by Nate Kenyon
She knew the answer, in this cold place, inside the buzzing of electric air; Sarah did not trust anyone, not even herself. Things had happened within these walls, accidents that were not entirely blameless.
Mental illness is a matter of mistrust, Jess thought, as she walked. Never knowing when your own mind might betray you. Jess had private thoughts, of course. She was sometimes unable to keep her mind from things that might be considered inappropriate. She knew that it gave her distance. But what must it be like to a little girl who had felt responsible for others’ lives ever since she had been able to form such thoughts? Who knew with certainty that her every emotion could end up with such dire consequences?
They played into that here, didn’t they, Sarah? Made you feel guilty? Made you feel responsible when accidents happened, when you could not control yourself?
The air seemed to pulse, as if in answer. Hands tickled the inside of her skull.
Jess crouched at Sarah’s door, the last along the line. She considered the lock. This was not one that could be sprung with a bobby pin. She stood and peered through the little window. Touched the glass and found it ice-cold. Traced a fingernail along the surface; it was translucent, lightly covered by frost. She rubbed it away.
Sarah Voorsanger stood against the far wall. The jacket that had contained her was lying torn and discarded on the floor. Jess was awed by the changes in the girl, how tall and straight she stood now, the power that she held in the depths of her dark eyes, pulsing from her like waves. Oh, we only saw the barest glimpse of it, didn’t we? We only knew the edges of the truth. Sarah had been afraid before, and her faith and hope of an eventual release had faded long ago; perhaps her urge to fight had faded with them. But now she was stronger, and older, and she had a reason to fight for her life. She had been introduced to a world of possibilities outside this place.
Sarah looked up into the glass, and they found each other. Jess could see her breath, puffing like silver clouds before her face. She could feel something inside her mind, probing.
In spite of her best efforts to subdue it, fear trickled through, cut deep into her gut. Sarah crossed the little room and put her hand up against the glass. Their fingers touched with the window between them. Something groaned, and the glass cracked and buckled. The hand twitched inside her skull.
Jess felt it just in time, fell away from the door as it shrieked and split at its hinges, as it tipped with a shuddering crash to the floor.
Concrete dust swirled and spun like tiny tornadoes in the following silence. Jesus Lord. Jess got to her feet, choking on the thickened air. The door was a twisted chunk of discarded metal lying against the opposite wall. She reached down and touched a ragged edge, yanked her hand away from the scalding heat. She could hardly believe what she had just seen. But the evidence was lying smoking and battered at her feet.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Back in the outer room, she heard the elevator whir to life.
“Sarah?” Jess said. “We have to go. Now.” No response. She peered into the wound where the door had been. Sarah stood just inside the opening. Her lips were blue and she was trembling.
“I was bad,” she said softly. “And I liked it. I almost couldn’t stop.”
No seizures now, she’s learning how to control it better. Or was that just a side effect of whatever they were feeding her?
Words rushed and stumbled over themselves in an attempt to get out. “They’ve been telling you this is bad all your life, Sarah. I know they have. But they’re wrong. We can work all this out later, but right now you can’t think about all that, not if we’re going to have a chance to get out of here. Do you understand? You have to trust yourself. This power is a part of you, just like anything else. It’s nothing to be ashamed of—”
“Leave me alone!” Sarah shouted. “Please.” She backed away again, into the corner of the padded room. “I’ll hurt you, I’ll hurt everyone, I won’t be able to keep it down anymore.”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. A moment later Evan Wasserman stepped into the hall. He was flanked by two big men wearing riot gear and protective goggles and carrying police batons in ugly, thick-fisted hands. She saw guns clipped to their belts. Not cops, Jess thought. But they sure as hell know what they’re getting into down here.
She stepped forward, planted both feet, and gave her best bluff. “Hey. Where the hell have you been? She’s already gone, I couldn’t stop her.”
“Shut the fuck up and step away from the door,” one of the men said. She heard the fear in his voice, though he was trying hard to keep it down.
A syringe glistened in Wasserman’s hand. “You’ll never get close enough to her,” Jess said.
“That’s why you’re going to do it.”
“The fuck I am.”
“She trusts you. You’re the only one.” Wasserman took a few steps closer. “You can help us, or not. But these walls are reinforced steel and concrete. They’re specially made for this sort of thing. Nobody can hear you down here, and there’s no way out. Why don’t you make it easy on yourself?”
Wasserman’s eyes were wild and his tie was missing. There was an air about him of absent neglect, like a home where all the lights were blazing and the grass grew tangled in the yard. He’s lost it, she thought. He’ll kill us both now.
And then, with the strength of a fist in the guts, it hit her; why he had agreed to let her into all this, why he had encouraged her to win Sarah’s trust, but never given her any real freedom or power in the attempt. What do you do with a girl who defies everything you have ever believed about the world? A girl who cannot be controlled, locked up, sedated forever? A girl who has the power to destroy you? What do you do with her when you’ve been beaten?
“You end the game,” she said. “On your terms. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“She fought me,” Wasserman said. “For all these years she fought me hard. She’s ruined this hospital, ruined my life. I had a life once, you understand? Someone I loved. Do you know she’s killed two men? I bet that’s something you haven’t talked about in your little counseling sessions.”
His anger and fear seemed to explode from him as he came forward, closer. Jess could smell it like iron within his clothes, his sweat. “She hasn’t taken any sedatives in two days,” he said. “She’s too strong. They’ve dosed her with something that multiplies the effect. Don’t you see? You don’t have any choice. We don’t have any choice. From the moment she was born she’s destroyed everything. It’s gone too far now, too far. There can’t be any more tests. Who knows what she could do, if she gets out of here!”
“I won’t do it, Wasserman. I won’t be your executioner.”
“Then you’re a liability.” Wasserman fumbled in his jacket and came out with the gun from his desk drawer. His hand shook as he pointed it at her. “I’ll ask you to get out of the way.”
“The police know where I am,” Jess said. “They’ll be here any minute. You need help. Maybe we can talk to someone—”
“Don’t try that juvenile psychoanalysis with me. I was treating patients when you were still riding a school bus. I know what I’m doing.”
“Sarah’s not your enemy.”
“She’s not even human!” Wasserman shrieked. Spittle flecked his lips. “She’ll be the end of us all, do you hear me? You don’t know the truth of it! She could rip the world apart by its seams—”
Jess sensed movement from the corner of her eye. Sarah stepped like a ghost from her padded cell. Wasserman paled. His mouth moved but no sound came out. They stood staring at each other in the silent hall.
Wasserman’s hand shook holding the gun. Neither of them spoke. Jess was reminded for a fleeting moment of an old western, where the gunslingers met in the middle of the dusty road and faced each other down. Except in this version one of the gunslingers was a little girl, and her only weapon was her mind.
Do it, Jess urged silently. The hell with all of them. Push. P
ush hard.
She felt an answering squeeze, and the blood in her veins turned to ice. The temperature plummeted.
Sarah smiled.
The two men moved up to Wasserman’s side and held their batons in both hands like clubs. “Take it easy,” one of them said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone….”
Sarah looked from one man to the other. It happened as simply as a breath of wind; a sudden surge of air, a tickle in the back of her mind, and they were thrown backward as if a giant hand had reached out and punched them squarely in the chest.
They landed on their backs with a double thud, skidding across the smooth floor in a tangle of arms and legs, and came to rest still and silent at the threshold of the outer room.
The report of the gun was like a thunderclap in the narrow hall. Jess registered the bucking of Wasserman’s hand, the sudden ringing in her ears, and then Sarah shrieked and stumbled backward. A voice answered inside her head, and the mental fist clenched with vicious force. Jess felt herself driven to her knees. Dimly she felt the blood inside her temples surge and throb. Something had been turned loose inside her skull, and now it scampered through fat gray coils and dug its talons into soft flesh. She struggled for consciousness, felt herself slipping, the past and present mingling like ghosts.
Michael, there’s a car, get out of the road…
Jess bit down hard. The world spun and righted itself.
She looked up through splayed fingers. The frigid air cut like glass in her lungs. Mist swirled along the concrete floor, slipped in tendrils up the gray walls and boiled above their heads like little thunderclouds.
Sarah stood upright. A bloody stain spread over her left shoulder. Her eyes were wide and glittering, her fists clenched. Sweat dripped from her forehead.
The gun barked again, and again; Jess watched in wonder as the bullets slowed in midair, trembled, hung like tiny planets in a thickening wind. Finally they dropped harmlessly to the floor.
Wasserman shook the gun in his hand as if it had suddenly grown teeth and bitten him. It would not come loose.
His flesh began to smoke as metal twisted and melted into his skin. He screamed. Then the look on his face changed. His free hand went to his neck. He coughed, made a sound like a dog with a bone caught in its throat. He shook his head, tried to back away, and stumbled.
A storm was building inside the hall. Jess could sense it coming, a feeling like going deeper underwater.
Wasserman’s hand had left his throat and now clutched at his bulging eyes. Blood trickled between his fingers.
“No,” Jess said. “Sarah, stop it. You’re going to kill him.”
Wasserman’s feet left the floor. He rose as if lifted by a wind. His head was thrown back now and his limbs were quivering. Blood dripped from his face and was sucked away by the quickening air. His head snapped once to the right, then back again, and then he was tossed lightly to the side and discarded.
A low cracking sound came from under the floor. The tiles shuddered, groaned in protest. Every window in every door blew outward in a rain of flying glass. Jess touched moisture on her face, drew her bloody fingers back. The pounding in her head was fast and furious. Her vision faded, came back again in yellows and reds.
Sarah headed for the stairs at the end of the hall. The door slammed open, twisted on its hinges. She climbed the steps and disappeared out of sight. Tendrils of gray fog slithered after her.
She’s not going to be able to stop.
Jess struggled to her feet. Every step was an agony of thudding pain. Moans and squeals of protest rose up all around her as the building took on weight, felt the squeeze of unseen hands.
A shot rang out. Someone screamed from the upper levels. Two more shots in quick succession. The world crashing down around her, Jess ran for the stairs. Her brother’s face came as clear to her as if he had been standing at her feet. You will not get away from me this time. Not again. She repeated it to herself as she took the steps two at a time, as she emerged into a hailstorm of destruction on the upper floor. Great cracks ran along the walls, Wasserman’s door gone, his office turned upside down; three more bodies on the floor, a lot of blood, more guns lying useless against the wall. Papers, wood, and bits of concrete still settling in the wake of Sarah’s passage.
Something was wrong. The air had lost its energy all at once, as if a charge had been released. Jess spotted two men in attack gear and rifles peering out from behind doors at the other end of the hall, at the smaller body lying facedown a few steps away.
Then she heard a puff and felt a fist hit her in the right shoulder, and darkness welled up and slipped over her head, taking her down deep with it.
—36—
She awoke to silence, blackness arching overhead into seemingly limitless distance. Her head felt stuffed with cotton, her tongue swollen thick as a sock in her mouth. For a moment she thought she was back in her childhood bed once again, waiting for the sound of the key in the lock at the front door. Then something changed, but in her muddled state she didn’t realize immediately what it was.
Finally she was able to focus enough to find meaning in the face peering down at her.
Ronald Gee smiled, his eyes glittering in the light cast from a distant portion of the room. “There you are,” he said. His voice seemed to cup and then release her. “Better take it easy. You were hit with a pretty heavy tranquilizer. We were starting to wonder if you were coming back.”
“Let me up,” Jess said. Her voice sounded different in her ears. A stranger’s voice. She tried to lift her arms and could not. Something was very wrong. Gee was not doing anything to help.
“We don’t have long,” he said. “She’ll know you’re awake in a moment. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“Why on earth—you? You’re in on this?”
“It’s all part of the overall scheme of things,” Gee said. “I don’t expect you to understand right away. Dr. Shelley can explain things better than I can. But I want you to know that nothing bad has to happen to you. We can all get what we want out of this. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth.”
“Where’s Sarah?”
“She’s safe. You should know that, if you really consider it.”
She did. Sarah was there with her, somehow; she didn’t know quite how or why she knew, but it was true.
“What about Shelley?”
“She’s got loads of money, all that money from her family steel business, billions, she’s bankrolled Helix, the entire operation. And she found you. You’re a special case, you know. People like you are almost impossible to find. We searched for years.”
“People like me?”
“You’re a carrier, Jess. We’ve done a lot of research on this. Autism can be a symptom, you see, it can be traced through generations, through families. Your brother, he was a carrier, and probably your mother too.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Gee smiled. “See, I told you I wouldn’t be very good at this. What I mean is, you’ve got the psi gene. It’s just been dormant. Oh, it’s nothing like Sarah’s, I don’t mean that. You’re not at that level. But you’ve been in a deep sleep, and we’re waking you up. Dr. Shelley’s been dosing you with the dimerizer we developed. Slipping them into your drinks, your food. We’ve gotten the little factory dusted off and chugging away. Can’t you feel it, Jess? I know you can.”
For a moment he seemed to loom over her in his excitement, and she clenched her eyes shut tight, and then blinked three times. His face with its horrible goatee was still there, but it had retreated a bit, and his grin looked a little less like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but she did, even at this very moment she believed every word. That coffee in the Cave, the oily rings floating across the surface…my God. What have they done to me!
“I’m sorry I had to pull the wool over your eyes. I really am. But you were supposed to be brought in gently. Look, I’m just
a cog in the wheel here. If it had been up to me, I might have done things differently, but it doesn’t matter what I think.”
A terrible thought occurred to her. “Not Patrick too? Or Charlie?”
He shook his head. “Patrick’s oblivious of anything more than two inches beyond his own nose. So wrapped up in that silly group. Shelley knew about your friendship with Charlie, she knew about Charlie’s connection with Patrick. It was all set up to happen the way it did. Patrick and I talked about women once or twice, I suggested he make a couple of recent phone calls to put himself back into Charlie’s thoughts, you know, old flame and all, and she steered you our way. Neither one of them knew the full truth.”
“Why, Gee?” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”
“Because we needed you,” another voice said. “Ineed you.”
Dr. Jean Shelley stepped forward into the light. She walked with difficulty, seeming to favor her right leg. All the elegance and gentle grace was gone, and left in its place was this pale, haggard shell.
“I don’t have much time,” she said. “I have to do whatever I can now, or it will be too late for me. But everything I’ve told you is true. We needed someone fresh, someone special. Someone who could connect to her like her mother could have, if she were well. We checked into your medical background, school records, intelligence tests. You had some blood taken during a physical, we got our hands on that too. It became clear, with your family history and the test results, that you are a psi carrier. We needed you to make a bond with Sarah, so that when the time came…” She shrugged. “You could help us. Help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Convince her to do the right thing. Do you understand? She needs a friend, a mentor to guide her. This ability she has, it’s too big for one little girl to hold. We’ve pushed and tweaked and encouraged it to the point of ignition. The brain is a muscle like any other, and she’s been building it up without any sort of regulator. But the company’s gotten what they need from her, the scientists have done their thing, and now it’s my turn. And you’re my safety valve.”