Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(106)
Stomach heaving, I collapsed, hitting the ground right next to Donovan’s body. His empty eyes stared blankly at me. I retched all over the floor. As I gagged, Teddy crouched down beside me and ran his hand over my head, caressing my hair as if to comfort me. I tried to whirl on him, insane with grief and guilt and ready to make him join Donovan in an early grave, but the second I attempted to harm him, my body locked up and my brain seemed to slow down. I knew I’d zoned out, just like Harper had every time he’d tried to disobey one of his orders.
“He deserved it, Jamie.” Teddy spoke low and soft, but it did nothing to calm me. “He’s kept us caged like animals. He’s done tests on all of us, forced us to push our abilities to near breaking point. He practically turned Betty into a vegetable, and he steals Natalia’s bone marrow as quickly as she can reproduce it.”
When my thoughts turned to the young girl in the room, I was able to focus again and I gasped. Bone marrow? That was the secret ingredient in Donovan’s miracle serum?
“Look at her, Jamie,” Teddy said, pointing to the corner where Betty and Natalia were huddled, shaking with fear. “Look at what he was doing to her. He was killing her. And he would have eventually done the same to you. He was a monster.”
My anger flashed to the surface again, and I glared at Teddy. “Then you should have killed him yourself, you coward. Instead you made me a murderer! A cold-blooded killer. I hate you! I hate you!”
“Jamie, calm down…”
I tried to blast him again—not aiming to kill, but just to knock him unconscious. It didn’t work. He’d ordered me not to harm him in any way. My body locked up as it had before, and I once again zoned out. It was hopeless. He had me prisoner, trapped inside my own body, which no longer belonged to me. I would never escape him.
My focus was drawn back by the sound of alarms blaring through the entire compound. Wide-eyed with shock, Natalia stopped sniffling and blinked up at Betty. I’m guessing the alarms didn’t go off very often—or ever—up here in the middle of snowy nowhere. Teddy shot me a bitter smirk. “So the quarterback’s here already, huh? That didn’t take long.”
While I had a minor panic attack—worried about Ryan showing up and what Teddy might make me do—Teddy calmly walked over to the door of the subject residence quarters and peeked out the small window into the main hallway. His face fell into a frown. “Hmm. Maybe we should stick it out in here until the chaos dies down. Jamie…?” He flashed me a sickly sweet smile. “Would you kindly blast the control panel for me so that no one can unlock this door?”
“If I do that, we won’t be able to get out either, genius,” I argued. But as I argued, I still obeyed and sent waves of electricity into the control panel, frying it completely.
I received another stupid smile. “I have every faith that you’ll be able to get us out of here after your friends have disposed of Donovan’s little army. In the meantime, this is the safest place for us to—”
Ironically, as the words fell from his mouth, the door behind him was blasted open, knocking him to the ground and showering him with tiny bits of ash and melted metal. The door had been incinerated. When the dust cleared from the small explosion, Abiodun stood in the hallway, with his hands in tight fists at his side. Both of said fists were blazing with fire. Tyson had said Abiodun could throw a mean fireball. Not that I hadn’t believed it, but wow.
Abiodun met my eyes from the hallway with a soft smile, but was immediately blocked from my line of sight when Ryan burst through the door. I assumed he’d come for me, but after a quick sweep to make sure that I was fine, he ground out a sharp “WHERE IS HE?”
Assuming he meant Teddy, because Teddy was the only thing that could put Ryan into a murderous rage, I pointed to the floor. Teddy was slowly rolling over onto his stomach, moaning like a baby. Ryan wasted no time pulling him to his feet and punching him in the face. “You psychotic little bastard!”
He punched him again. And then again. Momentarily, I wondered if I should stop him—but it sort of felt good to see Teddy get pulverized, and there was no doubt Ryan found it therapeutic—but then Teddy croaked out, “Jamie, stop him. Protect me.”
Before Ryan could hit him again, I separated the two and dragged Teddy safely across the room. His eye was swollen, his nose was definitely broken, and his lip was split, but he still managed a smug smirk in response to Ryan’s shocked expression.
“Stay back,” I whispered as I flipped into Danger Mode and held my hand up, palm out, ready to defend Teddy by any means necessary. “If any of you move, I will be forced to act. I will hurt you. I don’t have a choice. They made new nanobots that are resistant to my energy. Teddy controls them. I can’t stop myself. I have to do whatever he says.”
By now, all of the ACEs had filed into the room behind Ryan. Several of them had rushed to Betty and Natalia while the others were standing behind Ryan, their attention focused on Teddy and me. All of them froze at my confession, their gazes shifting to Teddy.
Major Wilks broke the silence first. “Son, there’s no need to hold Miss Baker hostage. We’re on the same team.”
Even with one eye swollen nearly shut, Teddy’s glare was lethal. “I’m not holding her hostage,” he grumbled, spitting a little blood out of his mouth. “I’m rescuing her. I’m rescuing all of us. Betty, Abiodun, Tyson, Natalia, let’s get out of here.”