by Simon Holt
Unger regarded her but still did not seem satisfied. He approached her again and put two fingers against her throat, checking her pulse.
When he touched her, a wave of nausea swept over Reggie, and she reached out instinctively to steady herself, grabbing the doctor’s arm. Her hand wrapped around his wrist, and she felt the ba-bump, ba-bump of his own pulse as clearly as if he were drumming it on her fingertips. Her vision narrowed, and for a moment she feared that she was starting to have another fearscape flashback. The office around her faded into gray smoke until it was like she was looking down a tunnel, but she couldn’t see what was at the end. And then her mind began to stretch like putty, as if it were trying to leave her body and travel down the tunnel. At first she resisted, but it was as though a magnet was pulling her, and the desire to know what was there, on the other side, was so great. Strangely, she was not afraid. She let herself go and felt a whoosh as her consciousness rushed outward. When she emerged from the tunnel, she was shocked at what she saw.
Dr. Unger lay screaming and writhing on a slab, not unlike the one he had strapped Reggie to in his underground lab. Wraithlike people swarmed around him—some of them had shaved heads, some were missing limbs, and they all had gray, rotting skin marbled with bruises and burn marks. They looked like walking corpses, but all of them wore twisted expressions of malicious glee.
Reggie chanced a few steps closer, but no one was paying her any attention. It was as if she were invisible. With a start she realized that she recognized one of the women standing by Unger. She was one of the patients the doctor had experimented on—Reggie had seen her imprisoned in one of the cages by the lab. Unger had driven her insane by injecting her with liquefied Vour essence, and she’d nearly beaten herself to death on the bars of her prison right in front of Reggie. But now, it seemed, she was exacting her revenge. She danced around the doctor’s body, happily injecting him with IVs filled with thick, black sludge. The vile stuff flowed into Unger and turned his veins black beneath his white skin, and they pulsed menacingly. Reggie saw black ooze flow over the whites of Unger’s eyes, and she cringed. Another man stood by his head with a scalpel in hand and was performing a lobotomy without anesthesia. Unger’s screams were piercing.
Somehow, this was different from the previous flashbacks she’d had. It wasn’t even a flashback—she’d never seen this event before. Moreover, she didn’t feel the fear in the same way; it wasn’t all around her, encompassing her, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Unger was feeling the pain, the fright, not her. It was as if she were just an innocent bystander, a fly on the wall, witnessing his torment. And, stranger still, in the background she could make out the outlines of shapes in Dr. Unger’s office—the desk, the lamp, the brain-wave machine—but they were dim, as if behind a black screen.
And then it hit her. She was in Unger’s head—deep in his psyche, accessing his terror. It wasn’t his fearscape, but his subconscious. She was seeing what Vours saw when they read people’s minds and retrieved their fears. And this was what Unger was afraid of—that the atrocities he’d committed would somehow come back upon him. Reggie had to admire the symmetry.
But did she have the Vours’ other ability to then project those fears into the conscious mind? Could she make Unger see and feel these terrible things happen to him? Again Reggie felt the hatred and anger toward her captor rise within her, and she wanted to try.
Reggie focused on the image before her. Slowly, deliberately, she began to push it with her thoughts back down the tunnel. It moved like molasses, but gradually her own brain felt less stretched, and she knew she was getting close. Before she realized it, she was back in her own body, staring out of her own eyes at the doctor and the office around him. But her thoughts still held the image of his torture like a lasso, and as she glared into his startled eyes, she felt a connection, a pathway of sorts, open between them. With all her effort she pushed the image back at him, straight through his eyes into his visual cortex, where it gripped his neurons. The doctor’s pupils dilated, and the color drained from his face. He began to twitch violently.
“No… no, no, no, no,” he moaned. “No, it isn’t possible….”
“Oh, it’s possible, you son of a bitch. And it’s happening. Enjoy your little trip.” Reggie applied more mental pressure to Unger’s terrors, searing them into his waking mind. She felt incredibly powerful, and electricity seemed to surge through her body—not painfully, as when Unger’s machine had shocked her, but fluidly, like an alternating current that rejuvenated every cell. It was ecstasy.
Unger dropped to the floor and rolled into a fetal position. He was screaming now, and Reggie suddenly realized that all the noise would bring Click and Clack to the doorway. She had to shut him up.
Reggie glanced around the room for something to gag the doctor with, but when she broke eye contact with him, she lost the connection. It was like slamming a door in one’s face—suddenly she was just shut out of his mind. Abruptly his screams stopped, and Reggie’s heart dropped. Would he call out for help? But no, Dr. Unger continued to whimper like a baby on the floor, and Reggie remembered what it felt like when a Vour vision was pushed on you—even when it receded, it took a while to recover. Still, she had to hurry.
She winced as she ripped the wires from her skin and scalp and rubbed the permanently raw patches that they left behind. Unfortunately the orderlies had taken away the gurney, so Reggie searched for something else to use to restrain the doctor. His desk drawers yielded nothing but more legal pads and office supplies. She found masking tape, but that would hardly do. She moved to the closet in the corner of the room. Here she was more successful. Folded neatly on the bottom shelf was a straitjacket.
Reggie propped the doctor up against the couch and, with some difficulty, maneuvered his twitching arms into the straitjacket and buckled it up. He struggled slightly, but Reggie didn’t think it was against her: He kept his eyes closed and, though he had stopped yelling, continued to murmur incoherently at something she couldn’t see. It was taking him longer to recover than she would have anticipated, and she wondered if his age had something to do with this.
Reggie next grabbed scissors from Unger’s desk and cut a couple strips of fabric from the window drapes. With one she gagged Unger, quieting his mutterings, and the other she tied around his eyes, blinding him. She stepped back and contemplated him for a moment. The once powerful doctor, now trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, cowed and shivering. Reggie felt a grim satisfaction, but she didn’t let herself linger on it; she had to get out of there.
She gingerly turned the knob on the office door and opened it a crack. She heard nothing in the corridor outside, so she peeked her head out, swiveling it side to side. The hallway was empty and silent, lit by flickering fluorescent lights in the ceiling. She pulled her head back inside the office and glanced once more at Unger. He still twitched involuntarily, and his head lolled against the couch. Now was her chance to escape.
But as she turned back to the door, her eyes fell on the filing cabinets opposite Unger’s desk. She hesitated. There could be valuable information in those files—answers as to what the doctor and the Vours were up to, what they wanted with her, and how they could be stopped. Reggie looked from the door to the cabinet to the clock on the wall: It was just after eleven. There was a shift change at midnight, when the next patrol would make the rounds and check on Unger. She had a little bit of time yet.
Reggie ran to the file cabinets and yanked open one after another. There were hundreds of files, all labeled with different names. Unger’s patients and other Vours. Reggie grimaced at the hundreds of innocent people sacrificed over the years to the monsters’ evils.
She certainly didn’t have time to peruse them all. She would have to grab the files that seemed pertinent and take them with her. One by one she checked for relevant names. She pulled out a file for Quinn Waters and one for Keech Kassner, not that she expected these to help her much. Quinn and Keech had been foot
soldiers, not privy to the Vours’ bigger plans. Next she took a deep breath and opened the H–I drawer. Right up front was a thin folder labeled Halloway, Henry, and behind it, a folder three inches thick with her own name scrawled across the tab. With trembling fingers she pulled this out and held it on her lap, just staring at it.
For the first time it struck her that she had somehow developed Vour powers, that the things they’d done to her were changing her. What she was, and what she was becoming—the answers to it all could lie in these pages. She reached to open the packet, but then stopped. Her desire to see what lay in this file was almost overpowering, but her instincts warned her to keep moving. There would be time to study these pages later, if she could make it out of here. Resolved, she added hers and Henry’s files to the pile on the floor and went back to her search.
She opened the B–C drawer and scanned the names. Blackman, Bledsoe, Bleeker, Blighton, Blindauer, Bloodworth, Bloom. There was no Bloch, Eben.
She was about to shut the drawer again when she caught sight of a file toward the back that was the size of her own. Curious, she pushed the other folders aside and gasped as she read the name. It was the last thing she had expected.
“No way,” she murmured as she pulled out the file. It was marked Canfield, Macie.
In some ways, Macie Canfield was the person who had set the events of the last year in motion. It was her journal that Reggie had found and read, which chronicled the existence of Vours and how one had taken her brother, Jeremiah. Reggie had taken it for granted that Macie’s tale was fictional and had only realized the truth after her own brother had been possessed. In trying to figure out how to save him, she and Aaron and Eben had gone so far as to track Macie down; they hadn’t found her, but they had discovered Jeremiah’s mummified corpse in her old house and, more frighteningly, his Vour, which Macie had managed to trap and keep imprisoned for years. The image popped into Reggie’s mind as clearly as if she had seen it yesterday. It was hard to forget, the first glimpse of true evil: the monster in its black, smoky form, begging her for release. Well, she’d released it, all right. She’d frozen it and, taking literally Macie’s own written advice to “devour her fears,” eaten it. This was what had given Reggie the power to enter fearscapes, and it was all because of a crazy old woman’s ramblings. All this time, Reggie had just assumed Macie was dead—how could Unger even know about her?
There was a groan behind her, and Reggie jumped, dropping the file. Papers scattered all over the floor. Reggie whirled around to see Dr. Unger sitting up, wagging his blindfolded head back and forth and trying to speak. She had been so absorbed with her thoughts that she had completely forgotten the doctor was still in the room.
Unger struggled in his straitjacket, and his stifled cries grew more insistent. Reggie knew she had to hurry. She bent down and began to gather up all the papers from Macie’s file. There were brain scans, sheets of test results and other data, and—Reggie chilled—pages filled with a very familiar, scrawling handwriting. They had frayed edges, as if they’d been torn from a book. Or a journal.
Reggie stuffed all the papers back in the folder, and only then noticed a sheet paperclipped to the inside of the front jacket under a stamp marked Most Recent Results. The page was filled with numbers and scientific terms that meant little to Reggie, but what caught her attention was the date: These were results from tests done not even a week ago.
Reggie slammed the folder shut and leaped toward Dr. Unger. She picked up the scissors again and pressed them against his throat. At the touch of the cold steel, the doctor stopped his writhing and quieted. Reggie leaned toward his ear.
“Welcome back, Doc,” she whispered. “Now listen up. I am going to loosen this jacket, but you are not going to struggle, no matter what, or I am going to stab you in the throat. Do you understand?”
Dr. Unger nodded, and Reggie unbuckled the back of the straitjacket. She removed one of the doctor’s arms from the restraints; for a minute he resisted, but as soon as the scissor points were back against his neck again he relaxed. Reggie drew out his hand; above him, on the couch, lay the ends of the wires connected to the brain-wave machine. Reggie collected them and attached them to Unger’s fingers and neck, as had been done so many times to her. The doctor stiffened as he realized what was happening. He began to cry out again.
“Hush,” Reggie hissed at him, again raising the scissors to his neck. He hushed. “Very good. I’m guessing you know what you’re hooked up to. And you have nothing to fear if you tell the truth. Right?” Unger didn’t reply, but Reggie could see sweat forming on his brow and upper lip. “Now, I’m going to remove your gag and ask you some questions. You’re going to answer honestly, because if you don’t, you know what’s going to happen. And if you scream, I’ll be forced to remove your larynx. Are we clear?” Another nod from Unger, and Reggie untied the gag.
Dr. Unger coughed as soon as the cloth was removed, but he didn’t yell for help.
“You have a Macie Canfield here in this hospital,” Reggie said. “I want to know what room she’s in.”
Unger hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then said, “I don’t recognize that name. You must be mistaken.”
As soon as the words were out, he convulsed violently as the shock hit him. Reggie shook her head.
“I think you’re lying to me, Doctor. Let’s try again. Where is Macie Canfield?”
“Why do you care about her?” Unger croaked. Another spasm.
“I’m asking the questions now.” Reggie pressed the scissors tighter against his skin.
“You’re not a killer, Regina. I don’t believe that you’ll really hurt me.”
“Maybe I don’t have to kill you. Maybe I can just make you think you’re dying. I can do that now, remember?”
“Yes, yes, you can. It’s a miracle. You’re a miracle!” Unger was panting now with excitement. “You have the powers of a Vour, but you’re still human! I never thought such a thing was possible. You have to see the potential in this, Reggie. The things we could accomplish—”
“Shut up!” Reggie cried, then bit her lip and lowered her voice. “You are a worse creature than the monsters you serve,” she hissed at him. “Now answer my question, or I’ll send you back into hell. Where is Macie Canfield?”
Unger sighed. “All right, all right. She’s in room 323.”
He jerked as the electricity hit him. He yelped and his hand went to his heart.
“I’d pegged you as a better liar, Doctor,” Reggie said. “I’m turning up the voltage now.”
“Okay, okay! Wait! She’s in the basement. Block four, room eight.”
This time he remained still. No shock had been administered; he was telling the truth.
“Thanks for the help. You know, it’s been fun, being your guinea pig and everything, but I think I’m going to have to leave the nest.” Reggie ripped the wires off of Unger and tied his arm back in the straitjacket. But as she went to retie his gag, all the lights went out. Reggie stumbled backward, surprised, and tripped over the trash can, landing on her back in the middle of the room. Unger began to holler at the top of his lungs.
“GUARD! PATIENT ESCAPING! PATIENT ESCAPING! HELP ME!”
Reggie scrambled up. A bit of moonlight streamed through the window, and she could see the outline of the file cabinet and the pile of folders she had made next to it. She felt blindly for Unger’s briefcase, which she knew he always kept next to his desk. Her fingers touched on the leather case, and she clicked it open, then hurriedly packed the folders inside and slammed it shut, Unger’s screeching voice behind her all the time.
“GUARD! HELP!”
BAM!
Reggie swung the briefcase at the doctor and clocked him in the side of the head. He crumpled over, unconscious.
“That felt good,” Reggie muttered. She turned, but thought of something, and reached back toward Unger, feeling in his pockets. She pulled out his wallet and a set of keys, stowed them in the front pocket of the bri
efcase, then glanced once more around the dark room.
Were the guards responsible for this? she wondered. Did they know she had turned the tables on Dr. Unger and was planning to run for it? But no, if that were the case, they just would have stormed into the room; there was no reason to cut the lights. That only made their job more difficult. No, something else had caused the blackout. It was a clear night, with no storms or lightning that Reggie had noticed. A feeling of foreboding crept over her, and as she stood with the briefcase in one hand, she clasped the scissors in her other, holding them tightly by the closed blades.
She quickly rifled through the doctor’s desk drawers until she found a penlight, then ran for the door and threw it open—there was no time for caution now. She heard commotion down the darkened hall as hospital security rushed to check all the rooms. Beams from lit flashlights waved about, and scattered shouts echoed along the corridor. The electricity appeared to be out throughout the building.
Reggie stole out of the office and loped the opposite way down the hall, away from the lights. She stayed close to the wall, half feeling her way. Unfortunately she didn’t have a sense of where she was—she was usually half out of it whenever Click and Clack wheeled her around, and all the hallways in this place looked the same to her.
She needed to figure out a way to get to the basement. She knew that she was on the fourth, maybe fifth floor because of the view from Dr. Unger’s office. That meant there had to be an elevator bank somewhere. The elevators wouldn’t be functional with the power out, but there would most likely be a stairwell close by for emergencies. She just had to keep following the corridor and hope it led to an escape.
Reggie’s heart leaped as her fingers brushed against a button in the wall, then the closed steel door of an elevator. She clicked on the light, keeping her hand over the majority of it so only a small beam penetrated the blackness. Sure enough, she was standing in front of a bank of elevators with a large number five painted on the wall; beyond was a door marked Stairs.