Page 111 of Two Chambered Heart

When the wracking of her sobs finally settled, she asked, “How many days?”

“Just one.”

She pulled away from him, floored that her body seemed completely healed. She lay in a makeshift hospital bed in the middle of the living room. She had a pulse reader attached to her finger, hooked up to a monitor by her bedside. The coffee table was nowhere to be found.

Another hospital bed was set up close by hers, a bunch of wires running to the body under the blanket.Jason.

Her heart tripped over itself, and a whimper escaped her. “Is he going to live?”

“Yes, he’s going to be just fine. He’s in a medically induced coma right now, to help him heal from all the internal trauma to his organs. It will help speed up the healing process. How do you feel?”

“I feel… great.” She swallowed, looking around the room again, feeling a little bewildered. Something wasn’t adding up.

She reached for her shoulder, but found nothing there—no entrance wound from the knife she knew she'd been stabbed with. Her ribs felt fine too, even though the impact from the bullets should have bruised her like a peach. She ran a thumb along her front tooth. It was still chipped.

“I don’t understand. How are we okay? And why aren’t we in the hospital?”

He brought a hand behind his neck, rubbing it sheepishly. “It’s kind of a long story.”

A tinkling laugh had Corey’s head swinging to the kitchen. A beautiful, albeit miniature, woman was sitting on the bar stool, holding a mug. The regular-sized mug looked massive in her small hands. She was breathtaking, with silvery blond hair cropped to her shoulders and bright blue eyes.

She must have felt Corey’s attention, because the women’s head turned, cocking to the side, a big smile on her full, pink lips.

Hopping off the bar stool, she practically floated to Corey's bedside.

Corey blinked a few times, trying to decide if she was hallucinating.

“Oh, good,” she said, “you’re up!” She clapped her hands together lightly, a juvenile expression, though she didn’t look younger than Corey. “I’m Sophie, Sophie Monarch. It’s nice to meet you, Corey. The boys have told me a lot about you.” There was a lovely cadence to her voice, something soft and ethereal, and a little brassy at the end. It swept over Corey, and she felt the spike in her nerves calming, the change in her physiology echoing on the monitor.

Corey shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“I’m a healer.”

“Like, a doctor?”

Sophie’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know?”

“They haven’t told her yet.” It was a gravelly, deep voice that she immediately recognized. The man behind the comms came into view. She hadn’t noticed him in the kitchen, with the other woman’s mystic charm. “Nice to meet you in person, Corey.” He stuck a hand out to her. “Under less dire circumstances.”

“This is Archer Knox. He’s the voice in your ear, our tech guy. Archie manipulates computers,” Kayden explained.

Archer Knox was covered in tattoos, traditional Chinese tattoos looping and swirling with mist and monsters up his toned arms. They climbed the fingertips of the hand she was still shaking dumbly, all the way up under his t-shirt sleeves and then escaping again from the collar and up his neck.

“Damn, you don’t look like a computer nerd.” She eyed him appreciatively, and she could have sworn Kayden’s eyes flashed.

“The twins didn’t know where I lived, in case they were ever compromised, but I was just a few hours away. I started driving over as soon as you guys were back in the car. Luckily, Sophie lives a little closer.”

The little pixie woman spoke again, her voice a calming salve for the words that came out of her. “You had a kidney contusion, a tear through the deltoid and rotator cuff from a knife wound, bruised ribs and a mild concussion.”

“How did that all heal in one day?”

Sophie looked to Kayden, seeming to defer to him for the explanation.

“Arch and Sophie were in the facility with me and Jason. That’s how we met them,” Kayden said slowly.

“That doesn’t answer my question, Kayden. Just tell me what’s happening?” Her heartbeat started to climb on the monitor at her bedside. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling vulnerable in the hospital gown someone else had put her in.

“The kids in the facility, we were… collected. It wasn’t random. They took us or bought us for experimentation because we have genetic anomalies. We are considered evolved humans. The facility believed we represent a natural evolutionary leap in the human species, and they were studying the cause behind our genetic changes. Because of the mutation in our genetic coding, we have unique gifts. Archie is technokinetic. Sophie is a healer. Jason and I are telepathic. Some had fire, telekinesis, regeneration, all kinds of abilities. The facility was doing genetic engineering and experiments to understand if and how our gifts could be activated, transferred or controlled.”

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