Rachel cradled my head against her breast and stroked my hair. Her voice vibrated into my chest. “You’re a very talented 14-year-old lover, Lakan,” she murmured.
“Is this still my dream?” I wondered, awed at the second set of sensations coursing through me.
“Yes. And it’s about to end so you’d better figure out how we’re going to escape,” she retorted.
“You have any suggestions?” I asked marveling at how real this dream seemed. Because it was my dream, I felt everything – the satiny texture of her skin, the sweet scent of her hair, the lightness of my own body after an ejaculation. I wondered idly if my body back in the solid world had experienced a nocturnal emission. I laughed. It would serve Cameron or Chase right if I came all over one of them.
“I can open the door to the Spirit Realm for you but your great-grandfather warned me that the Soul Hunters would find you almost immediately. Plus, I’m not sure if I can physically carry you with me.”
“I’m drugged back in my room, Rachel,” I told her, playing with a strand of her hair. “They operated on my belly. I had a ruptured spleen.”
“Then they won’t be moving you anytime soon. Or experimenting on you.”
“Maybe not. That doctor is crazy, he did things to me when I was a kid and he often didn’t use painkillers.”
“Your childhood must have been terrible, Lakan,” she encouraged. I knew she wanted me to speak about my youth but truthfully I didn’t remember anything.
I felt myself drawing away from her. Stubbornly, I tried to hold onto the dream but it was no use. A woman’s face in a mask and surgical scrubs was shining a penlight in my eyes.
“Dr. Cameron, he’s coming up from the anesthesia,” she spoke over her shoulder to the doctor. He was in scrubs also and his face framed by a surgical cap that covered his hair.
“How do you feel, Lakan?”
“Floaty.”
“You had a 2-inch laceration of the spleen and 2 pints of blood in your gut cavity. Of course, it was closing as I stitched you. Probably would’ve sealed itself without my help but we did surgery anyway. Your pressure is normal and your temp, too. At first, we thought you were spiking a fever of 105° but as soon as we warmed you up, your temp dropped back to 98.6. You can regulate your internal temperature?”
I mumbled something and slipped back into sleep. Didn’t feel it when they wheeled me back to my room, transferred me to the bed and put me into restraints. I did wake up as they rolled me onto a bedpan and told me to poop.
Of all the things that have been done to me, that ranked as the most humiliating, not being able to crap on my own or wipe. After that, a male nurse came in, washed me off carefully, changed my sheets and re-gowned me in a clean one. Another checked my IV, the covered incision and took my vitals.
I still wore the continuous IV and the pain was a distant memory telling me that I was on some kind of painkiller or the Thorazine. It was like thinking through a cloud of pea soup.
“Thirsty,” I whispered and the male nurse placed a few ice chips in my mouth. They melted instantly. “Where am I?”
“Recovery. Just rest, Dr. Cameron will be by later,” he said.
“Your name?”
“Blue. This is Red.”
“Better than Smith and Brown,” I returned and closed my eyes. I heard them muttering about the room but I ignored them. Late that afternoon, I was more cognizant of my surroundings and others around me. Either the doctor had not reordered the Thorazine or it interfered with the pain medicine that the male nurse Blue injected into my port every four hours. Those shots left me sleepy but not so spaced out that I couldn’t think.
I was alone, my hands still in restraints but these were soft padded leather, not stainless steel handcuffs. My ankles wore the same leather and sheepskin but these were looser so that I could move my legs and almost turn on my side if I didn’t mind stretching one shoulder uncomfortably.
My stomach grumbled. I was almost hungry. I had a vague memory of the old man Tungasila bent over a campfire cooking steaks. Bears steaks he had caught earlier that year because the animal had been attacking our sheep. He had stalked and shot the bear with the help of our closest neighbor but the memory of that person or their name did not come back to me.
“Oma key yo!” I mumbled but no one answered or came to my help. Time drifted and me with it.
The door opened startling me. In came the doctor who did the surgery and Cameron, followed by men in suits with Agent Chase. They stared at me with hard eyes and Cameron pulled down the sheets, pushed aside the gown to peer under the surgical tape. His fingers were cold as he pressed hard on the incision. My guts writhed under the pressure yet it didn’t hurt any more than the bruising from the kicks.
“The incision looks days old, not post-surgical,” he sounded excited. “The bruising and swelling have all but disappeared, there is almost no evidence that this child had a severe laceration of the spleen twelve hours ago. I would calculate that within twenty-four hours, there won’t even be a sign of a scar.”
“Can the ability transfer through his blood?” One of the suits questioned.
“We’ve only acquired the subject these last seventy-two hours, Sen. Gibson. Further testing has to be done,” Cameron admitted. “First and foremost, we need to control his behavior.”
“Can’t you just threaten him? Pay him off or something? What about his parents?”
Chase stepped in. “His parents are dead.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“His grandmother is Sarah Hamilton.”
“The Director of the CIA?” The Senator gaped. “That does pose a problem. I take it she’s not aware that the boy is in your custody? Does the president know?”
“He doesn’t know that he has a grandson, no. The Director has managed to keep Lakan Strongbow a secret for two years,” Chase said. “He’s the son of that FBI agent that disappeared fifteen years ago.”
“Why? Because of his genetic mutations?”
Cameron answered the Senator. “At first, she funded my GMO research but when she learned that he was her grandson and one of my test subjects, she had him snatched, brought to D.C. and re-programmed with memories she created. Something went wrong and he ran. We tracked him through the Shenandoah National Park, George Washington Forest and all the way to Red Pine, Oklahoma. His microchip tracer disappeared and showed up back in the Tower Casino Complex on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the Dakotas for about thirty seconds.
“Then again in Idaho where we apprehended the pair.”
“Pair?”
“Another juvenile, Rachel Little Bear. She’s 17, an Amerindian and the niece of the Tower’s CEO,” Chase added.
“His girlfriend?” One of the other suits asked. He looked like an aide to a Senator, too young to be one. Chase called him Johannsson with Special Agent in front of it. He had dark hair with just a touch of gray over the ears and a fashionable two-day scruff perfectly trimmed. His eyes were a pale blue and he had slight freckles on his nose. It looked like he used a tanning booth, he was too bronze for this time of year.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I denied. “Just a friend and I only met her for the first time three days ago. I’m hungry.”
Cameron nodded. “I’ll have the orderly bring you a lite meal, Lakan.”
“Is he going to feed me?” I asked peevishly, wiggling my hands and feet in the restraints.
Cameron laughed. “We can dispense with those for now.” His hands were swift as he released me and I swung myself up to sit on the edge of the bed. All of them stepped back as if they were afraid of me with the exception of the doctor. He put his hand out to hold my chest as my body tried to fall onto the floor. I tried to right myself but my head whirled and I had absolutely no sense of balance and no feeling in my legs. I had lost the ability to stand.
“What have you done?” I cried out.
“Hobbled you, Lakan. You won’t be escaping on those legs.” He carried me over to a wheelchair and seat-belted me in. Shortly after that, he drove me out into the corridor and down to a small room that was set up for meals. On the table were plates of breakfast stuff – eggs, toast, bacon, and sausage. Coffee, cream and sugar. Catchup. Salt and pepper. Fresh biscuits. It was enough for everyone, all of them sat down and made themselves a plate while in orderly remained at the door. He did not look like a nurse but was clearly there for security.
I was starving but still in shock over what he had done to me. I stared at my legs and cursed them. I was able to move them normally but the moment I tried to put any weight on them, they turned boneless.
“Your hands work, Lakan,” Hamilton said. “You said you were hungry. Eat." He pushed a loaded plate towards me and I picked up a fork. Shoveled eggs and bacon in, eating not because I was hungry but because I knew I needed the fuel to keep my system running. I despaired over how I was going to escape when I couldn’t even walk.
They discussed my case in front of me as if I wasn’t there. Finally, I had had enough, slammed my knife down on the plate and glared at them. “I’m here, not some plastic petri dish,” I snarled. “I’m a real person, I bleed, I hurt.”
“But are you human?” The Senator asked holding up a piece of sausage on the end of his fork and stared through it at me.
“As human as you are,” I retorted. “Although I’m not sure if a US Senator classifies as human. More like a subhuman species.”
He didn't like that and he sputtered, food flying from his mouth as he stood up. He got in my face; I opened my eyes and drew him in to hold his mind in my own, the hold of their drugs not quite so strong. He sat down abruptly and said, “you're a dangerous creature, Lakan Strongbow.”
I let him sizzle, to change his attitude too quickly would send up a red flag that I had taken control of his will. He reached forward before Chase or Hamilton could stop him and slapped me on that cheekbone previously broken.
“Don't smart mouth me, boy. I can do worse to you,” the Senator threatened and I wiped my face as involuntary tears ran down by cheek.
“You gonna let him do that, doctor?” I asked.
Cameron sniggered. “You ask me, you deserved that and more. You killed two Federal Agents, Lakan,” he said. “When you're done eating, we’ll go visit the labs.”
“I can hardly wait,” I returned. Little did Cameron know that I had planted a suggestion in Gibson's head to visit me later with certain items from the nurse’s cart.
I couldn’t say the visit to the lab was a piece of cake. It qualified just this side of torture. The lab tech was matter-of-fact but it still hurt when he took bone marrow samples, blood, skin scrapings and all those other things that Cameron wanted. Halfway through the session, the Senator and his group grew bored and Chase escorted them out of my presence. I tried not to watch anxiously as my slim chance of escape walked out tucked away in the Senator’s head.