Page 31 of The Chosen Son

“Huh.”

I went to bed that night feeling hopeful. Could it really be so easy?

Spoiler alert: it was not.

I woke up even before the sun was up, the pain clubbing me over the head and dragging me out of sleep. I felt like I’d been trampled over by a stampede of rabid hippos. My entire body ached, right down to the roots of my hair.

It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, but when I tried to relate it to something familiar, it reminded me of the time in third grade, when I fell off the climbing structure and broke my arm. It was like that but multiplied by 206, once for every bone in my body, and it had that hot itchy feeling of being mid healing process. I turned on the bedside lamp and held my arms up, searching for any sign of injury, but there was nothing. Nothing but the tiny red pinprick on my stomach to mark where I’d injected myself with Dr. Wells’s supposedtreatment.

The insides of my eyelids were lined with Velcro, as were my eyeballs, and I was pretty sure my tongue had grown fur.

“What the fuuuuck…” I mumbled, rubbing at my eyes as I dragged myself out of bed and over to the window. I wrenched back the curtains, staring out across the moon-drenched yard and pool below. Everything looked a funny color, like I was wearing red-tinted glasses. I blinked, eyelids scraping, but it didn’t make any difference to my vision.

It was the strangest feeling, because I was scared as hell, but my heartbeat was too slow in my chest, the blood sluggish in my veins.

I hobbled, groaning, to where I’d dropped my phone on the floor last night and dropped to the floor beside it. The carpet texture grated against my oversensitive skin, and as I dialed to call Dr. Wells, my fingers felt thick and clumsy. I didn’t give a fuck what time it was, couldn’t give a rat’s ass if I woke him up. He didn’t answer the first time, so I called him again. He picked up on the fifth ring, his voice thick with sleep. “Yeah,” he muttered.

“It’s me. Something’s wrong,” I gasped, dropping my head back to rest on the bed behind me.

“Cameron?” He was instantly alert. I heard the rustling of fabric as he presumably got out of bed. “Tell me everything.”

I listed all the symptoms I was feeling, and all the while, he hummed, the clack of computer keys in the background telling me that he was taking notes. He asked a few questions for clarification, and as I unloaded it all on the doctor, I began to feel a little better. He would know what to do. “So, do I need to go to the hospital?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh, no. You’re fine,” he said almost offhandedly.

“What? I’m not fine! I’ve never been less fine in my life!” I shouted in a hushed whisper. I was still very aware that Phobos could probably hear me, even from the other side of the house.

Dr. Wells made a soft shushing sound like a parent would give their baby to soothe them when they were upset. “I promise, this is quite expected. It will take you some time to get adjusted to the medication. It will likely improve the longer you take it.” It didn’t escape my notice that he’d said “likely.”

“And how often will I need to take it?” I asked, already dreading his answer.

“Let’s start with weekly, and we’ll see how it goes. I would like to see you in two weeks for some more blood work, and then we’ll do another MRI in a month to check on the disease progression. How does that sound?”

My eyes stung with frustrated tears. “Fine. Whatever,” I snapped, gritting my teeth. I was a fixer, a doer, someone who saw a problem and did whatever it took to repair what was broken. I’d always been that way. So to be told to just sit back and do nothing made me feel so incredibly helpless.

After a few more meaningless assurances from Dr. Wells that everything was going to be okay, I dropped the phone back to the floor. This sucked, but as much as I wanted to wallow in my own self-pity, it simply wasn’t in my nature to give up. What I really needed was a task, something else to focus on to take my mind off my constant pain and stress.

I needed a problem I could fix.

With that in mind, I forced myself up and into the shower. There was no chance of going back to sleep while my body was on fire, so after getting the doctor’s assurance that I wasn’t dying, I figured it was best to just get on with it. He’d said I could take painkillers, so I took the maximum dose on everything I had and hoped for the best.

I was dressed and headed downstairs to make some breakfast when an alarm tore through the house. Was it the fire alarm? I didn’t smellany smoke, and when I raced into the main part of the house, I found Phobos in his tights, staring down at his phone.

“Only 43 seconds. Great reaction time!” he praised, his violet eyes alight with excitement. “But I was really hoping you’d be dressed properly. Ah well, no time now. Let’s go!”

I frowned, following him toward the garage door. “Go where? What was that alarm?”

“Do you like it?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder but not slowing his quick pace. “I had it installed yesterday. It’s for superhero emergencies.”

“For superhero emer—” I bit back my sigh. Wasn’t this what I’d been hoping for? A problem I could fix? “Okay, so what’s the emergency?”

We stepped through into the garage, and I slid into the passenger seat of his white Porsche. Phobos hopped in the driver’s seat and slid the key into the ignition. His eyes, so bright a second ago, now darkened with shadows. “I’ve had word that Deimos is at the hospital.” A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he stared straight ahead through the windshield as the garage door slid up. “Apparently newborn shifter babies are an easy target to recharge his power.”

My jaw dropped in shock, but whatever I’d been about to say was lost beneath the roar of the engine as Phobos cranked the key and peeled out of the garage and down the driveway. I wasn’t Deimos’s biggest fan or anything, but babies?! That was… unthinkable! It took a special kind of monster to go after children.

I gripped the sides of my seat hard, letting my anger build as we blasted through the city streets toward downtown. If Deimos wanted to mess with me, I had plenty of pent-up rage just looking for an outlet. With each passing block, as the buildings grew taller around us and traffic closed in, I allowed my power to rise to the surface. Everylock I’d put on it, every wall I’d tried to erect around it, they all came crashing down as the surge of energy coursed through me. Every ache I’d been feeling sharpened, and I knew I would be paying the price for it later, but it would be worth it to blast the smug smirk off that asshole’s face.

Valleywood General was a massive hospital, with 50 floors, towering over the city. Phobos headed straight for it, and he didn’t take his foot off the gas until we were in its shadow, stopping just two feet from the doors. He shoved open his door. “Let’s go kick my brother’s ass,” he grumbled, storming into the building.

---