Super Secret | Half Hero Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 1: Dead Man Walking

Try as we might to avoid it, our past will inevitably come back to bite us in the ass, and almost exclusively when we least expect it. 

I was having such a moment, gaping at the dead man walking up to shake my hand.

His auburn skin crinkled around a pair of gold-flecked green eyes that widened the moment he caught sight of me. I marveled at the uncanny crook of his smile, which tugged his features into an expression I'd gotten to know quite well while in sleep-away-government-psycho camp last year.

I took a tentative step closer as my mom's fingers tightened protectively around my forearm. Her heart rate (only detectable to me and my inexplicable supernatural powers) was sputtering with parental anxiety. 

The waning afternoon light spilling through the picture window of my municipal apartment cut an angular shadow across the man I could have sworn I'd watched bleed out in a hallway eleven months ago.

"Rishi?" I breathed, knitting my brow to study the smart black cane he was leaning against.

"Ah, no," doctor Rishi's twin chuckled kindly as I accepted his outstretched palm. His skin was soft yet his shake was warm and suitably short (unlike most of the career bureaucrats I'd met lately.) "Arujn was my brother. My name is Varun Rishi, Arujn's older and much handsomer brother."

I laughed in spite of myself, a nervous sound that petered out into awkward silence while I was left holding Varun's hand. 

All I could picture was doctor Rishi's terrified eyes wide with fear and pain as blood filled his lungs. He was helping me escape, and I left his little brother to die alone (not exactly how you want to start off a working relationship with someone).

My mom moved to Varun's side to gently unhooked our grasped palms. She was wearing a new perfume, something I didn't immediately recognize, but it had notes of jasmine.

"Varun's been helping us with the move," she said tenderly. "And his lawyers are fighting to bring you home. He's going to be working with the Department on your case to make sure nothing happens to you that you don't want to. We owe him a lot."

"I'm sorry," I shook my head to clear my thoughts. "Why did you call doctor Rishi Ar-roon?"

Varun's lips curved into the same smile his brother wore in my memories. "Arujn changed his name because people had trouble pronouncing it," he spoke of his sibling wistfully. The wound of his brother's untimely demise was obviously still fresh for him. "Eventually we all succumb to the follies that make us human, I suppose."

I shot Galen (my government provided nanny man) a sideways glance. He was stone-faced, leaning up against my laminate kitchenette counter watching with his toned arms crossed over his starched white shirt. Galen clearly wasn't super happy about Varun overseeing the deep science exploration of my altered genetic makeup on Project Scion.

"The department has been kind enough to supply what's left of my brother's research, and I will work tirelessly to find out how this happened to you, Ella." Varun's conviction was a little much for eight in the morning, but I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He'd been helping my family while I gallivanted through South East Asia with Mac pissing everybody off. That counted for everything in my book. "What I am lacking is the proper equipment."

"Is our lab not up to your standards?" Galen drawled with barely contained spurn, pushing off the counter to join the conversation. "Whatever it is you need, we can get. That was the agreement."

His masculine stride gave off a tense energy that made me squirmy.

"I'm having some paraphernalia shipped out from my personal lab," Varun nodded his head full of salt and pepper waves in Galen's direction respectfully. "Your people are welcome to inspect everything upon arrival, per said agreement."