Secret Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

“No.”

  “You have a team in place to infiltrate the complex,” Richard reasoned. “But you haven’t yet tried to take the center down. Something has you spooked. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Can you feel Sarah now?” Jacob asked.

  Richard had been trying to since his mind began digging itself out of unconsciousness.

  “There’s nothing where our link should be,” he admitted to his elder. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the room’s chill. “But I trust her to—”

  “We’ve just detected a psychic burst from the center. The energy readings are stronger than anything we’ve ever encountered, and they don’t match Ms. Temple’s psychic imprint or the imprint of any other consciousness we’ve tracked.”

  “She’s found Trinity.” Richard smiled. “That’s my girl.”

  “That’s our suspicion. The question is, why? Why would there be a flash of activity now, after thirty minutes of psychic silence?”

  “It could be a trap, but the center’s already baited their hook. They already think they’re reeling us in.”

  “Exactly why I’m contemplating pulling the infiltration team back from the complex. More unknowns are not what we need, when we’re targeting an adversary this volatile.”

  “Something has changed. Something the center wasn’t expecting.”

  “Such as?” Jacob’s gaze sharpened. His mind swept the thoughts and emotions Richard kept open as he analyzed the situation.

  “Don’t call off the team.” Richard pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the way the room dipped and spun around them. “Send the team in. Now. But on a recovery mission, not an assault.”

  “Recovering whom?”

  “Trinity. If you can read her energy but not her mother’s, she’s sending us a signal. The center itself would have no reason to tip its hand and show us Trinity’s location. The child’s asking to be brought in, before her handlers—”

  “You’re suggesting I order the extraction of a consciousness that’s strong enough to block the psychic projections of a woman whose unstable gifts have already grown beyond our control?”

  “I’m suggesting you bring in the Temple Legacy, sir. And the details about center tactics she’ll deliver.”

  “We’re already in position to shut the complex down. We have all the information we need.”

  “Not about the details Trinity extracted from Lieutenant Coleridge about our legacies. Whether the center’s research facility itself survives, the organization behind it and the government already have intel on our principals. Trinity knows what they know. She may be able to tell us who they’ll hit first. We need to know more about the government’s overall plan.”

  “The strike team can access that intel from the complex.”

  “Assuming their mission is successful. The center’s expecting an assault, not a covert infiltration. Take them off guard, secure information they’ll have no way of recovering, and we have an advantage it’ll be hard for them to recover from. We’ll have Trinity.”

  “What about the programming they’ve embedded to control the child’s mind, the way they’ve continued to control her mother’s?” Jacob linked his hands together in his robe’s front placket.

  “Sarah will help me remove the center’s latent footprints. Both of the twins are ready to do whatever it takes to reclaim Trinity and their legacy.”

  “You truly can’t sense Sarah Temple?” Jacob’s mind began peeling away the layers of Richard’s consciousness until he reached Richard’s memories from Sarah’s idealized seashore.

  “No.” Richard slapped his hand to the wall, bracing himself against the strain of accepting Jacob’s presence in his mind. “I can’t reach her now.”

  “But you believe she’ll bring Trinity’s consciousness back to you and her twin.”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe,” Jacob said, continuing to read Richard’s truth, “the child’s been a pawn, and that the mother will be able to negate the center’s programming. You believe they’ll both be assets to the Brotherhood.”

  “Yes.” Sarah had already succeeded. The surge of psychic energy at the center was proof that she’d reached Trinity. Richard refused to consider any other explanation.

  Jacob’s consciousness retreated.

  Richard sagged but managed to stay on his feet.

  “How much of your belief,” Jacob asked, “is your fear of losing your mate, and how much is your intuition as a Watcher?”

  “Both, equally, sir.” Richard ignored the migraine pounding behind his eyes. He stayed on his feet by picturing the smile he knew he’d see on Sarah’s face once she was holding her child in her arms. “To be everything I can for the psychic realm, I need Sarah in my life. So does the Brotherhood. She and her daughter and her twin are integral to all our paths. To win the war we’re facing, we need legacies like the Temples fighting by our side, even if it means sitting out a few battles. We need them, sir, even more than they need us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sarah’s mind woke with her child’s in the white-on-white lab from Trinity’s nightmare. Her daughter was curled in her arms, quietly crying, clinging, and more real than Sarah had ever dreamed possible.

  It was still a projection. Trinity still lay within her center laboratory alone, Sarah in her cell at the bunker. But her mind and Sarah’s were linked now. Completely. Trinity finally trusted her.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Within their projection, Sarah stroked Trinity’s silky hair. “I know you’re afraid. But you’re not alone.”

  “They’re coming.” Trinity was shaking.

  “The Watchers who are coming will help you. But you have to—”

  “The doctors. They’ll know I’m awake. They’ll send me back.”

  “Shh. . . .”

  Sarah noticed for the first time the equipment around her daughter’s bed. The tapes and leads and tubes attached to her child, feeding monitors and readings. There was no one else in sight. Her gaze flew to the door. How long did they have before that changed?

  “Trinity?” She sat up and pulled her daughter with her, praying she was helping her little girl become more conscious within her real lab. “Honey, I need you to focus on the door. Lock it, Trinity. Do whatever you have to so your doctors can’t get in. Then detach the monitors and sensors they’re tracking you with.”

  “But—”

  “Please, you have to trust me, so I can help you from where I am. You have to buy yourself time until your Watchers arrive.”

  Where was the Watcher team?

  Sarah reached for Richard’s mind but still couldn’t sense him. She looked down to find Trinity staring across the lab. The same red haze that had marred Sarah’s shoreline in the vision’s mural was oozing over the door, until it completely covered it. The tubes and wires attached to Trinity began to fall away, including the IV hooked to the shunt in her chest.

  “Good girl,” Sarah pulled her daughter closer in their shared dream. She wiped Trinity’s tears away and gauged the alertness of her gaze. “Now let me talk to Richard.”

  “No! He’ll—”

  “He’ll help you. The Watchers are coming to help you. Let me prove it, honey. Let me show you his mind.”

  “He’ll hate me.” Trinity buried her head against Sarah’s neck. “Everyone will hate me.”

  The door rattled behind the barrier Trinity had painted. The little girl whimpered.

  Sarah saw a brief flash of her daughter’s reality. Trinity lay on a bunk, alone in a room with walls of glass, her eyes almost completely closed as she pretended to sleep. The jumble of wires and tubes from the monitors and other equipment were no longer attached to her. A team of scientists stood on the other side of the transparent walls, an elaborate observation suite beyond them. No one could reach the door or the floor-to-ceiling windows protecting Trinity—as if an invisible field were holding them back.

  The men were furious. Arguing. Strategizing how to force their way through
.

  “They’ll hate me now, too,” Trinity cried in the vision, curling deeper into Sarah’s arms. “They said I’d die if I woke up without them.”

  “The Watchers will get you out before the doctors can reach you. But you have to help them, honey. You have to trust them.”

  “They’re not coming. Not for me.”

  “They’re already here.” Sarah pushed her child away until they were looking into each other’s eyes, the vision feeling more real by the second. “I’m a Watcher, Trinity. And I came for you. I’m your guide out. You’re awake. You’ve trusted me this far. Now let us help you be free of this horrible place forever.”

  The anger in Trinity’s mind was gone. There wasn’t a hint of the hate from Ruebens’s programming. There was only shock and confusion and the smallest flicker of hope staring back at Sarah from her child’s blue eyes.

  “You came for me?” she asked.

  “As soon as I knew about you. As soon as I woke from our last nightmare, I started making my way back to you, honey. And I’m never leaving, whether you let the other Watchers help you or not. If you stay, I’ll be here. Right here, with you. Whatever the center does next, they’ll do it to both of us.”

  “You . . . you won’t make me go back to the nightmares?”

  “No more nightmares,” she promised her child, “for either of us. No more living for nothing but other peoples’ dreams. The Watchers won’t let the center take either of us there again. Now let me contact them.”

  Within their vision, Trinity looked beyond her transparent walls, toward the angry men grouped on the other side. Then her tiny hand reached for Sarah’s cheek. Her touch flashed a rainbow of color through their minds as Sarah’s senses rushed back.

  “Richard?” Sarah called with her mind. “Trinity’s awake. She’s been inside a center lab all this time.”

  “I’m here.” His response was instantaneous. “We picked up her energy spike. A recovery team’s entered the complex undetected. They’re on the way to her. Get Trinity ready to move.”

  “She’s terrified.” Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. “There are men everywhere, the men who experimented on her mind and fed her nightmares.”

  “Talk her through it. Prepare her, so the team won’t sense her as a threat. The Watcher team will take care of the rest. But she has to go willingly. She has to be willing to leave or the elders will call off the recovery.”

  “It’s the raven,” gasped the shaking little girl in Sarah’s arms.

  “His name’s Richard,” Sarah assured her. “He looked out for me when the center hurt me. Now he wants to help me look out for you.”

  “Is . . . is he coming?”

  “His friends are. They’ll be here soon. You have to go with them.”

  “Watchers?” More tears flowed. More fear.

  “Friends. Your family. Leave your mind open to them. They’ll make the men on the other side of the wall go away, then they’ll get you out. They’ll bring you to me.”

  “And the seashore? From the painting? I don’t like the ocean, but I like the pretty sand and the clouds in the sky over the water.”

  “Then that will be our first dream together.”

  Sarah clung to their vision, desperate to hold the little girl in real life. To introduce her to her aunt and soon-to-be uncle, and to Richard. To the world opening up for their legacy.

  “We’ll paint a dream of the shore together, honey, while we get rid of everything these horrible people have done to your mind. You’re the light in my dreams. You’re the sun just starting to rise above the ocean, making all the beautiful colors in the sky possible. Remember that, when your Watcher friends come. Remember the dream we’ll create once they take you away from the center.”

  Trinity clung to her in their vision, her head nodding as she tried to believe. Beyond her glass walls, there was a flash of light, a strobe of energy as Watchers dressed in black fatigues stormed the observation room. Scientists tried to relay for help. They were stopped instantly. Not with the automatic weapons Ruebens had programmed into Trinity and Sarah’s ocean nightmare, but with the expertly trained minds of the warriors the Brotherhood had sent to claim her little girl.

  Sarah saw another flash from her daughter’s reality: a child’s head rolling to the side to watch her rescuers subdue the last of the men who’d tormented her.

  “They’re here,” Sarah projected to Richard.

  “They can’t push through her control over the lab’s door,” he said. “She has to let them in, Sarah. Tell Trinity to drop her shields. There’s no time. She has to let them in now.”

  “Trinity?” Sarah said in their dream. “Let your new friends in, so you can come dream with me. I’m waiting for you, honey.”

  Trinity swallowed, her consciousness flooding Sarah’s with so many emotions, Sarah closed her eyes to keep her mind from flinching away. Hope. Fear. Betrayal. Fury. All of it strong, just like her little girl. And weak, just as Sarah herself had been when she’d done the unthinkable and allowed herself to trust Richard.

  “Come back to me, Trinity.” Sarah pressed her cheek to her child’s. She’d never been more terrified than she was in that moment, as she waited, helplessly, for the Brotherhood to rescue the secret part of her she’d left behind at the center. The best part of her. “Come see what we’ve become.”

  Then suddenly the Watchers were beside Trinity’s bed, both in Sarah’s dream with her child and in Trinity’s reality. One of the warriors lifted Trinity into his arms.

  “Mommy?” the little girl cried as she was rushed out the door, her arms reaching behind her to where Sarah still sat by the empty bed in their dream. “Help me!”

  “I’m right here, honey.” The Watchers disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived. Sarah’s link to her daughter blurred to a blinding white. “I’m right here,” she promised. “They’re bringing you to me. Stay with your Watchers. Stay with them. Trinity? Trinity!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Her daughter’s lab faded.

  Trinity’s cries faded.

  Their dream dissolved until Sarah could no longer feel her child.

  She fought to hold on, to be sure that Trinity was safely away from the center. But familiar arms were pulling her close, pulling her back, anchoring her to another reality. She could sense a strong mind, an even stronger heart, that she couldn’t deny. Medication flew through her veins, opening her senses to the world beyond her closed eyes.

  “Wake up, Sarah.” Richard’s voice was coming from the other side of sleep instead of through their link.

  “Trinity?” she asked, still sensing her child, but there was nothing to see when her mind reached for their link.

  “She’s safe,” Richard said. “They’re bringing her straight here.”

  “Richard?” Sarah clung to the sound of his voice and the solid strength of him leaning close, and the brush of his fingers, his lips, against her face.

  “Come back to me, Sarah.”

  Her eyes flickered open. “Richard?”

  “I’m right here.” He smiled down to her. “So is Madeline. She’s coming around, too. Jarred’s pacing a trench in the floor next to her.”

  “But . . .” The bunker’s lab came into focus around Sarah.

  She was wearing the same scrubs she’d had on when they began the dream mission into her nightmare. She was lying on the same table Richard had settled her onto after the planning meeting. It was as if none of the rest had happened. As if her misfiring brain had dreamed up every bit of it.

  But that wasn’t possible.

  It couldn’t be possible.

  “Trinity.” Sarah pushed up until she was sitting. “I know I met her. I found her. Tell me it’s real. My daughter’s real. Where is she?”

  “She’s real. You found her. She’s only a few minutes away.” Richard pressed Sarah back to the table. “The team was able to cloak their movement once they were beyond the complex. They even think . . .”

  �
��What?”

  A moan shifted Sarah’s attention to her sister, who was waking on the exam table beside her. Jarred hovered over his fiancée. Sarah reached for her twin’s hand. She could feel her sister’s mind more clearly through the contact. And with Maddie’s centering presence, she could feel Trinity’s fear drawing closer. She could sense her child’s disorientation at being outside, being driven quickly through the night, being surrounded by strangers, being carried again.

  “I’m here,” Sarah tried to project to her, but there was no response.

  “Her extraction team’s shielding her mind.” Richard brushed Sarah’s bangs from her eyes. “They believe Trinity’s strengthening their reach. That she helped them escape the complex without their movements being detected.”

  “Her Watchers . . . They have to—”

  “They’re being very careful with her. She’s not resisting. I can feel her, too, Sarah. I can feel her through you. She’s doing remarkably well.”

  An innocent mind. A damaged mind that had never known life beyond suppression and control, loneliness and anger, and—

  “Mommy?” Trinity called.

  “I’m here, honey.” Sarah pushed herself up again.

  “They’re—” Richard said.

  “Inside the bunker.” Through Trinity, Sarah saw the side entrance from the woods. A rush of images followed: hallway, elevator, strong bodies moving in a protective circle. Each observation swam with a little girl’s panic as Trinity was rushed deeper into the ground, inside once more, shut away from a world she’d never seen.

  “I have to—” Sarah’s legs buckled as soon as her feet hit the ground. Richard caught her against him. “I have to go to her.” She tried to step away.

  “She’s here,” Richard said a second before a six-man Watcher team entered the lab.

  One of the men—Donovan—walked straight to Sarah, the beautiful dark-haired child in his arms twisting in his grasp, her arms opening.

  “Trinity?” Sarah was engulfed in the sweetest, most delicate hug imaginable. Her child was shaking so badly, and they were both so weak, Sarah was able to hold on to Trinity only because Richard wrapped his arms around them both. “What’s wrong? What happened?”