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The question was so formal, so out of place—because hello, he shouldn’t be here—that she nodded reflexively. “What are you doing in our lab?”
And that was when she saw C.P. Phalen standing behind him. The woman was looking fragile, her eyes wide and confused, her hand going to her temple and rotating as if her head was aching from trying to grapple with what was going on.
“He’s got something,” the woman said in a stilted way. “For Daniel.”
Lydia glanced at Daniel. Then she disentangled herself and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I don’t… understand.”
Well, wasn’t that the theme for the night, evidently.
Blade came a little farther forward. “I have a cure for him.”
As the words, in that accented voice, hit the airwaves, they went into her ears. But they made no sense.
“I’m sorry, wh—”
Gus barreled into the room, half his face covered with shaving cream, a razor in his right hand. The doctor was shirtless, the scrubs on the bottom half of him hanging low on his hips, his well-defined torso flexing with muscle—and marked with bruises.
“What the fuck… is going… on…” His words trailed off. “It’syou.”
“Good evening, Augustus.” Blade bowed at the waist. “You’re looking better than when I saw you last.”
“You… were the one who got me out.”
“I did.”
“You sound like him,” Gus said remotely. “Your accent.”
“Yes, I have a similar one to him. But I am not he who hurt you.”
“You know who did, though.”
“Yes, I do.” Blade inclined his head to Gus. “That is not why I have come, however. It is your patient whom I have sought out. I have the solution to his little problem.”
Gus’s eyes narrowed. “The man does not have a little—”
From out of a pocket in the robe, Blade presented a small glass box, about the size a pair of earrings would come in. From Lydia’s vantage point, it was hard to see what was inside—
Blade looked at her, and her alone. “If you want him to live, I will give her to him.”
“What thefuckare you talking about,” Gus snapped.
“She will cure him.” Blade’s eyes were steady and sure as they held hers. “His cancer will be gone, over a period of weeks. As if it never was.”
Gus started talking to C.P. Phalen in a hard, cutting voice, the word “security” getting used a number of times:Where is security. When is security coming. Why did security let this crackpot in—
Blade ignored the commotion. And so did Lydia.
“He will be as you knew him then. The man he once was. That is what you want most in the world, is it not.”
“What is… it,” she whispered.
Thesymphathin the red robing stepped even closer to the bed, and she made sure she kept herself between the two, protecting Daniel with her body.
“She is a love of mine. I bred her.”
It was a scorpion. In the little glass box… analbino scorpion stared out through the portable prison, its tiny pincers and curled stinger so small, Lydia had to squint.
“Her venom is the way to kill his cancer.”
