Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(99)

Dr. Chen was gone, but Donovan sat in a padded chair beside my bed reading a nonfiction book written by someone with a name I couldn’t pronounce. I found it strangely comforting that he’d stayed with me while I slept, like a parent or a loved one would.

I cleared my throat to get his attention, and his face lit up with a bright smile. “Jamie!” He set his book down. “Good morning.” He glanced at his watch and smiled to himself. “For a few more minutes, anyway. I trust you slept well?”

I sat up slowly, my head swooning a little, but after blinking my eyes into focus, I finally became alert. I looked around for some confirmation that it was morning, but there was no clock and no windows. “What time is it? How long was I out?”

“It’s nearly noon. You’ve been out for about fifteen hours.”

“Fifteen hours!” The serum they gave me better have worked, because Major Wilks only gave me a day. He was probably already on his way. I needed to get as much information about it as I could before I ran out of time.

“That’s nearly half the recovery time my soldiers need after being administered the healing serum.” Donovan scanned me from head to toe and smiled. “You are truly a remarkable young woman, Miss Baker.”

I flushed at the praise, feeling both embarrassed and absurdly proud that he approved.

What the heck? I felt proud to be complimented by Donovan? That was insanity.

Instantly I flipped into Danger Mode and turned up my energy to the highest possible setting.

Donovan stepped back, eyes wide. “Miss Baker?” he asked warily as he watched my skin spark and my hair whip around my head. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’m just frying your stupid nanobots.”

When Donovan’s eyebrows flew up, I laughed. “The ACEs aren’t stupid, Mr. Donovan. They knew something wasn’t right with me after the way I acted at the hospital. We know I was being controlled. It turns out that your precious robots couldn’t handle my electricity. I can’t believe you’d try to inject me with more knowing that they don’t work on me.”

Donovan sighed. “We figured they hadn’t worked on you, but we didn’t realize you knew about them.” He gave me a sheepish shrug. “Can you blame me for trying again, Miss Baker?”

“No, I guess not.” I snorted and let my energy calm down. I mean, the guy was psycho, after all. You could always trust a psycho to act psycho.

Once my mind was clear again, I relaxed. He couldn’t control me. I had the upper hand here, not him. Reminding myself that the ACEs were coming soon, I focused on the plan and tried to get as much helpful information from Donovan as I could. I took a deep breath and, stretching my arms and legs, tried to sound casual as I probed for more information. “Do you use the serum a lot, then? You must have a ton of it.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he watched me for a few minutes with a calculating expression. I quickly turned my line of questioning to play to his ego. In all the superhero movies Teddy has shown me, egos were always the supervillains’ downfall. “Are you planning to market it to the public? Because, I mean, it’s basically a miracle serum. You would do so much good if you shared it with others.”

Bingo. Donovan’s face smoothed out. Suspicion gone. Replaced with pride. And bonus, he answered my question. Chalk up a point for me. “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “The serum is definitely miraculous and has been perfected for the most part, but the magical secret ingredient that makes it work is in very short supply. I can only make small amounts of the serum and not very often. In fact, Chen gave you nearly the last of our supply last night. I only have one last dose that we save for emergencies.”

“Only one more?” That was disheartening. I wondered if the last dose would be enough to fix me after the ACEs came in and shut this place down. No way were they going to make more if this magical secret ingredient came from Natalia, as I suspected it did. I wanted my memories desperately, but I couldn’t possibly ask for them at the expense of another human being.

“Yes, Jamie—may I call you Jamie?” I nodded absently, and he smiled as if pleased, before continuing. “We used nearly all of the remaining serum on you—as much as was safe for you.”

Suspicion crept into my mind. “Why would you do that? You said yourself that you knew I’d turn on you if you gave me all of my memories back.”

Donovan sighed. “Because we want you to trust us. We want you to be happy here, and to see that we really do want to help you. It’s true we couldn’t fix you completely, but as a show of our faith in you, you should have almost all of your memories back now.”

My heart fluttered. Did I really have my memory? I tried to retrieve a memory, but nothing came. Maybe it was because I didn’t know what memory to recall. Thinking back on all the stories Ryan told me of my life before the explosion, there was one in particular I wanted to remember firsthand. I tried to imagine a warm, cozy cabin, snowstorm howling outside the windows and the fire crackling inside. Just Ryan and me…

When that didn’t work, I tried to remember our last night together, at the Grand Canyon. He’d told me that’s where he’d proposed to me and gave me enough details that I should remember the conversation. Again, nothing seemed to come to mind other than the conversation I had with Ryan a couple nights ago. My heart rate picked up as anxiety blossomed inside me. “It’s not working. I don’t feel any different. When I try to think about my past, it still comes up blank.” I started to panic. “What if it didn’t work?”