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  She reemerged into her own body still holding McNamara's hand. A small rebellion on her part. The Oversight Committee knew she needed skin-on-kin contact to heal people, but the assembled Committee collectively glared at her anyway.

  Tough. The skin-on-skin contact sent shivers of warmth straight to her heart. How could she miss human touch so much when she'd had so little of it in her life? She didn't want to let go, but holding McNamara's hand longer than she had to would creep him out. It wasn't really his hand she wanted to hold.

  "Congratulations, Doctor McNamara." She tugged her hand out of his, and forced herself to sound chipper. "You have the body of a healthy forensic pathologist."

  He laughed as he sat up on the hospital bed, straightened his collar, and took a deep, deliberate breath.

  "I have to say, I haven't had this much verve in three days. It's amazing what a lungful of oxygen can do for you. Thank you, Ms. Quinn. I do believe we have the proof we need to allow you keep the gloves off."

  "I object." Johnson looked around at his colleagues. "All she's proven is that she has alternative abilities. She hasn't proven her control."

  Hannah mashed her lips closed to keep from spewing a long stream of foul language at Johnson. McNamara swung his legs around to climb off the table. "On the contrary, her performance today coupled with what we've already seen from the video evidence proves she can control herself."

  "All she's proven is that she can use her ability for evil. She's hurt more people than she's helped. She needs to be detained for further testing."

  "Self-defense is not evil." McNamara made it to his feet, fists balled up ready for a fight.

  A hand on Hannah's shoulder backed her away from McNamara. Catherine Blackwood stood there. The look on Catherine's face made it clear that Hannah wasn't to get into the middle of this argument. The angry flame in Hannah's gut flared. Miranda would have done the same thing to keep her quiet, but even as the memory of her ex-mother fed her rebellious thoughts, Hannah knew Catherine was right. No one wanted her opinion here.

  "You'll still need a thorough examination." Doctor Rao nudged his way to the front of the Committee so he could take McNamara's pulse. "We've scheduled more blood work and a CT scan to compare against the baseline reports we have on record. We'll need to repeat the lab work we performed yesterday."

  "Yes, yes. My body will be at your disposal after I finish my report on the quarry victims with Ms. Quinn's assistance."

  McNamara glared at Johnson who glared right back, neither willing to concede the fight. Catherine Blackwood stepped up from behind to hand Hannah an opened bottle of water. Hannah took the water, but only sipped the contents. With a final glare at Hannah, Johnson stormed past her and out the door.

  The icy contempt in the air rose a few degrees. The other doctors who'd watched her test said nothing.

  "I'll take you home," Catherine said, her hand dropping from Hannah's shoulder to her back, guiding her back toward the hallway.

  That was it? Hannah scanned the faces of the Oversight Committee members who passed by her: neurology, ophthalmology, general surgery, orthopedics, pulmonary medicine, and a few others. They chattered to each other in hushed voices, their glances at her fleeting.

  Still no official pronouncement. She was free to go. The thick, dark-brown, unfashionable gloves she'd worn for the last week sat on a nearby counter. She decided to leave them there instead of throwing them in the garbage, afraid if she drew attention to them, the Oversight Committee would change their minds and make her put them on again, or worse, try to lock her up again.

  With Catherine at her back, Hannah opened the door leading into the hallway of the surgical suite.

  Scott stood there, leaning against the opposite wall. Hannah stopped in her tracks, forcing Catherine to stop too. Her hormones spiked her pulse. It didn't take much, just slicked back black hair and gray eyes, squinting with mischief. His own gloved hands held a spray of flowers.

  The rest of the world faded away to nothingness. If she were any other girl, she would have run to him, thrown her arms around his wide shoulders and wrapped her legs around his blue-jeaned hips. But she wasn't any other girl and her life wasn't her own. So she stood in the door and waited for him to make the first move.

  "Catch!"

  Hannah raised her hands as the burst of color flew at her, the flowers dropping into her ungloved hands.

  The surprise on Hannah's face filled Scott's heart with affection. She'd caught the bouquet he'd tossed at her without gloves on her hands. She'd passed. The fact that the Committee allowed her to leave the exam room without gloves was all the proof he needed.

  Scott curled his own gloved hands into fists, pressing his knuckles into flesh. It would take him longer to get to the point where he could prove his control, but as long as Hannah was staying in Thunder City, he had incentive to stay as well.

  Hannah walked up to him, close, but not too close. "They're beautiful."

  Her face, more relaxed than he'd seen it since the day he'd met her, gave him hope. Joy glowed from her, a happiness she deserved more than anyone else in this room. How tempting to pick her up, press her against his chest, maybe even give her a quick spin.

  He resisted the temptation. The Oversight Committee filed out of the exam room. They spotted him standing so close to her. Johnson tried to approach but Catherine held him back with a sharp word Scott didn't catch. He didn't want to see Johnson or his mother right now.

  "No. You're beautiful," he said. "The flowers just enhance what's already there."

  Her smile sent shockwaves of desire through his veins. The bruises on her face had faded even more since yesterday. Despite her conservative beige skirt and light blue blouse, she looked as if she could tumble into bed at a moment's notice. He wanted her there, in his bed, more than anything.

  He put his hands behind his back and leaned against the wall, hooking his thumbs into his back pockets. See? I'm being good.

  Catherine wasn't having any of it. She pushed her way between them. "Cory."

  He sighed. His mother's tone of voice, and her insistence on calling him by his birth name, spoke volumes. You're here to cause trouble. You're here to make a point. Congratulations. Now, go home.

  Well, maybe he was here to make a point. The Committee had said he and Hannah couldn't have physical contact, but they couldn't legally stop him from speaking to her — yet. The Star Haven Newcomers could still live with their families. Preventing him from seeing Hannah in person was just some sick joke cooked up by Johnson. Some other day he'd have to ask Catherine about it, but he wouldn't do it here with so many people watching them.

  He ducked his head, blood pounding in his ears.

  If he were smart, he'd leave the hospital. When it came to Hannah, though, the smart thing to do clashed with his heartache. He needed to rebuild, but starting from scratch for the second time in his life — just moving into his father's place downtown reminded him of how much Thunder City didn't want him. Hannah could heal his physical wounds, but she couldn't help him with his loneliness. He needed more than just a loving girlfriend in his life. His resolve to use Hannah as his incentive to stay slipped further away.

  "Fine. I'll wait here." He tilted his head toward the doors at the end of the corridor. "You two go on ahead. I have a training session at the Arena later."

  Disappointment drooped Hannah's shoulders, as she too lowered her eyes. "I'll call you tonight. We need to talk. McNamara is taking me to the harbor with him."

  McNamara again.

  Instead of fighting the inevitable, he touched two of his gloved fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss. She did the same, before she followed Catherine, the doctors right behind her, not trusting Scott in slightest.

  "Hannah Quinn."

  The shout pushed Scott away from the wall. He watched a small woman overburdened by a shirtless toddler in her arms, push her way through the sparse corridor. She stepped in front of Hannah and Catherine, forcing them to stop. "I deman
d the Blood Surfer examine my child."

  Taller than most of the doctors, Scott could see the commotion over their heads. He shoved his way through the knot of white coats as Catherine pushed Hannah behind her. Good. If anyone had a larger stake than Scott in keeping Hannah safe, it was Catherine. No one could threaten his mother and not expect to get knocked on their asses. She created a barrier between Hannah and the woman.

  "Hannah is not a doctor," Catherine said. "She cannot use her ability to determine what is wrong with your son. Perhaps some time in the future — "

  The woman shoved the child into Catherine's arms, leaving Catherine no choice but to grab hold of the boy. The kid's head lolled to the side, his eyes closed, either asleep or drugged. Hannah stepped back, but not fast enough. Even as Catherine juggled the limp child, the woman reached around Catherine and grabbed Hannah by the arm. With a jerk, she forced Hannah forward, then smacked Hannah's ungloved hand onto the boy's upper body.

  "Wait." Scott could see Hannah try to pull away. "I can't — "

  This wasn't a random assault by a distraught parent, but a well-planned attack. The woman wore blue surgical gloves so she wouldn't touch Hannah's skin. Scott surged forward. Before he could reach the woman and pull her away from Hannah, the woman swung out and slapped Hannah across the face.

  Hannah's shriek of pain was cut short as she disappeared, bloodsurfing inside the boy's body.

  6

  "No! Oh, no, no, no, no, no! How could you do this to me?"

  What had she done? The shock of the slap had triggered her ability. The sharp sting reminded Hannah of her helplessness when Miranda had hit her.

  Her proof of control shattered into millions of red blood cells. She wanted to scream, but who could hear her from inside the boy's lungs?

  You're just pissed because the Committee was right. You don't have control. If you go out there with a temper tantrum, you'll only prove you're not mature enough to handle your own power. Don't give them yet another excuse to cage you.

  Her rage burned too hot for her own words to cool down. She needed to swim off her anger, so she headed for the anterior spinal artery and surfed upward. Was the kid sick? Dying? Was he an Alt? She'd have to check his brain to find out.

  She plowed through layers of gray matter until she reached the area where the interthalamic adhesion was supposed to be. It wasn't there, which wasn't unusual in a normal human. Not everyone had one, but if this child had been an alternative human, a thin black thread would have crossed the midline of the adhesion. Somehow the black thread tied alternative humans to their Alt power. Scott had one. Scott's brother Nik had one, as had Joe Austin.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Pressure. She remembered so much pressure as she sucked air and liquid into Joe's skull. The visceral pain had blinded her as Joe's brain exploded under her touch and rocked her for the second time. She didn't want to think about Joe or how she had killed him. Not here. Not while she operated inside a child.

  You killed him.

  She surfed faster, as if she could outrun her own thoughts. What she wouldn't give to take it all back.

  This is life and death. You can't take it back.

  Her attack on Joe wasn't like disabling Miranda's mercenaries. She would heal the mercs if they'd let her, but she couldn't resurrect the dead.

  She shoved Joe to the back of her mind and focused on bloodsurfing around the boy's brain. Something didn't look right. There were scars along the meninges. The brain itself didn't appear to fit inside the skull, a hair to too close to the bone in some places. The brain wasn't swollen, though.

  She traveled back along the spine. What the hell is that?

  The spine bulged just at the point where the medulla oblongata ended and the spinal cord began. She surfed closer to examine the damage. It appeared as if someone had sliced through the spine and all its interconnecting tissues, then spliced them back together again. Despite the detail of the splice, the job itself looked sloppy, as if the surgeon couldn't quite get a clean stitch. The swollen nerve tissues pressed against bone. The signals along the spinal cord operated at a rate slower than normal, bumping over the uneven growth along the newly healed wounds.

  Why, though? What was wrong with the boy that had required such an operation? Who could perform such an operation? She'd read as much as she could about medicine and surgery while she had been on the run from Miranda. None of the medical textbooks discussed a condition that would require a surgeon to cut through the spine to heal someone.

  On the other hand, she knew nothing of this boy. If she'd been given a chance to examine him from the outside before his mother slapped her, she would have known what she was supposed to look for.

  Oh, there was her anger again, distracting her, damn it. She surfed faster. Scars aside, all of the boy's systems functioned within normal parameters, if a bit erratic here and there. The drugs in his system appeared to keep his immune system at bay. Fixing the damage wouldn't take long.

  I demand you examine my child.

  Hannah stopped dead in the middle of the boy's aortic arch. What was she doing? The mother of this boy didn't want her to fix what was wrong. She had asked for Hannah to look at the damage and report back. Like the Oversight Committee, the mother wanted a witness, not a healer.

  Hannah floated closer to the aortic wall, confused. What was she supposed to do now? Why didn't she know? She knew every part of the human body, better than any doctor, but she couldn't identify the purpose behind the scars.

  She needed to know.

  When Miranda forced you to heal her prisoners, you ignored the causes of their injuries in order to protect yourself. When you healed Scott, you used brute force to heal his body before he died, and ignored the consequences of what you were doing. He hadn't wanted to you to regrow his missing ear. He never wanted you to fix his broken Alt powers. You thought you were so smart. You thought because you'd memorized human anatomy you knew everything, but you're not as smart as you think you are. You heal without considering what your patient really wants.

  Frustration further stymied her instinct to heal. The temptation to smooth the scarring, to re-image the boy’s immune system nagged at her. Except it wasn't just frustration, it was fear. Fear of what she didn't understand paralyzed her.

  She'd never not healed anyone before, so she floated further down the descending aorta until she could skip along the upper true ribs and insert herself next to the boy's heart — which beat with a strong, steady rhythm despite the signal lag.

  What should she do next? She couldn't answer her own questions, so she floated back out of the boy and into her own body, leaving him exactly as he was.

  For the first time in her life, Hannah had failed to heal her patient.

  Scott shoved himself to the front of the crowd. How dare anyone force Hannah to use her power without her consent? He knew better than anyone how much Hannah needed her freedom. After spending her life being manipulated and abused by a heartless killer, Hannah deserved to have a say over when and where she used her Alt ability.

  His white-hot rage made him reach out to tackle the woman, but a strong pair of arms clamped around his shoulders and yanked him back.

  "Let her finish," a sharp, deep voice admonished him.

  Scott shook off the arms. McNamara backed off, but repeated his warning. "Let her finish."

  Scott glanced back at Hannah, still a barely-there outline of her body visible. Of course. No one knew what would happen to Hannah if they touched her shadow while she surfed. McNamara had prevented Scott from making a bad situation worse by blundering into the commotion blind with rage. Scott had been a cop. He should have known better. He should have assessed the scene, then acted. Scott nodded his thanks to McNamara, who retreated.

  A minute passed, then another. No one moved. Catherine remained frozen in place. She looked at Scott, then the child — a boy, to all outward appearances — then back to Scott. Pulling one hand from the boy's back, she gestured. Don't interfere.

/>   Scott obeyed, but he did pull his phone out of his pocket. Without even looking at the screen he tapped the code to alert Thomas. His company had built the security system for the hospital, and his team would have already alerted him, but he didn't know Scott was here.

  Hannah reemerged after a third minute. She yanked her hand from under the other woman's gloves before she stepped away from Catherine and the child.

  "Did you see?" The woman ignored her son as she shouted. "You saw what those butchers did?"

  Scott watched Hannah, looking for signs of distress, a signal or a blink, anything to indicate she needed him. Hannah didn't respond to the woman's question. She just stood there with an odd expression.

  Catherine leaned forward to hand the boy back. "What you did here today was dangerous — "

  The woman shoved the boy back into Catherine's arms. "I don't want him. He's not my son. He's someone else's child. I demand the return of my child." She whirled on the doctors standing behind Scott. "You! You allowed this to happen. You said the transplant would save his life, but you stole him away from me instead. I want him back. I demand you give my son back to me!"

  Scott wouldn't risk turning around to see who the woman was pointing at. Behind him, he could hear some murmurs and shuffling, but nothing that identified the culprit. The woman's hysteria built and the boy started to wake in Catherine's arms. Hannah appeared too fixed upon the boy to pay attention to the danger. Scott took another step forward. Someone needed to get the situation under control.

  "Ma'am. I want to help you, but you have to calm down first."

  The woman's breath hitched as he approached, slower this time.

  "What is your name?"

  "Betty Chung," she said after a moment.

  "My name is Scott. Can you tell me what happened? Can you explain why you forced Hannah to bloodsurf through your son?"

  "I know who you are." Ms. Chung took a half step away from Hannah. Good. The farther he drew the woman away from Hannah, the better.