Uncovering You: The Complete Series (Mega Box Set) (148 page)

“Take your time,” I tell him. “I’m quite cozy. In fact, I think I’ll miss this bed after we’re done.”

Dr. Telfair chuckles. “You are a dream patient,” he says.

Those words make me swell with pride.

Once more, I drift away on the hypnotic melody, eyes closed.

“Four is done,” Dr. Telfair says. “But uptake is slower than I had hoped. We might have to wait a little longer before the final one.”

My eyes pop open. A jolt of fear rushes through me. “What? Why? Is something wrong?”

“No. You’re doing great.” Dr. Telfair tries to sound reassuring, but there’s a new, subtle edge to his voice that makes me afraid. “Don’t worry, Lilly. We’re almost done.”

All I do
is
worry—regardless of his reassuring words.

My mind immediately goes on overdrive. Uptake is slower. Why? What does that mean?

I try to focus on the music, to make myself relax, but it’s proving impossible. My muscles go tight. Without thinking, I test my restraints.

Finding that I cannot move a single limb is far from being reassuring. Panic tears through me like a tidal wave.

I tell myself that I have to be still, that I am completely safe, that I trust Dr. Telfair and trust what he’s doing…

“Dr. Telfair?” I blurt out. “What is it? Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

His voice comes on just a sliver of a second too late. “Nothing’s wrong. Lilly, you needn’t worry. Everything is going exactly to plan.”

Then why did you mention the delay? I think in desperation.

My breathing has become shallow and short despite my best efforts. I cannot help but test the straps on my ankles, my arms, my chest, every few seconds.

Blood starts thundering in my ears.

“Dr. Telfair?” I call out. My voice is filled with desperation. I can feel myself close, so utterly close, to the brink. I don’t know how much longer I can stay in here. The gentle hum of the MRI machine becomes a menacing roar. It drowns out all hint of the music playing in the background. The lights around me become angry, hissing stubs of fireworks. “How much longer, Dr. Telfair? How much longer?” The small chamber I’m in starts to become suffocating. I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. The air is so hot. Too stuffy. My chest is too tight. “Dr. Telfair?”

“Just hold on, Lilly,” he says through the intercom. He does not sound nearly so sure of himself as I would hope. “Hold on. Just a little longer. Hold on…”

“How long?” I gasp. The panic attack is so very close to consuming me now. I’m hovering on the precipice. “Tell me how long. I need a number. Give me a number!”

“Thirty seconds, Lilly,” he says. “Stay calm. Count your breaths, the way I taught you. Focus on your breathing. When you get to thirty, we’ll be done.”

Okay, I tell myself. Okay, I can do that.

But given those thoughts are filled with a desperate agitation. A hurried franticness threatens to swallow me whole.

Thirty seconds, I tell myself finally. Goddammit Lilly, you can last thirty more seconds. Can’t you?

And so, I begin to count.

One Mississippi.

Deep breath.

Two Mississippi.

Deep breath.

Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi. Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath—

Shit!
Five
. Five’s the number of injections, the number that should already have been administered. I should already be out…

I squeeze my eyes tight and continue to count. Slow inhale. Steady exhale. Ten Mississippi.. Eleven Mississippi. Twelve Mississippi.… Nineteen Mississippi. Twenty-one Mississippi. Twenty-two Mississippi. Twenty-three—

“It’s done,” Dr. Telfair says. His voice catches me off guard. “It’s done, Lilly. The fifth injection’s been given, and…”

Suddenly, the world lurches.

I stagger as if tripped down a set of stairs. I jerk tight. The sensation of falling stabbing through me with violent thrusts, over and over again, down those never ending stairs…

I stop just as suddenly. Now, I’m weightless. I’m floating. I cannot feel my limbs. I have only the vaguest awareness of my body.

My heartbeat pounds in my ears.

A hiss, like the sound of an angry cat, rips me from my sleep. I open my eyes. Instead of the smooth, marble pillar, all I see is blackness.

Blackness that explodes in ferocious streams of red and white.

Sparks fly around me. They fill my vision like I’m an iron ingot thrown into a brazier. Thick sparks, thin sparks, sparks big and small, sparks that flow like angry snowflakes, ripping curtains and eddies across my vision.

They bludgeon me, badgering me from left and right. They’re warm against my frozen skin at first, then instantly turn hot, searing hot, hot with the fury of a dozen suns…

I gasp for air and shoot up. Imagine my surprise, my disorientation, when I find that I can.

I stare, wild-eyed, around the empty white room. It seems a prison now. A veritable cave. I look around, jerk my head this way and that, and glimpse the MRI machine behind me.

There are two figures standing beside it.

I recognize them only for a second. Dr. Telfair looking at me in shock. And the old nurse, looking at me, but seeming not seeing anything at all.

Then my vision splinters, and a searing pain surges through the back of my skull.

I scream. I scream with all the voice given to me. I close my eyes and bring my head between my knees, cowering against the pain.

The pain… is extraordinary. I have never felt anything like it, not when I was shocked, not when I was beaten, not when I was raped. The pain engrosses all of my consciousness. Aside from it, I know nothing else.

I shriek with the shrill cry of a steaming kettle. I shriek and claw at my neck, tear at the back of my head, desperate to get the pain to stop. Desperate to make it go away.

Strong hands catch mine. They hold on tight and refuse to let go. I struggle against them. As I open my eyes and see Jeremy there, I continue to squirm, continue to shriek.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?” I hear his yell over my shrieks. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?”

The grip loosens, just enough for me to tear away. I stagger back, trip on my feet. I fall.

My head rebounds against the cold, hard floor, and everything goes black.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

LILLY

I come to in a tiny, blue room. There’s a grandfather clock on one wall. The pendulum swings with every passing second.

Groggily, I push myself up. I’m on a little bed. There is a little window behind me. I look outside and see an unfamiliar lawn.

Where am I
? I wonder.

I open my mouth to yawn—and find my tongue strangely thick and swollen. The roof of my mouth feels soft. Almost like it’s filled with cotton.

I work my jaw to lessen the sensation but it doesn’t work.

I run a hand over my forehead and up over my scalp. My fingers are greeted with thick, golden hair.

I stop cold. Terror grips me. The totem. I rush close to the grandfather clock and make out my reflection in the shining metal of its case. I look at my hair. I
tug
on my hair, and feel the pull at the roots.

Oh, no. I start to shake my head. Oh, no, no, no, no, no…

I drop down to my knees. I huddle up in a little ball and rock back and forth on my heels. I keep running a hand through my hair, my long, luxuriant
natural
hair and keep repeating,
“No, no, no, no, no!”

The door opens. I jump to my feet. Dr. Telfair comes inside.

“You!” I hiss. I clutch my hair in one fist and hold it out at him. “You did this! I know you did!”

He looks at me calmly, unblinking.

He has a tray in his hands. On it is one glass of water. And one small, red pill.

“It’s time for your medication,” he informs me.

The most primal revulsion fills me at the sight of that tray.

“No,” I gasp.

He gives a small, evil smile. A
Stonehart
smile. “Yes,” he says, and forces himself onto me.

--

I bolt upright with a gasp. It’s dark. Pitch black. I can’t tell any of my surroundings.

A voice comes from the night. It feels like a distant voice. Yet it’s filled with the gentle tenderness of a lover.

“Come back to bed, sweet Lilly.” Jeremy. It’s Jeremy speaking. “Come back to bed. I have something for you.”

I turn toward him—toward his voice—in an eerie daze. I’m standing? Since when am I standing?

How did I get here?

“Where are we?” I ask as I drift aimlessly toward him.

“Somewhere far, far away,” he answers. He lifts the bed sheet on my side of the bed and beckons me to him. I lie down.

“What do you have for me?” I ask.

“
Cock
,” he answers in a snarl, and shoves it down my throat.

--

“
No, no, no, no, NO!”
I scream. I look up, and suddenly, the pain at the back of my skull is gone.

I’m in… the operating room. Once again?

No. Not
again
. I never left.

Dr. Telfair backs away from me, syringe in one hand, the tip of the needle wet with my blood.

Vaguely, I become aware of a stinging in my left shoulder. I look at it and see the mark the needle left.

Jeremy crouches beside me. He seems hesitant to touch. “Are you all right?” he whispers.

“I…I think so,” I answer in a shaky voice. I bring a hand to my head, and am instantly relieved when I find only the shortest sprouting of hair there. I look over at Dr. Telfair. I rub my shoulder. “What did you give me?”

“Something for the pain.” He looks solemn. Morose. Regretful.

None of those looks are good on a doctor who’s just completed surgery.

I have enough experience reading Jeremy to tell that something is ghastly wrong. “What happened?”

“You panicked,” he tells me. “You started to scream.”

“I mean, with the operation,” I say. I force myself to bulldoze through the immense shroud of fear that clouds my deepest suspicions. “It did not go according to plan,” I swallow. “Did it?”

Dr. Telfair exhales.

“No, Lilly,” he says. “It did not.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

LILLY

Even though I’m lucid, the remaining hours of the day pass in a dark and terrifying haze.

My very worst fears have been imagined. As Jeremy and Dr. Telfair scream at each other and fling accusations back and forth, I cower, afraid and horrified over what comes next.

The nurse—her name is Jill—sits beside me on the bed. She does not say anything. She merely holds my hand.

That is more comfort than I should be allowed.

“What the bloody hell do you mean her body rejected the serum?” Jeremy roars. “You had it made for her specifically! We spent millions on this! You said—You promised me!—that it would work!”

“I said this was her best chance!” Dr. Telfair snarls back. The two men have long since given up trying to involve me in the conversation. All I’ve been able to do, once the horrifying news had been revealed, is go into a state of semi—delirious shock.

The operation backfired. The procedure was botched. Uptake of the medication did not occur as Dr. Telfair has expected.

What that means for me in the future, I still haven’t fully grasped.

“A chance,” Jeremy laughs. It’s a crude laugh, cold and sharp. “A chance? You all but guaranteed success! And now—look at her! Look at her and tell me what you got!”

Dr. Telfair spares a curt glance at me. “Lilly’s stable,” he says. “That’s what’s important now.”

“Yes, but for HOW LONG?” Jeremy explodes.

I shy back at his yell. Jill holds my hand tighter.

How long, indeed
. I don’t know. Dr. Telfair doesn’t know. Jeremy doesn’t know. It’s clearly driving him crazy.

But not as crazy as I might be soon.

I run a hand through my hair. Still short. This is real.

“Lilly,” Jeremy looks at me. Fear fills his eyes. “Lilly-Flower. Look at me. Tell me you’re still here.”

“I am,” I whisper.

Jeremy turns back to his brother. They continue their argument. They’ve been going in circles for hours.

Meanwhile, there I sit, uncertain of how much longer my sanity will last.

“The injections?” Jeremy tries. “The ones from before. The ones with the counteragent. We can make more. We can give her more!

Dr. Telfair shakes his head. “No,” he says. “It’s impossible to say how she’ll react. She has too many chemicals swirling around in her system. Too many chemicals flooding her brain. I need to monitor her, Jeremy, goddammit! I need monitor her and see what happens next.”

That uncertainty lies at the crux of all the tension. It’s what makes me feel helpless and weak. A passive victim unable to do anything to help herself in any way.

And that uncertainty is what fuels these constant arguments. Dr. Telfair won’t let Jeremy take me out of the facility.

That’s good, at least, because for now, there’s nowhere that I’d rather be.

In essence, we’re all waiting. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I rub at an itch at the back of my head. That was the source of the initial searing pain.

Nobody knows what will happen next. Will I succumb to the visions again? I did once already. That is what has us all worried. Without the benefit of the counteragent, but with some portion of the brain injections active, where will I end up?

How much of a hold does Hugh’s poison have on my mind?

I scratch at the back of my head again. That damn itch isn’t going away. I listen to the ongoing argument, while still scratching, when suddenly a horrifying screech comes from beside me. “Lilly, stop!”

I turn immediately to Jill and when I do, I catch a spot of red on the shoulder of my robe
.
I frown, look at it—and then see my hand.

It’s stained to the knuckles with blood.

I scream. Jeremy and Dr. Telfair rush over. I stare at my hand, dab at the back of my head. Every time I do I come away with more blood.

“Dammit! What did you do?” Dr. Telfair hisses. He turns on Jill. “You were supposed to watch her!”