Supervillainess (Part One) Read Online Free Page A

futon and spooned soup into her
mouth.
    Just as he finished and sat back, bleary
eyed and exhausted, the woman stirred.
    Keladry Savage’s eyelashes fluttered open.
She gazed at the ceiling for a moment before looking at him with
large, dark eyes.
    “Hi. I’m Kimber. Well, Doctor Kimber –” he
started.
    “I can’t hear you.”
    He blinked. Concerned about her more serious
wounds, he hadn’t thought to double-check her ears after his
initial assessment. Kimber reached for the first aid kit tucked
under the futon.
    “Did you drug me?” Keladry demanded
quietly.
    He straightened. “I gave you morphine.”
Realizing she wasn’t going to understand him, he pulled the bottle
of pills from the first aid kit and held them up.
    “That’s why I can’t hear,” she said with a
frown.
    Kimber pulled an otoscope free from his kit
and fitted it with a disposable tip. He gripped her ear and slid
the instrument into it, flipping on the light to see her
eardrum.
    The woman batted his hand away. “There’s
nothing wrong with my ears,” she snapped.
    He leaned back, studying
her pupils. She showed no signs of fever, and her pupils were the
correct size, indicating the morphine he’d given her twenty hours
ago had worn off. “So you can or can’t hear?” he asked, lowering the
instrument.
    “Yes.” She shifted away from him as far as
possible and reached up to touch her face. “Where’s my mask?”
    Raising an eyebrow, Kimber lifted the
t-shirt she’d put eyeholes in from its spot on the floor. She
reached for it, but he held it away. “Why don’t you keep it off for
now?” he suggested, beginning to wonder about the state of her
mental health. “Until you’re healed. You shouldn’t have anything
restrictive anywhere on your body.”
    She considered him, as if the decision were
one of the more difficult ones in life, before relenting. “Very
well. You’ve already seen my face.”
    “Guess you’ll have to kill me now, right?”
he teased.
    “We’ll see how it goes. Did my father send
you?”
    “No.”
    She scoured her surroundings critically.
“What is this? A safe house? Prison? Am I under arrest?”
    “No,” he said. “It’s my apartment.”
    “Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “This shit
hole is where you live?”
    “Shit hole?” he repeated. “Do you have any
idea what rent is in the city? This is nice compared to what my
other options were.”
    “I’ve never been somewhere where blood on
the floor actually improves the carpet,” she said.
    Not expecting her sarcasm, Kimber’s tired
mind was too surprised for him to form a response. The carpet was
old and smelled musty when it rained, but he hadn’t cared when he
moved in and didn’t care now.
    At least I know she can
hear me. He caught sight of the blood
seeping from her abdomen onto her blanket. While he didn’t know how
to take her frankness, he easily slid into doctor mode. “You need
to be still. You’re healing, and I don’t have a spare set of
bedding.”
    Keladry glanced down then at him, brow
furrowed. “Who are you?”
    “Kimber Wellington, ER physician at Sand
City General.”
    “So I’m a hostage,” she said.
    “Uh, no.” Kimber said. “I found you in the
alley. No one else would help you so I did.”
    “Right. You’re something even worse than my
captor.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re an alleged do-gooder.”
    “No alleged about it.”
    “There’s no such thing, Kimber Wellington
from Sand City General.”
    “You’re alive, aren’t you?” he retorted.
    “If that’s what you call this,” she snapped
back. “I’ve seen torture chambers with more amenities.”
    Did she just say what I
think she said? Kimber opened his mouth to
respond when his patient swung her legs over the edge of the bed
and tried to stand.
    “Hold on!” he exclaimed and rose. “You can’t
be doing that. You have a puncture in your -”
    “I’m fine.” But her voice was faint, and she
wobbled the second her feet touched