She wiggled her toes, the action shooting spikes up her legs and causing her to wince. Not a great sensation, but it implied her gift was working as expected.
How clever of the Fates to allow her this small defense. Did that mean they favored the outcome of her escape? Were they playing a game of their own?
Caro’s brow furrowed as she considered what it could mean. They were essentially owned by the council, their hive mind one very few Seraphim were allowed to touch. She’d never considered what that meant for their existence until this very moment. Perhaps they despised the method by which they were used. Yet that would imply some manner of feeling, which didn’t exist within this world.
Shaking her head, she decided to ponder it another day and put all her mental effort into expediting her healing because the beeps were growing more rapid outside her glass prison.
She couldn’t see well, the darkness of the room around her glass tomb void of any external lights. However, her enhanced sight allowed her to see just enough in the dark to understand her surroundings.
It was a smaller room with one door, her pod, a series of machines, and nothing else. Not even a chair.
She’d never been inside the rehabilitation center, but she imagined this was similar to where the ancients slept. Small, neat quarters with equipment meant to pump nutrients into the body to keep it well nourished.
What they didn’t do was aid the body in physical recovery. However, that wasn’t really necessary with how quickly Seraphim could regenerate.
Angel?
Yes?
Just making sure you’re still there, Sethios said, his voice oddly relieved.
Where would I go? she asked him. I’m stuck in a glass pod.
This is the longest we’ve spoken since Astasiya rescued me.
Caro paused. Our daughter rescued you? From Osiris? That’d been the expectation all along, but to hear that it’d actually happened sent a spark of life through Caro’s veins. They battled? Did he perish? She frowned then. Did I miss everything?
You haven’t missed anything, he promised. But yes, they fought. Vera helped. She saved me, and we’ve been trying to figure out how to find you since. We thought you were drowning in the ocean.
What? Why? I haven’t been in the water for... well, I’m not sure how long, she admitted. I’ll think about it more after I free myself.
Her mind seemed unable to multitask, perhaps a result of being in stasis for so long. She didn’t feel all that well, her body still mending itself and her mind a swarm of chaotic thoughts and memories that didn’t appear to want to stay put in any sort of logical order.
Rather than piece it all together, she concentrated on moving her foot. Sharp pricks shot up her lower limbs, rivaling the ones in her arms as she twitched her fingers and hands. Almost there, she thought, her muscles beginning to flex and shift as she rebuilt the ligaments and strengthened her joints.
Seconds turned into minutes, Sethios’s presence in her mind and heart an anchor that helped her remain conscious.
Every few beats, he’d say her name, and she’d reply with his own, both of them reminding the other that this was real, that she hadn’t fallen back into that dreadful coma.
Her throat worked on a hard swallow, her heartbeat a regular cadence in her ears, and that beeping had reached a crescendo.
No one came, making her wonder how closely the Seraphim monitored her vitals. Perhaps she needed to unplug a few of these cords.
She considered them as her arms moved inside the tiny box. There was a tube connected to one side that pumped oxygen into the container. She didn’t want to mess with that. She rather liked breathing. A memory told her why, but she shoved it away, not wanting to think about drowning right now.
Instead, she focused on the electrical wires that seemed to be hooked into her chest and head. Those needed to go regardless, so she might as well undo them.
She tugged the first one out of her temple and cried out in pain at the metal dislodging from her mind. Sethios’s voice reverberated through her thoughts, his words unintelligible over the agony shooting up and down her spine.
“Fuzz!” she shouted, her voice a rasp of sound that didn’t match the anguish behind it. Oh, ow, ow, ow.
Sethios replied, but she couldn’t understand him.
And oh, she had another one in her other temple.
Might as well yank it out now and just recover from both.