“Afraid you’ll set off another alarm. The last one gave me a headache.”
Three more security checkpoints. Two more sliding doors. Each one needs Leonid’s fingerprints, retinal scan, or firstborn child to open.
Finally, he stops in front of a door marked “High-Security Wing B.”
“Ready?”
“To see Mitch? No. To get out of this sci-fi nightmare? Hell, yes.”
The door slides open with a hydraulic hiss.
My feet freeze on the threshold. Every muscle locks up.
This isn’t a medical wing. This is fucking “Star Trek.”
Pristine white walls curve overhead into a dome of glass panels. Holographic screens float in mid-air, displaying vital signs in 3D. Doctors in what look like hazmat suits made of liquid metal glide between beds that hover—actually hover—three feet off the ground.
“What the actual fuck?”
A robot rolls past, carrying a tray of instruments that probably cost more than my house. The air smells like nothing—too clean, too pure, like even germs are too poor to exist here.
And at the far end…
“No way.” The word comes out half-laugh, half-disbelief.
Mitch is propped up in what looks like a floating cloud of light, wrapped in monitors that pulse with his heartbeat. He’s wearing what seem to be silk pajamas, watching something on a screen that’s literally floating in front of his face.
And he’s eating caviar. Actual fucking caviar.
“Welcome to the future,” Leonid murmurs behind me.
22
Clara
Barefoot, dirty, and dragging the remnants of my dignity, I make my way over to Mitch.
I shake my head, not quite believing it. “Mitch, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
He glances up, caviar fork frozen mid-air, his eyes sweeping over me like I’m some kind of ghost.
“Clara?” His voice drags slightly, like the words are fighting their way through molasses. He’s staring. At my bare feet. At the mess that used to be me about five car chases ago.
One eyebrow arches lazily, almost comically slow. “What… happened… to you?”
“You know I was kidnapped by Kuznetsov, right?”
He blinks, his gaze wandering like he’s trying to process the sentence, then lazily shovels another spoonful of caviar into his mouth. He chews deliberately, the sound almost cartoonishly loud in the silence.
“Yes,” he finally says, dragging the word out like he’s still piecing together the conversation.
“And you’re just… eating caviar?”
“This is good,” he says, lips curling into a slow, lopsided smile that feels all kinds of wrong.
Holy shit, Mitch is smiling.
There’s a gap where his front tooth should be, which is new. In the decade I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him crack more than a grimace.
