Chapter 6 - THE FIRST TREMORS
For eight months, the medical monitors in Everett Kane’s suite had hummed with the monotonous, flat rhythm of a man trapped behind glass. The nurses hired by Sterling changed bags, checked vitals with bored precision, and spoke over Everett’s body as if he were a piece of antique furniture.
Then came Chapter 6.
It was 3:15 AM on a Thursday. The room was dark except for the amber glow of the IV pump screen. Willa sat in her velvet armchair, her eyes heavy with exhaustion, her fingers tracing the margin of her spiral notebook.
Suddenly, the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor hitched.
Beep. Beep. Bi-beep.
Willa bolted upright, her professional instincts flashing back to life. She stepped to the bedside in two long strides, her eyes darting to the monitors. Everett’s pulse rate had jumped from a sluggish fifty-four beats per minute to seventy-two. His brow furrowed tightly, a line of tension cutting across the pale skin above his dark eyebrows.
“Everett?” she breathed, leaning over him.
Beneath his closed eyelids, his eyeballs were moving rapidly under the skin—a sign of fierce, frantic REM activity. He was fighting his way upward through the chemical fog.
With trembling fingers, Willa reached out and pressed her palm against his wrist. His skin was warm, his muscles rigid as steel cables. He wasn't just waking up; his nervous system was violently rejecting the heavy doses of paralytics and sedatives Whitfield had been steadily feeding him.
“Don't fight it all at once,” she whispered urgently, her thumb pressing softly against his pulse point. “I know you're angry. I know you're trapped. But if your heart spikes too fast, Sterling’s doctors will notice the anomaly on the remote telemetry log. Slow down. Breathe with me.”
It sounded insane—whispering breathing exercises to an unconscious multi-millionaire in a locked mansion.
Yet, beneath her hand, Everett’s pulse rate crested, hovered, and then slowly began to stabilize back down to sixty-five. The violent furrow in his brow relaxed by a fraction.
Across the room, the digital telemetry console blinked green, logging the minor fluctuation as routine nocturnal restlessness.
May you like
Willa let out a long, shaky breath, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. She looked down at his face, her heart hammering against her ribs.
He was in there. The dragon was stirring in its cave. And Sterling Kane had no idea what was waking up beneath his roof.
