Free No Life But This by Anna Sheehan Page A

to break him, I’m just going to bend him a little.’ ‘What do you expect me to do? Let him kill himself? That’s my job!’ Finally, Tristan dragged him off me, and I curled back up into my ball. ‘Fine,’ Quin snarled. ‘Let him die. I hate him anyway.’ This was followed by only a grunt, as he dismissed whatever it was Tristan signed in reply to this.

chapter 5
    Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with the repercussions of my escape. There’s a certain advantage to dying – no one thinks it’s fair to punish you. Dr Svarog, however, seemed disapproving as he looked me over. I ignored him, staring into the ceiling as if I could see through it to the stars above. Ultimately he sedated me.
    As the sedative worked its way through my system, I keptthinking of that kiss I had dropped on Rose. I had been very out of it. I would never have done such a thing otherwise. Not that I hadn’t thought of it. I thought about it every night when I went to bed. Every evening was an exercise in self-restraint as I imagined touching Rose’s white throat, kissing her soft red lips, feeling her fingertips against my skin. She helped me sleep.
    But lately,it had been frustrating to 42, who surged up out of my subconscious before the sedative took hold. She hovered there, in my mind, exuding disapproval. I didn’t want her there. I loved her, but I could never fully forgive her for dying on me.
    ‘
You burning sped,’
she told me before I passed out.
    ‘You burning sped,’ Rose said as I opened my eyes.
    That seemed to be the consensus. Quin, 42, nowRose. I blinked at her. She was sitting by my bed in the light from the window, working on her sketchbook. I sat up a bit. My head pounded, but not too badly. She set her sketchbook down on the chair and went to me. I glanced at the book – she was sketching my sleeping form.
    She knelt by my bedside and took hold of my hand.
‘You scared me to death!’
she told me silently. It was a very spiky thought,but I let her pierce me. I deserved it.
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Quin tells me this has been building for weeks.’
    I was more surprised that Quin was willing to talk to her at all than that he had told her that, specifically.
    ‘Probably years,’
I pointed out.
‘I’ve been living on borrowed time since the eighth grade.
’
    She frowned. She was unconvinced. ‘Your doctors thought that you had already gone throughit,’ she said. ‘And came out unscathed.’
    I shook my head.
‘That wasn’t me. That was 42. I just went with her.’
    ‘Then why did it take so long for you to react, if all the others died that year? And why is Tristan okay?’
    I didn’t know. I sent her one huge, long uncertainty attached to half a dozen theories and a dozen possibilities branching off each one, finally ending in a baffling and unanswerable
?????????
    She sighed and let go of me. ‘Xavier and I spent all of yesterday looking for a solution.’
    I frowned. All of yesterday?
‘How long have I been out?’
I signed.
    ‘The sedatives wore off yesterday afternoon, but you’ve been sleeping since then.’ She glanced up at the monitor above my head. I felt the wires on my scalp and I knew it was monitoring my brain waves. These had let her knowI wasn’t dying, so she let me sleep. With a resigned tug I pulled the wires from my head. The machine beeped angrily, and finally went silent.
    ‘Sorry about those,’ Rose said. ‘I didn’t feel like stopping them.’
    I nodded that I didn’t blame her.
    ‘I’m sorry about the stasis thing,’ Rose said.
    ‘
I understand,’
 I signed to her.
    ‘I just thought … it would buy you time to find a cure. I didn’t think…’
    I gently took her hand.
‘I do understand,’
I told her.
‘That wasn’t the problem. Please try to understand about this. I’d be in there forever. There is no cure for “There shouldn’t be anything wrong.”’
    Her next thoughts surprised me no end.
‘There might be.’
    I let go of her hand, blinking. She