Page 63 of Fuse

Because even hot-pants girl is a better reality than the one the guys are still pushing on me.

“A virus.” Repeating it doesn’t help the issue. “You’re really telling me that Faline remote-controlled Kane into shoving some kind of electric virus into him? Something that’s letting that bitch prowl through his bloodstream now too?”

Yeah. Definitely the opposite.

After exchanging a brief nod with Wade, Fershan rolls his shoulders back—geek shorthand for girding his loins—and steps forward. “It is the closest we have to a theory, based on Angelique’s testimony of what happened at the Source. Based on Sawyer’s recap of Reece’s final words—”

I brake his analysis with my tight glare and sharp seethe. “Does anyone see a dead man lying here?” I bite out. “Not his final words, damn it!”

For a long—too long—moment, the only sounds in the room are those god-awful machines with their heartless beeps. Finally, Lydia is everyone’s savior with her quiet but firm statement. “Em is right. We can’t give up. There’s got to be a way to reverse, isolate, or block what Faline’s done to Reece. How much of his blood could that shit really have gotten into anyway?”

“How fast can any supervirus spread in a guy with supercharged blood?” While Wade’s mutter is nearly imperceptible, it’s not silent. The damning glare my sister throws at him might as well be an answering scream. I direct a grateful stare at her for it…and the strength I desperately reap from it.

At once, Sawyer grits out, “Draw more blood, you guys. Then get your asses in there and run as many tests as you have to until we know what the fuck we’re dealing with here.”

By there, he means the attached lab, filled with every state-of-the-art blood-analysis machine available on today’s market, plus a few that aren’t. Team Bolt has not wanted for every advance in the hematological realm since the lab and command center were fully functional, and they damn well have plenty of baseline readings of Reece’s blood from the last month, so they should be able to run some comparative readings and find at least a sketchy path to whatever’s turning his bloodstream into a platelet omelet.

Though maybe it’s not a whatever.

Maybe it’s a whoever.

I order myself not to go there, even as the lab door opens and Alex Trestle appears in the portal, wearing a determined scowl. His lanky frame is already dressed in a poly lab coat, and a pair of latex gloves dangles from one of his strong hands. The team’s master of disguises also has the chops to be a nerves-of-steel scientist if he chooses, and I’ve never been more grateful for his multiple talents than right now.

“Ready for another fun round of weird science, kids?” he asks, sliding a hand into one of the gloves with a loud smack.

Wade grunts while leaning over Reece’s arm, brandishing a needle with a blood sample tube attached. “Depends on what you’re calling ‘science’ today, class dork.”

Oddly, everyone gives in to fast smiles. The nickname, which Wade has been using since we got back from Paris and Alex started helping out in the lab, is the reminder we all need of the “good old days”—aka three days ago, when life wasn’t exactly carefree but was a lot closer to the description than now. When all we were worried about was a group of insane scientists coming after us before we had any intel that would help us go after them. Before we learned Kane Alighieri never went to Tibet to mourn his dead husband but tried to go after the insane bastards himself. Before he ended up shackled in their lab instead, at the mercy of those lunatics—though as we also learned, at their mercy had very little to do with mercy itself.

Especially when, just a few weeks later, Kane showed back up in downtown Los Angeles…and razed half the city in a mindless rampage.

Purposeful emphasis here? Mindless.

Faline Garand had gotten her hands on his self-will.

No. Had gotten her claws on it. Then into it.

And now has tried the same with Reece.

We’re not going to let that happen—no matter what we have to do. And right now, every damn option is on the table.

Except killing him.

Nope, nope, nope. The “killing him” shit is absolutely not an option.

As if the man has read my damn thoughts from the midst of his bizarre blackness, he flinches to the point of rattling the bed. I look up in alarm before realizing it’s just an involuntary reaction to the needle prick as Wade locates a vein and starts to collect the new blood sample. I drop my hand and wrap it around Reece’s freezing fingers, unable to identify why I’m reacting as if Wade’s slicing a whole knife down the middle of Reece’s arm. What’s wrong with me? I know Reece has consciously succumbed to this procedure a hundred times in the last month. But on all those other occasions, his blood has been red—not iridescent blue.

Electric blood should not be happening for him right now…

But it is.

Oh holy shit, it is.

An anomaly that really isn’t a trick of my imagination, if the deeper grooves between Wade’s brows mean anything. The icicles in my vitals lengthen as soon as he raises the vial, twisting his lips as if preparing to embellish the scowl with one of his classic profanities, which I find myself yearning for desperately instead of what he does spit.

“We have to simmer this stew at once, kids.” Alex flings open the door to the lab. “Kitchen’s open.”

“Outstanding.” The word is the only heartening aspect about Wade’s vibe as he leads the exodus from the room, which allows me the solitude to focus on taking one deep breath after another as the room is consumed by a strange stillness.