Rebel Heart Read Online Free Page B

initial part, the taking of all your plasma and replacing it with clean plasma, is extremely painful, a person only feels it for a second. When they wake up, it is all over and it is as if nothing has happened."

 
    "You make the process sound so..."

 
    "I am at a loss for words."

 
    "It does no one any good to fear something that is inevitable but won't kill you. Here in this room all of you have gone through this process at least once. And you are still present and able to talk about it. It is part of the world I live in so I must get used to the barbaric practice."

 
    Forming a V around the girls and Lord and Lady DeMontville with Jonathan in the lead, they made their way to the chambers. The process would take about thirty minutes. The girls were ushered into the chambers, disrobed and hooked up to the plasma draining apparatus. Then the doors clanged shut. Stillness pervaded the waiting area; a hush fell over the seven remaining outside.

 
    DeMontville rested his head in his hands, remembering so many things and so many times he should have taken a heavier hand with Tori. He had never had it in him to punish his headstrong oldest twin. She'd never really done anything so bad. Just as this time she did not deserve this. But for the machinations of Quentin Morray and his camp followers, she and Nessa would not be sent away. Seven years was such a very long time.

 
    "I'm going to the mountains," Lady DeMontville said. "I have need of fresh air and honesty."

 
    "Go if you must, but there is no more honesty and faith in the mountains than there is in the city."

 
    "It's my home. I will come back though and soon. I cannot leave you for very long. My glider awaits and I will leave with the girls."

 
    "Don't think to follow them," DeMontville warned. And he prayed Morray did not have some vile plan to shadow one or both of the twins.

 
    "And which one would I follow? The one who needs me the most or the one most likely to find trouble?"

 
    "When you put it that way, neither, I suppose. Jonathan, would you arrange for the girls to have escorts?"

 
    "I have done that. No one will know where they go and where they will live for the next seven years save you."

 
    And the codicil you have in your wall safe. Guard it closely, Jonathan Reese. I am counting on you. If anything happens to me, you are their hope and their savior all in one package. Trust no one.

 
    "They are finished and have come through with shining colors," the nurse told them with a beaming smile.

 
    The girls followed in wheelchairs, looking pale as death and sleepy.

 
    "You should not put them on the gliders for another thirty minutes or so. They have a gallon of water they should drink and some bars that will help them through their recovery. They will be groggy at first but might become silly as the drugs wear off. Any questions?" the nurse asked.

 
    "No," DeMontville said. Trust no one. "What bill are they debating now?" he turned his attention to Jonathan.

 
    "On the floor as we speak are laws about interracial marriages. We hashed this over so many times I have the bill memorized as well as all of the pros and cons. What we need to do is overturn the bill prohibiting the genetic allele transplant surgery. I know it will work. And Cameron Savage has been working on the process for over a year now. His center in Reding is state of the art, but there is still the fear."

 
    "It won't happen until there are no other alternatives--until none of then new serums work--until people are dying in mass--until there are so many dead they cannot bury them all," DeMontville said.

 
    "Always the fear. It is really more like terror," Jonathan said.

 
    "Then there are the recruiting laws. Some believe every male over the age of fifteen should enlist. Others are outraged and say fifteen is much too young and if the males have to enlist, what about the females. I would say history always repeats itself."

 
    "Do you think there will be