“Meg, can you reach in and take away some of her sadness? It may help her ease into consciousness,” Evan suggested.
Meg sighed. “Right.” This time she kept her hands to herself. Meg reached out with her warm white blanket and draped it over the girl’s sadness, reminding herself that Farrow was just an innocent who had been caught up in Williams’ evil. Like Creed, no one came to rescue her either.
Those thoughts gave Meg renewed determination to help. She stretched her emotional blanket around the girl’s darkness, bundled it up and pulled it away from her. With a prayer, Meg tossed it up into the sky. She sensed Farrow’s body shudder, muscles contract, then relax.
Meg opened her eyes and sighed deeply. She had to sit down, momentarily spent from her work.
She noticed something about this evolved gift that she didn’t like at all. Not only was it disorienting and exhausting to slip into someone else’s mind, she was also starting to get some intense headaches afterward. Stabbing, vice crushing, headaches came on quickly and seemed in direct correlation with how much effort she expended into the empath reading.
Meg rubbed her temples and watched as Farrow’s eyelids fluttered.
“Farrow? I’m Meg, and you’re here with my family. You’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you. My brother treated your wound, and you’re healing just fine. It’s okay to open your eyes.” Meg sent gentle waves of calm across the emotional connection still tangible to her, and felt the pain in her own headache surge.
Farrow’s large doe eyes opened slowly, as though she didn’t completely trust what she would see.
“Am I dreaming?” The girl’s voice was scratchy around the question.
“No, dear. You’re finally awake. Though you’ve been out of it for a couple of days,” Margo said gently and offered her a reassuring smile.
Margo reached out to accept bottled water from Alik’s hand and tipped the bendable straw so she could hold it still for Farrow to take a sip.
“Take a couple sips. Slowly,” Margo warned holding the straw still for her. She obeyed, taking two small sips, eyes wide with a mixture of awe and disbelief.
“How are you feeling?” Evan asked.
“Different,” she responded without hesitation.
“Different in what way?” Evan pressed.
“I was so angry—furious,” she started and wrinkled her brow remembering more of her dreams of abandonment, “but now—” her voice trailed to a stop. “You’re the metas the director wants so badly. And you,” Farrow locked eyes with Margo. “You were my target.”
“We are the Winter family. I’m Margo, and you’ve just met my daughter, Meg. This is my youngest, Evan. He was your doctor, by the way. And this is my older son, Alik.” Mom looked at the drawn face of Dr. Andrews. “That’s my dear friend, Dr. Theo Andrews and the young man on the stretcher across the aisle is his son, Cole.”
Everyone murmured “hellos” to the dark-eyed beauty who had been their assigned assassin.
“I know this seems surreal,” Meg said to the only other female meta she’d ever met, “but we really do only want you to get better and ask you to join us, if you’re willing.”
“You did it, didn’t you?” Farrow asked Meg pointedly, skipping the implied question. No one in the room knew what she was talking about, except the empath.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I used my gift to help ease your sadness.”
“That is your gift?”
“It is part of it now,” Meg offered a tired smile through the pounding in her head.
“I was told your gift was to read emotions.” Farrow slowly sat up as they talked.
“It is, but I’ve evolved.”
“Evolved?”
“It’s kind of a long story, and I don’t mind sharing it with you, when you’re feeling more up to it.” Meg adjusted the gurney’s sheet around the girl’s legs to help her feel more comfortable. Meg sensed she was feeling very vulnerable.
“Are we on a plane? Where are we going?”
“Yes, we’re over the Pacific Ocean. We’ll be landing in LAX in a few hours to refuel.” Meg didn’t offer any more information about their final destination intentionally.
“You have to understand our concern, Farrow,” Alik began. “We need to know we can trust you not to hurt us. Williams came to hunt us back on the Big Island. He brought fourteen mutated metasoldiers with him. We escaped, but not before we lost two of our own.” Inwardly, Meg nodded approval of her brother not identifying the names of their dead.
Farrow looked around the room at her former targets.
“Why did you rescue me?” Her voice was small.
“Because it was the right thing to do,” Margo answered simply.
“But, I hurt your family,” Farrow grimaced thinking about how many of them she had personally harmed.
“Yes, you did,” Meg locked eyes with the former assassin. “We are willing to forgive you, if you’re willing to help us fight against Williams.”