Reviving Olivia (Project DEEP Book 7)
Reviving Olivia
Project DEEP, Book Seven
Becca Jameson
Copyright © 2019 by Becca Jameson
eBook ISBN: 978-1-946911-52-0
Print ISBN: 978-1-946911-53-7
Cover Artist: Scott Carpenter
Editor: Christa Soule
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. And resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
About the Book
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Author’s Note
Also by Becca Jameson
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I really have to thank everyone who listened to me ramble on and on about this series for months while I worked out the plot and figured out where we were going. It’s a totally new genre for me. (Well, I mean except for the fact that it’s still erotic romance! Let’s not get carried away.) So, it took a lot of planning.
The concept came to me in the early hours of the morning in a dream when I wasn’t quite awake yet. (Okay, gotta pause again here to say that “early” is a relative term. I don’t do “early.” Nothing in my world is actually “early.” I just mean whatever time the last hour of my sleep occurred. Probably more like ten in the morning.)
In my dream, there were these scientists in a government bunker. They were studying diseases. They got sick. They had to be cryonically preserved… And from there, a series was launched. I spent a great deal of time studying cryonics and learning the difference between cryonics, cryobiology, and cryogenics--which are very different things.
I worked very hard to ensure that my terminology was correct with respect to the field of cryonics, though I obviously took a great deal of artistic liberty when reviving the preserved since alas, as far as we know, no one has been reanimated to this date.
Many thanks to Christa Soule for plotting with me when we were in the early stages, and then when we were in the middle stages, and still to this day.
Thanks to my husband and countless friends who listened to me and added their two cents.
Thanks as usual to my cover artist, Scott Carpenter, for designing these series covers. He rocks, and he nailed it once again!
Praise for Becca Jameson
“Time and time again, Ms. Jameson infuses her talent for creating pleasurable and entertaining love stories with wonderful characters, a depth of passion, and the joy at discovering your soul mate that is beautiful and thoroughly sexy.”
Shannon, The Romance Studio
“Becca Jameson can write sex, hot, steamy, make-you-cold-shower-twice sex. She also can write emotion.”
Felicity Nichols, Mad in Wonderland Reviews
“I always love reading Becca Jameson's bedroom scenes and how she makes her heroes fall so completely in love with the female leads in her stories.”
Roni, Romance Book Scene
“Becca has the ability to create the different worlds, draw you into them, and keep you wanting more with her writing ability. The way she writes the different characters, you can’t help but to feel for their emotions. When they are scared and upset, you are as well.”
Crystal’s Many Reviewers
About the Book
Olivia.
Cryonically preserved for ten years without her knowledge.
Holds the mysterious key that could free everyone.
Living on the run with two very tempting men, while hoping more than anything that her past doesn’t compromise her future.
Spencer.
Computer hacker who escaped the enemy.
A skill set that could save the entire DEEP team.
Lacking confidence could be his undoing, especially when it comes to the two people he cares about most.
Damon.
Cryonicist who revived twenty-four souls.
Protector of the two lives in his care.
Hopeful that he can convince them to be his, and scared to death he might not be enough for them.
An unconventional relationship born under duress, in isolation.
Can their bond hold true when the dust settles?
The books in this series can be read on their own, but readers will enjoy the Project DEEP series more if they are read order.
Prologue
“Oh. My. God,” Damon muttered as he rolled his chair back to his desk.
His hands were shaking as he set the file folder on the desk and continued to flip through the pages.
“You okay?” Ryan asked from a few feet away. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Or perhaps, in our case, cured a disease.” He chuckled for a moment.
Damon glanced up at him, knowing the blood had rushed from his face.
Ryan sobered. “Shit. What is it?” He shoved from his desk and approached to lean over the file Damon had in front of him.
Damon swallowed and flipped back to the first page. It was the medical file for Olivia Genova. No. No, not at all. It was a second medical file for Olivia Genova.
Ryan leaned closer. “Looks like Olivia’s file. We’ve been through the entire thing. Did you find something new?”
“That’s an understatement,” Damon muttered as he tugged her original file out from under the new one. He lifted his gaze as he shook the file. “This is her file.” He dropped it on the corner of the desk and reached for the new one once again. “I just found this second one in the bottom of the file cabinet, lying flat under all the other files.”
“Seriously?” Ryan reached for the top few pages.
Damon watched him scan through the information, knowing in a moment he was going to come to the same realization as Damon.
“Fuck.”
“Uh-huh.” Damon leaned back, running his hands through his hair and trying to catch a full breath.
“According to this, she’s not sick. She doesn’t have myasthenia gravis. She never did.”
Damon didn’t move a muscle as he let Ryan continue to read through the data. “Jesus. She was never sick. She’s perfectly healthy.”
“Looks that way,” Damon agreed. At least he hadn’t lost his mind and his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
Ryan dropped the file. “If this is accurate, why the hell was she preserved?”
Damon shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong person.” He stretched across the desk for the file on their other cryonically preserved patient—Dr. Joseph Boyden. “I’d say the only person who knows the answer to that question is Dr. Boyden because it would seem he was the one to preserve her.”
“Holy mother…” Ryan whispered.
There were only two people preserved at this New Mexico bunker. Far fewer than the twenty-two who had been vitrified and later revived a
t the Colorado facility for Project DEEP. At least the scientists who’d spent ten years vitrified in Colorado had all been legitimately diagnosed with a rare viral anemia that had now been cured.
Ryan, Damon, and three other members of their team had been working on a cure for myasthenia gravis for months now, and they were racing against the clock. So close.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem like it even mattered, at least not for these two patients. Damon pointed out the obvious. “We’ve been working our asses off to find a cure for a disease that Olivia Genova doesn’t have, while there is little chance Dr. Joseph Boyden can even be revived.” The man had waited too late to have himself preserved. Even if a cure were found, his file indicated he would probably not survive reanimation.
“This is huge.” Ryan dropped down onto a chair next to Damon’s desk, rubbing his temples. “Why the hell would Dr. Boyden preserve a nurse who wasn’t sick?” Ryan repeated.
Damon turned his attention back to Olivia’s file. “I’m going to pore over this ten times and compare it to the first one, but considering the evidence and the fact that this file was hidden under everything else at the bottom of the cabinet, I doubt I’m going to come to a different conclusion.”
“Dr. Boyden preserved a woman who was not sick,” Ryan whispered, as if this needed repeating multiple times in order to sink in. He met Damon’s gaze again. “Dr. Boyden might not be the only person who knows why Olivia was preserved.”
Damon nodded in agreement. “You’re right. And there’s only one way to find out.” It was time to bring Olivia back from the dead.
Chapter 1
Two months later…
Damon sat several feet from his patient, staring at her while hardly blinking. For the last month he’d been isolated in this studio apartment on the fourth, and top, floor of the building. It was only a few hundred square feet. The living room, kitchen, and bedroom were all one. The only escape from anyone was the bathroom.
Not that Damon needed escape. Olivia had been in a coma for the entire month. In fact, Damon only left her side long enough to take quick showers, and he never shut the bathroom door.
Twenty-eight lonely days during which Damon had experienced only limited contact with the outside world. Besides the occasional delivery guy who brought groceries and supplies, Damon’s only other connection had been phone calls to Ryan and his other coworker, Dade. Dade was hiding out with the majority of the original team of scientists from Project DEEP at a farmhouse in Montana owned and operated by a group called SURVIVE.
Today was the day. Today, he would disconnect Olivia from the equipment used to keep her alive and bring her to consciousness.
Today, he would get answers.
His phone vibrated on the coffee table in front of him, and he snagged it to connect the call. “Hello?” he asked in a normal voice. The number was unknown, but this meant nothing. Damon had gone through several burner phones already.
“Hey. You ready?” Ryan’s voice inquired.
“More than. You have no idea what it’s like to spend this many days alone. I hope she’s not a raving lunatic or something.”
Ryan chuckled. “Let’s hope not. For your sake. Because you can’t leave that apartment even after she wakes up.”
“I’m clear on that. How are things going in New Mexico?”
“Nearly the same as you, except I have Emily with me. Thank God. If it weren’t for her, I’d have gone insane. I don’t know how you managed.”
Damon chuckled. “And lucky for you, Emily isn’t some random person you can barely tolerate.” It wasn’t funny, really. Damon envied his friend and coworker. The man was trapped with his own girlfriend. Dr. Boyden, the guy they were tasked with protecting, was still in a cryostat.
“Yeah, I tolerate Emily just fine,” he joked. A month ago, when Damon fled the New Mexico bunker to find a safer place to hide with Olivia, Ryan and Emily had taken the enormous risk of staying behind in secret to guard the last cryostat.
There had been no way to move the cryostat itself, so Ryan and Emily had volunteered to stay at the bunker while all other nonessential staff left. The only remaining people working at that bunker were guards hired to man the gate and fence line.
The guards weren’t plentiful in numbers, however, and the bunker had been broken into already twice—as they’d feared might happen, which was why everyone relocated. The organization that was intent on finding all the Project DEEP team members, for God only knew what reason, meant business.
Blue Cell. That was the name the organization called themselves, though Damon had no clue what or who they were. All the details DEEP had on them came from a hacker who had escaped Blue Cell—Spencer Casey, some genius kid Dade spoke of highly.
Both times the New Mexico bunker had been breached, Ryan and Emily had hidden in a safe room while praying no one bothered the cryostat. And luckily, both times, they had not been found, and the cryostat with Dr. Boyden had remained undisturbed.
Damon sighed, shoving his envy of Ryan aside. At least the man was with his woman. “Has anyone been in contact with Temple?” General Temple Levenson was in charge of the Falling Rock, Colorado, bunker. Even though twenty-two people had been revived in that bunker, none of them were still there. The damn place wasn’t safe.
“My parents have. Temple is still at the bunker with a skeleton staff.”
“Is she furious with all of us?” The last two people to leave the bunker entirely were Ryan’s parents, Trish and Tushar Anand, the original leaders of the team. Temple was aware of their departure and the reasons why. She’d even been supportive. After the latest incident involving two men who shot Tushar and tried to kill Graham, Temple had admitted the entire situation was out of her hands.
“She’s being understanding. She realizes we’re all just trying to save lives, our own as well as others’. She doesn’t even want us to let her know where we are or what we’re doing.”
“At least she’s finally coming around to understanding that information that crosses her desk or enters her ears is never sacred.”
“Exactly.”
“And Montana? Are Dade and his crazy hacker any closer to figuring out why people are hunting us down?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Well, that sucks. What am I supposed to tell Olivia when she wakes up in a few hours? Hey, so, yeah, here’s the thing, we can’t actually leave this room.” Damon’s worst fear was that Olivia would be hysterical and difficult to convince of the severity of their situation.
He still had no earthly idea why she’d been preserved, and he hoped to God she would provide all of them with some answers.
Certainly no one else had the information…
Ryan chuckled. “Not sure I would tell her that first thing. Maybe start by offering her some water.”
“You’re funny.” Damon sat up straighter and closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay, I’m going to disconnect her from everything. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Sounds good. Call me.”
Damon ended the call, took a deep breath, and headed toward his patient. He didn’t even have a hospital bed in the small apartment. He’d rented it furnished, and the only bed was queen-sized. Luckily, the couch was long because Damon had slept on it most nights.
There were times he’d slept carefully next to Olivia, but it made him nervous, fearing he might roll over and dislodge her IV or something vital.
As he unhooked her from the equipment, he prayed she would prove to be at least someone he could get along with for the time being. He knew nothing about her personality. Her file had given him enough details for him to know she was twenty-three and a nurse. There was no mention of any family in her file, and when Damon did an internet search for her, he came up with very little.
He knew where she’d gotten her nursing degree and what year, but that was about it. She was a mystery beyond that. Did anyone know she had been preserved? Friends? Coworkers? A boyfriend? Or hell, maybe a girlfriend?
It would take several hours for her to open her eyes, so Damon forced himself to lie down next to her and try to nap. Lord knew he hadn’t gotten enough sleep in the last few weeks. The constant stress over being found weighed on him at all times.
Damon jerked awake, confused for several seconds about where he was and what had woken him before he sat up straight and twisted toward Olivia.
She was staring at him with wide eyes, licking her lips.
“You’re awake.” He scrambled off the bed and rounded to her side before reaching for her wrist to check her pulse out of habit.
She jerked her hand out of his grip, surprising him with her strength. “Who are you? And where am I?” Her voice was weak, but stronger than any of the other patients he’d been with when they first awoke.
“I’m Dr. Damon Bardsley. I’ve been taking care of you.”
She frowned. “Am I sick?”
Shit. He hadn’t really been able to figure out what he would say to her, mostly because he hadn’t been able to imagine what she might ask. He shook his head.
“Was I in an accident?” She glanced down at her body. “I don’t have any broken bones.” She tried to lift her head and gave up, dropping back to the bed. “Why am I so weak?”