The Taking 02: Hover Read Online Free PDF

“Wait—implantation?” I glance from Zeus to Jackson and back.
    The corners of Zeus’s mouth curl, and I realize he gets pleasure out of making people uncomfortable, pushing them mentally. “You are a member of my army now.” A haunting laugh floats from his throat, circling around the room, fear on its wake from the other Ancients in the room. “Welcome to Triad.”

Chapter 3
     
    I lay flat against a cold table, cringing as the healer beside me—the scary one from the Lexis incident earlier—shoves needle after needle into my arm, each one causing me to drift further from reality.
    I can’t remember how I arrived here. Stairway or elevator, a single door or a passageway, I’m not sure. I remember leaving Zeus and then lying on this table, undressed except for a makeshift cloth covering the important parts of my body. Zeus had dismissed everyone in the room except Jackson and me, his eyes on me while the other Ancients left. Then once the door closed behind the last Ancient, he walked over and shook my hand, as though we were old friends instead of enemies. I expected his skin to be cold, something about his look and attitude demanded cold skin, but nothing like this. It felt dry, the cold biting, like jumping into a stream during the winter. And the look on his face, a dare of some sorts, a checkmate, like he had me in sight and was going to enjoy watching me squirm.
    Then without another word, I was escorted away by his guard, Jackson at my side. They must have forced Jackson to leave, because I’m alone in the room except for the guard by the door and the scary healer next to me. She bears the same green dress as before, another long needle in hand. “Calm your mind, child,” she says, brushing one of her hands easily over my eyes. For the briefest second, I want to open them back up, but then a thick fog spreads over my brain, seeping down my neck and through my body. Warmth and relaxation move over me. I don’t feel or hear anything else after that. No light, no fear, no worry. I feel at peace for the first time since arriving here, and that’s when I realize what I must be experiencing—sleep. Peaceful sleep, void of the nightmares that have plagued me for weeks. I let my body succumb to it, grateful for the moment of serenity.
    But then I wake.
    Chaos reigns inside my brain in overload. Intense feelings—fear, worry, happiness, love—then words, jarring me from my rest and into the unknown. I feel the hardness of the table on my back, yet everything is spinning. I reach out for something to help steady me and feel a warm hand wrap around mine.
    “It’s okay,” Jackson says close to my ear. “It calms down. Just breathe.” And it’s too much. I feel him, Jackson, his every single thought toward me. He’s worried. No, he’s sad. Afraid. Worried. Sad—I can’t process it. I can’t think. His feelings mingle with my own, one orange, the other yellow, shades of the rainbow, one beside the other, never mixing, yet so close it’s difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Then a third slips into the color spectrum and I want to throw up—I’m going to throw up. Red. Hate. So much hate. There is no other word to describe it. A tear traces down my face, the sudden change in emotion so overwhelming if I could speak I would beg for relief.
    Jackson wipes away the tear. “Breathe. Just breathe.”
    I suck in a jagged breath, while tears continue to run down my face, pooling under my neck, wetting my hair. I want the red to leave. Please make it leave.
    “Leave now,” Jackson commands, the color coming off him changing from orange to black.
    “You are in my building, lest you forget,” Zeus says, and I feel him near, but not just his presence. His emotions, his thoughts, all of them directed at me. I open my eyes to see him leaning over me, a smile on his face, while waves of hate continue to lap through me, suffocating my mind and senses. “Pain is an object of the mind, like