Jed rolled his shoulders discreetly while he was in the elevator, trying to rid himself of the knots bunching his muscles. If he were feeling out of it, she must be a hundred times worse. He wanted to be there for her. Besides, she was likely to be looking for a fight when she regained her strength and would insist on looking for him again, just as she did earlier. Even if she had to crawl. The corners of his lips lifted at that image.
He paused for a moment at the entrance, surprised and yet, not, at the sight that greeted him. This was one of the highly classified areas and usually, those who had access didn’t congregate in one room unless something important had happened.Elena. He was at her bedside in a few strides.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. Her face was pale, her eyes closed.
“She’s fine, Jed,” Dr. Kirkland reassured him. “She’s just a bit out of REM, but she’s drifting in and out of consciousness. She was aware of her surroundings but needed help to get off the Portal.”
He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. Her eyes fluttered, then opened. “Goodie,” she mumbled. “All the boys are here.”
Indeed. Jed finally turned around to acknowledge the presence of most of his team. They were watching and no one seemed in any particular hurry to leave. He looked at them questioningly, lifting his eyebrows a fraction.
“Is there a reason why all of you are assembled down here?”
“Eight Ball sent a message to me that Hell wasn’t breathing,” Flyboy said. “I’ve asked the computer to let me know if anything went wrong during a session.”
“I was with him when he took off.” Shahrukh shrugged. “We were in the middle of discussing something so I came along.”
Not breathing. That was probably when she was in a panic. Flyboy was the friendliest with Elena so Jed wasn’t surprised he’d be down here.
“Your vitals were also alarmingly out of control, Jed,” Dr. Kirkland chimed in, “and I was about to shut the thing down when you signaled you were aware and doing something about the situation.”
He remembered how his mind had been so immersed with Elena’s consciousness that he’d felt all her panic and fear at the idea of being buried alive. It’d taken him by surprise how real the sensation was and he’d undergone a few long seconds of sheer panic before his own logic broke through. He recalled his hand reaching out to curl around the emergency handle—if he’d pulled it, Dr. Kirkland would know something was very wrong; if he pushed it forward, that would mean that he wasn’t able to talk right now but was functioning. There were other buttons on it to help communicate any problems he couldn’texpress but he hadn’t had the time while talking Elena out of her panic and had trusted Dr. Kirkland not to panic at his end too. He turned his attention to Alex. So that was why Number One and Tess were here together. His lips quirked. And not quarrelling. Chain of command was priority. If anything had happened to him, Alex would take over this particular mission.
T’s eyes narrowed. “It couldn’t have been that bad if you can still make snide remarks with your eyes.”
Jed didn’t allow his smile to surface. T, as usual, was testing him, using her own way to assess his condition. “I’m never snide,” he said. He nodded toward Elena. “She’s okay, but we had the interesting experience of finding ourselves inside a crate. Not knowing our exact location and with the cramped space, the first conclusion was that it was a coffin or something buried.”
Understanding dawned in Tess’s and Alex’s eyes. A soft whistle came from one of the others and a few cusses.
“You mean—”
“Full-blown panic?” Alex asked, at the same time.
“And you experienced it too,” T finished. “That’s why your readings were going nuts.”
Jed nodded. “It took a minute for me to realize I wasn’t actually buried and wasn’t unable to breathe. It was Helen experiencing it.”
“Wait a minute. From what I’ve been reading, remote viewing is like watching something from a distance. The person I talked to said it’s similar to seeing the reflection of an event. So how is it that her experiences are so real she literally can’t breathe?” Flyboy asked, a frown forming.
“I think the most interesting question is why would her choking affect you?” Armando said from the corner of the room. His dark eyes met Jed’s. “You’re the monitor, not the remote viewer. Synced brainwaves can’t be that intimate, can they?”
Jed flicked his attention back on Elena. “My concern now is giving Hell some rest. Don’t wake her up, Doc. Believe me, she went through a lot.”
“Interesting non-answer,” Armando commented softly. “Isn’t that right, T darling?”
“He’s looking a bit off himself, I think,” Tess murmured. “If nothing’s too urgent, questions later.”
“I have verification of a number of the locations,” Jed announced quietly.
There was a stunned silence.
“On the list?”
“Not all of them, but yes,” Jed confirmed. He absently massaged the stiffness in his neck. “I wouldn’t say it’s not urgent, but we have some time. I need a half hour to make some notes. Maybe an hour.”
“He needs sleep,” Elena interrupted, her eyes still closed. She yawned, then turned on her stomach. “Hey, if he can know I’m exhausted, and you guys believe him, then it stands that I can know he’s just as exhausted.”
“You should be resting,” Jed told her.
