The crinkle of the body bag.
The silk of Koda’s skin against his fingers.
Reese tucked his hands under his arms. Even before Koda took his first breath, Reese knew he was different. He was pretty sure Echols did too even though he never admitted it.
“Usually when we woke them up it was…”
The subject thrashed against the table, his screams splitting the air until his vocal cords bled.
“Disturbing. When Koda opened his eyes….”
It wasn’t that the quiet in the room was unbreakable, rather breaking it was sacrilege. For the longest time, they all stood there staring at the young man on the table. And he stared back with eyes older than the tombs where they’d found the ichor.
“Different. Calm.” Reese stopped again and stared at the wall. “I think I was in love with him before he even spoke.” The pain of those words threatened to drag Reese to his knees.
“But it was never physical.” Phillips made it a statement.
“No. It didn’t need to be.” Sometimes Reese wondered if those men would have been loyal to him even without the Anubis. With it? He might as well have been the sun.
“Did Echols feel the same way?”
Reese blinked a few times, clearing the tears from his eyes. “If he did, he never said. I suspect there was something, though.”
“Why?”
“He would watch Koda. Everyone would.”
“You sure it wasn’t just voyeurism.”
So Phillips had seen the videos.
“It probably started as that. I mean, it was hard not to watch. But even the guards who were disgusted at first they eventually saw it.” Felt it. “Did you?”
Phillips put her hands behind her back. “No.”
Reese believed her.
The colonel shook his head.
Reese believed him too.
“I kind of figured you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“You watched it on video. You weren’t there. You didn’t see. You didn’t…feel.” And what had Reese witnessed other than a surge of bodies moving as one, rippling in pleasure? “After the first few times, Echols only watched the videos. Not the live feed, but the recordings. It was somehow different that way.” It still hadn’t been completely ordinary.
“What about the betas, did they have any effect on people?”
Reese smiled a little. “Yeah, they did. But it wasn’t the same kind of charisma. They radiated power. Like an energy source. The air hummed around them, especially if they were close to Phasing. Half the time I didn’t know if I would be able to breathe again when they changed. It was intense, and it drained you.”
“Like adrenaline.”
Reese started to tell her no. “I… maybe.”
“And what Koda radiated?”
“Peace? Although that seems too plain.”