Possession-Blood Ties 2 by Jennifer Armintrout Page B

hundred years. They finally let me retire back in the fifties. Er, the eighteen fifties. Too bad, though. During that whole ‘don’t exercise or your uterus will fall out’ time period, no one would have seen a female assassin coming.”
    “Three hundred years? Wait…” I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Nathan told me the Movement was two hundred years old.”
    “Yeah, but before we started calling ourselves the Movement, because it made a better acronym, we were the Order of the Brethren. Things were a lot tougher back then, let me tell you.”
    We ventured farther into the building than she’d taken us on our previous tour. This area, I noticed, had fewer safe rooms and more security labels. We reached a large set of double doors with a thick, black-and-yellow-striped line around them. Huge red warning signs, printed in several different languages, plastered the doors. In addition to a key card reader, I noticed there was a palm scan device and a keypad on the wall.
    “This is the most secure section of headquarters,” Anne explained. “Only high level administrators and security have access. Oh, and the scientists who monitor the Oracle.”
    “Scientists?” I chewed my lip nervously as I watched her key in the codes. The English language sticker on the door warned an improper access sequence would result in a security breach alert, and I didn’t remember where I’d seen the last safe room.
    “Yeah. She’s got a whole team of doctors and chemists and pharmacists keeping her medicated and fed well and under control.” The same computerized voice from the elevator informed us that the access sequence was accepted, and Anne pushed open the door with a flourish.
    “If she’s drugged up, why is Max so afraid of her?” He’s not the kind of guy to be blindly afraid of anything.
    Anne made another “pff” sound of dismissal. “He was on the team that moved her to the new facility back in the eighties. Really, he shouldn’t have been assigned, he was too young. He’s too young now. Anyway, her meds didn’t hold, and she twisted one of the team members’ heads off.”
    “Twisted?” My guts mimicked the motion implied by my word. “She’s got that kind of power?”
    “Oh, yeah. She’s got mad telekinesis. It would be cool, if she didn’t use it so destructively. But that’s why she’s constantly doped up. Ah, here we are!”
    We turned left and went through thoroughly unintimidating swinging doors, into a room with black walls like an exhibit in a museum. A dark window the size of a movie screen dominated one wall, separated from us by a brass railing.
    “Stand there,” Anne instructed, moving toward the window, where she turned a dial. The lights dimmed slowly on our side of the glass as the other side illuminated.
    “This is like the penguin house at Sea World,” I said, my voice sounding way too loud in the quiet room, and Anne snorted in laughter.

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    Behind the glass, a void of still redness surrounded a murky, suspended shape. It took me a moment to realize what the redness was.
    “Is that blood?”
    Anne joined me at the rail. “Yup. The Oracle can’t feed in the traditional sense anymore. She requires much more blood to support her tissues. Total immersion allows her to draw the blood in through her lungs and pores as well as her digestive system. The blood cycles through purifying and oxygenating filters continually, to provide optimal nourishment for her.”
    “So, you’ve got a giant heart-lung machine back there, pumping blood?” I squinted at the tank.
    Anne nodded and shrugged. “Pretty much.”
    As the lights grew brighter, the shape came into focus. A figure, nude and obviously female, floated in the blood. What appeared to be intravenous lines and electrode wires connected to her slender limbs and bald head. Her face was relaxed, eyes closed as if in sleep. She was