The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,192

back here.”

A short dark-haired woman stepped out of the front door.

“Bring her inside,” she said, glancing up and down the street.

With visible effort, Liam carried Ruby up the path and up the porch steps. Chubs kept close to them, a supporting hand under her prone form. Just in case.

“Thank you for doing this, Maria,” Cate said as the boys lowered Ruby onto a bed upstairs. It was bare, save for a sheet over the mattress. The doctor stripped off her own oversize cardigan, rolling it up to give Ruby some kind of a pillow.

“What do you need?” Cate asked, hovering anxiously beside the bed.

There was an array of small handheld equipment over the nightstand, as well as an IV bag.

“Clean water and a washcloth, clothing for her,” Maria said. “I looked just in case, but didn’t see much of anything in the cabinets.”

“We stripped the house of anything that could ID us as its owners,” Cate said apologetically. “But I do have purification tablets in my bag. I’ll bring a pitcher up for you.”

“I’d also like the room to do my examination,” Maria said, giving Chubs and Liam a meaningful look.

Liam tensed, but Chubs put a hand on his chest and shook his head. “Come on. I can patch you up, at least.”

I lingered in the doorway, even after the others left. I wasn’t sure what to do, other than wander out to the cars and assess what we had by the way of supplies and what food we could give to the kids.

Hauling the bags inside, I was careful not to wake the kids sleeping on the couch and the rug on the living room floor. They’d curled up together like kittens, and it reminded me, again, of how resilient kids were, and how much this world was testing the limits of that resilience.

There was nothing for me to do but disassemble the packs and sink into the mindless task of laying out the supplies on the kitchen counter. Max and Priyanka drifted in and out of the edge of my vision, but none of us seemed capable of talking just yet. I reached for the last bag. My fingers brushed a bundle of fabric.

The familiar gray shirt took the air out of my lungs. This was Roman’s pack. It was empty, save for this spare set of clothes, a flashlight, and the remnants of the first-aid kit we’d taken from Haven.

“Zu?” Chubs called from upstairs. “She’s ready.”

The words shook me from the trance I’d fallen into. I made my way back up to the room, not realizing I was still holding Roman’s shirt until Vida gave it a quick glance. Someone had found an extra set of clothes for Ruby; the gray sweatshirt was too big for her, but it disguised her skeletal form better than the blankets had.

“As far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with her,” Maria said slowly. “She’s dehydrated and slightly malnourished, and I found various cuts and stitches from where they probably took tissue samples.”

Liam shook his head. “That’s not nothing.”

“I meant,” Maria said, raising her hands, “they didn’t operate on her.”

I slumped back against the wall in relief.

“Then why hasn’t she woken up?” Chubs asked, his arms crossed tight over his chest. “Is it a bad reaction to the sedatives? Even a strong dose should have worn off by now.”

“I don’t have the right kind of equipment here to confirm that she doesn’t have a traumatic brain injury. She needs a real scan and an actual neurologist, but if the point was to study her specific ability, they wouldn’t have wanted to harm the normal processes of her brain,” Maria said. “My guess is that it could be a medically induced coma to combat brain swelling incurred during their testing. I find it equally likely that they wanted her completely subdued, knowing how powerful she is.”

Could some part of a person still be aware, even if they were trapped in unconsciousness?

Liam shook his head, pressing his face into his hands. “Dammit…She had to have been awake at some point, otherwise Max wouldn’t have been able to do his reading. We wouldn’t have seen what she was seeing well enough to find her.”

Cate’s brows rose at that.

“Has she shown any kind of reaction?” Maria asked. “To your voices, to being moved…?”

I haven’t told them. “Yes.”

“Zu…?” Liam said. “You saw something?”

“She showed me where to find the kids upstairs,” I told them. “When we found her, I touched her to check her pulse