Blood Bond

It was early morning, and the light that came through the shades was a pale bluish grey. But we had the kitchen lights all on, because we wanted to see the color of our toasts.

"Is it ready yet? You don't want to burn it." Maya stooped down, bringing herself to eye level with the soaked toast sizzling on the pan.

I pretended to bonk her head of chestnut hair with a swing of my spatula. "It's been only like half a minute. You want it a little crispy and cooked, right?"

Maya scrunched her nose up at me. "Well, I think you put too much butter." She pointed accusingly at the poor innocent pan. "Look how it's bubbling all over!"

I glanced back toward the cooking webpage on the touchpad. "Everyone says you can't have too much butter." Then gestured to the bowl containing the mixture of milk and eggs. "But I think you put way too much sugar in there."

"Calm down you two. I'm sure it'll be delicious." Mom's relaxed voice came from the dining table where she was nursing a cup of steaming coffee.

"Yup, you just sit and chill, Mom!" Maya declared.

I lifted a corner of the toast and, seeing it was golden-brown, flipped it.

After transferring the still crackling toast onto a plate, I handed it off to Maya. "You can put the sliced fruits and whip cream on."

"Yeah, yeah! I know what to do." Maya grumbled as she carried the plate off.

I dipped another piece of bread into the mixture bowl. As I looked over our modest but modern kitchen and breathed in the warm, comforting scent of cinnamon and butter that mingled with Mom's coffee, I wondered what the kitchen back in the Keep was like. They probably didn't have gas stoves, but maybe something powered by magic. It might be fun trying to cook something. The food the staff made us was always so fancy and intricate. I wondered if my Mother and Father there would enjoy something simple made by me, like French Toast or an Omelette. Maybe I should do that one day.

If I'm even still alive over there.

It's been over a week now, and I still haven't switched to the other side. Last I remembered was me drowning in blood essence and pain.

Perhaps I'm stuck here permanently now. Was that really a bad thing?

"Leo, how long are you going to soak that?" Maya cried out.

"Umm… Oh!" I quickly lifted up the dripping bread and moved it to the pan where it instantly sizzled. "I just wanted it extra soft on the inside."

Maya rolled her eyes. "Yeah right, stop obsessing over Naomi."

I humored her with a light laugh and finished cooking the French Toasts.

After that, we all sat with smiles on our faces as we enjoyed our little celebratory breakfast for my first week out of the facility.

—

The clang of my locker door was immediately swallowed by the roar of the hallway, a hundred overlapping conversations, the squeak of sneakers on linoleum, the sharp scent of floor wax. It was a chaotic symphony, so different from the sterile silence I'd grown used to. I checked the time on my BMI link. It had become a habit for me.

"Why are you still wearing that thing?" Sam muttered with a scowl. "Aren't you out of there?"

I shrugged. "I'm still in their program, so I'm kinda obligated."

It's not like I could give back the money, so for now I'm still their specimen.

I turned the black wristband in front of him, showing its smooth seamless surface. "See, there's no way to open this thing. And I'm sure they'd charge me for breaking it."

Sam leaned in closer and examined it, attempting to pry at it with his fingers. "Yeah, sorry about that. It must suck."

"Why would you be sorry? It's not that big a deal. Some of the other kids think it's pretty cool."

Chloe walked over, looking dubiously between the two of us. "You two are looking rather intimate, drawing a few stares here. Isn't this how rumors start?"

Sam quickly dropped the wristband like a hot potato, and jerked away. I exhaled a laugh. Even though I was just recently back, everyone seemed to already know who I was with.

Naomi came up to me and smiled. She slanted an eye toward Sam's flushed face. "Something happened?"

I smiled back at her, our shoulders touching. "We were messing around. Let's get to Bio."

After waving off Sam, who had to run to his class on the other side of school, Chloe, Naomi, and I walked to Biology class. On the way, we cracked jokes and chatted excitedly about our plans for the weekend. We waved and called out to friends, ducked away from a few glares, and I even got a few tidbits on the more infamous kids.

This was the high school experience I had read about in books and missed while in the hospital bed. I was starting to feel like one of them, a normal student, and not some out of place traveler. This was something I could never be in the other world.

As we turned the corner we found Kyle leaning back against the wall, attempting to look cool as he waited for us. I rolled my eyes at him, but gave him the fist bump he asked for as he reached out to me. He smacked my shoulder. "Bro, glad to have you back!"

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

—

After school, I got into the back seats of an unmarked black sedan waiting for me by a corner. The ride was as always, silent—a quiet buffer between my two worlds on Earth.

Antara had kept his word. Blackwood did several rounds of tests and had verified that I was cleared of the malignant cells. Professor Herbert went nuts, of course, demanding even more tests. I think he wanted to lock me up in a deeper section of the facility. I got The Director and Julia to force him to back off, and allow me to go back to my normal life, since I was now cancer free.

Had to make a few concessions though.

The airlock door hissed as they slid open and I walked out of the decontamination chamber.

"Hey Mr. Norman, good afternoon," I called out and waved.

The large man, whose skin was a little less scaly, grunted, but then gave me a slow begrudging nod.

Annie's room was empty when I entered. Her bed was made up, looking as if it hadn't been slept in for a while, and Alice in Wonderland was still spread out on the desk where I'd left it.

I knew where she was.

She was sitting at the desk in my room down here, playing some game on my laptop while her bear watched. She still had her pink bow headband on, but some patches of her hair were coming back.

"Annie, you know you can get a laptop in your room right?" I took a seat in the bed and leaned back on my hands.

Annie puffed her cheeks at me. "I want to leave and go live with Big Sister Leo as well!"

I smiled at her, readjusting her bow. "Maybe once you get better. But I'm not sure my mom would approve…"

She has no other family members. Where could she go once she's cured?

I forced a smile.

For some reason Blackwood insisted on keeping this room here, mine. Maybe they knew something that I don't, Antara did say only a few years.

"Annie, what do you see when you look at me? Are the roots still there?"

She paused her game and set her green eyes on me. "They are still there. They are just really hard to see. Like something is covering them up."

It was strange. I had reached into my heart again through my blood, and I couldn't find that horrifying mass of dendrites again, but I did feel something there. A strange oppressive presence suffocating my cells as they flowed past my core.

I wondered what it all meant. "And how long do I have? More than before?"

"Much more." She raised her bear and hid her face behind it. "But less than me, much…"

The door slid open and Julia entered. "Good timing. Both of you are here. Annie, time for another round of treatment. And Leonard, Stanley expects you to help analyze the results." Her eyes glanced down the hallway. "Really, he can't do anything without you these days."

"He's still Professor Can't Be!" Annie huffed with her arms crossed.

The sight of her adorable outrage made both Julia and I chuckle.

Annie was lying on the bed when I walked into the treatment room with my new lab coat on.

She sat up, grinning from ear to ear. "You look great, Big Sister Leo! Are you a doctor now?"

"Just a technician." I took a seat on the stool beside her and raised a square device with a handle on it. A strange, unfamiliar feeling swelled inside me.

I have a job! A part-time one, but it certainly pays a ton, along with other benefits!

My finger pressed against a pin atop the device and a drop of my blood filled a receptacle on it. The front face of the device lit up, casting a soft, warm light, and I moved the beam over Annie. I held her hand, giving her tiny fingers a squeeze. "Now, just lay back and relax, like last time."

When I got back from Aetheria after the battle, I decided to tell Julia about the healing glow that I memorized. There was just too much potential not to.

We could save so many lives.

Unfortunately, I could only form a small patch of reflector cells here on Earth, and no matter how many tools they tried to analyze it with—from spectrophotometers to active emission spectrometers—they couldn't reproduce the glow. At least not its healing effects.

I then had an epiphany. Maybe it took me so long to memorize the glow because my blood wasn't just capturing a snapshot of the light, but learning to replicate and predict its actual behavior.

So Professor Herbert and I developed a prototype where a drop of my blood was connected with a synthetic array of reflector cells that would deflect light from a high powered light source down to the patient. It gave me control, and also saved me the trouble of having to form reflector cells.

"Close your eyes." I moved the device over Annie's head, spotlighting face. "This feels ok?"

She nodded at me, but I was focused on features of her face, watching for the minute ticks, and any slight changes in her expression. As always, my blood seemed to know what to do. It modulated the kind of light the reflector cells reflected based on what I saw. Annie exhaled, breathing lightly, her facial muscles went slack. A gentle smile set in on her lips.

It made me think that the key to the healing spell was more about being aware of the recipient's reaction to it and adjusting accordingly.

What it said about Lelian, and the hours long torture session…

It made me even more angry at Antara for stopping me.

"Thanks, Big Sister Leo! I feel even better now!" I didn't even have time to react before Annie's arms wrapped around me and smothered me with a hug.

At least I got this out of the ordeal.

Julia stood by the door with her hands on her hips. "Now, we just need more of him."

The way her voice whipped over the air, made the hair on the back of my neck stand on ends. The smile on her face was one that I was neither used to, nor appreciated.

I took a seat next to Professor Herbert at the computer, his finger tracing out a few lines on the graph. "Look here, Leo. This is Patient Hasting's malignant cell count in relation to the varying intensities and frequencies of that light. Here are the other patients. Fascinating, yes?" He then looked hopefully into my eyes. "You think there might be a pattern?"

I leaned forward, resting my chin on my hand as the lines of the graphs burned into my vision. "Yeah, maybe? A time axis as well could help…"

I know, I'm giving them a weapon that could be used against me. But this really seems like something that can save a lot of lives. Something wonderful from another world.

Besides, I wanted more than just a few years. Antara. I didn't trust him when he said he couldn't cure my cancer. It felt all too convenient that he could only push my death back by a few years.

But to go up against a god, I needed all the resources that I could possibly get my hands on, including everything Blackwood had to offer.

—

Down in the depths of a long dark tunnel, amongst the mechanical hum of the air vents and the stale recirculated air, Key was crawling up a pipe that wrapped around a circular, reinforced door. He reached a black box with numbered buttons on it, and his tiny paws methodically pressed out the code: a sequence of sixteen numbers.

Once he was done, there weren't any beeps of acknowledgement. Instead the gears creaked and the door slowly rolled to one side, revealing another tunnel lit by trails of light strips that descended downwards.

Key hopped down and scurried into the lowest level of the Blackwood facility.