Predatory Game
Page 47

“You can already read my biorhythm, right? You monitor my pulse, even my blood pressure. Start slow. See what you can do. We don’t have to do the regeneration all in one day, in one session. Neither of us knows how it will work.”
“It’s an experiment, Jesse, and a darned dangerous one. If Lily did this, she could have the equipment ready in case anything happened to you.”
“She could have equipment ready after the fact, but you can prevent disaster from happening in the first place. You’ll know if my heart starts to go crazy, or anything else goes wrong.”
“Maybe-but you’re betting your life on a very big maybe.”
“And the other thing, Lily has no way of monitoring the cells themselves. She would have no way of knowing the cells were becoming overstimulated, so she would be guessing at the electrical pulses used. You’ll be far more accurate.”
“Jesse,” Saber shook her head, holding her shaking hand out in front of her. “You don’t have a clue of the process any more than I would have for moving objects. You’re guessing because you want it to be true.”
“Am I?”
Saber closed her eyes and let her breath out. Eric and Lily couldn’t know the amount of electrical current to introduce. How could they? Their guesses would be less precise than hers.
“Okay. But you tell Lily.”
“She’ll want to be here, and I want to start now.”
“I don’t care. We can start, but you tell her what we’re doing. If she has advice or objections, I want to hear them.”
“I thought you didn’t trust her,” he grumbled, pushing his chair down the hall to his office, with Saber walking behind him.
“I’ve changed my mind.”
He unlocked the door and waved her inside. Saber took the most comfortable chair and waited until he brought Lily up on the monitor. As Jesse explained what he wanted to do, the dawning excitement on Lily Whitney’s face made Saber’s hands clench the armrests of her chair. “Jess! I should have thought of that. It was there in his file about cell regeneration, but I didn’t think about Saber. Can you really do that? Is it possible, Saber? Can you monitor him internally and know when to stop?”
Saber shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“I studied your file. You’re unique. I’ve never run across anyone else like you, with your talent, so this would be such a gift to the GhostWalkers if you could actually use electrical currents. There’s so much I could teach on manipulating cells for wounds. This could be historic…” She broke off. “I’m sorry. I get carried away sometimes. You must be really frightened thinking about trying it on Jess.”
“It terrifies me,” Saber admitted. She still found it hard to trust Lily-to trust anyone. “No one has any idea if it will work or even how to do it.”
The thought of Jess without his wheelchair was scary. She hadn’t realized how much she relied on that chair to keep her safe. She’d seen glimpses of the real Jess Calhoun, confident and skilled, a warrior, a SEAL, a GhostWalker. He would demand she give everything and he’d give just as much. What if it worked? What if it didn’t? She could barely breathe she was so close to panic, and that was simply-unacceptable.
“If you want to try with me here, I’ll be glad to help monitor him,” Lily offered. “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but we can talk about it as we go.”
Saber twisted her fingers together and tried to look calm. “That sounds best. Then, if he goes down, you can get us help fast.” Her eyes met Jess’s. “You’ll have to have your legs stretched out.”
“That small couch is a futon. I rest in here sometimes,” Jess said.
“Is that what you do when I think you’re hard at work?” Saber said, trying to inject a light note into the situation. She was liable to have a heart attack before they were through she was so scared.
As Saber pulled off the cushion to unfold the frame, she heard Lily rattle papers. “While she’s fixing up the room, Jess, I may as well let you know we got the identities of three of the four men who attacked your sister. The fourth man is a ghost. He’s dead. I mean he was listed as dead before he ever arrived in Sheridan. The other three were all army, just as you suspected. And the ghost was a Ranger. Special Forces. He took the psychic exam, but didn’t pass it. Didn’t score any psychic ability. He was supposedly killed in Afghanistan.”
“I’ll bet that was the one they called Ben.”
“Ben Fromeyer. Supposedly deceased a couple of years ago,” Lily said. “But here’s the really interesting thing, at least to Ryland. Two of your dead men served under Colonel Higgens before he was killed. Higgens is the man who tried to have Ryland and his GhostWalker team destroyed. We thought he murdered Whitney.”
Jess noted that once again, Lily distanced herself from her father. “Higgens was selling secrets to other countries. Conspiracy, treason, espionage, murder-the man was a real piece of work.”
Lily nodded. “Ryland thought he stopped him.”
“But maybe Higgens was just a cog in the wheel,” Jess mused. “And it’s been moving right along ever since.”
“That’s what Ryland thinks. He wants to discuss this with General Rainer.”
“He can’t until Rainer is cleared. You know that, Lily.”
“He won’t. But in spite of the circumstantial evidence, Ryland doesn’t believe the general is involved.”
“Ranier’s army, and he was a good friend of Whitney’s.”
“I know. I know that. But Peter Whitney never sold out his country. Higgens wanted him dead because he found out about the espionage ring. That part was very real. Whitney faked his death and went underground so he could continue with his experiments, but you can bet he’s still got every single government contact he had before.”
“Does that include General Rainer?”
Lily shook her head. “Absolutely not. The general has been very good to the GhostWalkers. Without him, Ryland’s team would be on the run.” She looked past Jess to Saber. “Saber is ready, Jess, if you really want to try this.”
Jess didn’t make the mistake of hesitating. One look at Saber’s face told him she was ready to run. He pushed his chair close to the futon and locked the brakes so he could shift onto the open bed. Saber handed him the two pillows that he kept on the shelf in the frame, and he stretched out, positioning his legs so Saber could touch them easily.
She sank down beside him and tangled her fingers with his. “Are you certain? Very certain you want to try this?”
He could feel her trembling and raised her knuckles to his mouth. “I need to do this, Saber. If there’s a way I can walk again, then I have to try.”
She took a breath and let it out, glanced at Lily, who nodded encouragement, and moved down to the end of the futon where she could circle Jess’s ankle with her fingers. His skin was warm, so the circulation was working. She had to calm her mind, put away any possibility of mistakes, and listen, find his rhythm and hear what was happening in his body.
In actuality, it was more than hearing-Saber felt the movement of blood. Felt the way everything worked, as if it were her own body, as if they shared one skin, much like it felt when Jess made love to her. That same breath. The euphoria. He was so strong, inside and out.
She moved one hand up his leg to his calf, trying to feel the electrical pulse, that field of energy always present. She had to map the electrical properties of the damaged cells. She could identify them and keep the map in her mind, one of her greatest gifts. Lily and Eric had believed that with the DNA Whitney had given Jess during the genetic enhancement, and with the new drug accelerating cell repair, they would be able to stimulate the damaged nerves to work, but clearly the damage was far too severe.
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
She moistened her lower lip with her tongue, the only sign of nerves. “Obviously, Jesse, I’m in uncharted territory. If the damaged cells had been usable, physical therapy would have been enough along with the other things Lily and Eric have tried, but the therapy failed. Before I can stimulate new nerves to grow, I’ll have to get rid of the damaged ones.”
Jess linked his fingers behind his head. “That makes sense.”
She flashed him a brief, tentative smile. “I’m glad you think so. And I sure hope you’re right about Dr. Whitney, because I’m using everything he said in that file. According to him, many areas of the body have their own built-in programs for regrowing themselves if they’re damaged. To heal myself, or someone else, in theory, all I really have to do is trigger one of those programs and the body will do the rest.”
“Let’s do it then.”
Saber sighed. She’d said “in theory.” He had chosen to ignore that part. To trigger the program she needed to send a steady stream of electrical signal to the right place at the right time. The body’s own biological regrowth program for that particular area would take over and do the rest. It sure beat trying to micromanage the regrowth process herself-that is, if Whitney was correct in his findings. She could just watch it kick in after she jump-started it.
“Come on, Saber, let’s do this.”
She scowled at him. “You know this isn’t quite as easy as you want it to be. For one thing, aside from having never done it, I have to learn all kinds of little details. I have to be careful when healing wounds to apply the electrical current in the right direction. If I blow it, the wound would open up instead of close. This is going to take a little time until I figure out what I’m doing.”
He rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “I’m sorry. I know it’s going to work, Saber. If you do this, I’ll be able to walk again.”
“Well, don’t talk to me anymore. Let me visualize this.” Because she was scared now. She’d killed over and over again with the touch of her hand. Now she was going to do something good for a change-if she didn’t blow it and do further damage. And she was going to have to follow Dr. Whitney’s instructions verbatim. He had written that report for her to read, knowing she would read it and retain every word. He had described in great detail what needed to be done and how to do it. First she had to shrivel up the damaged nerve segment, using a targeted burst of electrical current. Then she needed to grow a new nerve segment to replace it.
Growth of new nerves-neurogenesis-took a special application of her skill. Like an artist, she would “direct” the electrical field from one point to another-across the gap where the damaged nerve segment used to be-“painting” where she wanted the new nerve pathway to appear. This would set up an electrical field across the space she was visualizing, and nerve cells would start growing in the direction she had “commanded.”
She started tentatively, and found that for growing neural pathways, a pulsed electrical current worked much better than a steady one. With persistence, she could generate an entire nerve segment. It was an amazing feeling. The nerve cells felt like plants sprouting in her mind; she visualized them that way. Some would push out tentative tendrils that would grow around neighboring cells. Others would retract if they touched other cells.
Once she grew some new nerve cells, she “fired” them repeatedly-just as if Jess were using those nerve cells over and over again, to break them in and to trigger growth of even newer neurons hanging off of them. If she generated more current, it resulted in faster growth of new nerve cells…but she also had to be careful to not overdo it and “fry” the new nerve segment she was creating.
It was an exhausting business, but she grew more confident as she realized the useless tissue and cells were being replaced by healthy muscle and nerves. She concentrated on the most damaged areas, around the bionics where the electrical signals had been severed, and stimulated the growth in those precise muscles and nerves needed to drive the bionics.