what they get? Pain. I’ve been told it’s like the equivalent of over a thousand volts of electricity going through the body. You’re not supposed to be alive.”
He stared at her. “So you’ve touched someone like me before?”
“Oh yes. It didn’t end well.”
He’d deal with that tidbit of information later. “What happened when you touched them?”
“They went down like a sack of potatoes and didn’t move for a good hour. When asked what it felt like, they all say it’s like the worst electro-shock of their lives, and they would know. You’re the first person in three years I’ve been able to touch who seems somewhat unaffected.”
He blew out a breath. “So what you’re saying is, what happened on your couch was just you enjoying someone touching you.”
She raised a delicate brow. “Four years is a long time to go without human contact.” She sniffed. “But don’t worry. It won’t be happening again. You probably won’t live that long.”
“Don’t count me out, princess. You go on believing whatever you have to believe to sleep at night. But you’re forgetting one detail.”
She tied the last suture and used the tiny scissors to cut the nearly transparent thread. “I can tell when you want me. Your mind can lie, but your body can’t. Just like I can’t hide anything from you, once you touch me. You can’t hide the fact that you want me.” He grinned. He was goading her, but she just gave him a sad smile.
“You’re right. I would have let you do whatever you wanted. It’s nice being able to touch someone.” She cocked her head and smiled. “And not give a shit about killing them.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit. I can feel you. I’m an empath. I know you’re scared and want to keep me at arm’s length because it’s easier. So just pretend you don’t feel this thing between us. Sooner or later, you’ll have to deal with it. I prefer sooner.” He shrugged. “But I have a feeling you’ll be worth the wait.”
She didn’t show any reaction to what he’d said. Her emotional state didn’t change either. Like she’d locked away all her feelings and hidden them where he couldn’t find them. “You said you wanted to talk to me. I’m all packed and ready to go, so you better get started. Then I can decide if I’m going to take you with me or leave you here for your Tracker buddies to find.” She shrugged. “They probably will be a little pissed you stood them up.”
Now or never. “You just said that thanks to my boss, you haven’t been able to touch anyone. You make it sound like he did something to you against your will. We all knew what the Hidden Soldier program was before we signed on.”
She scoffed. “What you call the Hidden Soldier program, we call torture. He took me and my friends from our families and tortured us for years with experimental drugs, grueling training, psychological mind games, and testing the limits of our powers by any means necessary. I didn’t sign on for that shit.” She spat. “He sterilized all of the girls. We can’t ever have children. You think I volunteered for that?”
Garrett shook his head, trying to sift through what she was saying. “The program’s only been around for a year and a half. I was approached through Symcore. We’re supposed to be an elite team of special ops soldiers.”
Symone puffed a laugh, even as she paced n front of him. “Looks like you drank the Kool-aid. Peter was in bed with Symcore back when he ran Gentech. He was trying to build a super soldier. His sister, Cassie, was his first experiment. She was completely an accident, of course. He started by trying to cure her of her congenital heart failure. The drugs he gave her cured her all right. But they also had some unintended side effects.”
“So you’re saying we weren’t the first?”
She smirked. “Kinda chaps your ass that you’re not special, huh? Anyway, once he found out the side effects on Cassie, he started thinking about the weapons implications. He used himself as a guinea pig too. What he discovered was the serum worked best on children. He started recruiting. And by recruiting, I mean kidnapping. Eighteen months ago, Cassie broke us out. He was supposed to have died in the fire.”
Garrett’s head spun. Reaper’s scars. He’d seen them himself. Burn scars up and down his arms and part of his neck and face. “So