Wild Tiger Chase | Book #2 (Complete)

32: bloodfeather

— Rio - New Continent, same day—

Rio blinked a few times, and his vision went back to normal. It was almost as if he had spent an entire week inside a bathtub filled with freezing water and confusion, considering the way his head was heavy and empty, his heart throbbing, and his shoulders tense. He was also trembling and as cold as a corpse.

He looked around him as the sounds slipped back into his mind.

And all at once, his patient's scream boomed and bounced around the small, metallic room. It hit his chest like a handful of needles and sent him reeling back until he hit the wall. Rio's lips trembled; his eyes widened. What was happening?

His patient pounced and ran towards Rio, gnarling and biting the air like a wild beast. The chains grated through the metallic loops in the floor until the tungsten spheres stopped the patient with a hard tug. He growled, teeth snapping in the air and a dense, white foam forming in the corner of his lips. His eyes changed from blue to orange, to purple, and then to a strong shade of red.

Holy shit, what had left him so agitated? He hadn't acted like this for a while now.

"It's okay," Rio said. He went for a soothing tone, but his voice trembled. "Calm down, okay?"

It pained Rio to see him like this. The man before him growled for a long moment, eyes set on the door at Rio's back. He turned around and watched in silence as the door swung softly and closed with a click.

A cold shiver climbed up Rio's back. He was alone in the labs, but he still felt a weird, lingering presence in there, as if someone had just left. But Rio didn't have much time to worry about it. His patient's knees buckled and met the hard floor with a hard jab that made Rio grimace. He crouched in front of the patient.

"It's okay," he whispered again, caressing his hair. "I'm here."

"Leaving," the patient mumbled, his voice so groggy and so low, Rio could barely understand him. "Pain. Hurts! Why... leave?"

Rio's breathing caught in his throat. His patient had never spoken a single word before. Rio's eyes snapped to the now-closed door and back to his patient again. With a teary smile, Rio wrapped his arms around the other man's frame. His long hair still smelled like the roses shampoo Rio had used to wash it this morning.

"Why leave?" the patient repeated—with a gentler tone this time.

Rio chuckled against the soft silk of the patient's hair. "I need to make sure some of my friends won't ruin my research, that's all." He stepped back, held the patient's face, and turned it this side and that. The scars were already fading, letting his moles and freckles be the only beauty marks on his cheeks. And those eyes...

There was so much intelligence in those cerulean-blue eyes.

The patient leaned back, freeing himself. "You won't... back." His face scrunched up and he averted his gaze.

"Of course I'll come back," Rio cooed.

Four years ago, when Rio found him amidst the debris of the Murilean Mansion, he never thought Antônio McCockay would be alive. More than that, Rio never thought he would feel this attached to him.

This should have been nothing but a few exams and maybe some non-invasive experiments. He had promised to hand Toni to the authorities once he made sure Toni would survive, but... what kind of nurse-slash-scientist would he be if he lost the opportunity of a lifetime? After all, Toni had been dead for two entire years, and now he was here. How the fuck could a dead man be revived like this? He needed to know.