me. No human can sustain even half of these levels. Ms. Kovacs should be dead. She is not even showing signs of organ failure. If anything, she seems stronger and healthier.
Note: Her fresh wounds from when she arrived have now healed as if they are weeks old.
We must discuss these results in private. There seems to be only one explanation.
Terror punched me in the gut, leaning me over, oxygen gushing from my lungs. My nails dug into the desk as I tried to breathe.
They know you aren’t normal. A voice crawled from the depths of my subconscious. It was one thing to let the thought drift across your mind, but to have others say it—it was an accusation.
Did Killian do something to me? Did those pills change me? I pinched my nose, exhaling through my mouth. Come on, Brex, no one can change human DNA. Right?
Boxing up my panic before I fully flipped out, I opened the next folder, quickly fanning out the papers on the desk.
Everything stopped. My world tipped on its axis, trying to shove me off.
Icy fingers dragged down my neck, wrapping around my throat. Shock and fear twisted my chest as I took in the dozen pictures staring back at me.
My own image.
A pinched noise rose in my throat, my heart slamming against my ribs. I reached for the first photo.
It was slightly hazy because it was night and at a distance, but there was no denying it was a picture of me—and Killian.
Embracing.
“Oh, gods…” Panic fluttered in my lungs, shadows edging around my vision.
Flicking through the rest, they showed every moment of our kiss. An intimacy and ease between us.
Frantically, I picked up another set. Ones of me standing at the window inside the bedroom Killian gave me. Some alone, some where he stood next to me, our bodies close and in conversation.
My muscles quaked, my mind whirling with justifications about these images when Istvan interrogated me. He knew the whole time that I had come from Killian’s… he knew I was lying.
My brain rolled with excuses I could tell him—that I had to fake interest in Killian to get away, that I was doing it all to save my life. It could have been feasible… except I had kept the fact I had even been there a secret.
And he kept the fact he knew about my time with Killian from me. He let me walk right into it. It was something he did when trying to trip Caden and me up in a lie. He gave us the rope to do it ourselves.
Terror heaved my lungs.
Istvan knew.
Knew from day one I had straight out lied to him while I sat in the chair on the other side of this desk.
And gave nothing away.
Why had he not confronted me? He let me carry on in this house like everything was normal. What was his plan?
Staring down at the table, bile burned up my esophagus. The doctor called me “anomalous,” and the pictures proved I lied.
Not just lied, but betrayed and deceived him, my people, and my soldier oath.
Sedition in the eyes of HDF.
Punishable by death.
Istvan would never let my disloyalty go—unless he was planning to use it against me somehow.
Voices coming from down the hall jolted me. Fear and adrenaline chugged through my bloodstream, my heart thudding, palms sweating. My gaze darted desperately down to the evidence of my crimes in front of me. Shuffling all pictures and papers together, I started to shove them back into the safe. But one of them slipped from my grasp and onto the floor. The file with some kind of formula and notes spread out over the rug.
Fuck!
I thrust the other two inside, about to pick up the fallen file.
Footsteps stopped at the door, voices muttering, speeding up my pulse.
Baszd meg!
Forgetting it, I pressed the safe closed, slipping back the false front. The door handle rattled. Panic drove me to sweep up the folder and dart to the curtain I used to hide behind as a young girl. Bunching up my huge skirt to my chest, I tried to flatten myself into the wall, the documents pressing into my skin.
“Come in.” Istvan’s voice rang through the room, my heart thumping as I noticed the curtain still swaying from my movement. Gritting my teeth, I hoped he either wouldn’t notice or think he caused it by stepping in. “Have a seat.”
“I’d rather not.” Flat and low, the other man’s voice tapped at the back of my head. I knew