Hearts didn’t regenerate from that brutal an assault.

He shouldn’t be feeling anything inside his chest, but he was, and he was having thoughts inside his head, which meant his brain hadn’t exploded, either. Was it possible the medics had him on some sort of life support?

Yet he felt too alive to be nothing but a vegetable hooked up to a machine.

He needed to open his eyes. But he couldn’t.

“Hold on a minute,” the frost-kissed female voice said. “You have tape over your eyes.”

A sliding sound, a new and breathless woman’s voice saying, “He’s awake?”

“Yes, and thinks he’s a brain in a jar. Can I take the tape off his eyes?”

“Do it. I need to monitor his vitals as he rises. It’s possible he might not make it all the way out.” More huffed breaths. “This is incredible. I never expected this response. The compound clearly works on human neural tissue far more efficiently than it does on ours.”

Bo wanted to scowl. He was right here. Could they please stop talking about him as if he couldn’t hear them? And if they weren’t human, where was he?

“I think you’re speaking Italian now,” said the one with the cool but throaty voice. “I only speak Hawaiian, Samoan, English, Japanese, and a bit of very bad Cantonese and French.”

Bo felt a whisper of movement against his face, caught the edge of a lush scent that made him draw in a deeper breath. Some kind of exotic flower . . . and sugar. Cinnamon. He liked cinnamon.

“Good to know. But don’t start thinking I’m going to bake you a cinnamon cake, Security Chief. I save that for friends.”

Bo tried to settle his brain. But he kept on being distracted by the waves of luscious scent rippling across the air. That scent had nothing to do with the otherwise astringent smell all around him.

Hospital.

It was a hospital smell he’d been ignoring. Every single person in the world probably knew that smell. Whatever antiseptic they used to clean hospitals, it seemed to be the same regardless of location. Maybe they got a bulk discount.

Flowers and cinnamon whispering across his perception again.

A tug on the skin of his face near his eyes.

“I’m sorry”—an unexpectedly gentle touch, her fingers stroking back his hair—“the tape isn’t meant to stick so hard.”

“Here,” the other woman said. “Use this to warm it up first. It’s probably stuck because I used a new roll. Christ, his vitals are insane.”

“Good or bad insane?”

“Phenomenally good.”

“Permanent?”

“Unlikely. He could come up only to dive back down.”

A sensation of warmth against his skin, then the tug again. “Keep still—moving your head’s just making it harder.”

Bo was coming to the realization that he was alive, very alive, and the woman with the gentle hands, frost-coated voice, and luscious scent appeared to be a medical technician or a doctor. If she was, her bedside manner was terrible.

“Of course you’re a critic,” was the distinctly annoyed response. “And for your information, I’m a cook. An excellent one.”

He had to be hallucinating. Why would a cook be taking medical tape off his eyes?

He also didn’t recognize either woman’s voice, and he knew every single senior medic in the Alliance, knew each and every one of the doctors to whom his grievously wounded body would’ve been taken. So where was he? Was it possible the Alliance had brought in others to help? They had allies now, friends.

“I’m going to prick your feet. It won’t hurt.” Words spoken by the woman whose voice didn’t make his skin . . . itchy.

His leg jerked seconds later. It had been a test, he realized, to see if he had sensation in his feet. Breath held, he flexed both his fingers and toes.

Everyone had their nightmares and Bowen’s was to be helpless. He’d been exactly that once, a long time ago. He’d never forget the agony of the telepath’s psychic fingers shoving into his brain while he fought helplessly against her control.

It had all ended in blood.

Hers and his.

He’d made it clear to Lily and his parents that he’d never want to be kept alive only by machines, his body and mind beyond his control. It was the most vicious horror he could imagine. But his brain seemed to be functional, and as the last of the fog flickered away, he confirmed he had no physical blank spots, no numbness.

It was odd but he could also sense hundreds of tiny objects on his skin, and it felt as if they pulsed his muscles.

The tape disappeared. “Okay,” said the cook with the smoky, bluesy voice that held an inexplicable anger, “try to open your eyes—don’t force it. They may feel heavy.”

Bo could be patient when he needed to be, but he found he didn’t have that control today. He flicked open his lashes.

Chapter 3

KL: Mal, are you sure this is safe? I know we have to let Attie run her experiment, but Hugo’s information changes things. Bowen Knight is a cold-blooded murderer and he’s targeting our people.

MR: If he doesn’t wake, all we’ve done is give Attie what she needs. If he does, then we have him under our control.

—Messages exchanged between Kaia Luna and Malachai Rhys

THE ANGRY COOK had huge brown eyes that snapped with electricity against skin of a softer brown, her long dark hair in a loose braid that had fallen over one shoulder. She’d tucked a creamy white flower behind her right ear and her features reminded him of a movie he’d once seen about a Tahitian princess. Except this woman was no princess. She was a warrior. One Bo was dead certain was fighting the compulsion to stab him.

Fingers touched his left shoulder, followed by a small press against it. “That should help clear your head.”

Bo went to say his head was fine . . . only he hadn’t sensed the other woman’s approach. And he was a security chief with supposedly hair-trigger instincts. Which meant the fog hadn’t all dissipated.

When he turned to face the medic, he saw that her white-threaded black hair was cut sharply into a bob, her body covered by a white lab coat. His mind caught on the disconnect between her hair and her face—the white strands spoke of age, but her face was unlined, her light brown skin plump with youth.

Her eyes, however, they were familiar. They reminded him of Lily’s eyes, even though the medic’s were a dark shade where Lily’s were gray. No one knew Lily’s past before two years of age, but genetic tests done as part of a routine medical check for latent diseases had put his sister’s ancestry as Eurasian. The medic also had a strangeness to her shape. As if she had a bowling ball hidden under her coat.

When the woman with the young face and odd shape held a straw to his lips, he took a draw of the cold and slightly sweet liquid within. “How long?” he asked afterward, his brain sloshing itself back together as it shook off another layer of sleep.

“You’ve been in a coma for the past eight weeks and four days. Ever since you were shot on the bridge in Venice.”

Two months.

As he struggled to accept the lost time, Bo looked right to confirm he hadn’t imagined the warrior cook with the deadly look in her eye.

There she was. Crossed arms, scowling face, and dangerous curves.

Around her was a hospital suite. Pure glowing white except for the blue sheet over his body and on the bed. All kinds of lines went from his body to various machines on either side of the bed, and the tiny things he’d sensed on his skin? That hadn’t been his imagination. Small objects of a muted silver clung to his bare arms, and he could feel them on his legs, chest, everywhere.

They looked like robotic bugs.

“Muscle trainers,” the brown-eyed cook said without warning. “It means you won’t be confined to bed because your muscles turned to noodles while you were in a coma.”

“They’re on my back, too?” He could feel the lumps now.

“Smaller version. Bed’s designed to exercise that part of your body and keep the blood circulating.” She moved to the end of the bed, touched something on the panel there. “Attie, I’ve turned off the exercise cycle. It would’ve started again in an hour.”

He became aware of a fine metallic sensation against his skull. “Am I bald?” He could swear she’d brushed back his hair, but the warmth of her fingertips on his skin could’ve been an illusion created by his sluggish mind.

It was the old-young doctor who answered. “No. I’m monitoring your neural activity through a network of fine wires placed directly against your scalp—there was no need to shave off your hair to get them into position.”

Another burst of clarity, another part of his brain roaring to full consciousness. “I need to tell Lily I’m awake.” The aftermath of the shooting would’ve devastated her. He’d put himself in the line of fire to protect her, would do so again in a heartbeat, but he knew Lily—she’d have been beating herself up over it.

Poor Lil. She didn’t understand that his choice had been selfish; Bo had seen the red dot on her forehead and felt a rush of terror such as he’d never known. The idea of burying his little sister? No, just no.

Oh, fuck. “Is she alive?” He’d been in a coma for two months—while the chips in Lily’s head and the heads of all his closest friends continued to degrade. “The others?”

“No one is dead,” the doctor confirmed. “Ashaya and Amara Aleine were able to come up with a solution that slowed the degradation, but it’s limited in scope. The person implanted after you has another two to three months.”

All of them still dying, just a little slower. It had been the Aleines who’d figured out how to create a psychic shield for human minds—a shield that protected them from telepathic coercion and violation by the Psy—but Bowen didn’t blame the two scientists for the countdown to death; he, Lily, and their closest friends and associates had chosen to be implanted over the Aleines’ objections that the chip hadn’t been fully tested.