Acceptable Risks Read Online Free PDF Page A

eulogy, and when he choked up, so did Jason. A decade of friendship, wrapped up in five minutes. Agent after agent filed past the closed casket, some touching it, others moving quickly past. Mourning someone who wasn’t gone. His parents hadn’t been there. He wondered what people thought about that. For damn sure not the truth—that his mother stayed away because she couldn’t act worth shit.
“Slow it down, Jason.”
Awareness clicked in and the sterile, glass-and-high-tech-plastic interior of the lab came into focus. He realized his finger was mashing down the speed button and his legs burned. He backed it down until it was slow enough to walk and accepted the towel Gabby handed him. “Thanks.”
“How do you feel?”
“Head clear, no chest pain, resps high but in range, heart rate…” He put his hands on the grips and waited for the machine to register. “One sixty. No nausea. Sweating like a horse, though.” He mopped his face. “What brings you to the lab, Dr. Berwell?”
She didn’t look up from her clipboard. “It’s not a lab, Jase.”
“Looks like one.” He snorted. “I mean, could this whole situation be any more of a cliché?” He stopped the treadmill and grabbed a water bottle off the table next to it. “Bionic man comes back from his fake death, engineered to be better, stronger—”
“Stop it.”
Her sharp tone halted him mid-stride. She never lost her composure. “Stop what?”
“That’s copyrighted material.”
He stared at her, then laughed, the anger he hadn’t labeled finally fading.
“Seriously, Jason, you’re not bionic. And I know you hate being cooped up in here, but you won’t talk to anyone.”
“I talk to you. And Matt.” When Matt bothered to come down, into the bowels of Hummingbird’s headquarters on the outskirts of Washington, DC.
But that wasn’t fair. In the aftermath of Hummingbird’s greatest failure, his friend had had his hands full. Kolanko and the kid were fine, and none of the Hummingbird team had been injured except Jason, but his own death had been spectacular enough without the explosion to compound it.
He sat on one of the hard benches and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m okay, Gabby. I just feel a little cooped up.”
“I know. And I know telling you it’s not forever doesn’t help, but I have something that might.”
He raised his eyebrows. “My final test results?”
“Your final test results.”
“All of them?”
Her red-lipsticked mouth curved. Huh. He hadn’t noticed her lipstick before. She looked good with it on.
“So tell me.” He was intimately familiar with the list of original damage. His spleen had taken the worst internally, and they’d removed it, which was part of the reason for his forced isolation. They’d repaired all his damaged bones with a gluelike compound that not only held them together to heal properly, but made them stronger. Enough of his two-hundred-six bones had been broken to make him wonder how much of his skeleton was now fake, but after three months floating in a special harness, it was solid enough to support his weight and the weight of the building besides.
Okay, maybe not that strong.
“Imaging shows that with one exception, your skeleton has fully solidified. Your white blood cell count is in a normal range, so the marrow is operational. Which, frankly,” she added, “we weren’t sure would happen.”
“I know.” It was one thing he appreciated. They’d been completely open with him about his chances from the first day he was awake. He’d insisted on hearing every detail of what had been done to him and what the results were expected to be. Death had been a constant possibility. “What’s the exception?”
“There’s a point in your sternum that’s not going to seal completely.”
“I have a hole in my chest?” He rubbed the spot in question, but couldn’t feel anything.
“Not a hole. Just a…thin spot, I guess you could say. It won’t interfere in anything