Meg sighed deeply.
Cole’s facial expression changed from confused to scared as his memory kicked in. His hand reached up and felt his shoulder where he was struck by Farrow’s sniper bullet. He pulled up the short sleeve of his hospital gown to look at the wound with his own eyes. Clean, white gauze hugged the site. Tentatively, he touched the cloth. He felt nothing. No pain at all. Curious, he started peeling back the white medical tape.
Knowing he needed to see for himself what Evan determined an hour or so ago, Meg didn’t move to stop him.
Beneath the gauze was fresh, pink skin. Cole touched it carefully. Feeling no pain, he rubbed it gently with his palm. It felt a little tender, but fine. He stared amazed at how quickly he was healing.
“It’s a normal advantage metahumans experience,” Meg offered carefully.
His green eyes flashed to hers.
“Oh, my God,” he said slowly, face paling.
“Yeah.”
Cole sat silently for a few moments, eyes darting as he pieced together his memories. Meg just watched him. Evan had warned her that he may experience erratic behavior when he first awoke. They really didn’t know how Cole’s body was going to react to the serum.
Physically, he was definitely going through metahuman changes. His chest was widening with muscles. His legs were thickening and biceps growing. Even his sixteen-year-old face was changing. As she watched him process the implications of what he’d done to himself, Meg noticed his jaw had begun to square off, the cleft in his chin was becoming more defined, his forehead even seemed thicker and he was looking to need a good shave. Never had Meg known Cole to grow a dark scruffy beard, but there it was. She looked at his right cheek where his charming dimple used to flash when he’d smile and wondered if it would still be there.
Meg missed him. She missed her friend.
“What happened while I was out? Why did we have to leave the island?” Cole asked in a shaky voice.
“A lot happened, Cole. Are you sure you’re ready to hear it right now?”
“Not knowing is freaking me out. Just tell me.” A look of panic struck him and he tried to sit up, craning his neck to see around the passenger seats around us.
“Oh, my God. My dad! Where’s my dad?”
“He’s fine. He’s up front with mom.” Instinctively, she needed to soothe him, so she reached out and held his hand.
“Do you want me to get him?” Meg offered.
Cole’s green eyes stared back from a changed, matured face. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Okay,” she nodded reassuringly.
“Tell me what happened,” he urged.
Chapter 16 Sunlight In My Eyes
The landing in LAX to refuel was thankfully uneventful. They had the option to leave the plane for the two hours it was going to take for the ground crew to do their refueling and maintenance checks, but Meg didn’t want to. She felt compelled to keep vigil over the aircraft as strangers worked on it, worried Williams’ influence positioned someone evil nearby. Thoughts of bombs being planted or wires being cut kept her focusing her energies on the strangers who wandered around outside the plane.
They were all pretty anxious to get airborne again, but Margo found Meg to let her know that she and Theo were heading into the airport for a walk. Mom promised to be right back, but Meg knew she wanted a chance to talk with Theo alone, so she didn’t give her a hard time about leaving. As she watched them leave, she wondered again if she should offer to use her gift to help Theo.
Sometimes, it was hard to offer help only because the recipient would have to first admit they were struggling. No one worried about Evan helping perform surgery, but there was something different about her evolved empath ability.
People readily accepted the need to remove a bullet from the flesh through surgery, but not everyone was as comfortable admitting the need to remove the blackness of anger and sadness from their hearts. Somehow it made people feel lesser which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to an emotion-based being like Meg.
She could feel emotions just as well as she could reach out and feel someone’s skin. Everyone’s essence, their aura, their vibration, their emotional signature—as she’d taken to calling it—was as clear as their physical body to her. Sometimes it could be even more clear. She didn’t have to be with people to feel their emotional signature.
Meg was thinking about the irony of her empath gift causing people to feel stress instead of the peace it could offer, when she saw Alik and Farrow walking toward her.
“Hey, Meg. Are you okay if we head to do some shopping?” Alik nodded toward the airport.