He almost felt bad for the human, but if Jorge failed this assignment, he knew his sister would be tortured again. No matter what it took, he couldn’t allow that to happen.
The lock turned and Jorge watched the door, but instead of Reyes, he saw Harry Watkins holding a knife to his sister Alejandra’s throat. He moved toward Watkins, but the man slit Alejandra’s throat before he could reach the pair. Jorge watched in horror as his sister’s lifeless body was tossed to the floor. Watkins kicked her and stared straight at him. “You’re no different than me. You’ve killed innocents, and so have I. Remember that.”
Watkins vanished and Jorge watched his sister’s blood cover the floor, unable even to cry out at his sister’s murder.
Jorge jerked awake and sat up, heaving in deep breaths. Something touched his back and he rolled off the bed to the side and took a defensive crouch. He looked up to see Sabrina staring at him with a mixed expression of puzzlement and concern.
Her voice was soft when she asked, “Are you okay?”
He drew in a deep sigh. He’d been dreaming. Alejandra was safe with DEFEND, not dead on the floor.
When he still didn’t answer, Sabrina moved to where he was crouched and kneeled on the floor in front of him. She reached a hand toward him and he suddenly yearned for her comforting touch, but then she pulled back and he wondered why. She asked, “How do you feel? Were you just having a bad dream or a negative reaction to Neena’s drugs?”
Neena. The crazy woman’s name brought him back to the present and what had happened. He did another quick scan of the room, but he didn’t see Neena anywhere. “I’m fine. It was just a bad dream, don’t worry about it. What happened to Neena? Tell me what happened after that woman drugged me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look fine to me.”
“Sabrina.”
She put up her hands. “Fine, I’ll drop it for now. As for what happened, you’re probably not going to like it.”
Now that his heart rate had calmed a little, his head ached. He slowly stood up and realized the sluggishness from earlier was gone. “Tell me anyway. It’ll give me a chance to try to pull myself together and shake off any aftereffects of the drugs Neena pumped into me.”
She also stood up and watched him for a second before she finally replied. “Well, Neena and I had a chat.”
“A chat? Seriously? With the crazy lady who drugged me unconscious?”
She shrugged. “Hey, I was ready to knock her out cold until she said some things that forced me to take her seriously. Did you know she can see visions of the future? The woman has abilities I can’t even name.”
He took a step toward Sabrina. “I may have heard something about that, but enough about Neena’s abilities. Just tell me what she said.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “She gave me the information we needed to take down Watkins tonight.”
“Exactly how is this supposed to happen? I can’t even shift until tomorrow morning.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I don’t know how your abilities work, but if you can ‘check’ on your power levels, they should be at full capacity thanks to a mystery drug.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “I’ve never heard of a drug like that. If it existed, I’m sure the Collector would’ve used it.”
“Just check, okay? For me? If what Neena told me about this drug recharging your powers is true, then I’d feel more confident about using the other information she gave me.”
He stared and she stared back. He could tell the woman wasn’t going to back down.
The human had guts; he’d give her that. Human. He’d nearly forgotten about her earlier revelation, but for some reason it didn’t seem to bother him as much as he’d expected. Probably because of the way she’d looked at him when he’d fallen to the ground earlier. It’d been a long time since someone had shown any concern or worry for him.
He just needed to be careful not to read too much into it.
He sighed. “Fine. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I have a feeling you’ll argue with me until I do what you ask, so in the interest of saving time, give me a second.” He closed his eyes and focused on the hum of power he drew on whenever he used his shadow-shifting abilities. Normally, this close after using them, it would be nothing more than a whisper. But Sabrina was right—his energy was pulsing at full power.
He opened his eyes. “Usually shifting so close together would put enough strain on my heart to kill me, but my energy levels are back to full. I can shift again without killing myself. How is that possible?”
“The drug I mentioned was the one Neena injected you with, and it seems she was telling the truth about it speeding up your recovery process.”
He opened his mouth to ask how, but decided that wasn’t important right now. Instead, he said, “But there must be more you aren’t telling me because as awesome as I am with my abilities, they alone won’t capture Watkins.”
Sabrina couldn’t get the look of horror she’d seen on Jorge’s face when he’d jumped up from his bad dream out of her head. She wanted to wrap him in a hug and push him to tell her what it’d been about, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t say a word—if anything at all—until he knew everything Neena had told her.
Since it was only early afternoon, she just needed to get their plan for tonight formulated and then she would still have time to get him talking about his dream and maybe even about his reaction to her working for the Feiru Liaison office. He had yet to bring it up and Sabrina wasn’t going to go into a high stakes situations—like taking down Watkins at the school—until she was sure they could trust each other enough to work together.