Charged - Book One by L.M. Moore

back
up. I didn’t even know what they intended to do with us. But she
seemed sad and it pulled at me. I wanted to help her. She looked at
me for a while and I could see tenderness in her eyes.
    “Starting to hurt again. And you didn’t have to drug
us.” I was slightly angered by the deception.
    “That bottle was meant just for you. Aaron wasn’t in
any pain. Well, none that he couldn’t tolerate. Get a shower and
I’ll be back in twenty minutes to take you to Jessica.”
    “Jessica…she’s your physician?” I said.
    “She’s better than any doctor you’ve ever seen.”
    “That means she’s not human, doesn’t it?”
    Without answering, which meant “yes,” she got up to
leave.
    I hung my head, slightly shaking it. Somehow things
were more real when she was present. Why did it make me feel more
comfortable that she was here? And she didn’t look like she was one
of their children, not at all. I could only imagine what they did
to her. Maybe she couldn’t remember. I tried to reassure myself
that everything would be okay.
    Aaron was still sleeping in the bed next to mine.
After a moment, I tried to wake him, but he was really out and I
couldn’t wake him up. This concerned me a little, but he had all
the normal signs of life. I bolted the suite door from the inside
and hobbled to the shower. The pain in my knee was slowly creeping
in again and I was hoping the heat would soothe the pain.
    The shower took me a few minutes to figure out. When
I walked into the small bathroom, there was just a toilet and
nothing else. To the right side of the room was an empty square
section. I assumed it was the shower stall but there wasn’t a
faucet just multiple holes in the ceiling. There was a basket of
toiletries and three black buttons on the wall. I pushed the first
one and some kind of fan turned on but I couldn’t see it, I only
heard it. Then I pushed the next button. The floor next to the
toilet lowered about four inches and the lined seams pulled back
making the floor look grated. The last button activated the holes
in the ceiling and water streamed out of them. I put my hand in the
water because there was no way to adjust the temperature, but it
felt perfectly warm. It didn’t occur to me that there weren’t any
towels until I was done showering. When I hit the button to turn
off the water, the water stopped and huge gusts of warm air blew in
from the holes in the ceiling and the grate below me. It blow dried
my entire body in one minute flat.
     

CHAPTER 21
     
    IN TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES, I was showered and Kye was
waiting. The shower was barely tolerable, what with trying to
balance on one leg and not let the pain swim completely over me.
Whatever was in that bottle that we used last night made me feel
like I’d downed a fifth of tequila on an empty stomach and the
anesthetic qualities were wearing off.
    I tried to wake Aaron again after my shower, but he
still wouldn’t wake up, which was starting to really concern me
now. He was breathing and had all the appearances of having a deep
REM sleep, but wouldn’t wake up.
    “Wake him up,” I said.
    “I can’t. It will wear off when it wears off.”
    “I used a lot more of that anesthetic than he did.
Why isn’t he awake yet?”
    “The more pain you’re in, the faster it wears off.
Just you were supposed to use it. He was supposed be the guarding
buddy all night, but apparently he’s willing to try anything.”
    “You have no idea.”
    She was right about Aaron but, I didn’t like this at
all and she knew it. I didn’t want to leave Aaron alone, but then I
remembered this was exciting for him. Yes, he would’ve left me
alone, given the opportunity to look around the place and I needed
to have this knee looked at. The pain was affecting my thinking
now, so I decided to leave my extra gun right where Aaron had left
it and go with Kye.
    “He’ll be fine, Mr. Kagen.” Everything in her posture
and expression reassured me.
    “Just call me