Ghost Heart (The PSS Chronicles #3)

by Ripley Patton

  It was the page of a book. Page 113 of some book titled The Bone Road.

  I turned it over, looking for handwriting, and there it was, scrawled between the lines in faint pencil.

  I am your friend. Don’t cry. I will help you.

  I immediately disobeyed and burst into a fresh round of tears, leaning against the cool wall, my ribs heaving.

  “Hello?” I gasped when the sobs had subsided.

  “My name is Olivia. I’m a prisoner here. Are you a prisoner too? What’s your name? How long have you been here?”

  But there was no answer.

  “Why won’t you talk to me?” I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together. She’d told me not to cry. Maybe she was pissed because I had anyway. “Hello?” I called through the wall. “Are you still there?”

  I heard the rustle of someone moving away. She was leaving. She was abandoning me.

  I got down on all fours and smashed my face to the floor, trying to get a look through the hole, but all I could see was a small circle of light.

  I tried to dig away at the opening more, but all the loose mortar was gone and what was left was gritty and sharp, biting into my fingers and making them bleed. I might have made it a little bigger, but not much.

  I crumpled the book page in my hand, blood from my fingers smearing onto it. Then I opened it up again and smoothed it against my leg, reading the words carefully and slowly, savoring their promise.

  I had a friend who wanted to help me. Obviously she wasn’t a captive, or she wouldn’t have access to a book or a pencil. Maybe someone had been coming and she’d had to leave. Maybe, for some reason, she couldn’t talk. And what made me so sure she was a she? The finger had been slender, smaller than mine even. The touch had been feminine and so was the handwriting.

  The page blurred as my eyes filled with tears again, but I held them back.

  Don’t cry. That’s what she’d asked of me.

  I picked myself up off the floor and moved away from the hole, taking page 113 with me. I needed a place to hide it. There was a crack in the wall on the other side of the cell and I folded the page carefully, slipping it in, making sure to block the camera’s view while I did it.

  An hour or so later, Anthony came for me.

  He handcuffed me and took me back up toward Dr. Fineman’s lab, reminding me again on the way that if I said anything about our visit to Major Tom, he’d kill me.

  * * *

  The interrogation room wasn’t empty when we arrived.

  Dr. Fineman was already there.

  And there were others. Five others. Standing in a row along the far wall like a criminal line-up.

  I almost cried out when I saw them.

  They were teenagers, and captives, just like me.

  They were also handcuffed and chained together at the ankles, their demeanor completely beaten down, their shoulders slumped, their clothes filthy, their eyes staring at the floor. Worst of all, each of them was gagged with one of those ball gags, a black strap tight around their heads, sporting a red ball stoppering their mouths as if they’d bitten off an evil clown’s nose.

  I looked at Dr. Fineman and he smiled.

  What a sick fuck.

  I turned back to the captives. I vaguely recognized one or two from the crowd at the Eidolon. There were three girls, one blonde and two brunette, bookended by two guys. The guy closest to me was short and stocky with black hair. The guy on the end was tall and ripped, his brown hair flopping over his face.

  He flexed his shoulders and looked up at me, blue eyes locking onto mine through the veil of his bangs. I bit down on my lip and looked away, my heart plummeting in my chest.

  It was Grant.

  Grant was here, his blond hair so dirty I’d mistaken it for brown.

  That was why we’d never found his body up on the cliffs. Why no one had seen him escape.

  Grant was a captive of the CAMFers, and he didn’t even have PSS.

  He was here because of me. Because Dr. Fineman, who’d lived in my hometown and dated my mother, knew exactly who Grant was to me. He was my childhood crush. My next-door neighbor. My best friend’s brother. And when I’d gone missing, Grant had suddenly decided he loved me and then he’d forced a kiss on me at Shades. Dr. Fineman probably didn’t know that part. But it didn’t matter.

  Grant could not be here. I needed him NOT to be here, because even though he’d been a dick at the Eidolon and I didn’t care about him in that way, I still cared about him. He was still Emma’s brother and my friend, and I was terrified of what they’d do to him.

  And yet, my fear was mixed with an uncontrollable surge of joy and hope.

  Grant was here standing in front of me.

  I wasn’t alone.

  “As you can see,” Dr. Fineman purred, sidling closer to me, “I brought you some new test subjects. I thought we might conduct a little experiment on what happens when you put an item back into a subject from which it did not originate.”

  I stared at him, not understanding his words. He was pointing at the table again, the table in the middle of the room with the dog tags and matchbook on it.

  No.

  An image of Major Tom laid out in the morgue flashed in my mind. He was dead by his own hand, or mine, and that knife had come from him. I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if I put something somewhere it didn’t belong.

  “No way,” I said, shaking my head. With the cuff, Dr. Fineman could keep me from using my ghost hand on him and Anthony, but he couldn’t make me use it on someone else.

  “I thought you might feel that way.” The doctor slipped his hand into his lab coat pocket and pulled out his silver cube. “As we learned with Major Tom, telepathy and mind-control are wonderful new side-effects of the enhanced PSS signature of these items. If I put this in your hand and Anthony makes you hold it, I could make you do exactly as I wish.”

  “Or I could make you do what I wish.” I smiled wickedly. “Why don’t you ask Major Tom how that worked out for him?”

  Even as I said it, Anthony squeezed my arm, his fingers digging in and bruising me, but I didn’t care.

  Dr. Fineman turned pale and put the cube quickly back into his pocket. He was afraid of me and what I’d threatened. What if I could get my hand on that cube? Would I be able to mind-control my way out of here, or would he control me? Or we could just go back and forth, taking turns controlling each other the way Major Tom and I had. Would it be worth the risk?

  “Well,” the doctor said, clearing his throat, “if you will not cooperate willingly, then I suppose we will have to hurt one of these other guests until you become more cooperative.”

  “What? No!” I cried, but Anthony was already dragging me to the table. He shoved me into the chair and unlocked the handcuffs, pulling my arms through the metal slats and relocking them so I couldn’t move.

  One of the girls in the line-up began to shake and sob.

  I looked at Grant and his eyes caught mine, his head shaking slightly. It was the barest of motions, but I caught it. I just had no idea what it meant. Don’t give into them? Don’t let them hurt us?

  Anthony stepped in front of the table, his back to me, and pulled something from his pocket. It was a small boxy gun. Was he going to shoot one of them? No, it wasn’t a firearm. This was something else. Maybe a new minus meter design or some kind of stun gun.

  He strode up to the line of captives, stopping a few feet in front of the dark, stocky boy.

  The boy lifted his head, eyes almost as wide as the red ball in his mouth. He tried to shuffle back, away from Anthony, his chest heaving and drool running down his chin.

  Anthony lifted the device in his hand.

  “Don’t,” I shouted. “I’ll do it. Just don’t hurt him. Please.”

  Anthony turned and looked at Dr. Fineman, a question in his eyes.

  Grant took that moment of distraction to charge forward, barreling into Anthony, the other captives yanked off their feet and dr
agged across the floor behind him.

  Anthony was down, Grant solidly on top of him, but with his ankles, hands and mouth bound, all Grant could really do was lay there.

  I tried to jump up and nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets. Someone had bolted the damn chair to the floor.

  “Get the fuck off me,” Anthony bellowed, shoving Grant aside and sinking the gun thing into him.

  Grant gave out a muffled groan, the sound squeezing past the ball in his mouth, and he began to flail on the floor, his arms and legs spasming, his face turning bright red, all his muscles clenching and unclenching. I’d seen it before, when we’d used Yale’s homemade stun gun back in Greenfield. I knew it wouldn’t kill Grant, but watching him contort in pain because of me was almost more than I could take.

  Five seconds later he lay still, panting and puffing, Anthony standing over him.

  “You little prick,” Anthony said, hauling back his booted foot and kicking Grant in the ribs. “We were saving you for later, but you just couldn’t wait, could you?”

  I wanted to yell, wanted to tell Anthony to leave him alone, but I could see Dr. Fineman watching me, gauging my reaction and undoubtedly calculating how he could use Grant against me. So, I sat back in my chair and watched Grant try to roll away from the second kick.

  The other captives picked themselves up off the floor as best they could, the girls huddling up around the dark boy, all of them kneeling because they didn’t have enough slack in the chain to stand.

  “So, since you volunteered and all,” Anthony said, pulling out a key and bending down to unlock Grant’s ankle chains from the rest of them, “how about we see if your little friend here can put something in you?” He grabbed Grant by the arm, pulling him up and propelling him toward me at the table. “And if you do give us anymore trouble, I can always hurt her,” Anthony added, nodding in my direction.

  Fuck. This wasn’t good. It had been bad enough when they’d just had me. Now they could hurt all of us, use us against one another. Now they could make me do their bidding and they knew it.

  “Okay. I’ll do it,” I said, looking down at the items on the table. The matchbook. The dog tags. Which would be worse to put inside Grant? “Unlock my hands and turn off the cuff so we can get this over with,” I said to Dr. Fineman. He had a theory about all of this. Well, so did I. Time to do a little test and see who was right.

  Grant’s blue eyes fixed on me as Dr. Fineman took the keys from Anthony to undo my handcuffs. The doctor crossed behind me and when I felt the restraints fall away, I pulled my arms from between the chair slats, my muscles twinging with painful pleasure at being set free.

  “Put your hands on the table, slowly, where we can see them,” Dr. Fineman said. “And remember, I can disable your PSS hand in an instant, so don’t try anything funny.” He circled around in front of me, keeping a safe distance, withdrawing his hand from his lab coat pocket to show me his finger on the cuff controller.

  I placed both my hands on the table, palms up. “I’m not going to try anything funny,” I assured him. “But I need to reach for the matchbook and you need to bring him closer.” I nodded at Grant.

  “Fine, fine,” Dr. Fineman said eagerly, gesturing Anthony and Grant forward.

  As they approached, I reached out and touched the matchbook. As soon as I picked it up, it crackled in my hand, sending a tingle through my ghost fingers and up my arm.

  Whoa. It had never done that before.

  I stared down at it.

  Oh my God, had it come from inside Palmer? No, that couldn’t be. I certainly hadn’t pulled it out of him. I’d wanted to. I’d felt something in him that day outside of Greenfield when we’d had him tied to a tree. But I hadn’t done it.

  Or had I?

  Marcus and the guys had said he’d screamed, but I hadn’t remembered it. I’d blacked out or something. Could I have pulled something out of Palmer without even realizing it?

  No, that still didn’t make sense.

  They would have told me. Marcus would have told me if I’d pulled something out of Palmer. Besides, if I had, I’d be able to feel where he was whenever I touched it. I’d especially be able to feel him now that Fineman had enhanced the PSS signature. Yet, all I felt was the faint buzz.

  I hadn’t pulled the matchbook out of Palmer.

  But Dr. Fineman was convinced I’d pulled it out of someone, and now I was going to have to try and stuff it into Grant. He was standing in front of me, pressed up against the table, Anthony holding him from behind.

  “Take his gag off,” I said.

  Dr. Fineman nodded to Anthony and he unstrapped Grant’s gag, tossing it on the table in front of me with a wet splat.

  Grant’s jaw tightened and he looked down at me, resignation in his eyes. “It’s okay, Olivia,” he said, his voice hoarse from lack of use. “Do what you have to do.”

  It almost undid me, hearing him say that, as if he thought I was going to hurt him, maybe even kill him.

  I looked up into his blue, blue eyes, begging his forgiveness as I stretched out my ghost hand, the matchbook folded in my fist.

  Then I slipped it straight into his chest.

  My hand went into him easily. It sank through his clothes and skin, through flesh and muscle, right up to my wrist stump. There was no urgency like there’d been the other times I’d reached into people. No strange sensations. No sense of needing to find something and pull it out. It just felt like my hand was inside someone’s chest, as if it belonged there.

  Dr. Fineman glanced from me to Grant and back again.

  Anthony stared over Grant’s shoulder, his eyes boring into me, full of hatred.

  Grant’s eyes never left mine. He didn’t even look down at my hand inside of him.

  For a moment, nothing happened, all of us poised in a strange Mexican standoff. Then the matchbook fell from Grant’s shirtfront, fluttering down to the table and landing with a soft slap.

  Dr. Fineman frowned.

  “Well, that didn’t work,” I said, slipping my hand out of Grant and trying to hide my relief.

  “Try it again,” Dr. Fineman commanded, picking up the matchbook and handing it to me.

  I tried three more times, all of us standing there watching as I reached into Grant and the matchbook went fluttering to the table.

  After the third attempt, Dr. Fineman picked up the matchbook, clutching it in his hand. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  I thought about telling him the truth. Maybe it would get Palmer in trouble. Maybe it would put them at odds. But it would also solve a mystery that was driving Fineman crazy, and I needed every advantage I could get.

  “Some random guy at the Eidolon,” I lied. “He wanted to see what my hand could do, so I showed him.”

  “Impossible,” Fineman snapped. “This item doesn’t match any PSS signature I have on record.”

  “Yeah, so?” What was he saying? That he had a PSS sample of every Marked kid at the Eidolon? How was that even possible? I mean, I knew he was a collector of PSS. He’d told me that fun fact back in Greenfield, but how would he have gotten access to the members of The Hold?

  I looked up at Grant.

  He didn’t have PSS. And they hadn’t killed him.

  In fact, at the Eidolon, the CAMFers had specifically targeted and killed the Marked, which made no sense. Marcus had thought Dr. Fineman’s intention was to harvest PSS as a renewable energy source, but maybe that wasn’t what he’d been doing at all. Or maybe his plans had changed after I’d taken the cube from him. What if all the death and destruction up on those cliffs had somehow been my fault? What had the CAMFers said when they’d captured me? Hold your fire. He wants her alive.

  I glanced over at the group huddled near the wall. They had no signs of PSS that I could see. Of course, I’d learned from Passion and Samantha that PSS could be deep inside someone, manifesting internally, not externally. But did Dr. Fineman know that? Had he let these four and Grant live because they didn’t have
PSS? Or did they have PSS he simply couldn’t detect?

  “Here,” Dr. Fineman said, holding the dog tags in front of my face. “Try to put these in him.”

  I hesitated, feigning reluctance. This is exactly what I’d hoped he’d do.

  I reached out and took the tags in my ghost hand, feeling the familiar tingle.

  Passion, I screamed in my head, I’m in the compound in Oregon. Grant is here too. Tell Marcus. Come get us.

  I didn’t take time to feel her presence. If she was asleep, that should wake her. If she was awake, it might give her a headache. I didn’t really care, as long as she heard me.

  “Hurry up. What are you waiting for?” Dr. Fineman prodded me, his voice full of suspicion.

  I obediently stuck my ghost hand into Grant and the tags clattered to the table, refusing to go into him just like the matchbook had.

  “Good. Excellent,” Dr. Fineman said, a smug smile on his face.

  Why did he look so satisfied? It hadn’t worked. His experiment had been a flop.

  My eyes drifted to the square bulge in his pocket, the cube with Jason’s bullet in it. He wanted me to put it back in him, and now he knew exactly what would happen to Jason’s bullet if I did.

  Shit. I’d just shown him how to separate the bullet and the cube.

  And with the hostages and Grant as leverage, he could probably make me do it.

  God, I was an idiot. I’d played right into his hand, just like last time.

  Still, there was the issue of Major Tom. The returning of his knife hadn’t gone so smoothly. I suppose if Dr. Fineman wanted to risk death by cube, he could go for it. He was a determined man. Not to mention, he was completely insane. Sooner or later, he would figure out how to counteract whatever had happened to the Major, and then he’d make me put the cube back into him.

  That thought chilled me to the bone.

  “Take them back to their cells,” Dr. Fineman told Anthony, gesturing at the captives behind us. “But put these two together,” he said, looking at Grant and then leering at me. “She deserves a little reward for all her hard work.”

  I wanted to break his nose again. I wanted to sink my ghost hand into him, the cocky bastard.