Chapter 206
“Let’s go,” Jamie said once I’d stepped back. I looked at him, grateful for his help, but also thankful that he was moving on this before any minds could be changed. “Who do you want with you, Cass? The room where Christian installs them is a little small. You can really only have two people in there, maybe three.”
“Well, you, of course,” I said to the doctor without hesitating.
“Good call,” Brandon assured me.
I looked at my mother. “Do you want to come?”
“No, honey, I don’t,” she said, smoothing my hair back. “Your father and I will wait for you here.”
Nodding, I turned to my sister. She smiled at me, stepped forward, hugged me tightly, and said, “Take Brandon. We’ll wait outside the door.”
With a deep breath, I let her go, and turning to look at him, I asked, “Will you go with me?”
“To the prom?” he asked, a crooked grin on his face. “Or do you mean like, go steady?”
My mother let out a moan. “Don’t joke about that right now, Brandon. I love you, but I’m just not ready.”
We laughed at my mother’s antics, and he took my hand. “Come on. Let’s go get your eye computer installed.”
My parents hugged me one more time as the rest of them made their way across the hallway. When I got there, Christian was setting up in a tiny area in the back of the room. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but I could see what Jamie meant. It looked sort of like a long, narrow closet. Cadence and Aaron stayed in Christian’s office, and Jamie led us the rest of the way.
“You about ready, Christian?” Jamie asked.
“Getting there,” he replied, glancing up and grinning at me. I wondered if he thought he’d done this on his own. I wasn’t about to correct him since he was going to be slicing into my eyeball soon. The thought made me nauseous.
“This won’t act differently because of my Vampireness, will it?” I asked Jamie
“I can’t imagine why it would. We’ve put them in Vampires before, actually, as experiments, and never had a problem. We have several humans who have them, too.”
“Really?” The idea of my mom having one was funny to me, and I momentarily forgot I was about to have a panic attack.
“Okay, Cassidy, if you’ll have a seat,” Christian said, gesturing toward the black dentist-like chair.
I took a deep breath, and Brandon hugged me. “It’ll be fine. Just remember, if something wonky happens, the command to turn it off is ‘Full off.’”
I nodded, but I really hoped I didn’t need that information. “Will it be on when you install it?” I asked as Christian readied a dropper.
“Shouldn’t be. Once it was. With your sister.” Without any warning, he used his gloved hand to pull my eye open very wide and let several drops of the liquid splash into my right eyeball, my normal eye. “Blink a few times,” he said. Then he handed me a towel. “Press this against your eye. We’ll let that get set up.”
Almost immediately, my eye felt numb. It was a strange sensation. I wondered if I’d even be able to see out of it if it was open, if there wasn’t a towel pressed against it.
Christian was in my face now, and I could see what Brandon meant by having him all up in his grill. In this proximity, I did get the faint whiff of cigarette smoke, something I’d never noticed before, and I wondered if he smoked. “Okay, I’m going to make a small incision in your eye, and then drop the IAC inside. Then, I’ll give you some drops to put in it until it heals, okay?”
“Actually, once we’re sure everything’s okay, since I’m here, I may as well go ahead and heal it,” Jamie said.
“Right,” Christian nodded. “That’ll work, too.”
“Well, that’s no fair,” Brandon joked. “Where were you when I was getting mine?”
“All you had to do was ask, buddy,” Jamie replied.
If Brandon said anything in response, I missed it. Christian had removed the towel and was pulling my eye wide open with one hand while the sharpest looking scalpel I’d ever seen was in the other and coming right at my eye, which he had positioned under a giant magnifying glass on a swivel on his table. “Try not to move,” he said. Luckily, I was petrified. I wasn’t going anywhere.
It only took a second for him to slice my eyeball, and it didn’t hurt. He turned away for a moment, and then a second later, he was back with a pair of tweezers. I could feel a little bit of pressure as the ends of the tweezers scraped against my eye, but a second later, he let go of my eye. “How does it feel?”
I blinked a few times. “Numb,” I replied.
He nodded. “We need to try having you turn it on before I let Jamie touch you. Try this command, “IAC Cadence On.”
“What, just think it?” I asked.
“That’s all you have to do,” he assured me.
“Okay,” I mumbled. In my mind, I thought, “IAC Cadence On.” There was a little flutter, and then I could see my sister’s name blinking in the corner of my eye.
It was completely surreal. And then, in her own voice, I heard, “What’s up, Cass? Feel like a robot yet?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, my gosh!” I exclaimed. “It’s like my sister is in my head!”
“So it’s working then?” Christian said. “Good. Well, go ahead and turn it full off for now, then, until Cadence can teach you how to use it, and we’ll let Jamie heal that cut in your eye before it starts to sting.”
Reluctantly, I turned the IAC off, thinking I could always turn it on later, now that I knew enough about how to use it, and no one would even know Brandon and I were talking to each other! After almost a year of watching people have secret conversations, now I could be part of that. I was completely stoked. “It’s off,” I confirmed. “You’re not going to poke me in the eye, are you, Jamie?”
He chuckled. “Nope. Don’t need to. Might be fun, though.”
I glanced up at him, thinking of calling him a wise guy, and he placed his hand on mine. Instantly, I felt my eye heal, even though it was still numb. I also noticed a blister I’d gotten on my heel recently felt completely better, and the canker sore I’d gotten from chewing the inside of my mouth was also all no longer hurting. “How come none of those other things cured themselves when you hugged me earlier?” I asked.
“Cause I didn’t touch your skin with no gloves on,” he said with a shrug. Clearly, I was not his first rodeo.
“Am I good now?” I asked Christian.
“All done,” he said, removing his gloves and beginning to tidy up his work area.
“Thank you,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder. “I really appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
“And we definitely need to have that chat about the war as soon as we get a chance.”
He nodded, giving me a half smile, and I headed out to let my parents know I was alive and well. Now, all I needed to do was complete my training and move to headquarters. Then, maybe, this longing for a life I didn’t have might finally dissipate.
