Grayson gestured with the card. “Don’t act like you’ve never swiped one of these yourself.”
Reece sighed and followed Grayson down the hall.
From the Polaris lobby, Aisha rode down to the second level beneath the ground, nearly the mine’s lowest save for sublevel three, which was only for storage and the morgue. She stepped out into the hall, immediately chilled. The air was colder down here, and there was nothing but artificial light, the kind that made time meaningless. It wasn’t a long hall, and Aisha could see a security guard at the far end. He straightened up as he saw her.
“Dr. Easterby, with the Stone Solutions Seattle office,” she said, as he stood. “I’m here on behalf of Agent Grayson.”
The man flinched. “Understood, doctor. If I could just...”
Aisha didn’t hear him. Her gaze had gone past him, to the room he was guarding. The room held a single bed, which held Cora. She looked exactly like her pictures, pretty enough to make people look twice, except now her big brown eyes were closed, long brown hair spread out on the pillowcase around her. An IV on a stand was connected to her wrist while a monitor beeped softly.
Aisha knew, logically, that Cora had been behind more than a dozen deaths in Seattle in November. But looking at her, all she could feel was sympathy for the sunshiny therapist who’d been kidnapped and lost the love of her life in the most horrific and traumatizing way.
“Is she beingsedated?” Aisha demanded.
“She’s a mass murderer with emotion-control powers,” the guard said back sharply.
“That’s literally the entire reason this place was built in an old mine full of empathy-dampening metal residue,” Aisha said, even sharper. “I’m going in.”
“Doctor—”
“It wasn’t arequest,” Aisha said.
“If you’re opening that door, I have to lock down the whole floor.”
“Then lock it down,” Aisha said. “Go get a coffee or something and leave me and her alone.”
The guard threw up his hands, muttering something Aisha ignored as he finally turned, heading away down the hall toward the elevator.
Aisha swiped the access card Higgins had passed her, and a moment later, the door was sliding open, letting her in and then closing behind her.
Cora didn’t react. Her chest rose and fell with slow breaths as the heart monitor beeped at a concerningly sluggish speed. Aisha distractedly registered the whir of the blood pressure cuff tightening, then relaxing as she stepped to Cora’s bedside and picked up her chart.
Her mouth tightened. Sedating a corrupted empath did take a large dose and was tricky to maintain; their jacked-up corrupted empathy would burn through invasive medication like a wildfire. But there weren’t any studies about the long-term effects of sedation on empaths, and Cora was being pumped full of sedatives at a dosage better suited to a horse.
Aisha glanced back at Cora. She wasn’t just sedated; she was cuffed to the rails of the bed with padded medical cuffs. This deep in the mine, there were metals in the very walls. It wouldn’t block Cora’s strongest powers, like hearing lies, and Aisha’s safety wasn’t guaranteed, but the room itself was almost like an empath glove, and Cora would be groggy and disoriented and unable to touch her.
Aisha stepped close and carefully worked the IV out of Cora’s wrist. Then she stepped back and waited.
It didn’t take long for Cora’s eyelashes to start fluttering. Aisha cleared her throat. “My name is John Doe. I’m a middle-aged white man from Chicago.”
Cora slowly turned her head toward Aisha, blinking.
“You could hear that lie, right?” Aisha said. “Despite the location and the drugs? Sorry, I know this is a surprise and you don’t know me, but I don’t know how long we have and I just want to be sure you know I’m being completely honest with you.”
She stepped closer. “My actual name is Aisha Easterby. I’m a doctor, I live in Seattle, and I work with the Dead Man. I understand if that puts you off, but again, I want to be honest.”
Cora studied her for a moment, through half-open eyes. When she spoke, it came out as a hoarse whisper. “What do you want?”
“To check on you,” Aisha said.
Cora managed to look skeptical even through the drug haze. “Thirteen dead. Fromme. Check on them.”
“Oh, I know you were behind all those deaths, and I’m sorry for many of them,” Aisha said. “But some of them deserved what they got for what they did to you.”
Cora stared at her for a long moment. “Dr. Harleen Quinzel and the Joker,” she finally muttered.
Aisha’s lips twitched slightly at the reference. Cora had been a therapist and psychologist; of course she was familiar with that particular origin story. “That depends on whether you like pigtails,” Aisha said, before she meant to.
