No one else had noticed yet, but Cadence knew immediately what her sister had done. There was no point in arguing with her now—she was too out of it to respond. “Sicilia!” she shouted, since the Healer was still standing a few feet away at Christian’s bed. “You got another injection?”
“What did she do?” Elliott asked, coming up behind her like a rocket. “What did she do?”
“Oh my, God,” Sicilia muttered, coming over as quickly as she could. “Jamie!”
“On the shelf, under the table,” he said, pointing, though Cadence realized the only reason he was standing after healing Shane was because Aaron was holding him up.
Sicilia crouched down and saw that there were a few extra doses of the serum in a container underneath the table Jamie had used to administer the shots to Brandon and Aurora. She quickly moved to Cassidy, shot in hand, and felt around for a vein. Since Cassidy hadn’t used a tourniquet when she’d given herself the first injection, Cadence had no way of knowing if she’d hit a vein then or not. “Wait!” she said to Sicilia, realizing she might be able to help.
Using her X-ray vision, Cadence scanned her sister’s arm. She could actually see where the first injection had gone through the skin on the inside of her sister’s elbow, and it looked like Cassidy had miraculously hit a vein. Sicilia’s needle was a fraction of a millimeter to the left of it now. “Scoot it over a tad,” Cadence instructed. Sicilia did so. “There you go.” The fleeting thought that it was too bad they hadn’t thought of finding Shane’s vein this way flittered though her mind.
The Healer pushed down on the stopper, and Cassidy began to shake violently, but she didn’t make a sound. Cadence pressed her down, trying to still her the best she could, and Elliott moved in to help. Her shaking didn’t seem nearly as violent as some of the other patients, but it wasn’t good, and it lasted a long while. Just when Cadence began to think her sister would continue to vibrate forever, she stopped and appeared to be in a deep sleep.
“Holy hell,” Elliott said as they both withdrew their hands. “What in the world was she thinking?”
Cadence had no answer for that, but as she gazed at her sister lying next to her boyfriend on the cot, both of them barely breathing, she thought they looked morbidly like Romeo and Juliet. “Can we have another cot?”
Martin wheeled one over from the other side of the room, and they moved Cassidy onto it, covering her up with a sheet. Cadence thanked him and ran her hands down her own face in exhaustion. By now, Jamie was sitting in a chair between Shane and Christian, so Aaron could come over and wrap his arms around her. “She’ll be fine.”
“She’d better be,” Cadence replied, realizing she would have to go tell her parents what her sister had done. “I really can’t take my eyes off of her for a second. She’s like a puppy. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell her not to go through the fence, the second you turn around, she’s darting toward oncoming traffic.”
Aaron kissed her on the top of the head. “I’ll go talk to your parents.”
She looked up at him, surprised. “I can do it.” Even she could hear the longing in her own voice for him to insist on doing it for her.
“You stay here. I’ll go.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, she said, “Thank you,” and sat down in a chair that magically appeared beneath her. She looked around trying to figure out who had brought it and supposed it might’ve been Sicilia, who was crossing back across the room, but she didn’t know for sure. Aaron nodded and took off, and for a moment Cadence was a little envious that he got to get the hell out of there for a little while, even if it was to deliver bad news to two people at least one of which would probably lose her shit.
Elliott brought over another chair and sat down beside Cadence, shaking his head. “That was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
“You’re telling me. And yet, it’s not the craziest thing that’s happened in this building in the last month.”
“True.” He shuddered, and Cadence imagined he was also thinking about Bonnie. She had that effect on people. “I just hope Cass didn’t hurt herself. What if her powers are all screwed up because of this?”
“What if she can literally walk around in people’s heads now?” Cadence asked.
Before he could say more, Lucy was standing in front of them, staring at Cassidy. Cadence had forgotten her sister’s best human friend was there. “Is she going to be okay?”
“We think so,” Elliott said, smiling at the young girl. “Don’t do stupid things like that, Luce. No good can come of it.”
“Oh, I know,” Lucy replied, her arms folded. “I would never…. I would never.”
“Do you want to stay here and wait for her to wake up?” Cadence asked trying to keep her voice as positive as possible.
“Uh, actually, I was thinking of going back to the apartment. All of that was… crazy. I’m not sure I want to see what happens when they start to wake up.”
“They should be fine,” Elliott assured her. “But if you want to go home, I’ll walk you.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” Lucy objected. “I know you want to stay here with Brandon.”
“I do, but he’s not going to do anything for the ten minutes it takes me to walk you home.” He was already on his feet, and Cadence noted that it wouldn’t take nearly that long if he picked Lucy up and carried her.
“’Kay,” Lucy replied, looking around the room one more time.
Cadence stood up and wrapped her arms around the teenager. She somehow seemed much more fragile now than she had even when she’d first arrived right after her dad died. “It’ll be all right,” she said again.
“I know.” But Lucy didn’t sound like she knew for sure, and Elliott’s arm went around her shoulders as they headed for the door.
Once they were gone, Cadence looked around. Tara was sitting next to Dax with her phone in her hand, and all of the doctors were busy walking around, checking on the patients, except for Jamie who looked like he was starting to regain some color in his cheeks. Though there weren’t any monitors on any of the sleeping team members, the doctors were manually taking their pulses and writing numbers down on charts attached to the foot of each of the beds. Cadence wondered how Shane’s and Meagan’s charts had even stayed put.
“What do you say we never do that again?” Jamie asked her over the IAC, and Cadence couldn’t help but laugh. It had been absolutely ridiculous. “From now on, one at a time.”
“You still thinking you wanna go next?”
“Absolutely. But I don’t want a room full of people to watch me cry.”
“Fine. I’ll just record it and send it to everyone.”
Jamie snickered and ran his hand over his face before sitting up tall in his chair and gazing over Meagan and Mickey at Ashley. His girlfriend was still now, the sheet tucked in under her chin, but Cadence could only imagine how helpless he felt watching her struggle so. “She’ll be fine,” Cadence reminded him, and he only nodded in response.
Dr. Morrow came over to check on Cassidy and made a small, “Hmmm” sound when he dropped her wrist.
“Is she okay?” Cadence asked, a little concerned.
“Yes. It’s just her pulse is slower than the others. I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s not dangerously low or anything. It seems that the serum generally speeds the heart rate up, but hers is slower than normal.” He smiled, as if that might calm the alarms sounding in Cadence’s mind, and then moved on.
“Oh, little sister, what have you done to yourself now?” Cadence wondered aloud quietly to herself. She had no idea what effect the serum would have on a Hybrid, but something told her that Cassidy wouldn’t be the same after this—and not in the same way everyone else would be altered either. She was sure her parents would be angry at her for not keeping a better eye on her sister, but at the end of the day it seemed quite evident Cassidy Findley was going to do what Cassidy Findley was going to do. Until it killed her.
