The Delphi Resistance (The Delphi Trilogy Book 2)
Page 1
Table of Contents
TRANSCRIPT: SUBJECT #13, INTERVIEW #4
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY RYSA WALKER
The Delphi Trilogy
The Delphi Effect
The CHRONOS Files
Novels
Timebound
Time’s Edge
Time’s Divide
Graphic Novel
Time Trial
Novellas
Time’s Echo
Time’s Mirror
Simon Says
Short Stories
“The Gambit” in The Time Travel Chronicles
“Whack Job” in Alt.History 102
“2092” in Dark Beyond the Stars
“Splinter” in CLONES: The Anthology
“The Circle That Whines” in Tails of Dystopia (forthcoming)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright ©2017 by Rysa Walker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Skyscape, New York
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542047227
ISBN-10: 1542047226
Cover design by M. S. Corley
This book is dedicated to the many people around the world—past, present, and future—who risk their lives in the ongoing resistance to tyranny, injustice, ignorance, and oppression. Without the candles you light, the world would be a much darker place.
CONTENTS
TRANSCRIPT: SUBJECT #13, INTERVIEW #4
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TRANSCRIPT: SUBJECT #13, INTERVIEW #4
ALLGLOBALCONSPIRACIES.COM/PARANORMAL
October 30, 2019
Telephone interview with female psychic, age twelve
_____________
Q: Okay, just tell me what you remember.
A: It’s a bumpy road. Not like potholes, though. Uneven. More like a dirt road. Later, when they opened the trunk, I saw a bunch of tall pine trees. But . . . I think they learned something from Nicki running like she did. The boy who I was in this time . . . his hands and feet were bound. Although he couldn’t move much anyway, because he was piled in the trunk with the other four kids.
Q: Do you know which one of the boys you were . . . seeing through?
A: I’m pretty sure it was Hunter, because later when they had the other kids in the building, I could see the two girls really good. One of them was right near these animals—like drawings from a children’s book—that were painted on the walls in the room. I never got a close-up look at the two boys at the far end, but I saw their feet once I was inside, and they were bigger. So it had to have been Hunter. And he was a sweet little kid. He . . . he didn’t deserve this. No way.
Woman’s voice: You okay, sweetie? We don’t have to do this. We can call back later if you’re too upset.
A: No. I want to, Mom. Like you said, maybe she can get the cops there to listen. Maybe they can find the guys who did this . . . or at least find the kids’ bodies.
Q: Take your time. No rush.
A: So . . . anyway . . . I was inside Hunter, and when the car stopped, someone opened the trunk. I couldn’t see anything because Hunter was squeezing his eyes shut so they wouldn’t see he was awake, but the voices got louder. One was saying nasty stuff about a girl he met at some bar, and the other said he’d better shut that crap up before the boss heard him. Then they start dragging something—the other kids, I guess. Once they were gone, I could see again, because Hunter opened his eyes, and the men, they didn’t close the trunk. One of the girls, the younger one, was next to Hunter, but she wasn’t moving. He starts thrashing around. I think he was trying to get the tape off his hands and feet so he could run away. But then he hears the men coming back, and he plays possum again.
Q: Your mom said the vision happened last night, but this group of kids disappeared nearly a week ago. Does the boy know where they were holding them before this?
A: I don’t know, but it wouldn’t matter even if he did. I don’t get their thoughts, just what they see and hear. Sometimes smells, but not always. And it’s fuzzy sometimes. Blurry. Like it’s far away. Anyway, after that, I mostly just saw the ground, because the big guy flung us over his shoulder and went inside. Hunter kept pretending he was still knocked out. I guess he was worried that if they knew he was awake, they’d give him more of the drug and he wouldn’t have any chance of escaping. Not that he ever had a chance anyway.
Q: Did you see much of the building? Or the area around it?
A: Enough to know it was the same area where they brought Nicki last week. Same fence, but one section of it was down. One of them had a big flashlight, and once we were inside, I could see crap all over the floors—food wrappers and beer bottles. Even a hole in the floor in one room. They went upstairs, and just before they propped us up against the wall next to the other kids, the flashlight reflected off these big chunks of white . . . what do they call the stuff you make sinks and toilets out of?
Q: Porcelain?
A: Yeah. There was an open pipe right next to them, so I think it was a bathroom. I could see the walls, but only a little, since Hunter was squinting so they wouldn’t notice he was awake. But I’m sure about the drawings—paintings, I guess?—on the walls. A couple of dogs. And this one that looked like a rabbit. The walls were crumbling in places, but the drawings were like something from Peter Rabbit or whatever. So, I guess kids lived there at some point. And now kids died there, too. There was a shot and then another and another. Not loud. Just a fwap sound, kind of like when you pull a cork. Hunter opened his eyes when the shots began, and he started screaming . . .
Woman’s voice: It’s okay, baby. I’m here.
A: A
fter Hunter screamed, the man who was bragging about his sex life before starts cursing and saying the kids were all supposed to be asleep. That he didn’t sign on for this. So the third person, the woman, shoves the guy out of the way. She points the gun straight at Hunter’s face. I only saw her briefly, but she didn’t look angry like I expected. More sad, really. She said, “I’ll make it quick for you.” Hunter squeezed his eyes tight, and I heard another fwap noise. And after that, I didn’t see or hear anything else.
CHAPTER ONE
Somewhere in Ohio
October 31, 2019, 5:20 p.m.
I wake to music, barely audible over the hum of the road. At first, I think I’m still in the truck with Porter. But it’s Aaron’s hands tapping on the edges of the steering wheel this time as he sings along with Arctic Monkeys about Arabella and her interstellar gator-skin boots.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my words punctuated by a yawn. “I was supposed to be keeping you company.”
Aaron smiles but doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “Your job was to keep me awake, and you did. You were snoring right in time with the music.”
I give his leg a half-hearted swat. “I do not snore.”
He catches my arm and squeezes it briefly, then his hands go right back to the wheel. Even though he’s been towing the RV for the past two days, it still makes him nervous.
But then, we’re all a bit nervous. My eyes automatically stray to the rearview mirror, although I don’t really expect to spot anyone tailing us. Aaron scanned the RV for tracking devices before we left Baltimore, and I don’t see how anyone could possibly have followed our winding, purposeless path over the past few days. Our orders were simple: get out of the area, keep to back roads, await further instructions.
Which is exactly what we’ve done. Yesterday was rural Indiana. Today, we watched rural Ohio flicker past the RV’s windows like a perpetual video feed from The Farm Channel. And it will probably be rural Tennessee or whatever tomorrow, since no one has gotten back to us with the promised “further instructions.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe? We’re in the outer suburbs of Columbus.”
The view outside doesn’t really fit my definition of suburbs. In the DC area, builders routinely squeeze three-story starter castles onto lots not much bigger than this RV. What I’m seeing here are mostly modest-sized houses, even a few mobile homes, surrounded by large swaths of land.
This stray thought is all it takes to stir Daniel from his corner in my head.
Land’s cheaper here than it is in DC. That’s why you see more single-story houses and fewer townhomes or condos.
Mmhmm.
I leave it at that, hoping he’ll take the hint. It’s getting really hard to mask my annoyance at Daniel’s interruptions. Part of me wants to pop a permanent wall around him. He seems unable to restrain himself from commenting on every thought that enters my head, no matter how inconsequential. Maybe he’s only making conversation, but it would be nice to just stare out the window and let my thoughts wander without Daniel constantly bringing my train of consciousness to a screeching halt.
For as long as I can remember, my head has been subject to double occupancy. Sometimes, like now, it’s triple, although most of the ghosts I’ve picked up have been a little more respectful of boundaries. These mental hitchhikers, for lack of a better term, all have something left unfinished, something tethering them to this world and keeping them from moving on to the next. I help when I can, because tying up their loose ends is the quickest path to getting my head back to myself, and it’s usually a fairly simple, if somewhat time-consuming, matter to send them on their way. This one guy, Abner, just needed to see that his sudden death hadn’t also resulted in the starvation of his dog. Another hitcher, Josephine, couldn’t let go until she knew her little girl would be okay without her.
Some cases, however, aren’t so easy. My decision to help Molly Porter’s ghost deliver a message to her grandfather is the reason that I’m in this mess. The reason my foster brother, Deo, is involved. The reason he’s sick.
Now Jaden is mumbling at the back of my head as well, although I can’t really fault him, since he’s trying to rein Daniel in.
Man, you know she hates that, right? Hates. It. Why can’t you just chill until she asks you somethin’? Give the poor girl time to think. To just be.
Jaden doesn’t always follow that advice himself, but he generally avoids chiming in unless he has knowledge that’s actually relevant. With Daniel, it can be about anything. What looks good on a fast-food menu. Whether it’s chilly enough to wear my wool socks.
To be fair, I don’t think Daniel can hang back and do nothing quite as easily. Jaden doesn’t have a body to go back to. Graham Cregg made sure of that when he had him killed, simply to see if I’d be able to pick up both Jaden’s spirit and his psychic ability.
Given that Jaden is dead, he’ll soon be moving on to whatever comes after this life. Daniel’s future, on the other hand, is far less certain.
I was only trying to help. How am I supposed to know what Anna already knows?
But Jaden is having none of it.
Have you taken a good look around in here? You see those file cabinets with names? Abner, Emily, and so on? Those are full freakin’ lifetimes of experience that Anna can access anytime. So, unless you know somethin’ that’s not in one of those files, somethin’ she actually needs to know, why not give her a little peace?
Daniel doesn’t respond at first, but I can feel him stalking around like a caged animal. That sounds stupid for someone without a body, but I don’t have another descriptor for the constant, restless movement of his consciousness inside my head.
Yeah, well, I have to do something or I’m going to end up insane. Not everyone can be all Zen Buddha like you.
The Zen Buddha comment starts Jaden wondering if it was an insult to his race or his religion. Or maybe it was a compliment? And Daniel’s pacing is making me crazy.
Be still! Be quiet! Both of you, okay?
I shake my head to clear it, then lean back into the seat and rub my temples.
“Another headache?” Aaron asks. “Is Jaden—”
“Jaden’s not the problem.” I’d love to tell Aaron that the real issue is his older brother, but Daniel is determined to keep his family oblivious to the fact that he’s joined the circus in my head. “I’m just tired, I guess.”
Aaron smiles. He can definitely commiserate on that point. Neither of us has gotten more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep in the past few nights.
“Find a campground,” he says. “It’ll be dark in another hour anyway. Might as well stop now. It’s not like we actually have any place to be.”
Taylor pulls the edge of the curtain back a fraction of an inch and peers through the tiny gap.
“Two.” Her whisper is so low I have to strain to hear. “A man and a woman . . . staring at the door. So I guess three, since I can’t see the one who knocked.”
That knock startled the hell out of us—well, except for Deo, who’s propped up against the wall, pretty much out of it. I persuaded him to come to the table, but he’s barely touched his bowl of Campbell’s Chicken & Stars, the only thing he’s been willing to eat for the past day. His fever keeps going up, despite the Tylenol, and the arm where he was injected is so swollen that it strains against the fabric of his shirt.
Aaron peeks outside. “Whoever they are, they’re not armed. Not planning any sort of violence. Otherwise, I’d be picking up that vibe.”
Yeah, well, your premonitions aren’t foolproof.
“You’ve been wrong before.” Taylor couldn’t have heard Daniel’s comment in my head, so the fact that Aaron’s premonitions are sometimes wrong must be common knowledge in the Quinn family.
“False positives. Never a false negative.” But Aaron reaches into the windbreaker slung over the back of his chair and pulls out his gun as he speaks, so maybe he’s not entirely convinced eith
er.
Knock, knock.
The pounding is more insistent this time, so loud that even Deo startles.
Only for a second, though, and then he slumps back against the wall. Seeing him like this, lacking the energy to even hold up his head, stirs a wave of anger so powerful that I suddenly hope it’s one of Cregg’s people—or better yet, Graham Cregg himself—on the other side of that door. Any qualms I might have had about killing him a few days ago are long gone.
“This is stupid,” I hiss, moving toward the door. “It’s probably the woman from the campsite office.”
Aaron hesitates for a moment and then nods. “I’ll cover you.”
I bite back a nervous laugh. This entire situation is beyond absurd. How did I land in a reality where anyone has to say he’ll cover me?
The door opens to reveal pint-sized versions of Iron Man and Buzz Lightyear side by side on the bottom step. Just beyond them is a tiny girl in green makeup, with green hair, red gloves, and a red antennae headband.
The laugh I was holding in explodes out of me. I press my hand over my mouth and back away from the door. All three kids chant, almost in unison, “Trick or treat!”
“Holy crap,” Taylor says from behind me. “It’s Halloween?”
“Whoa.” Aaron turns away, surreptitiously tucking the gun back into his jacket. “Hang on, kids. Let me see what we’ve got.”
There’s no candy, so Aaron sends the kids off with a large bag of Doritos to split between the three of them. They look pretty happy as they make their way back to Mom and Dad, who wave at us a little apologetically.
The one good thing about the interruption is that it seems to have given Deo a bit of energy. He raises the edge of the blind to peek at the kids. Deo loves Halloween. Admittedly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a foster kid who doesn’t. Halloween is one of the few times we get a shot at a whole bunch of candy we can (usually) keep for ourselves. Back when Deo was seven, he was placed in a foster home run by a fervently fundamentalist couple who didn’t celebrate Halloween. He swears that played no role in his decision to run away, but I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that he hit the road on the morning of October 31st.