He smiled at her, tears welling in his eyes. “Hi, Sparky.”
“I’m me,” she said, her grin broadening. “With a killer headache, but I’m me.”
“That’s the sedative,” Kyle answered. “If you’re up for it, we need to get you hydrated and some food into you. It’ll take the haze away and get rid of your headache.”
She bobbed her head. “I’m more than ready. I also want to know what you found in that file.”
Alex flicked his gaze across the room to the red folder on his armchair. “We haven’t looked at it yet, Avs.”
“What?” she cried as Kyle eased her up to sit, propping a few pillows behind her. “Why not?”
“Uh, you were a big part of that retrieval, and I wasn’t about to dig into it while you were laying here drugged and unconscious.”
“By choice. It’s not like I was randomly drugged like I was from PharmaTech. Which, by the way, how much of this is in my system?”
“Looked like about one or two fairly strong doses,” Kyle answered. “I’m guessing Miranda administered it somehow, maybe through your skin. It would have been easy enough for her to do completely undetected.”
“How was she not affected?” Ava asked.
“She could have been using the same blockers. Or maybe she was affected,” Kyle answered. “She turned on The Board. That could be why.”
“It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone,” Alex said. “And hopefully no one else is going to give you any more of this.”
“I’m monitoring that,” Kyle said. “We should see less and less of this in your blood until we can’t detect it.”
Ava nodded. “And then I’ll go off the drugs and find out for sure.”
“I know it’s scary, but it’ll be a good thing when that happens, Ava. Now, were you on the verge of another blackout or was this just all precaution?”
“Precaution. I couldn’t distinguish between my physical symptoms from the blackouts and from the panic with the stealing of the file.”
“Okay,” Kyle said with a nod. “We’ll leave your medication as is for now. But if you start having symptoms again, you need to let me know because I may need to adjust the dose.”
“Okay. Now, can we please look at that file before it burns a hole through my mind? I want to know what Project Reaper is. And I can’t believe Sebastian hasn’t broken down the door yet to read it.”
“He tried,” Alex answered as Kyle grabbed the file before he wandered to the door and tugged it open.
“Finally,” Sebastian said, stretching his arms to the side as he burst into the room. “We didn’t grab that file to sit on it while Ava took a nap.”
“Hey, easy. Ava risked her life to get that file,” Alex said, poking a finger at him, “and I think she should be awake when we read it.”
Sebastian shook his head. “We could have filled her in later. This is important.”
“Stop arguing, and let’s just open it and read it already,” Ava said with a shake of her head.
“Water and food first,” Kyle answered, raising a finger in the air.
Sebastian snatched the file from his hand with a heavy sigh. “You go get her food and water. I’m reading this.”
“We’ll get it as soon as we’ve read it,” Ava said. “Stop putting it off.”
Sebastian flicked the folder open, his eyes scanning the page as Kyle peered over his shoulder. “Will you back off?”
“Quit hogging it. I’m the doctor here. I should be reading it.”
“Fine,” Sebastian said, shoving the folder at him. “Read it.”
“Okay.” Kyle grabbed the folder, scanning the page before he lifted a sheet, his eyebrows crinkling. “What?!”
