Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(98)

Chen smiled as he held up the syringe. “Are you ready to begin remembering?”

I was, until he put the needle against my skin. The fluid in the syringe was clear but had an off-white tint to it. It looked the same as what Dr. Chen had injected me with before, but I felt more hesitant now. Before, I’d said yes, but I’d been struggling with the nanobots. Now, even knowing I’d dreamed, I wasn’t sure I wanted that stuff in me. “It’s just serum, right? The same stuff you gave me before?”

“Exactly the same,” Chen said with a nod. “Completely safe. We use it here all the time. Our formula that gives our soldiers their strength, and speed isn’t perfect. It wears their bodies out.”

I knew that, but I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to give away any hints that we might have the jump on these guys.

“Whenever any of our soldiers gets too physically exhausted, we give them this serum. It repairs anything biological,” Chen explained. “It’s quite miraculous. Once, we even repaired a man’s knee, which you’d completely shattered with your superstrength.”

My eyebrows flew up at that, but Chen didn’t bother to explain the altercation. He was too focused on the science. “There was nothing but tiny fragments left of his bone, but this serum fused the fragments back together and mended the knee entirely. There wasn’t even any scarring. You can’t tell it was ever broken.”

“The same will happen for your brain, Miss Baker,” Donovan said. “The serum will reverse all of the damage done and restore your brain to its original state.”

Dr. Chen grinned a toothy smile. “You’ll be good as new.”

“Well,” Donovan corrected, “mostly. Obviously we can’t heal you completely tonight, or tomorrow you would turn against us.”

I snorted. “Obviously.”

“But we can give you enough of your memory to help you ease some of the frustration, confusion, and depression that has been plaguing you.”

“Gee. That’s thoughtful of you.”

Dr. Chen’s smile fell. “We do want to help you, Miss Baker. We are, above all, philanthropists. We do this because we want to end people’s suffering. And one day, if we can trust you, we will heal you completely.”

None of us had that long, but for now I’d take what I could get. “Okay. I guess that’s fair. Go for it, then. Juice me.”

I held my breath and gritted my teeth as Dr. Chen injected me with four times the amount of serum he’d given me the first time. The cold liquid stung a little as it traveled up my arm and through my body. I shivered at the sensation.

“So that’s it?” I asked, lying back on the bed. The serum was making my body feel heavy. “That’s all there is to it?”

“That’s all there is to it.”

“What’s in the serum?” I asked, covering a yawn with my fist. My eyes were getting heavy. “How does it work?”

“One of our subjects is blessed with a miraculous gift of cell regeneration—self healing. We’ve found a way to use that gift for the good of others.”

I sucked in a breath. Self-healing was Natalia’s power. She was an eight-year-old girl they’d acquired from the Netherlands last year. Her family had been in a devastating car accident. Only Natalia had survived. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they’d thought her wounds would be fatal, but she’d recovered overnight. I didn’t like the idea that they’d found a way to use her gifts like this. “How?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “What have you done to that little girl in order to make this serum?”

Donovan didn’t answer me except with a condescending smile. “Nothing as awful as you’re thinking, Miss Baker. We are not monsters. Natalia is carefully monitored. She is fine.”

Yeah, sure she was. His definition of fine and mine couldn’t be the same. “Donovan, if you’re harming that child, I’ll kill you. You have my word on that.”

Donovan sighed. “I will take you to her so you can see for yourself that she’s fine.”

“Yes.” That was an excellent idea. I needed to see Natalia. Needed to know for sure that she was fine. I started to stand, but my head spun and Dr. Chen gently pushed me back until I was lying on the bed. “You’ll see her soon. For now, just get some rest. You need it.”

He had a point. My head felt like it weighed a million pounds, and my eyelids even more. It wasn’t normal. Sleep was pulling me under. I gasped. “You drugged me!”

Dr. Chen shook his head, giving me a reassuring pat on the back of my hand. “No. Fatigue is an effect of the serum. It’s pulling energy from your body to repair the damage. It’s an exhausting process, and we’ve just given you a rather large dose. You need rest. But you will be fine once you’ve slept it off. You have my word.”

Ha! His word. Like that meant anything to me. But, whether he was telling the truth or not, my eyes closed and I started to drift into a heavy sleep.





I didn’t dream. That disappointed me, and I worried that maybe the serum hadn’t worked, but maybe I’d just been too exhausted to dream. When I woke up, I was still very groggy, and my body felt stiff. It took me a few minutes to think straight. I was still in the hospital bed I’d passed out in, but from the stiffness in my body and the pressing bladder issues, I was sure I’d slept a long time.