“Whatever,” Christian said, not willing to admit defeat. “I still think she might be the better candidate to bring it up.”
“Well, we don’t need to do it right now,” Jamie said. “Why don’t we wait until the Leadership team meeting and talk about it then?”
“If we can,” Cadence replied. “Something tells me Aaron is on to something with what this movement means, and he’s just about ready to declare he’s figured it out. If that’s the case, we won’t have time to wait until the meeting.”
“Let’s play it by ear then, and we’ll see how it goes,” Jamie said with a heavy sigh.
That worked for Cadence. “Okay, but there is one more thing I’ve been pondering.” She realized it was past 1:00 now and her beloved might walk in at any time. She glanced over her shoulder at the door. “Listen, it’s probably really dumb for me to even bring this up… but I’ve been thinking about another tool we have that might be useful, if we can figure out how to use it without killing anyone.”
“The grenades?” Christian asked. “Because I really think those were a big help last time. We just need to work on the timing from the release of the pin a little more.”
The overwhelming urge to roll her eyes again was fought off. “Uh, that’s not what I was thinking about,” she replied. After Christian had put Cassidy in a position where she almost caught herself on fire with the idiotic grenades, she had a few ideas where he could stick them. “I was actually thinking about… the Retransformation serum.” She looked at each of their faces, waiting for a reaction, but saw only confusion.
“Say what, now?” Elliott asked. “You think our best chance at defeating these demonic Vampires is to become human again?” He scratched his head. “I mean, I’m by no means a genius, but I think that might actually be counterproductive.”
He was within striking range, so she popped him in the bicep. “No, moron, that is not what I meant. At all.”
Elliott laughed like her punch was a tickle, and Jamie’s voice caught her attention. “Are you saying you think we should see if we can use the Retransformation serum to make us all stronger—like Aaron?”
“Precisely,” Cadence replied, breathing a sigh of relief that someone understood what she was saying.
“But it’s still undergoing trials,” Christian explained. “Dr. Morrow is fairly certain the current formula will work at ninety to ninety-five percent, which is even better than the Hunter Retransformation serum, but he’s not done yet. It could be a few more months before he’s done with the human trials.”
“So we try it on Elliott,” Cadence blurted. She’d spent enough time toying around with this idea in the back of her mind for the last couple of days, she thought it might be their best chance at defeating whatever came through the portal.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, looking at her like she’d grown a second head. “Hey, I’ve only been undead for a few weeks, and I think I’d rather stick to this dimension for a little while, thank you very much.”
Once again, Cadence inspected her eyelids. “It can’t kill you, remember? Nothing can.”
“Yeah, well, you go ahead and test that out on yourself and see if you feel comfortable first,” he argued.
“I’m not a Guardian,” she reminded him. “But if we think the Hunter Retransformation serum would have the same effect, hell yeah, I’d be willing to try it.”
“Seriously?” Christian asked. “You saw what happened to Aaron. You said he died, remember?”
“That was different,” Cadence countered. “That was on a mountain top in Ireland with only me to try to save him. Now, the serum is better, and Jamie would be there to fix it if something went wrong.”
“He couldn’t have fixed that either,” Christian countered. “When we’ve tried to save Hunters who are dying in the Retransformation process with Healers, it hasn’t worked. Not to mention, who would be there to save Jamie?”
“I don’t know,” Cadence admitted. Still undeterred, she said, “We’d fly in Cale or Scarlet or someone.”
“Like they could stop it.” Christian shook his head and dropped his eyes to the floor.
“I don’t think it matters,” Jamie said, finally joining the conversation once more. Cadence turned her head to look at him. His countenance was contemplative, and she was sure he was going to say it wouldn’t matter because Aaron would never let them try it, and he was most definitely right.
But that’s not what he said. Coming back to them, he cleared his throat and looked her in the eye. “I don’t think it was the Retransformation serum that did that to Aaron in the first place,” he explained. “I think that’s what almost killed him, but I don’t think that’s why he has the superpowers he has now, the X-ray vision, speed of light movements, all of that.”
She raised her eyebrows, though the picture was starting to come together for her. “You think it was just a second dose of the Transformation serum?” she asked for clarification.
The Healer nodded. “Yeah. I can’t imagine there are any instances of that ever being administered before—not on a Guardian. I know we tried it on some Hunters in the past who didn’t react well to the Retransformation serum, but whether or not a second dosage would have those same results on a healthy Hunter, I couldn’t say.”
“As far as I know, it’s never been done,” Christian agreed.
“So you’re saying that you think it wouldn’t kill us to try?” Elliott asked, looking from Cadence to Jamie but avoiding Christian.
With a shrug, the doctor said, “I don’t know. But I think it’s worth testing on some tissue samples. It can’t hurt anything.”
“What can’t hurt anything?”
The sound of Aaron’s voice behind her had Cadence literally jumping, and if she hadn’t had her hands wrapped tightly around the armrests, she might’ve flown out of her chair. Thoughts of what they might say to cover their scheming—which they obviously couldn’t share with him yet—wouldn’t come to mind, and she opened her mouth hoping an excuse would come out, but she only stammered.