“That’s one of the things he’s discussing with the others right now. But they’re all super-tactical military-trained people, except for Zo and Jake, so I’m sure they’ll come up with something good.” I meant what I said; if anyone could come up with a distraction devastating enough to Colony forces to enable our successful getaway, it was Jason and Chris. I trusted them with my life…which was why I was entrusting them with my life.
“I hope so,” Gabe commented. “What are your plans for the rest of today? Please tell me you’re lying low.”
I bit my lower lip. “Well…I was actually planning to pay a little visit to Dr. Wesley. I’ve got a few things to ask her before we leave. Unless…did you talk to her? Is she coming with us?”
“She’s not, but I don’t know if you should—”
“It’s nonnegotiable. I’m going to talk to her,” I told him. “I inadvertently caused a mess that I need to clean up, and she’s the only one who might be able to help.”
Gabe didn’t look happy, but he didn’t forbid me or anything ridiculous like that. “Fine, but you’re coming to the lab with me and not leaving until I do. We can’t risk screwing the pooch…not now.”
“Honestly, I don’t think you should ever risk that.”
With a sly grin, he smoothed his hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a hairband. “Just try not to screw things up. Sound good?”
“Much better,” I said approvingly. All of a sudden, something I should have noticed far earlier smacked me in the hypothetical face. “Gabe…I can feel you! Oh my God! Something’s wrong with the neutralizer; it’s not working on you anymore! He’ll be able to control you! You’ll become his slave! He’ll—”
He reached out a hand and squeezed my shoulder. “Calm down, Dani. I let it wear off. I didn’t think we could afford you not being able to communicate with me this evening.”
“Oh…that’s good, I guess.”
He smirked. “You were worried about me.”
I turned away from him so he wouldn’t see my smile and started down the hallway. “Shut up.” I stopped halfway to the kitchen. “Shoot, I forgot to give Mase a towel,” I told Gabe as I rushed past him toward the stairs. “Be right back.”
As I snagged a mauve towel from the linen closet, I heard a dull thump from the guest bathroom. I tapped on the door. The shower was still running. “Mase? I brought you a towel. Sorry…I forgot that there aren’t any in there.”
There was no answer.
I knocked on the door with more gusto. “Mase? You okay in there?”
There was still no answer. What the hell?
I tested the door handle. It was unlocked. Slowly, I eased the door open and called out again. “Mase? Everything okay?” I poked my head into the bathroom and glanced around from the sage-and cream-striped shower curtain to the toilet to the open window to the sink. He was nowhere in sight, which meant he was in the shower. Why isn’t he answering? Did he knock himself out or something?
I moved toward the shower curtain and reached out to pull it aside. “I’m not trying to be stalkerish or anything, but you didn’t answer and please don’t be mad at me for invading your privacy, but—”
The shower was empty. And the window was open.
“Shit.”
Less than fifteen minutes later, I’d changed, stuffed the little camera in my jeans pocket, and dragged Gabe to work early, parting ways with him just down the hall from Dr. Wesley’s office. I was fairly certain that was where Mase had run off to. Before heading up to his lab, Gabe warned me that my dose of the neutralizer would have worn off already as well—it tended to last only four or five days—and told me to be very careful about who I spoke to and what I said.
I entered Dr. Wesley’s office without knocking. Unsurprisingly, Mase was standing in the middle of the room, his back to me. He glanced over his shoulder as I walked in, and I raised my eyebrows irritably.
“Sorry,” he mouthed, and his eyes held such desperation that I couldn’t stay annoyed.
He just wants to understand. I approached him and reached up to pat his shoulder, letting him know we were okay. We would have a chat later, but we were okay.
“I assume you’re here for the same reason as Mase,” Dr. Wesley said. Again, she was sitting in the chair behind her desk.
I just smiled and tugged her key from the neck of my shirt. It only took me a few seconds to remove it and the guard’s key from the cord. “Thanks. As it turned out, I didn’t actually need this,” I said, setting both keys on her desk with a thunk. Once I was gone, I wouldn’t have a use for either of them.
The doctor returned my humorless smile, and I had to remind myself that her resemblance to Zoe didn’t mean I had to like her. “Had you told me who would be with you, I would’ve informed you that any key was superfluous.”
So she knew Camille could pick pretty much any lock. I guess that’s not surprising. “Camille told you about our late-night fun.”
Dr. Wesley frowned the barest amount. “No, she didn’t. I haven’t seen her since yesterday.” She motioned toward Mase with her chin. “He filled me in, a bit. At least, when he wasn’t making demands.”
I sighed. I could only imagine how Mase’s anxiety and unsquashable protectiveness of Camille had manifested while he’d been trying to get the rest of the story from Dr. Wesley. She had, after all, been the person responsible for Camille’s death and rebirth via the Re-gen process. I doubted that was something Mase would easily forgive. At least, not without proper motivation…like the truth.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why, Danielle? I think ‘why’ must be your favorite word.”
Laughing softly, bitterly, I shook my head and closed the final few feet to her desk. I pointed my right hand back toward Mase without breaking eye contact with Dr. Wesley. “Don’t you get it? He’s in pain. He’s heartsick because of something you had your hands in—or, another thing you had your hands in—and you have the information that might make him feel better. But no, you’re holding out.” I dropped my arm and glowered at her. “Your kids would be ashamed of you. Zo always said she thought her dad’s oddities were caused by a broken heart, though she used to think it was because he’d lost the love of his life in a tragic car wreck, not that it matters now.”
I expected her eyes to flash with rage, but hurt was all that filled their jewel-blue depths. Whatever her faults, Dr. Wesley loved her family. Unfortunately for humanity, she loved them too much.
“He was a good man,” I added softly. “I never knew my dad, and I always considered Tom to be sort of my surrogate father. But he was heartbroken. He wasn’t right in the head, not completely.” Briefly, I glanced back at Mase and then returned my eyes to the doctor’s. “He doesn’t have to go through the same thing. You can help him understand why Camille did what she did. You’re the only one who can do that.”
Dr. Wesley’s features tensed, turning the planes and angles of her face more severe, but then her expression softened. She sighed, a long, drawn-out exhalation of breath and emotion. It was a sound of letting go. Her eyes shifted to Mase, and she began to explain. “Camille came here…she came here for revenge, and although you might not agree, she was lucky that I intercepted her before Gregory learned of her. I know you read her backstory from her file. Well, it’s not completely…complete.”
Her brow furrowed in thought. “Let’s see…if I remember correctly, Camille’s mother was a nurse, and she noticed a correlation between the people she’d administered a certain batch of flu vaccine to and the first victims of the epidemic in her area—some part of Minneapolis, I believe.” Dr. Wesley waved her hand in front of her dismissively. “It was the same in every large city. Mrs. Lin noticed the correlation and suspected it wasn’t a coincidence. She checked the batch number and unusual place of origin, and made a complaint to the CDC. They told her they would take care of it—which was a lie, as they were already under Gregory’s control. He’s always been very strategic. His Ability can be expen
ded, you know, so he has to be selective about who he controls.”
Dr. Wesley paused for a moment, her gaze flicking back and forth between us. “Mrs. Lin fell ill soon after and died quite quickly, but not before she told her daughter to never go to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, that the base was where the faulty vaccines had originated. The rest of her story plays out much as you read it”—she waved her hand in Mase’s direction—“with Mase’s father attacking her, Camille killing him, and eventually her ending up in the car with the woman headed straight for the one place her mother begged her to never go. She was looking for answers.”
Suddenly, exhaustion filled the doctor’s face, along with wariness verging on fear. “I found her crying in a corner of the hospital shortly after her admittance exam. She’d spotted you, Mase, and couldn’t face you knowing what she’d done. She spilled her whole story to me, along with her knowledge of the false vaccine, and in turn, I informed her that spreading such a tale here would mean certain death for her. She was so hysterical that I wasn’t surprised when she said she would rather die than keep living with the knowledge of what she’d done. She was just so miserable…so I told her there was another option.” The doctor’s eyes turned pleading. “I know you think me heartless, but I could see it written across her face: the girl would’ve killed herself before the day was over. She’d given up.”
“So you killed her and brought her back to life as your own puppet instead of Herodson’s?” I clarified harshly.
Dr. Wesley shook her head, telling me she’d known I wouldn’t understand. “I told her I could transform her, end her current, pain-filled life and give her another one. I told her I could help her avenge her mother’s death. I told her the truth, and she believed me.” The way Dr. Wesley said “she” told me Camille had believed her in a way she knew I never would, and that she appreciated Camille for her openness. “We started the process the evening of her arrival, and she was reborn the following day.”
“And me?” Mase asked. “Before she was remade, did she know you were going to make me into a Re-gen, too?”
“What?” the doctor looked taken aback. “Of course not. The original Camille had no idea of what would happen to you. That was…that was partially my fault, and partially yours. Your letter was also not quite the truth. You see, you were using the neutralizer, like Dani. You were one of the first who was truly awake, truly free of Gregory’s control, even before Gabriel.”
For some reason, the revelation shocked me. The original Mase had used the neutralizer like Gabe and me? Did Gabe know Mase before—the original Mase, as Dr. Wesley would have said? If so, why didn’t he tell me?
“Unfortunately for you, that freedom of mind led to your downfall. But that’s where my fault comes in as well. Gregory believes me to be under his control completely”—her lips twisted into an ugly sneer—“but he commands me to behave as though I am not, wanting to give his fantasy more reality. This means I must give in sometimes to lend credence to my ruse. When your susceptibility to his mind control came into question, he asked his advisors, including me, for ideas on how to test your loyalty. I suggested he use Camille, a young woman who’d recently become a Re-gen, who you just happened to have a close connection with growing up. Gregory thought it was the perfect idea. He used Camille to prove your disloyalty, and the rest is history.”
I could do nothing else but stare at her, dumbfounded. The whole situation was a mind-boggling, convoluted mess of coincidence and bad luck.
“Just when I think I’ve dug as deep as I can, I sink the shovel in again and make the hole deeper,” Dr. Wesley said softly. “You must hate me even more now.”
But before I could answer, before I even knew how I would’ve answered, I sensed Camille’s mind signature. She was walking down the hallway leading to Dr. Wesley’s office. I grinned and peeked over my shoulder at Mase. “Camille’ll be here in five, four, three—” Suddenly, I noticed five other minds moving along with hers, and my grin withered. One of those minds belonged to General Herodson.
“He’s with her,” I hissed, my eyes wide. What did he find out from Camille? I looked from Mase to Dr. Wesley and back. “What do we—”
The door swung open. Apparently, like me, General Herodson hadn’t felt the need to knock. “My darling Anna, I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”
Simultaneously, Mase and I turned to face the newcomers. General Herodson, dressed exactly as he’d been the first and only other time I’d met him, in a dark blue officer’s uniform, stood behind two guards, both male, both wearing yellow armbands, and both armed to the teeth. When the guards stepped aside to flank the doorway, Camille came into view. She had a black eye, a fat lip, and seemed to be favoring one of her legs.
“Oh my God, Camille! Are you okay? What happened?” I asked her silently, terrified both for her and for me.
Images flashed through my mind, and I was only partially grateful for her adeptness at communicating with me in the odd, Re-gen form of telepathy. What she showed me was stomach-churning.
Camille sobbing as she ran back into a room with row after row of bunks.
A guard catching Camille by the arms and asking her something.
Camille lying on the floor, unconscious.
Camille, waking up tied to a plastic chair with plastic restraints in a room stripped of all metal.
A small child—a girl—strapped to another chair directly in front of her, crying.
A guard, hitting the child.
Camille mouthing, “I’m sorry.”
My heart raced. General Herodson, in all his perverseness, had threatened Camille with the well-being of a little girl in exchange for information. I knew his manipulative Ability didn’t work the same on Re-gens as it did on what Mase and Camille called “normals,” but I hadn’t guessed the heinous alternatives the General would use to get his way. I should have.
Oh God…what did she tell them? What could she have told him? Frantically, I searched through my memory for every interaction I’d had with Camille. Had I told her anything about Jason and Zoe? What did she know, besides enough information to damn Gabe, Mase, Dr. Wesley, and me?
“Gabe,” I said silently, reaching out to my friend’s mind. He was still upstairs in his lab. “They know. Get out. Get out now!”
“Are you okay?”
“Probably not, but don’t you dare come down here.”
“Dani—”
“I mean it, Gabe! If you care about me at all, get somewhere safe right now!”
“Danielle O’Connor. My new communications specialist,” General Herodson said. He was trim, slightly handsome, and easily the evilest person I’d ever met. He blew Mandy right out of the water, if only for the sheer scale of what he’d done. Why did the mind-manipulation Ability turn people into the worst versions of themselves? “What are you doing here, my dear?”
Adjusting my telepathic aim, I found Jason almost instantly. My heart sank. He—all of them—were still at their camp, over fifty miles southwest of the Colony. “Jason,” I said to him alone. “Don’t panic, but we need to hurry things up a bit.”
“Dani?” he responded, sounding furious. “What are you saying? Are you in trouble? Are you hurt?”
General Herodson asked what I’m doing here…right. I pulled the cord over my neck, glad I’d already removed the keys, and held the red card proclaiming my health status as “not suited for work.” I forced a smile, trying my hardest to make it appear genuine, and said, “I was just returning this. My sleep wasn’t at all disturbed by my headache last night, so I figured I’d start work today.”
“I’m fine for the moment, but I think they know,” I mind-spoke to Jason.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he demanded.
“Lie,” a woman said from behind the General. Like the guards, she was wearing fatigues, but she didn’t appear to be armed.
Silently, I told Jason, “Oh yeah, they know.”
“Fucking…fuck! Okay, listen. We�
�re about to leave. We’ll be waiting for you by the pond at the southern tip of the golf course south of the base. Carlos will signal our arrival and provide a distraction.”
“How?” I asked.
“An electromagnetic pulse. When the lights go out, you’ll know we’re there. Do what you have to do to stay alive, Red. I mean it. Anything. Just stay alive…for me, for you, for whoever. I don’t care so long as you stay alive.”
“A pity,” General Herodson murmured. During the entire exchange, his eyes never left me. “I had hoped CL-one’s information was wrong. Restrain the telepath and the Re-gen,” he ordered, and his guards took a step forward.
“No!” Mase bellowed. He stepped in front of me, blocking me from the guards. Predictably, they paused. With his Ability, nobody sane would confront him, but the mind-controlled guards were more living zombie slaves than sane humans. Still, they paused. Mase could be pretty goddamn scary.
“Stop, Mase!” Camille cried out. “You’ll both live if you just do what he says. He promised. Let them restrain you.”
“Camille? Why?” Mase asked, his voice breaking as his posture relaxed. No matter what, he would do what she asked.
“I had no choice.”
“Did you hear me?” Jason asked in my head.
“Yes,” I said. I was having a hard time following both conversations. “Sorry. About to get restrained.”
“It’s fine, Mase,” I told the behemoth—my friend—protecting me from the General’s lackeys. I rested a hand on his shoulder blade. “We’ll do as they say. We don’t want anyone to be hurt any further.” In his head, I added, “Especially not Camille.”
His muscles tensed beneath my fingers, but he eventually backed down, following their commands as they bound his wrists behind his back with handcuffs. I was next.
“Okay, I’m officially restrained now,” I told Jason.
“How?” he asked.
“My hands are handcuffed behind my back.”
“How many?”
Into The Fire (The Ending Series) Page 31