleep. Translation: Someone removed the bullets, gave me a dose of vitamin C, and let me sleep at least twelve hours, if not more.

I inhale a deeper breath, and another softer, sweeter scent touches my nostrils. “Layla.” I jerk to a sitting position, my back against a hard surface, finding myself inside some sort of glass cage overlooking a lab, where several white coats monitor me.

But Layla is nowhere in sight.

The television screen hanging in the corner of my cell flickers to life. I blink it into view, and rage surges through me at whatI find—at the image of Tad kneeling over Layla’s limp body, pouring a vial of what looks like ICE down her throat. Tad turns to the monitor and smiles, running his hands down Layla’s hair and petting her.

“You sonofabitch!” I roar, every nerve in my body on fire, every pore seething with anger. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you and enjoy it.”

Tad steps closer to the camera. “I’m sure you can imagine all the things I’m planning to do to her.” The screen goes black, and the doors behind me slide open.

I whirl around, ready to launch myself on the visitor, only to find two wolves snarling at me with the promise of attack.Julian’s wolves. His command over the beasts is well known. His use of them for punishment and entertainment is also well known. Defy Julian, even look at him wrong, and you end up in an old Roman-style coliseum beneath Groom Lake, with thousands of Zodius citizens watching you battle the wolves for survival.

And where there are wolves, you find Julian.

Today is no exception.

Dressed in desert camouflage fatigues, Julian enters the cage, leaving the glass wall open behind him. Well over six-foot-two with a muscular frame and light brown hair, he is his brother’s evil doppelganger. The GTECH serum somehow turned one good and one evil.

“You want to kill me,” Julian says, a smile curving his lips.

“Damn straight, I do,” I say, seeing no reason to hide the truth.

“You want to kill me over the woman.”

Alarms go off in my head. “The reasons to kill you are many,” I say cautiously, certain this conversation was going nowhere good fast. “Should I count them out, or would you rather hear about all the ways I’ve fantasized about completing the task?”

Laughter roars from Julian. “You have balls to stand here in my cage, in my world, and dare to threaten me. I like you, Jensen.” He leans against the wall, the wolves settling at his feet. “More importantly, my brother likes you, and he will not want to see you dead when we finally reconcile and rule as one.”

“He’ll die before he joins you.”

“Sooner or later, he’ll stop fighting the inevitable; that I am in him as he is in me.”

Whatever the fuck that means, I think.

He tilts his head to study me. “Did you know your little Layla Walters took her first dose of ICE because Tad held a gun to your head? The irony is that the ICE is curing her cancer. A few more doses, and she should be good as new.”

I go colder than ice, my emotions shredded by conflicting reactions. The cancer is being cured, but Layla is now addicted to ICE. And just like the original serum, no one can figure out how to replicate ICE, which makes Julian her only source of survival until an antidote is found.

“Of course,” Julian adds, “there’s the risk of death during withdrawal if she discontinues the use of ICE, not to mention the risk her cancer might return. I’m sure you would agree. She shouldn’t take any chances.”

“You’re a bastard, Julian.”

“But I’m her bastard hero.”

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