Janis focused past the more generic energies of the room and into the faint, dull-colored flow. The energy resonated inside her, on what felt like a cellular level. But not in a pleasant way. It ached like a low fever and drew sweat from her brow. A tremor shuddered the length of her spine.
Janis was startled by the sensation of someone patting her cheek. Beyond a pair of glasses, concerned brown eyes stared down on her. Janis was no longer hovering, she realized, but spread on her back, the floorboards cool through her damp clothes. Scott’s face withdrew as she sat up. The room spun. She felt vaguely nauseous. Scott’s hands steadied her as she drew her legs in.
“What happened?” he asked. “You look awful.”
She took in Scott’s dirt-smudged face and cobwebby hair. “You’re not looking so hot yourself.”
“Oh yeah, I was in the crawl space under the house. Didn’t find anything, though.” He continued to frown down on her.
“I’m all right,” she assured him. She grasped his shoulders and pulled herself up. She expected the room to spin again, but it didn’t. The symptoms that had gripped her moments before were waning.
“You felt something, didn’t you?” he asked.
“The illness I sensed…” Janis fought to recall what she had picked up before her awareness had grayed out. “Someone’s using it to control Mr. Shine. That might explain the duality I’ve felt around him. I think he’s being coerced into doing some pretty awful things.”
“Like working for the Scale?” Scott asked.
Janis nodded. “And there’s something else.” She double-checked her intuition before going on. “The illness is cancerous, some sort of side effect of his abilities. And it’s not just in Mr. Shine.”
Scott’s eyes darkened in concern.
“I think it’s in us, too.”
9
A sharp odor broke through the fog of Reginald’s illness as he set foot inside the creaking house. A foul odor, like rotten cheese. Revulsion filled him as he recognized its source.
You need her, he reminded himself.
Reginald’s eyes roamed the darkness behind his blindfold as a pair of hands, one on each arm, guided him forward. Halfway down a flight of wooden steps, his legs staggered. The hands gripping him tightened, preventing him from collapsing forward. They assisted him the rest of the way down the steps and over a hard floor. Moments later, a plush chair enveloped him.
Fingers at the back of his head unknotted the damp blindfold and yanked it away. Reginald blinked into what appeared a basement room. A single flame beat from a candle on a small table, pushing the darkness out a bit. Reginald could just discern the shadows of standing figures along the walls.
Her security, no doubt.
“Reginald Perry,” an old woman’s voice said.
His gaze returned to the candle. From the darkness beyond, a pair of wet eyes glistened back at him.
“I apologize for the manner in which you were brought here,” she said. “But until you are completely back in our confidence, we have to remain cautious. You still have a job to do, no?”
“I’m too sick.” Reginald fought to focus. “I need more time.”
“I’ve given you a month. With the kind of access you had, that should have been more than sufficient.”
“They left,” he said. “Some sort of a mission.”
“Yes, we know.”
Of course she knew, Reginald thought. It was how the Witch had earned her alias. She could see future events. It was also why he had to be extra careful. The moment he took an action—any action—she would be able to see it as the first in a series, all the way to its most probable conclusion. She had known, for example, that he would request today’s meeting.
“But they have been back for some time now,” the Witch finished.
“I had to clear out. Thanks to Shadow, Scott and Janis know about me. They know about my connection to the Scale.” Reginald paused to breathe, to summon up more indignation. “And with Jesse missing, where do you think their program was going to begin their inquisition?”
From the darkness, the Witch’s eyes took on a red hue.
She’s using her powers, Reginald thought.
“The boy and girl are looking for you,” she said. “But we have already gamed that out. As events stand, everything is going to be fine. We have prepared several action plans. Indeed, your leaving had the fortunate effect of drawing the Champions from their fortress. Soon, very soon, you will have your opportunity to eliminate one. Per our agreement.”
“Soon, very soon, I’m going to be dead,” he replied.
“I don’t see that.”
Reginald stared at her glistening eyes. He had tried to put it off, to give himself time to come up with an alternate plan. But she made it sound so inevitable: he was going to kill a Champion. Unless, of course, he took an action to alter that course. But then the Witch would see, would know.
And he would be history.
A convulsion jerked through his upper body. “You see?” he said. “Short of someone holding a rifle in my hands and pulling the trigger, I’m not going to be capable of eliminating anyone. Not without another dose of the damn medicine.”
When the Witch chuckled, more rankness wafted from her.
Something pierced Reginald’s left shoulder. He flinched and found one of her men extracting a hypodermic needle. The man receded with the needle back into the shadows along the edge of the room.
“A half dose,” the Witch said. “It will give you one more week.”
As the serum spread inside him, Reginald opened and closed his hands. He felt his strength returning by degrees and wondered how long it would take to close the distance that separated him from her. Wondered whether he could deliver a fatal blow before her men gunned him down. Because the minute he stood, she would be able to see his entire chain of action.
Reginald relaxed his hands. While her death would no doubt cripple the Scale, it would not destroy it. No, someone more powerful than the Witch stood behind the lethal organization. He just needed to find out who. And to do that, he had to remain alive.
“Are we done here?” he asked.
“Don’t I even get a ‘thank you’?” she teased.
“I’ll thank you when I get my supply back.”
Reginald waited to be blindfolded again before standing. For the first time in days, the muscles in his legs didn’t quiver. The men turned him around and guided him toward the stairs, away from her awful stench.
“Oh, one more thing, Reginald,” the Witch called.
The men allowed him to turn partway.
“We have decided to go ahead and make all of the Champions fair game. It’s time. But there is one in particular we want eliminated.”
Reginald’s stomach balled into a cold fist. “Who?” he asked.
Though he couldn’t see the Witch’s eyes beyond his blindfold, he could feel their blood-red stare.
“The girl,” she replied. “Janis Graystone.”
The sedan that dropped Reginald off was gray and nondescript. It pulled away as he limped up the walkway to his apartment. He had taken on a form nearly as nondescript as the sedan. The elderly were of little interest to most, he’d found, occupying the peripheries of an increasingly MTV society. In his current disguise as a geriatric white man, his blue eyes wouldn’t stand out, either. Another plus.
Inside the one-bedroom apartment, Reginald tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter, shed his jacket, and shifted into his natural form. He took a minute to search the unit, a procedure he’d resumed with more religious fervor after being ambushed in his last home and bolted to that evil contraption.
He touched one of the knotted scabs that haloed his head. Screws had been driven through his skull, the electrical impulses they conducted suppressing his ability to shift. The same machine had restrained his arms and legs, fed him, sedated him, flushed away his waste matter.
Reginald burned at the thought. He never wanted to be controlled l
ike that again.
And yet, here you are.
He paced the length of the small apartment, where he’d come to hide from the world, to plan. He ran his hand along the top of a plaid loveseat. His latest acquisition, a military-grade sniper rifle, was disassembled and hidden inside its wooden frame. He hammered the top of the couch with a fist.
An out, there had to be a damn out.
He thought again about a plan to contact Scott or Janis, the two Champions who trusted him the most. But after Shadow’s interference, how much did they trust him anymore? And contacting them would require an action, one the Witch could key into, trace to its conclusion. After having him killed, the Witch would just use the new events to the Scale’s advantage.
Reginald had to figure out a way to act beyond her sight somehow. He reviewed that day’s meeting with her.
The girl, he heard the Witch saying. Janis Graystone.
Reginald paused at his bedroom window and leaned his hands against the waist-high sill. Why had they placed her at the top of the kill list? Did the Witch consider her dangerous? Had the Witch seen something?
Reginald reviewed what he knew of Janis. Like Madelyn, she was a psionic. That much had become clear the day Janis attempted to enter his thoughts at school. At the time, her powers had felt less refined than Madelyn’s, but more potent. A sleeping destroyer of worlds.
Perhaps it was that potency the Witch feared.
Reginald peeked between two of the blinds onto a depressing cement courtyard. If he could only get into Janis’s head somehow, communicate with her in a way that would not require a physical act on his part. But aside from being able to blunt intrusions into his mind, he possessed no psychic abilities. He would have to figure out a way to get her to access his thoughts.
A note? No, that would require action to write and deliver.
Approach her in disguise? He shook his head. More action.
His old rapport with Madelyn?
Reginald let his eyelids fall. A subtle force rippled behind them as he trained his focus inward. In the years following Madelyn’s murder, he would go to their shared space from time to time, hoping to feel something of her. But now, like then, the space felt as barren as the apartment courtyard.
Still, it didn’t mean it couldn’t act as a meeting place. He just needed to figure out a way to give Janis access.
Reginald opened the top drawer of a vertical wood dresser. In the back of the drawer, amid some odds and ends, he retrieved a hard case for reading glasses. He carried the case to the bed, cracked it open, and lifted out a slender silver chain with a crystal pendant.
As the small pendant rotated, a warmth seemed to propagate through the air.
The chain had once belonged to Madelyn. In the early days of the Champions Program, her trainer had had her use the crystal to help concentrate her powers. Beyond the crystal’s smoky pink faces, Reginald thought he could still sense lingering traces of her energy.
Would Janis sense that energy, too? Would it lead her to his and Madelyn’s old rapport?
He was getting ahead of himself. First, he would need to leave the necklace someplace where Janis could find it, but without it appearing that he was leaving it for her.
The boy and girl are looking for you, the Witch had said.
They would no doubt start with his house, if they hadn’t already. Either way, it was his best shot. Reginald could return to the house and check the wall spaces as though looking for something he’d left behind. In the process, he would set the necklace down. The Witch would be aware of the act, but so what? To her, it would be just a lost necklace. Nothing in the act, in the artifact, would suggest an attempt to communicate with a Champion.
But the act will change the course of events, Reginald reminded himself. The Witch will observe that.
Unless he had a powerful psionic on his side.
Reginald dropped the necklace into his pants pocket. Shifting back into his old-man disguise, he reached for his jacket and keys. Of course, fooling the Witch would all depend on whether Janis found the necklace, one, accessed the rapport, two, and accepted his plan, three.
Reginald frowned. All were far from a sure thing.
And he only had a week.
10
“Shouldn’t we confront Kilmer about this illness thing?” Scott asked, still shaken by Janis’s revelation, not to mention finding her laid out on the floor. He looked over to where she was adjusting the temperature settings in the idling station wagon, trying to get the vents to blow warmer air. A pale color lingered on her cheeks.
“Eventually,” she replied. “Right now, there’s a more pressing health concern.”
Scott nodded grimly. Without a lead, one of the Champions—one of them, possibly—was destined for the morgue.
And soon.
He studied Mr. Shine’s house in the rear-view mirror. Coupled with the death certificate, the complete absence of any physical clues had made it clear that the shifter had no intention of being found. He could be anyone and anywhere. Most likely with the Scale, Scott conceded—unless he really was dead. Either way, the house search had been a bust.
“Hopefully, we’ll have better luck with Jesse.”
“Huh?” Scott said, before realizing Janis had picked up his final thought.
“The warehouses aren’t far from here.” She buckled herself in. “Other side of Depot Road.”
Scott regarded the bluish discoloration of her set lips.
“Are you sure you feel well enough to…”
“Scott, there’s no time.”
He didn’t argue. Placing the car in gear, he pulled from the wooded lot and drove from Mr. Shine’s house. As he steered along back roads toward Main Street, he took the occasional peek over at Janis. Color seemed to be seeping back into her face, thank goodness. They were just through the downtown when both of their watches beeped.
Scott feared it was Kilmer, calling them home.
Janis read her watch face. “Message from Steel’s number two. He says they’ve marked the crash site and a warehouse where they found a tire track from Jesse’s car that night.”
“That’s a relief,” Scott said. “Combing the entire place would have taken weeks.”
On the other side of the intersection of Main and Depot, Scott swung the station wagon onto a crumbling road where trees and aging warehouses competed for open air. The trees appeared to be winning.
“Up ahead,” Janis said.
Scott squinted until he spotted a faded orange cone. He slowed as he approached it, then turned left at the four-way intersection. Farther ahead, another cone directed them right. A final cone, this one larger than the others, sat in front of a bank of trees where the road turned sharply. Amid the foliage, Scott could see a chain-link fence that had been plowed into.
He nosed the station wagon against the cone and parked.
“Place looks a lot different in the light of day,” he said, remembering the feed from Agent Steel’s team the night they had found Jesse slumped over the steering wheel of the Chevelle.
He and Janis waded through weeds and crushed brush until they arrived at the downed fence. Beyond the fence, torn-open bags of cement sprawled from a pallet: the second impact site.
“Anything about this strike you as odd?” Janis asked.
“Besides it being an awful place to store cement?”
“Bingo.”
She stepped over the fence, then kneeling, placed a hand on the edge of the pallet. “I’m not getting any visions,” she said after a moment, “but there’s this temporal resonance, sort of hard to explain. It’s telling me the cement was placed here the night of the crash.”
“A staged crash,” Scott said, not liking where the line of reasoning led.
He paced slowly through the brush, eyes to the ground, not knowing what he was even looking for. Steel’s team had already scoured the site. Any evidence would have been bagged and processed—though apparently without result. Kilmer was looking to hi
m and Janis now for fresh leads. Problem was, without any data systems to tap, Scott’s powers were pretty much useless.
Janis wasn’t faring any better, apparently.
“There’s some energy from that night, but it’s not concentrated enough for me to really access.” She stood and dusted off her hands. “I seem to have better luck in enclosed spaces.”
“There’s still the warehouse,” Scott said.
Cones pointed the way once more. At the final cone, Scott guided the station wagon through an opening in a tall chain-link fence and onto a gravel lot. He parked in front of a corrugated-metal warehouse and cut the engine. He could definitely get used to driving Janis around.
“Creepy,” Janis muttered, eyeing the slanted structure.
Scott leaned forward to peer past her. A large rolling door stood ajar. “Anyone home?” he asked.
Janis shook her head. Outside the car, though, she stopped halfway to the rolling door.
Scott pulled up beside her. “What is it?”
“This is going to sound really clichéd, but I have a strange feeling we’re being watched.”
He gazed around. “Well, Agent Dutch and his team are around somewhere.”
“I can already sense them. This seems more…” Her brow folded down over her closed eyes. “…psychic. Like someone’s watching, but with his mind. And there’s a smell, too. Sort of disgusting.”
“Can you block him?” Scott asked, already raising his mental defenses.
“I tried, but the presence isn’t reading our thoughts. It’s just … present.” She waved her arms around. “Out there. Every time I try to draw a bead on it, it feels farther away, like a mirage.”
A pair of cold fingers walked down the back of Scott’s neck. He placed a protective arm around Janis.
“Maybe it was a mirage because I don’t feel it anymore,” she said.
“Oh.” Scott released her.
They walked past the rolling door and into a cavernous room. Before Scott’s eyes could adjust to the dimness, a biting sourness filled his nose. He wondered if that was the smell Janis had detected moments before. Old construction boards, furniture, and stripped-down motorcycles took shape along the walls. Off to his left, a wooden staircase climbed to a black doorway.
XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Page 5