Chapter 382
Across the room, a bloodcurdling scream cut through the relative silence, and I looked over to see Meagan thrashing around uncontrollably. My sister moved to help, as well as Shane, who hadn’t undergone the procedure yet, and everyone shifted that direction.
Brandon settled down about the same time that Aurora started crying. Since Jamie was preoccupied with the disturbance around Meagan and Ashley, who wasn’t screaming, but was shaking, I took a few steps around the end of Brandon’s bed undetected.
The entire room erupted into chaos as one by one the patients burst into sobs, violent shaking, or screaming. While it made me want to smile to see Christian crying, I tried not to focus on that. When Jamie looked away concerned about Meagan and Shane, I had my opportunity.
Meagan was starting to calm when Dr. Morrow injected Shane. The bulky Guardian knocked the physician across the room, and Jamie hurried over to keep him from hitting the ground. It was then that I reached into that basket on the bottom shelf of the table where Jamie had prepared the syringes for Brandon and Aurora, pulled one out, and took the cap off.
No one was looking at me at all. This was my chance. I knew it would hurt—a lot. And I also wasn’t even sure if I could give it to myself. I’d read all about how to find a vein and where the largest ones were, but the fact that I wasn’t using a tourniquet and I’d never done this before told me the chance that I’d actually get it right the first time wasn’t likely.
I didn’t think I could die, not from this anyway. I knew that Jamie and Christian had tried experiments with Transformation serum on the samples they’d taken from me. I didn’t know what the results had been, but they weren’t cell break down and death because they’d both told me that none of my cells had died from anything they’d tried. So, with a deep breath, I climbed into bed next to Brandon, happy that there was enough room, and took a look at my arm.
I thought I saw a sliver of blue, there in the middle of my elbow. I had been examining it carefully the night before and even this morning. I thought I could get the first shot in myself. I’d need help with the second one, but as I’d just heard Dr. Morrow remind Jamie, they didn’t know what just one shot would do. They were all fighting to get a second shot into Shane when I stuck the needle into my arm and pushed the plunger down before I had a chance to dwell on it.
Instantly, I regretted what I had done. I vividly remember the pain from my first Transformation procedure. That was nothing compared to this. A searing sting shot up my arm, taking my breath away. I felt like I’d fallen through a plate glass window, and every cell of my body had been sliced in half simultaneously. I couldn’t draw in a deep breath, and the world was growing hazy around the edges.
And that was just the first shot.
I had to have the second one, and it needed to be soon, or else no one knew what might happen. To go through this and have no change just wouldn’t do. So I needed someone to administer the second round. There was only one person I could think of who would help me without screaming at me. So I quietly began to call his name, praying that the rest of the room would settle down enough for him to hear me. “Jamie? Jamie?” I had no idea if anyone could hear me at all, and it didn’t occur to me that my IAC might’ve been better. The periphery of my vision was growing hazy, and I momentarily forgot I even had an IAC—or telepathy for that matter.
It was my sister who noticed first. She’d gone flying across the room a bit ago when Shane was angry. Now, Martin was fixing her face from where Shane had busted it, and even in my silent misery, I recognized that she was looking at me in horror. I called Jamie’s name again, but my sister was on her way to me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more afraid or angry in her whole life.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Cadence shouted, flashing over to me so fast my eyes didn’t register it. “Sicilia! You got another injection?” she yelled, and I wondered why she wasn’t getting Jamie. Maybe he’d had to heal someone, too, like Martin, and he was zapped.
Before Sicilia answered, Elliott was beside my sister. “What did she do?” he demanded. Cadence didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. He knew.
“Oh, my gosh!” Sicilia said the second she saw what I had done. I had no idea where the spent syringe had gone to. It had fallen out of my hand when I’d finished with it, but she could figure it out, like my sister had. “Jamie!”
Hearing his voice made the pain subside momentarily. At least he was able to give directions, even if he couldn’t save me himself this time. “On the shelf, under the table.”
A few seconds later, Sicilia was back at my side, feeling around on my arm. I heard my sister tell her to wait, and then she told her to move the syringe a little bit to one side before she said, “There you go.” It didn’t register at the time that my sister was using her X-ray vision to help Sicilia position the needle in my arm.
Once Sicilia had the needle right, she pressed down on the plunger, and I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head as my body went into convulsions. I’ve never felt anything like it before. It was the most intense pain I could possibly imagine, and I realized then why Meagan had been begging to die earlier. But as my sister and Elliott held me down on the bed, their hands felt comforting, and I tried to focus on that until the pain subsided. Then, all I felt was warmth, a surge of unbelievable power, and everything went black.
