The Delphi Resistance (The Delphi Trilogy Book 2)

by Rysa Walker

  “The pyrokinetic girl is named Svetlana. No clue about the last name, but she was clearly one of the women who was trafficked in from abroad. Jaden didn’t recognize the boy. But the last girl, the one who disrupted the electrical circuits, is actually a second-gen. She’s Sabrina Bieler, whose twin brother was killed at Overhills.”

  Magda looks surprised, but my revelation doesn’t generate the sort of keen interest that I expected it would, given her repeated inquiries about twin adepts.

  Aaron glances at me from the corner of his eye and then jumps in with the question I was about to ask. “The Bieler girl was probably evacuated with Graham Cregg and the Delphi staff. Based on what you’ve said in the past, I take it that she should be our top priority?”

  Magda shrugs. “She would have been, if her brother were still alive. My goal was to learn more about their interactions, to see if there were any similarities to my own daughters. But the most we’ll have now is anecdotal evidence from one side only.”

  I guess it’s time to tell Magda about Hunter. Sighing, I shift my focus inward. Hunter is easy to find, right near the front. I don’t get the sense that he has completely followed everything we’ve been discussing, but he definitely went on alert when I mentioned his sister.

  Hunter? We haven’t really talked about this, and I was hoping to keep quiet about the fact that you’re . . . in here, with my other hitchers. But this lady is someone who may be able to help us find Bree. She will probably have some questions for you, either now or after we find your sister. Would you be willing to talk to her?

  He agrees without the slightest hesitation, even before I finish the question.

  I look back at Magda, who’s staring at me. “Sorry. I was just checking on something. You may still be able to get both sides of the story. I seem to have picked up a hitcher when we were at Overhills. I didn’t say anything before because he was very distraught,” I add quickly, in response to her annoyed expression. “Usually when I pick up hitchers, they’ve had time to figure out what is going on . . . months, even years. Given the trauma and his age, I didn’t know if he’d stick around long enough to help.”

  “And you believe now that he will help?”

  “Yes. But only if we rescue his sister.” That last bit is a total lie. Hunter would immediately answer any questions she has. Apparently it takes more than one bad woman with a gun to erase his inclination to trust grown-ups. I have far more experience with adults who don’t always have your best interest at heart, however.

  “Hmph,” Magda says. “It sounds as though I’m being blackmailed by a ghost. When the living do that, I take the opposite action out of spite. And . . . to be perfectly frank, Anna, I’m not sure that you’re telling the truth.”

  “I was there when she picked him up,” Aaron says.

  Magda raises her eyebrows. “Really? And let me guess—you saw the spirit of Hunter Bieler rise up from his dead body and slide into Anna?”

  I give Aaron’s arm a squeeze to let him know I’ve got this.

  “Why would I lie about it? You’re the one who wanted us to prioritize finding twins. But if you need proof . . . hold on a sec. I may have something.”

  This is a bit of a gamble, because Hunter’s never been in the driver’s seat. I have no idea if his quirk with electrical gadgets will work through me at all.

  Hunter? I’m going to slide to the back, okay. You take my place.

  Okay. So she can ask me questions about Bree?

  No. See that floor lamp? Think you can blow it out, like you used to turn out the lights at Baker Elementary?

  Yes.

  I can feel his grin. It’s a small one, but it’s the first bit of real pleasure that I’ve felt from him since he came on board.

  The only thing is, you need to slide right back afterward, okay? No running off with my body. Otherwise, it will be really tough for me to help you find Bree. Deal?

  Deal.

  Okay, then—go to the front, Hunter! And no dawdling. Head straight for the lamp.

  He moves forward, and I watch as he holds my hands up, wiggling the fingers in front of his face.

  “Exactly what is your point, Anna?” Magda asks.

  Hunter doesn’t answer. He just pushes us up from the sofa. Unfortunately, he’s not accustomed to navigating a body twice the size of the one he owned, and he bumps the coffee table, sending a bowl and the few remaining chips tumbling onto the carpet.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” Aaron says, giving me a confused look as he bends down to scoop them back into the bowl.

  Hunter stands there, briefly paralyzed, and then remembers what he’s supposed to do. We stumble toward the floor lamp.

  Miller stands just a few feet away. His eyes widen, and he reaches into his pocket just as Hunter closes my hand around the lamp pole.

  A sensation much like the feeling when you bang your elbow radiates from my neck through my arm, all the way down to my fingers. The pole feels hot against my palm, and then the bulb glows brighter. It fizzles out with a final pop as Miller draws his taser.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Carova Beach, North Carolina

  November 12, 2019, 6:15 p.m.

  I’m not sure Hunter knows what a taser is, but he can tell that Miller is angry. He retreats from the driver’s seat so quickly that my stomach does a one-eighty. Despite the queasiness, I quickly step away from Miller. What did the guy think I was going to do? Hit him with the lamp?

  “Hey!” Aaron steps in front of me. “Put that away.”

  “It’s nice to see that you have quick reflexes, Miller,” Magda says. “But yes, do put it away.”

  Miller complies, but his eyes remain locked on me, even after Aaron and I are back on the sofa.

  Was that okay?

  It was perfect, Hunter.

  Now that I’m in control of my body again, I notice the burning sensation in my palm. When I flip my hand over to inspect it, I see a line of reddened skin down the middle. It looks like I grabbed the barrel of a curling iron. I don’t think it will blister, but I borrow the can of seltzer Aaron is holding to cool it down a bit.

  I’m sorry. It never burns when I do it.

  It’s not a problem, Hunter. Just a bit singed.

  “It might be wise to give us a bit of warning in the future,” Magda says. “So that Mr. Miller isn’t startled. Could you do the other lamp, too?”

  “Probably, but I’m not going to.” I hold up my hand to show her the burned area.

  Kelsey heads into the kitchen, giving Miller some serious stink eye along the way. I suspect she’s going in search of the first aid kit, although I’m not sure it’s necessary.

  Magda jots something down on the sheet of paper on her desk and then looks back up. “Are there any other secrets that I should know about?”

  I glance at Aaron and then over at Taylor and Deo. We’ve already told Kelsey about the text messages that have been coming in from Graham Cregg, and we were planning to tell Magda tonight. But I’ve got serious misgivings about that after meeting Miller. He’s already on a hair trigger, and I can’t even imagine how he’d respond to the possibility that there’s a threat he won’t be able to see or hear. That the four of us could be, without our consent, transmitting information about his security precautions to the enemy.

  Even without discussing it, I can see that the others are in agreement.

  “No, ma’am,” Aaron says. His words are clipped, and he keeps shooting angry looks at Miller. I wonder if they’re left over from Miller threatening me a few minutes ago or if he’s still picking up new vibes.

  “Well, then,” Magda says, “perhaps we should think about the next steps for finding the Bieler girl and any others they’re holding.”

  “I’ve been working on that,” Taylor says. “Although things would move a lot more quickly if we could narrow down the geographical area a bit.”

  Magda frowns. “Thought you needed a personal object in order to track someone.�
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  “I found a shoe.” Taylor doesn’t elaborate, just flashes her wide-eyed innocent look, and Deo chuckles in response.

  “I’m guessing your mother will be less amused than your friend is,” Magda says, “since she was adamant that I keep you and Taddeo out of any direct involvement. I’ll have my people intensify efforts to pin down the new location of The Warren, but given the deaths at Fort Bragg and the fact that it would be difficult to find another place to hide that many children with powers, we may need to also consider the possibility that they were all killed.”

  I send a silent message back to Hunter, telling him that I’m sure his sister is okay. I’m certain that he can sense I’m not sure, but I don’t want him to lose hope.

  “Then why expose the program now?” I ask as I spread some of the ointment that Kelsey dropped into my lap on my scorched palm. “Senator Cregg is opening himself up to considerable criticism for his role, and his son’s role, in creating the adepts in the first place.”

  Aaron says, “That’s true. If they’ve killed off most of the adepts, why take that hit, especially in the middle of a political campaign? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep covering it up and pretend it never happened?”

  They toss a few ideas around, none of which seem logical to me. Finally, Magda says she’s out of time and reaches forward to disconnect.

  “Oh, one more thing. As of today, I officially own the two properties on either side of you, along with the Isle of View itself.” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “Which will be renamed, and I’d appreciate it if someone could remove that tacky sign from the front. If you have any ideas for a new name, let me know next time we—”

  Aaron cuts her off. “How about Sandalford . . . like the British village, just with the first part spelled like sandals? You know, beach shoes.”

  Magda doesn’t know Aaron well enough to know that the smile he’s wearing right now isn’t genuine. And she either hasn’t read Watership Down or doesn’t remember the book, because she smiles and says, “I like it! I’ll have my assistant order a sign.”

  After she signs off and Miller retreats to the ground floor, Taylor shoots Aaron a puzzled look. “What was that about?”

  “It’s a place in a book I’m reading,” he says. “I’ll give it to you when I’m finished. Let’s just say Sandleford Warren wasn’t quite as safe and peaceful as it appeared on the surface.”

  “You were planning to . . .” Kelsey lowers her voice and leans forward. “To tell Magda about those text messages. I’m guessing Mr. Miller changed your mind.”

  “Yeah. I don’t trust him not to overreact,” Aaron says.

  Taylor shrugs. “Yeah. He’s a jerk. Although, to be fair, if Cregg has a way to hack into our minds, to figure out what we’re thinking? You’ve got to admit that’s a legitimate security concern.”

  I suspect this will end up as an argument, even though I could tell from Taylor’s expression that she agreed with the decision when Aaron made it. Since I really don’t want to listen, and since my hand is still stinging despite the salve, I leave them to it and head to the kitchen for a couple of Advil.

  Deo follows. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s minor. If I’d known to expect it, I wouldn’t have gripped the damned pole so hard.”

  “Hunter didn’t know it would burn you?”

  “Nope.” I find the bottle on the top shelf in the pantry and pour two into my hand. “Didn’t happen when he was in his body. Maybe it’s like Daniel’s mind-control thing . . . harder to do when you’re working inside someone else’s skin.”

  He steps forward to grab something from the fridge. He’s still more than a foot away, and he’s been this close to me several times in the past few days, but when the NNNNN sound hits my ears, I barely have time to slide to the floor.

  —idea it could be this cold. Wicked, biting cold. The snow is up to my knees, and even though I’m bundled in layers and a thick, padded parka, the wind cuts to the bone.

  Our progress is excruciatingly slow, and it has to be even tougher on Aaron, with the boy strapped to his back. He only weighs about forty pounds, but climbing multiple flights of stairs with him in that pack can’t have been easy. And now this, immediately afterward. At least we’ve reached the tree line now and aren’t going uphill any longer. And the snow has stopped.

  There are still a few clouds, but otherwise the sky is clear. The one good thing about the snow is that it reflects the faint light from the crescent moon, making it easier to see the path Aaron is carving through the drifts. It’s the path we made earlier, but we’ve gotten at least another four inches in the ninety minutes or so since we hiked in.

  Bree’s pace slows again. I tug at her arm with my unbandaged left hand. She’s bundled in a thick Star Wars jacket, with a glow-in-the-dark BB-8 on the front. A red scarf covers most of her face, but she’s still shivering.

  “Not much farther, sweetie. See the lights on the houses down there?” I nod toward two houses in the valley below decked out for the holidays. One has colored lights along the eaves. The other has white lights and a large star on the roof. “The camper is even closer than the houses, and it’s nice and warm inside.”

  I glance over my shoulder at the bedraggled line of people behind me, most of whom are having an even harder time than I am slogging through the snow. Seeing Ashley, Maria, and a few of the older teens helping the smaller ones triggers a memory of the scene in 101 Dalmatians where they’re trying to get all of the puppies through the snow to safety.

  Although with all of this snow on the road, is the RV really—

  NNNNNnnnn

  Aaron’s face is the first thing I see when I open my eyes. Deo is standing on the opposite side of the kitchen, as far as he can get from me and still be in the same room. They both look worried. I can’t focus enough to tell them I’m okay, though, because Hunter is barraging me with questions.

  You were with Bree! How could we see her like that? Does this mean she’s okay? Does she make it to the camper?

  Yes, it was Bree. Daniel, Jaden—little help here please?

  I leave them to explain the visions to Hunter, and stack up my mental bricks so that I can concentrate on what’s happening outside my head.

  “I’m okay, guys. But we need to invest in some heavy parkas.”

  What we really need is to try to invest in a few dozen snowmobiles or a heavy-duty snowblower to speed up our progress. But I know it won’t make any difference. The stores will be sold out, or a wheel will break off the blower, or it won’t start. Whatever happened in the vision is what will happen.

  We go back into the great room with Kelsey and Taylor, so I don’t have to explain the vision twice.

  “You’re sure that it was Ashley?” Aaron asks. “And she was helping us?”

  “To be honest, if I’d only been relying on visuals, I wouldn’t have known it was her. She was too bundled up, and the snow was still falling. But in the vision, I thought of her as Ashley. And yes, she was definitely helping us get the kids out of . . . someplace underground with a lot of stairs? Bree was with me. That girl named Maria, too, the one Jaden called a Peeping Tomasina.”

  “What about me and Deo?” Taylor asks.

  “You must be waiting in the RV. It’s Christmastime, but I didn’t get any info about the location of the place, so I’m guessing it’s considerably north of here. There was a lot of snow. And I think there were mountains in the distance, although it could have been clouds.”

  “We’ve gotten some hellacious blizzards in DC the past few years, so it wouldn’t have to be too far north,” Deo says. “Why do you think it happens on Christmas?”

  “Not on Christmas, just around Christmas. I saw holiday lights on two houses.”

  “Well, that narrows it down to somewhere north of here and sometime between Thanksgiving weekend and New Year’s Eve,” Taylor says, her mouth twisting. “Not a lot to go on.”

  “The moon. It was crescent. Waning crescent.”


  Everyone except Kelsey gives me a blank look, and Kelsey laughs. “A waning crescent is shaped like the letter C.”

  Aaron runs a search on his phone. “That narrows it down quite a bit. The moon will be in the waning crescent phase”—his tone is clearly mocking, and I stick my tongue out in response—“the third week of December. Which picture does it look like?”

  I glance at the pictures of the moon on his phone. “The twenty-second. Or . . . maybe the twenty-first.”

  Taylor says, “I haven’t had a lot of luck with the girl’s sneaker. But I may try using Deo as an amp, like I did the other day when we were tracking Peyton and her dad. If I get a sketch, do you think you’d be able to recognize the area?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. We were outside. The kids looked tired, so I think we may have already walked some distance from where they were being held.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we’ve got some time,” Taylor says. “Because we’re going to need it.”

  Deo asks me to take over puppy duty, and then he and Taylor head downstairs. She’s carrying two large bags of Doritos, so I’m guessing they’re going to start trying to get a location from Bree Bieler’s sneaker.

  Aaron messages Magda, Sam, and his mom with the new development. Kelsey, who has a busy day tomorrow doing intake on the new patients, heads down to her office to look over the files.

  “You up for a nighttime beach walk?” I ask Aaron after Ein has finished his bowl of puppy mush. “Ein could probably use a potty break.”

  “Outside, yes. But no beach. We have to stay close to the building—no one is allowed outside the perimeter after dark unless we clear it with Miller first.”

  “Ugh. No, thanks. What did Magda say about the info from the vision?”

  “Basically what you’d expect. Asked me a bunch of questions that I doubt you’ll be able to answer. She doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t just push harder and get more information.”