"If you think you can do it, I'm all for it," I said.
Alex grinned. "Trust . I've seen worse, and it worked out. Now, can you take off your glove?"
I thought about it, checking my HUD for alerts. There weren't any left. "Assuming the repair systems worked, yes."
I used my right glove to set the left gauntlet to split and be absorbed into the left forearm. It worked. That didn't surprise and it shouldn't have. It wasn't the first ti I'd tried it after all, but it was the first ti I'd tried it after the suit took massive damage.
"Oh," Haley said, staring at my hand.
Amy eyed it coolly. "That's bad. I got a few burns like it when we fought aliens, last spring."
I let my eyes move from the suit's forearms to my actual hand. It looked terrible. The skin was wrinkled and gray, and made think of grilled at. It looked a little browner around the joints, and a little pinker on the top where I thought I might be able to feel sothing.
I might have been deluding myself.
Alex shook his head. "I guess it's a good thing we spent the sumr putting on muscle. I'm going to be pulling material from your arm, and also from stored fat. Your hand will be a little weaker than you're used to when I'm done, but that will change over ti. Ready?"
I nodded.
"Great," he said, and my hand began to tingle. A mont later, it felt good, but a little painful at the sa ti, a little like it might after hard exercise. Alex wasn't finished though. Both the pain and the pleasure continued, but it didn't stay constant. It felt like it started at my wrist, slowly moving toward my fingers.
At first my hand didn't visibly change. Then the skin began to crack and flake off, the gray skin beginning to get a little color at first, but then growing dry and starting to itch.
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I gave Alex a sidelong glance. "May I touch it?"
He held up his hand to stop from talking, and said, "Not yet. I'm not done."
His mouth a flat line, eyes staring at my arm or maybe at everything inside it, Alex was more serious than I'd ever seen him.
I let him work. A few minutes later, I had a working hand. It looked just like it had except a little more pink. It felt a little sore.
When Alex said, "You're done," I set the glove to reform around my hand.
"Good idea. Tomorrow you'll want to put on sunblock unless you want a sunburn, and you'll want to keep it up for a while. Oh, and one more thing. You don't have fingerprints on that hand."
"Oh," I said.
"No kidding?" Lee grinned. "I know people who would pay good money for that."
Alex t his eyes. "How much?"
"Four, or five figures, but it's got to be both hands."
Laughing, Alex said, "I'm sure all these guys are totally legit and no one would get in trouble at all."
"You bet," Lee said. "Not if you didn't get caught anyway."
Half an hour later, I'd parked the van back in the garage and we were inside the foothill. Daniel and the others had moved everyone in to one of the complex's big conference rooms. Most of the people had been woken up by then, and either sat in the conference room, talking quietly with each other, or had left for their own rooms.
As for myself, I was talking with Daniel near one of the corners. I wore only a stealth suit, having left the Rocket suit back in the van. Hunter and Adam lay on the floor unconscious next to a cart covered with plastic chairs.
"So we've got them," I said. "What did you find out?"
Daniel frowned. "I found out that we've got nothing. Hunter was duped. He liked Adam and trusted him, and when Artaxus took over the show he was mind controlled."
"That figures," I said. "Well, at least we've got Adam. We can find so answers there... And now you're looking at in a way that's making nervous."
" too," Haley had been talking (separately) to Camille and then Travis, but she'd walked around the chair cart just then. Or so I assud. Her ability to sneak up without noticing had always been unnerving.
"About that," Daniel said. "Adam's not Adam. That's actually--"
"Courtney." Haley said. She'd sniffed the air as he'd said, "Adam's not Adam."
I shook my head. "That's not possible. I saw them both at the sa ti more than once. She couldn't have been him all the ti. What happened?"
Daniel shrugged. "Pretty much the sa thing as Hunter. She wasn't deliberately helping Adam like he was, but she was close when he left. Artaxus made her believe she was Adam and change shape. And no, you didn't interact with her at all. She never went down where you were held. She spent the whole ti up here working for Artaxus."
I wasn't sure what to say. Well, at least I hadn't ended up fighting her.
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