Never had to.
This was the first time it hadn't worked.
“I don’t understand,” he growled. “I don’t know what's wrong.”
“It’s okay, Voodoo.” Indigo pressed her hands over his, squeezing lightly.
But when he looked up to meet her gaze, he felt like it was anything but okay. Every time he put his hands on someone, he wanted to heal them, there was never any doubt about that. There had even been times with his team, with the women they had fallen for, where he wanted it even more.
This was on another level, though. He wanted to prove to Indigo that she could count on at least one person, that he would never let her down.
Only he was letting her down. He wasn't healing her, and he didn't know why.
“I'm sorry,” he muttered as he shoved to his feet and stalked a few feet away, needing some distance as he tried to handle his emotions, the feelings of failure that he’d dealt with since childhood, but that had dissipated when he realized he had been given an amazing ability.
Voodoo didn't know if his teammates wished they could give back their enhancements, but he had relished his, it was everything he’d ever wanted from the time he realized his parents cared more about saving others than raising him.
Now the one thing that made him special, made him better than his parents, was gone, and the woman who was going to pay the price for that was slowly wriggling her way inside him.
January 22nd
8:58 P.M.
Why had she been complaining for days now about being too hot?
Now, as Indigo lay on the ground inside a new cave, this one smaller, darker, and danker than the last, it was cold that plagued her.
Normally, she was fairly good at maintaining an even body temperature, which she knew was supposed to be one of the enhancements that came with the drugs. She’d spent countless hours being studied in that lab, tested in ways that she couldn’t help but feel were supposed to break her.
Mentally, not physically.
Dr. Gardner wanted his super soldiers to be physically strong, but he also wanted to destroy them psychologically so he could rebuild them in the image of what he expected them to be.
So torture was part of her daily routine. Once it became clear that she wasn't going to immediately succumb to the anger or suicidal thoughts, then the crazed scientist really doubled down on those tests. Some days she might be locked in a freezing room, dressed in nothing but the underwear in which she spent all her time dressed in. At first, she’d internally bemoaned the loss of clothing, but over time she’d come to be grateful that at least she had something to give her a modicum of modesty.
One thing she could say about Dr. Gardner was that he saved his sexual depravity for others and left his test subjects alone. Which sucked for those poor souls, but at least it was one mark in her favor.
While locked in that freezing room, one of the scientists would often come in, check her body temperature and her limbs, looking for signs of frostbite. During these tests she was always cuffed to a metal table, they didn't want her to be able to curl in on herself to try to preserve more body heat. Integrity of the experiment was what Dr. Gardner always called it.
During those tests, she’d always felt the cold, she wasn't completelyimpervious to it, but it had never been all-consuming. Tolerable, that’s how she’d describe it. Same way it had been when he’d performed the same tests with heat, or when he’d seen how long she could go without food while still being able to run miles on a treadmill, or how long she could last without water before the effects of dehydration took over.
Tolerable.
Always tolerable.
Until now.
Until she’d gotten sick.
Until heat had ravaged her system to the point where she wanted to give in to the voice that whispered constantly at the back of her mind that it would be better to be dead than to endure.
Until cold seemed to surround her, wrapping around her body, seeping inside it until it took all her effort not to shake convulsively.
Couldn’t do that.
Didn't want to worry Voodoo.
The man had been off since earlier in the day when her leg had finally given out on her and she’d been unable to summon enough strength in it to get it to cooperate so she could walk, even with the crutch to take most of her weight.
