Lab rat. That was my new name.
Well, maybe more like pampered little lab poodle, but still, that didn’t mean this arrangement I had agreed to was like a walk in the park. In fact, it was downright exhausting. But I wanted to go to the Academy to become a Water Keeper, and in exchange the Council wanted to know the extent of my healing abilities. So, I agreed to let them study me.
My new life on the world of Ambrosia wasn’t even close to the way things used to be in Newport Beach. All of their testing on me was actually done here across the border back on Earth, but they never even let me step foot outside while we were here.
The Council even had a title for all the testing and research they were doing on me. They called it the PAS project, which stood for Projection and Self-healing. Basically, anything that had to do with me healing myself or projecting my healing powers onto anyone else, the Council wanted to know about it.
The truth was, I wanted to understand my abilities just as much as they did, and I was pretty sure the only place I could test them was here at the testing center on Earth. Of course, border patrol didn’t let just any old person through the Threshold gates. Each time I passed through that brilliant wall of watery light I had an entourage of guards alongside me. Orion said it was for my protection, that I was important. But I knew at least a few of them were there to make sure I didn’t run off to tell my Earth friends all the secrets of Ambrosia.
As the Head of Security, Orion oversaw all my sessions at the testing center. Today’s session started out like most of the others. Orion took his place in the observation deck while I followed Agent Kelsey—and all two hundred and fifty pounds of his muscle—down the concrete steps to the testing area where he stood dutifully nearby. As usual, one of the doctors was waiting there to strap me into a bunch of wires and monitors before we began.
When I was all hooked up and the video cameras were ready to roll, a team of doctors and scientists appeared through the double doors at the far side of the room, guiding a hospital bed toward the other set of monitors across the way. That meant I would be healing someone else today.
Every once in a while they asked me to undergo injuries myself to test my own healing capabilities, but those days weren’t exactly pleasant. At first they tried giving me varying levels of anesthesia to block the pain, but unfortunately, my body quickly developed a resistance. Medications and other substances meant to alter body or mind didn’t seem to work on me anymore. If they wanted to learn more about how my body could heal itself, I would have to suffer pain in the process. I tried to explain to them that I had been shot straight through the head at one point and recovered without a scratch, but apparently scientists prefer to see the proof themselves.
After one particularly disturbing session had gotten out of hand, Orion made it clear that any future sessions regarding self-healing would have to be approved directly through him. Now, almost all my days were focused on healing others.
I watched as the team of doctors worked around the unconscious man on the bed. He wasn’t very far from me this time, maybe fifteen or twenty feet. I thought it was odd, considering the last few weeks the test subjects had been moved farther and farther away from me each day to test the strength of my abilities from greater distances.
I felt my heartbeat quicken. There was something different about this man. I could sense something inside him that was different. My eyes shifted away, trying not to think about it. I wasn’t supposed to start the process until they had him ready.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder who he was. Test subject number twenty-seven. His energy was different than the others, heavier somehow.
I was supposed to report anything out of the ordinary during my sessions, anything that might increase their understanding of my abilities. But for weeks now I had been holding something back. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t report it. At first I wasn’t even sure I knew what I was feeling. It started out as nothing but impressions, vague feelings that weren’t clear.
Each patient had been unconscious, yet somehow I began to sense the state of their energy. Many were worried or grieved, others hopeful and at peace. The impressions were still somewhat unclear, but with each new patient my ability to perceive grew deeper. A few days earlier, one woman’s worry was undoubtedly for her child’s wellbeing. And just the day before, I had healed a teenage boy who I could tell was upset about his knee injury and something to do with sports. The details were foggy, though. I could only make guesses.
The only thing I knew was that this type of energy felt different than an illness or injury, much harder to figure out. Finding the source of physical damage was becoming like second nature to me now. The more I practiced, the easier it became. But this type of energy was more like a person’s spiritual essence—it was their being rather than their body.
This man’s being, his essence, made me nervous.
“Ms. James?” I heard a voice echo. “Are you all right?”
I looked up toward the observation deck, remembering that they could read every tiny fluctuation in my body with their machines—temperature, pulse, brain activity, nerve impulses, pretty much whatever they wanted.
I forced a smile and nodded back at them. “I’m fine. Ready when you are.”
A moment later, one of the doctors signaled for me to begin.
I closed my eyes and took in a breath, letting the air exhale slowly until I was focused on the unconscious man across the room.
Immediately I knew he had been injured badly—a gunshot wound to the chest. I lifted my hand, but he was so close I didn’t need to reach out. Energy pulsed from my fingers as I made the connection between us, guiding the light forward from inside me to seek out the corrupted flesh within the man’s system.
It should have been routine at this point, the same methods I practiced day after day—find the damaged energy in the person’s body and pull it back into me, allowing the healing power within me to take care of the rest—but this time, some unseen force seemed to be fighting against me.
I reached out my arm, pulling harder, struggling to absorb the negative energy. This was different than the others. This felt wrong. The man’s entire body teemed with darkness, not just the wound. Malice and cruelty grew around me, swallowed me up like a black hole, dragging me deeper into an endless pit of hate.
Then I saw it, the image of a woman, terror wrenched across her face. It was just a glimpse, but I could feel it. The man hurt her somehow, ruthlessly, all with a sense of vile satisfaction.
I couldn’t take it. I tried to pull away.
But the darkness sucked me deeper.
I had felt this same terrible satisfaction before, the gleam in black eyes just before they moved to strike. A flash of Voss’s face blazed through my mind, the face from my nightmares. I had no idea if Voss had anything to do with this man, yet their darkness felt the same. The darkness was too deep for me to heal, too far gone to save.
I felt myself cry out, a sense of suffocation taking over. I had to fight the connection. I had to get away.
The wires attached to my body from the monitors tangled around my arms as my feet stumbled back. Commotion and people moved around me, but I couldn’t respond. My thoughts were stuck. My soul was stuck. The man’s energy from across the room still clung to me like scorching hot tar. I pulled and pulled to break free, searching in a panic from within, clinging to the light to push the dark away.
With one last groan I yanked the tethers of energy back, exerting all my might.
As if by some wonderful gift of mercy, the heaviness lifted. I took one sweet gasp of relief like a person saved from drowning, inhaling the air and the light with my last ounce of strength. And then, my body collapsed as my mind went blank.