She sighed and picked up the writing pad from the floor. She hit the Erase button, then wrote again.“I guess Medical bothered me more than I realized.”
“But why? You’ve been through it before.”
“I couldn’t remember last time.”
“No one remembers much of Medical—that’s why they drug us.”
She didn’t write anything else, her gaze on the floor.
And maybe I was stupid, but it took way too long for that to come together, for me to understand what she was saying without saying it.
“You remember it, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“How? The drugs work on you, or you’d have remembered the first time.”
She wrote quickly.“Kit.”
That made me groan. Of course Kit had been a part of this, and that made me suspect Deacon had as well. I hated that she had anything to do with either of them. They were dangerous and couldn’t be trusted.
It was only a matter of time before they fucked her over for their own benefit.Or, hell, judging from how she jumped away from me and shook, maybe they already had.
“And Kit managed something that made it so you resisted them?”
She nodded.
I didn’t even need to ask why she’d done it—I knew Hera well enough to guess.
“You wanted to see if you could overhear anything useful, didn’t you?”
Another nod.
“I know I’ve pushed you hard, said we need to come up with a usable plan, but I didn’t mean you needed to dothat.For fuck’s sake, what do you take me for?”
Her shoulders drooped, and I cursed myself. She wasn’t feeling great already—I really was the asshole everyone called me for snapping at her now.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “So, did you hear anything important?”
She erased what she’d had before and wrote, then turned the pad toward me.“They implied I didn’t turn into a shade naturally, that someone turned me into this. The Warden was there, too. She’s really interested in me.”
And there went my temper again. The Warden was bad news, and she rarely took an interest in any specific shade. When she did, however, it never ended well. The shade rarely made it long before going to the North Tower.
“Is that it?”
“The Warden said I wasn’t useful for either of their main projects there, so I’m more useful here than in the North Tower for now.”
“Useful here? How the hell can you be useful here?” I frowned, trying to make it make sense. “They aren’t using your skills for anything like interrogations or missions. Hell, they don’t even know what you can do, so how are you useful at all?”
“Gee, thanks.”Who knew two words on a pad could contain that much sarcasm?
“I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. If the Warden thinks you have a use, we need to know what it is, because it’s really fucking important.”
She let out a long breath, then nodded as if accepting the truth. After another moment, she leaned toward me and set her head on my shoulder.
The touch was strange. In fact, I nearly jumped away as she had earlier, and wasn’t that fucked up? I could have sex with her, could fight with her, but something like this, something almost sweet, made me uneasy.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to push her away. Instead, I sat there, my body rigid and unsure. “What’s this?” I asked in a low voice.