Forbidden Stranger Read online

  “None of the original studies were ever able to confirm the inability of the enhanced to experience a range of emotion that could be considered normal,” Zulik said now.

  Ewan hated that word. “‘Normal.’ What does that even mean?”

  “It’s not as though there’s any way to truly determine what someone . . . Well. Feels.” On the screen of Ewan’s personal comm, Zulik shrugged. His black brows contrasted sharply with his bleached white hair as he narrowed his eyes at the screen. “It’s not like a blood test or even a genetic screening. It’s kind of like pain, it’s different for everyone. What might be a ten for one person is a five for another. Feelings are the same. Nina’s grief and hysterical laughter might be excessive, but that doesn’t make her feelings wrong.”

  “I know that.”

  Zulik nodded with another frown. “But you don’t like seeing her upset.”

  “Of course I don’t,” Ewan replied. “I wouldn’t like it if she was doubled over in pain from some kind of physical problem, either.”

  “You’d want me to give her medicine for it, although with her particular set of enhancements they wouldn’t do much for her,” Zulik said.

  Ewan scowled, already knowing where this was going. “Yes.”

  “Well, Donahue, I’m sure you understand that I could give her something to stop her from having emotions, but in the long run, suppressing them would do more harm to her.”

  “I don’t want them to be suppressed. I just want to help her keep from hurting,” Ewan told the doc.

  Zulik twisted in his chair and leaned back, tapping his fingers on the desk. He pursed his lips, staring upward, before looking back into the comm screen. “How’s the rest of everything going? No signs of breaking down? Her memory functions are returning?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “And the new set of upgrades? Any breakthroughs?” Zulik asked.

  Ewan shook his head, frustrated. “No.”

  “And you won’t reconsider Article 757?”

  Ewan sat back in his chair. Article 757 allowed prisoners who’d been convicted of certain level crimes to be used for medical experiments without their consent. Its precedent had been used to allow the implementation of the enhancement tech in the fifteen soldiers, along with the secret self-termination programming that had not been originally approved.

  “I will never allow that,” he told the doc. “No matter what I think about Jordie Dev and the things he did, he’s being punished. There’s no way I’m going to have him used in testing the upgrade tech. His brain is already so damaged from what they did to him that any results we get would be too skewed, so even if I didn’t have an ethical issue with Article 757 I wouldn’t use Jordie.”

  “His mother is angling for it,” Zulik said.

  Shock pinched Ewan between the ribs. “How could she want that for her son?”

  Zulik shrugged. “I don’t know, but all I can say is that I heard she has her own team working on upgrades.”

  “That’s illegal,” Ewan said, knowing that it didn’t matter. Katrinka Dev thought she was above the law, and she sure had enough money to make a “do first and apologize later” attitude possible.

  “That’s the rumor going around. More than that, I heard that her team is close to a breakthrough,” Zulik said, then added, “and she’s using Article 757 to finalize the testing. She’s going to try it out on her son.”

  * * *

  In the beginning, there’d been a whole team of docs. The details were fuzzy, but Nina remembered being watched, inspected, analyzed, poked, and prodded. Now she only had Doc Zulik, who sent her weekly assignments of those damned mental puzzles she despised. He followed up with her once a week, too, although only through viddy chat. His next visit would be in a couple months . . . if she was still here, she reminded herself. Even if every time she thought about leaving she felt sick, there was still the chance she would decide to go.

  “I’m getting stronger. I can run around the island five times now without having to take a break.” Nina leaned a bit to look at the screen.

  “Good, good. Exercise is an excellent stress management tool.” Zulik looked pleased.

  Nina laughed. “I would hardly say I’m stressed, Doc. There’s nothing here to be stressed about.”

  “You worry that you won’t be able to regain your memories. You fear never connecting with your former self. That’s bound to cause some stress.” Zulik gave her a kind smile. “Exercise your body. Get your strength back. All of that will help you more than anything else.”

  “Even the puzzles?” Nina asked with a grin.

  Zulik chuckled with a shake of his head. “You and those onedamned puzzles. What is it about them that you hate so much?”

  “I’m not sure.” Nina shrugged, trying to put her finger on it. “They feel like a waste of time, I guess. Sometimes they’re too easy.”

  “You’re bored with the puzzles, as you are with the work Mr. Donahue’s been giving you.”

  Nina hesitated before answering, not wanting to sound ungrateful even to the doc in case he mentioned something to Ewan. There was no point in denying it, though. “Yes. All of it.”

  “You need something more to keep you occupied. A hobby, perhaps?”

  Nina’s laugh lacked humor. “Yeah, sure. If only I could remember, did I ever have a hobby? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I ever will.”

  “There’s nothing to prevent you from taking one up,” Zulik told her. He sat back in his chair with his fingers laid over his big belly. He was an enormous man, broad and tall, built like a mountain. “Donahue’s made it very clear he supports anything that will assist in your recovery. I’m sure he’d be happy to order you in supplies or whatever you might need to start something new. That is, unless you feel you’re ready to leave the island . . .”

  “Leave the island?” The thought of it sent waves of nausea coursing through her. “And do what? Where would I go? What would I do? I mean, I work for Mr. Donahue!”

  When the doc said nothing, Nina realized she’d been shouting. She swallowed hard and forced herself to take a deep breath. If she’d always been a hysterical ninny, she was glad she couldn’t remember it. Bad enough to know she was this way now.

  “I’m just bored,” she said finally, when the doc continued to remain silent. “I might be ready for a hobby, but not something more than that. Not yet.”

  Maybe she would never be, was the unspoken next sentence. This might be her life for the rest of it, an island home and boxes of dusty files and gray skies. A pair of nannies who weren’t supposed to let her know they were babysitting her and a gorgeous, swoon-worthy boss who seemed bent on giving her everything she could ever need . . . except the truth.

  Would that be such a horrible life?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The message blinking on Ewan’s personal comm came from an unrecognized number. The groups that had been threatening his life and livelihood because of his connection to the enhancement tech had all been disbanded or had turned their attentions to some newer, trendier focus, but that didn’t mean he could stop being vigilant. The security team he’d put together to scrub his publicly accessible information and essentially make him a cipher was top-notch, and with Aggie and Jerome here on the island, as well as the island’s defenses, he wasn’t worried about any physical threats coming his way. Still, the unknown number gave him a long pause before he swiped to read it.

  Got a new comm. Wondering about Nina. How’s she doing?

  The message was from Al, Nina’s friend and the fellow enhanced soldier Ewan had hired when Nina had been taken by the League of Humanity. Ewan didn’t bother typing a message in reply. He thumbed the screen to place a call.

  Al answered after a single ping. Her white-blond buzz cut emphasized the hollows of her cheeks. She looked thinner, almost dangerously so, but her icy green eyes flashed with the same strength he remembered. “Donahue. How’s the island?”

  “Rainy,” he said.

&n