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  Ashley’s lips curled into an expression which looked more like a leer than a smile to Harsha. “Yes. We have the most advanced equipment. Come on in.”

  She led Harsha back to the exam room, this time locking each door as they went through. Worried her knocking had spooked the woman, Harsha felt a need to apologize. “I’m sorry for startling you with my knocking.” Sort of.

  “It wasn’t that. We had a break-in last night. I’ve been on pins and needles all day.”

  Harsha’s childhood in Chicago and college years in Vegas accustomed her to crime. She expected to hear of break-ins in shabby areas, and the news didn’t faze her. Still, she knew many city dwellers lived in crippling fear and pitied Ashley. “I can imagine. It must be awful to feel unsafe in your own office.”

  “It is.” Ashley’s face took on a speculative look. “Actually, it involves you closely, Ms. Mooreland.”

  The mild apprehension upgraded itself to a warning, reminding her she knew people in Vegas who tended to hold grudges. Still, no point in jumping to conclusions. “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever broke in didn’t take any of our equipment, thank goodness. Only files. Your files.”

  Harsha crinkled her brow in irritation. The mere thought of all the phone calls she needed to make and letters she needed to write to keep her personal information from being misused fatigued her. She fished in her purse for one of her tins of candy. Nothing soothed her like a nice lavender drop. She popped one into her mouth and let the calming fragrance do its work before asking, “They took the whole file? Or just the financial info?”

  “The whole file.”

  “Well, whoever your thief was, they’re not very smart. There’s nothing in my medical records that can help anyone.”

  Ashley laughed, her peals striking an ironic note. Harsha watched her with growing nervousness, wondering if she ought to offer Ashley one of her lavender drops. Something’s off. There’s something she’s not telling me.

  The theft of one patient’s files might be nerve-wracking, but Ashley’s laugh bordered on hysteria. Harsha opened her mouth to offer some vague words of comfort, but Ashley cut her off.

  “Oh, I doubt anyone is going to care about your little anemia issue once they get a look at your DNA. Unless, of course, they’d like to drain your blood for closer study.”

  The hairs on the back of Harsha’s neck stood on end. An uncontrollable urge to run propelled her toward the door. Ashley sidestepped out of her way. As Harsha reached for the doorknob, a large hand smashed a breathing mask over her mouth and nose. She clamped her teeth shut and held her breath. Wondering how on earth she missed noticing someone large enough to own such a hand standing in the room with her, she folded her knees in an attempt to drop to the floor. An arm snaked around her waist to keep her upright and started squeezing.

  Her breath pressed against the top of her throat, desperate to escape, and her lungs began to ache. Heart pounding in her ears, she scratched at the arm and tried to jump to throw her captor off balance. The arm around her waist only tightened until one of her floating ribs cracked. The pain surprised a shriek out of her and caused a hiccough in her thinking long enough to let her lungs reflexively suck in air. She recognized the euphoria associated with nitrous oxide, but some other drug made her head swim.

  Any chance of getting to safety on her own dissolved with that one fatal breath, but if she could just stay awake long enough to get outside, she had a chance of being spotted by a cop on patrol. She renewed her efforts to scratch off the arm holding her up and tried dropping and jumping over and over. Her nails, bloody and grimy with bits of skin, lost their grip. Her feet scrambled against the linoleum until her legs went limp. Before she blacked out, she sent an ardent wish to listening deities, if any, to take care of Jason for her.

  Chapter 2

  What a nightmare.

  Harsha’s head ached and she shivered in spite of the blankets weighing down her limbs. Assuming a fever caused the vivid images of her dream, she tried to lift her hand to check her temperature, but her arm refused to budge. To make matters worse, her memory-foam mattress felt more like a bare tile floor than a comfy bed. She called to Jason, hoping he had enough strength to get to her on his own, or at least lift a telephone to call his caregiver and ask her to come early. His answer seemed far away, as if he were outside instead of in his room or on the couch.

  “…waking. I think…” The voice seemed familiar, but it didn’t sound like Jason’s. Harsha’s mental gears ground against each other as she tried to recall who belonged to that voice.

  While she muddled through that puzzle, a new voice, one she had never heard before, spoke in wavering fragments. “Better to euthanize…no point in…while it’s alive.”

  “Of course. After we ask it some questions.”

  This time Harsha identified the voice without trouble. Ashley Rice. Her mind jerked awake and she opened her eyes. Four sets of goggles atop surgery masks gazed down at her.

  “Help!” She launched every muscle in her body to spring up and run away only to slam back down onto metal. Leather straps dug into her wrists, ankles, and waist. Sweat slicked the table and smeared against her naked skin. Memories of her time in Vegas rushed at her in wild gyrations while she tried to pick through them to find the reason for this situation. She thought she’d found the Rice Clinic on her own, but maybe someone led her to it.

  Her heart pounded against her chest. She darted her eyes from one set of goggles to the next, trying to find something, anything, to explain the situation. They looked down at her.

  No. They observed her. They studied her eyes, her trembling limbs, her heaving chest, with deep interest. One pressed two fingers to her neck and counted her pulse.

  “What do you want?”

  One of the masked individuals picked up a scalpel and touched the blade to her cheek with teasing lightness. The point of the knife hovered in her peripheral vision. Her breath quivered in uncontrollable spurts and her limbs trembled all the more in spite of the binds holding her. A picture of herself stumbling through her house with empty eye sockets flashed across her mind, increasing the chaotic terror threatening to sweep away her sanity. She clenched her fists and curled her toes to force her body into relative stiffness, lest she drive the knife into her own eye with a sudden movement, and pushed her thoughts toward productive channels. Like how to get out of this mess.

  “The real question,” Ashley spoke in low, almost seductive tones, “is what do you want?”

  Harsha checked the impulse to pivot her head to face Ashley. In spite of her efforts to calm it, her mind whirled in confusion. The question made no sense. Not if these people worked for someone from Vegas. As for any other reasonable possibilities, Ashley knew what Harsha wanted. A cure. The scalpel pricked Harsha, insisting on an answer.

  She spoke in gasps, struggling to control her hyperventilation. “I want to live.”

  Ashley breathed a small chuckle. “Everyone wants that. I mean, what are you doing here? Where are you from?”

  Harsha tried to process the words, racing to find an answer that refused to materialize. She didn’t feel the scalpel lift from her cheek. She did feel it dig into her wrist and slice across her veins. She gasped at the pain and jerked her other hand in a futile movement to put pressure on the area. The hard binding dug into that wrist and scraped the skin raw. Blood trickled down her left arm to puddle on the table where it mingled with her sweat and added a sticky sensation to the slick metal. Each drop seemed to rob her of more reason. Her mind thrashed against itself, unable to focus on a single thought.

  “I asked you a question, half-breed! Where do you come from?”

  Harsha stuttered an assurance she gave her correct address when she filled out the paperwork. A shock of pain near her ankle made it clear Ashley wanted a different answer. “I was born in Chicago.”

  “We know you were born here. Tell us what you want here.”

  The scalpel delved deeper into Harsh
a’s ankle. Tears coursed down her cheeks and into her ears. “I don’t know what you mean! I just want to find a cure for our disease!”

  “Our? I thought the others died.” Ashley’s eyes gleamed behind her goggles.

  Harsha’s thoughts coalesced. At his request, she never mentioned Jason when she went to see doctors. She told them about her mother and Ami, her older sister, but not Jason. With all the effectiveness of a great flood after a drought, the need to protect her brother from these people washed away all else. She grew calm. Her trembling and tears ceased.

  My turn to study you.

  The scalpel maintained its pressure on her ankle while Harsha thought. Nothing made sense. None of the masked, goggled faces offered any insight into what they expected of her. None of Ashley’s questions gave her any clue, aside from the reference to her mixed ethnicity.

  At a loss for anything logical, she gave an answer worthy of Ashley’s bigotry. “Our spaceship arrives at midnight tonight, Eastern Standard Time. There are millions of us living among you. You are all doomed. My sacrifice means nothing.” She almost managed to say it with a straight face, but her voice broke into a laugh on the last syllable. The brief noise sounded more like a hyena than her normal giggle.

  Ashley quivered. With a roaring scream, she brought the scalpel to Harsha’s cheek again. “Then I’ll help you blend in. Let’s humanize that perfect face of yours, shall we?”

  Harsha sucked in a breath and squeezed her eyes shut. After everything, I’m going die at the hands of racists.

  Something thudded against the floor, startling her eyes open again. Ashley’s hand jerked. The scalpel nicked Harsha before Ashley dropped it. She let it lie where it landed on Harsha’s cheek when she turned to look behind her.

  Three sets of goggles and surgical masks bolted out of Harsha’s view, but Ashley stood in place with her hands in the air. “What is this? Who are you and what do you want here?”

  “Let the girl go.”

  The man’s deep voice, reminiscent of James Earl Jones, held a soothing quality. Harsha wanted to turn toward it, to see who spoke and garner some measure of calm from him, but the scalpel looming close to her eye prevented her from making a move. Instead, she watched Ashley in her peripheral vision, blinking to clear the increasing blur.

  “You don’t understand. She’s a volunteer helping us with our research. We have signed consent.”

  “Your friends already left. You should go with them.”

  “There’s more at stake here than you can imagine. This thing isn’t human. Its blood may hold the cure for HIV, cancer, ALS, Lyme, malaria, almost anything. All we need is time to study it.”

  A series of incredulous chuckles verging on insane cackles gurgled out from between Harsha’s lips before she managed to catch them.

  Light steps drew closer. “I see. You believe this woman is from another world and that her people can cure all human disease.”

  “Not all human disease. I told you: we need time to study it.”

  More footsteps. “How much time do you need to finish your studies?” Harsha made a noise between a sob and a laugh. He believes her . Pain throbbed in her wrist and ankle with each slow beat of her pulse. Her vision blackened around the edges while her muddled thoughts repeated one thing with lucidity. I’m dying.

  “I’m not sure. I need help. I need to bring back my colleagues.”

  “Step over here and I’ll see to it you get all the help you need.”

  “No!” Ashley placed a hand on Harsha’s shoulder, squeezing it the way a proper nurse squeezed to soothe an ill person. “I need to stay with my patient. See how much blood she’s lost? I need to sew her up before I can leave her.”

  She spun to snatch at something. A crackling noise filled the air. Ashley collapsed out of Harsha’s line of vision.

  A male face, ebony skin, hazel eyes, appeared. Hands tugged at the binds tying her wrist. “You’re all right now. I’ll get you to a hospital. You’ll be fine.”

  Harsha felt strong pressure on her wrist while gentle fingers brushed hair out of her face. She dropped her head toward the touch and moved her lips in a silent thank you before the world went black.

  Harsha combed her fingers through the water, savoring the sensation of it flowing around her skin. The tightness of her throat reminded her she needed to breathe. She watched the light play across the surface before swishing her feet in lazy pursuit of air. As her face breached the water, she closed her eyes. When she opened them, a man’s face hovered over her. She blinked, surprised, then remembered what happened. She asked for Jason before drifting back into her dream.

  She continued to drift in and out of sleep. Various faces, nurses and doctors, she supposed, greeted her each time she opened her eyes. She asked about Jason, but nobody seemed to understand. Most often, they told her, “Rest. You’ll feel fine, soon,” or, “I have some ice chips here. Do you want an ice chip?” The inept responses annoyed her a little more with each repetition until, with a pang of regret over leaving her dream sea, she swam into wakefulness.

  No faces peered into hers this time, but somewhere nearby, a machine beeped in steady rhythm and another produced a pulsing whirr sound. Buzzing florescent lights added nothing to the bright wash of natural light filtering through a sheer curtain. The pockmarked white ceiling stared down at her as if to say, “It’s about time you woke up.”

  Harsha wrinkled her nose at it before grabbing the guardrail of the bed to hoist herself up. All right, all right, I’m getting up.

  A rush of dizziness darkened her vision and sent her plopping back onto her bed with a grunt. When her vision cleared, she decided to use the convenient UP button to lift the head of the bed. It squealed on its gears, clinking in protest. She doubted her slight frame caused the bed’s strain, given the worn and tattered appearance of the room and furnishings that came into view as it pushed her upright. She kept her eyes forward and her head against the pillow, imagining she sat on a suspenseful roller coaster ride ascending toward the point where the track dropped off into oblivion and riders left their stomachs behind. The stubborn refusal of the rickety machine to lift her beyond a forty-five degree incline felt anticlimactic.

  A blue sheet screened her from the other patients, but she guessed her creaky bed shared the room with two other occupied creaky beds. An adjustable swing-arm table held a veritable bucket of a cup filled to the brim with ice. She hit the nurse call-button. A steady bing, bing drew grumbling and exasperated sighs from her hidden roommates.

  Harsha rolled her eyes and ignored the complaints. It’s not like I spent the whole day summoning nurses.

  “Knock, knock!” A middle-aged, matronly woman with the short, curly hairstyle that adorned the majority of her generation stepped through the curtain with a tired smile gracing her stress-lined face. “My name is Vivian and I’ll be your nurse today. As soon as I get your vitals, I’ll tell Dr. Green, that’s the physician attending you, that you’re awake.”

  Harsha, uninterested in her vitals at the moment, nodded understanding and moved on to what mattered. “Has anyone heard from my brother, Jason?”

  Vivian smiled. “Your brother?”

  “Yes. His name and number are on the emergency contact card in my wallet. Did anyone find it? Has anyone contacted him yet?”

  The nurse pursed her lips. “There’s no need to contact him, Honey. He brought you in.”

  “That’s not possible.” They must not have found the card. Her purse sat on the swing-arm table, but maybe someone had stolen her wallet. “My brother is in Kauai.”

  Vivian pouted in a look Harsha interpreted as mixed pity and humor. “Honey, he probably just went home for a little while. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  Harsha took a slow, deep breath, wishing her purse, and the tin of candy it contained, were within reach. A phone sat close enough for her to grab, so she decided to drop the subject of Jason and call him later in favor of dealing with a more pressing, not to mention irritatin
g and embarrassing, issue.

  “Is there any chance I can have this catheter removed soon?”

  Vivian’s smile returned. “Sure. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  After she left, Harsha eased toward her purse, reaching with her right hand. Pain stabbed the light out of her eyes. She decided the wallet, the candy, and the phone call could all wait and set her head back on its pillow. She thought of the face she saw last before blacking out.

  Ebony skin, hazel eyes. Unusual combination. Maybe Ashley was working for someone and Jefe sent him to rescue me. No. That doesn’t fit. If someone from Vegas came after me, they’d tell me what they wanted, and there’s the nonsense she said about my blood curing all those diseases.

  A man with thinning blond hair and a thick goatee, wearing glasses, a lab coat, and stethoscope, walked in, interrupting her thoughts. He flashed her a smile and stuck out a rough, strong-looking hand. In his lapel, he wore a small pin which read “SoPHE.” She studied it while she uh-huhed and uh-uhed his questions without listening to them and tried to remember if any of the other medical professionals she met over the years belonged to that particular organization. If they had, she could tailor her own questions.

  “…that’s all right with you.”

  She shook herself out of her thoughts. Fuzz-head. Pay attention. “I’m sorry. I’m still woozy. What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘I’d like my hand back now, if that’s all right with you.’”

  Embarrassed and hoping he didn’t think she wanted to flirt with him, she let go of his hand.

  “Anyone who’s fool enough to slit her wrists ought to be locked up in the loony bin,” said a voice on the other side of the curtain, startling Harsha.

  She stared at the blue curtain. What?