“We have to hurry,” Thirteen said. “The police are on their way. One of the Network dispatchers rerouted the call, but it won’t take long before they arrive. We’ve got maybe five minutes, tops.”
“Can anyone else feel that?” I asked. The air was so much thicker than before, surely the others felt it too.
“What? The mosquitos?” Shane said, smacking a bug on his forearm. “Who can’t feel the little bloodsuckers?”
“No, the…this misty, foggy stuff. Can anyone else feel that?”
“I don’t think so,” Jon said. “What does it feel like?”
“My family was here,” I explained. “Whoever it was definitely used power I’m familiar with, but it doesn’t…I can’t tell who.”
“Can you follow it?” Theo asked. “Tell which direction Banks was taken?”
“I can feel it all over the sidewalk.” I looked around but there was nothing to actually see. “I guess if we just keep walking around I’ll be able to feel when it disappears.”
“First, let’s check the house,” Thirteen said and led the way up the front steps to Banks’s splintered front door. The door had had a dark cherry frame and the glass had been etched with the same exquisite detail that was still evident on his neighbors’ homes.
“Did Banks have money?” I asked. I didn’t know how much the Network paid, but since Thirteen lived on the same block as my previous safe house I knew that he, at least, didn’t live like this.
“Earlier in the year he came into an inheritance,” Thirteen answered. We stepped carefully through what remained of the door and entered an elaborate foyer with high ceilings and an ornate chandelier. The floor was black-and-white checkered and classical artwork covered so much of the room I could barely make out the color of the wall paint.
“The blood was found in the bedroom,” Thirteen whispered and motioned us to the wide antique stair. The artwork continued along the staircase. Maybe there weren’t really walls at all. Maybe the home was simply held up by the paintings’ frames. We climbed twenty steps to a long, narrow landing at the second floor, then another twenty steps to the third.
No one spoke and no one turned on the lights. The two went hand in hand somehow. All the while, I felt the same silky fog on my skin, as if the energy circled me as I walked.
The stairs ran out at the third floor, ending where a set of double doors opened to Banks’s bedroom. We walked hesitantly into the room. A very large four-poster bed, high enough to need a step stool, faced the doorway. The bedding was rumpled, but the rest of the room seemed in order. On the far wall was a wide fireplace with no screen. The exposed bricks rose from the hearth to the ceiling. This was the only part of the house I’d seen where the walls weren’t hidden behind an endless array of artwork.
“The blood is over here,” Jon said, crouching by the fireplace.
I met Thirteen next to Jon and looked down at the blood. That’s it? Seriously? It was just a couple of drops on the carpet. The others crouched beside Jon. They might have been doing some important data gathering, but it looked just like staring to me. I bent down beside them, finding a space between Shane and Thirteen.
“Do you still feel the foggy stuff from outside?” Shane asked me in a hushed voice.
“Yeah, it’s all over the place in here.” I reached out and ran my finger through the blood.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Don’t touch it!”
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
And a barrage of other words and thoughts snapped at me in whispered yells. Theo grabbed my hand. For a moment I held my breath—now was so not the time for some supernatural reaction to his touch. Fortunately, the urge was manageable. A longing still flared inside of me—his touch so warm and firm—but there was no burst of energy. No disturbing images or feelings.
“You can’t touch the blood, Mag,” he said softly. “It’s evidence. We can’t tamper in any way with a crime scene. Ever.”
My face burned. I jerked my hand from his grip.
“I wanted to see if I could tell anything by it,” I hissed. “The power is so much stronger here. I figured if it was blood from my family, I’d feel it.”
“So was it?” Shane asked.
My cheeks burned hotter. “I can’t tell.”
We stood in a tight broken circle around the bloodstains. The gray moonlight was fading fast, the sky more purple now than black. Dawn was coming. Along with the police. The Network might work alongside the regular law enforcement when necessary, but the whole secret agency thing kinda made it a strained relationship.
Thirteen motioned us back to the stairs. “We got the confirmation we needed—one of the Kelches was definitely here in Banks’s room. Let’s head back outside and see if we can get a sense for anything more before we head out.”
Thankfully, no one said anything more about my CSI faux pas. We headed down the stairs single file, me taking up the rear. As the sky brightened, the images in the artwork became more apparent. Flashes of bright colors swam around us. Moving, swirling, almost alive. I watched the steps, clutched the railing, tried to avoid looking at the walls.
Outside, I took a steadying breath. Thirteen motioned me over to where he stood in the shadows around the streetlight. “I need you to walk up and down the sidewalk until you no longer feel the energy that you feel now.”
I nodded and moved in exaggerated steps down the sidewalk. The misty energy tingled along my skin. After a few steps, I felt like an idiot walking so deliberately, so I just strolled normally. Just before reaching the first neighbor, the tingling lightened then pulled away. I took one more step forward then one more back just to be sure I felt the difference.
“Right here. I don’t feel it anymore over here.”
“That’s not real far,” Jon pointed out.
“Try the other direction, Magnolia,” Thirteen said from his place in the shadows.
This time I walked two houses down before the feeling started to fade. Instinctively, I moved toward the curb. The fogginess abruptly disappeared.
“I think they got in a car, because it’s just suddenly gone here at the curb.”
Thirteen nodded thoughtfully. “OK,” he said. “Come back and let’s get back to HQ.”
We filed back into Thirteen’s car. Thirteen spoke quietly from the driver’s seat. “What use of power would be necessary from the sidewalk, all through the house, and back outside?”
There was a long pause. Thirteen peered at me from the rearview mirror.
“Oh!” Guess that wasn’t rhetorical. “Probably just a camouflage illusion. Unless, well, who called the police?”
“I did,” Thirteen said. “I reported the break-in on our way over here.”
“Then they definitely used a camouflage. You know, it’s like an illusion to cover themselves, make everything appear normal so none of the neighbors would see what was really happening.”
“But would that mask the sound?” asked Shane. “I mean, that door was shattered, exploded. Surely someone heard that.”
I nodded. “They probably did hear something, but if there was nothing to see to go with the sound, then…”
“You can do that?” Jon asked. “Explode a door without anyone knowing you did it?”
“Sure,” I said. “As long as they were there to hold the illusion. They could have even talked to the neighbors and no one would have known what happened. It’s just like what you guys have been training on. Of course, if it were me, I wouldn’t even need a camouflage illusion. I’d just turn invisible, unlock the door, and make any bodies I was hauling with me invisible too. Then there wouldn’t be any threat of discovery at all. The others can’t do that, though, so even if they were doing an illusion, which I can pretty much guarantee they were, it would be hard for them to cover a sound and a body at the same time. Especially one as big as Banks.”
Silence filled the car. All eyes were on me; the men’s faces turned hard.
OK, what di
d I do now?
I quickly peeked in their minds. Shit. “I didn’t mean like a body body! Like I’d carry out a dead body,” I spoke in a rush. “Banks probably isn’t even dead yet. He had to be able to walk out on his own, right? Since they wouldn’t have been able to camouflage his appearance at the same time they were covering the door and themselves and who knows what else. So I didn’t mean he’s really a body body. Not like that.”
“No,” growled Shane, “he’s not dead yet. He’s just being tortured at some unknown location. That’s all.”
Everyone turned forward again. Great.
I sat alone on the front porch and watched the sun set. Training had been canceled again so everyone could have a catch-up day at the office. In order to keep my involvement secret from the rest of the Network, Thirteen had made everything about the task force confidential. Which was fine, except that confidentiality meant the folks on our team were now forced to do research and paperwork they would have otherwise pawned off to other staff members.
I, for one, was glad for the day off. Things were so…strange right now. Banks was gone. They knew who had him, but with no physical proof their hands were tied. Everyone was on edge. Conversations were snarled rather than spoken. People were as quick to throw a punch as a sarcastic retort. Hell, the other day Charles had even asked to up the combat training just so everyone could work out some of the frustration.
But that wasn’t all.
I was changing. I didn’t know how or why, but at my very core, I was…evolving. I could feel it as certainly as I could feel the hot evening air.
I jumped up and walked out into the yard. I couldn’t just sit here anymore. My pace quickened until I was running past the wide back field. Faster and faster I moved. The trees tore at my clothes but I didn’t care. I hadn’t run like this since my escape. It felt good to feel the wind gain speed around me. Free. I’d never been in control of my life. But now, recently, I wasn’t even in control of me. Intense dreams. Unexpected powers. Theo. All these…feelings.
I couldn’t run fast enough.
Night fell quickly. Before I knew it, I was several miles from the farmhouse. Shit. I wound through the trees, following the sound of cars on a busy road. When I could see the street, I recognized it from my trip to Target. No wonder I had a cramp—I’d just run about twenty miles in ten minutes. With deep breaths, I walked along the road back to my farmhouse, staying under the cover of trees and bushes. The return trip took much longer.
At least my run had served its purpose: by the time I got home, I was too exhausted to think anymore. My Target-brand sheets and quilt welcomed me with cool comfort. On the bed, I curled on my side and sighed. My flowing yellow curtains waved me good night right before I closed my eyes and passed out.
…
Everything was red. Painful, pulsing red. It felt like an ax had lodged itself right in the middle of my forehead, splitting my skull in two. This wasn’t one of my normal dreams. It was too painful.
I took a deep breath, hoping to ease some of the pain. A rancid stench filled my lungs—mildew mixed with blood and grain. I flinched and the rub of restraints burned against my ankles and wrists. Oh God. It was all too familiar not to recognize.
No, no, no, no! This could not be happening. It had to be a dream. But the pain was too real to deny.
I was back.
Somehow, some way, they had gotten through the Network defenses, past my own senses, and dragged me back to the estate. I strained to peel open my eyes. When I did, a wave of nausea overwhelmed me. My stomach turned over. My throat burned, and the smell was enough to make me heave again. I leaned forward, gagging.
I pulled at my arms. Just like my eyes, moving was a forced effort. My body wasn’t working right.
There was a sound. It must have been ongoing, but I only noticed it now. Some kind of low grinding. A machine of some sort. No voices, no cars in the near distance. Shit.
The walls were dark and powdered with dried dirt and ancient grain. The reinforced ceiling, a large square window, the thick metal door in front of me. I hadn’t been in here since I was child, but I knew where I was: the farthest silo on the southern acres. It was rusted to the point of crumbling. To the left of the door was a desk with a table lamp turned on. And next to the lamp sat my guard—a small, dark-haired man in a disheveled gray suit…sleeping. His snores were the low grinding I heard. His collared shirt was unbuttoned nearly halfway down his hollow chest and his feet hung off the end of the desk. Thin and lanky—was this a joke? My head not restrained, a nothing guard—What the hell was going on?
I closed my eyes as a wave of dizziness overtook me. With a deep breath, I stretched against my restraints and felt leather bite into my wrists.
Wait a minute. Leather straps? Were they serious? Only thick chains were ever strong enough to hold me. I pulled again, but my arm barely moved under the leather.
The guard shifted in his sleep, and suddenly he wasn’t the dark-haired, skinny man anymore. He wasn’t a man at all. He was a woman, her blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, stretching her already sharp features. Alabaster skin spotted with dark, scabbed lesions covered her sickly frame. A torn and stained halter top accented the knobs of bone in her shoulders, and her shredded jean shorts were cut too short to leave anything to the imagination.
Terror consumed me. I couldn’t breathe. The woman turned her sunken face toward me. “Teddy?” she asked in a heavy whisper. “Teddy Bear, is that you?”
Images slashed through my mind. Foreign, haunting scenes of a life before I was put in foster care, before I found Jon and the others, before I won a scholarship to Butler and became a decorated Navy SEAL. A life before the Network—a life with a mother, the hooker who raised me on the streets of Chicago.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Please, please no!
The guard coughed and grumbled then returned to the rhythm of his heavy snores. I peeked through my lids again and the scrawny man was back, still sleeping soundly with his head back against the wall.
What…the fuck…was that?
I pulled against the leather straps hard this time, but again, my arms barely lifted at all. Drugs could explain the hallucinations and the nausea, but what was with this weakness? Maybe there was a chain-linked interior to the straps or something…
I stopped. The leather had cut into my wrist—a tanned, thick wrist that led to a firm, calloused hand with blunt nails and a thin scar across the knuckles.
This wasn’t my hand.
My mind worked furiously. This was not my body, not my memories. It was not me being held here. It was only a piece of my mind in this horrific place.
Relief washed over me. Wherever I was, I was safe from this nightmare. But this body and mind were not. Whoever had been captured and brought to this place, he didn’t have my powers to free himself or to recover from whatever torture awaited. And I was here in his mind, experiencing it with him.
I concentrated on separating my voice from his to hear those thoughts that weren’t my own. The collage of profanity in this man’s mind rang through, more impressive than anything I had ever heard. This guy was seriously pissed and seriously scared. Strangely, the thought of the emaciated woman returning frightened him more than any possible torture that was sure to come.
He just didn’t know any better.
The snoozing guard stirred again. We had to get out of here. Like, now. With a deep breath, I reached out with my thoughts.
Um, calm down, please. I want to get you out of here.
Silence. Great. Maybe if I just tried to focus on this guy’s thoughts rather than trying to speak with mine…
What the hell is wrong with me? I’m hearing fucking voices now? What the fuck did they give me?
Thank God. I tried again with my most soothing voice. Please, I’m not part of the drugs, but you have to let me help you get out of here.
Fuck that! These fuckers are going to pay for even thinking they could mess with my head!
&nbs
p; OK, this wasn’t working.
Centering on his right arm, I forced my will and strength into his body. In a fast, smooth movement I pulled the wrist free from the leather binding without leaving so much as a burn on his skin.
See, I can get you out of here if you’ll just shut up and listen to me!
There was a long pause. Mag?
My thoughts scattered. The coined nickname, the sudden warm and violent fluttering inside me—how could I have not known? My family had captured Theo. And somehow, through the connection between us, I was with him.
It took several moments for me to compose myself.
I—I can get you out of here, but you have to give me some control.
How the hell am I supposed to do that?
I just pulled your arm free because you didn’t fight me. Let me get you free from your restraints, then we’ll get the hell out of here.
You know where I am?
Yes.
Movement from the corner caught us off guard. Our snoozing guard was awake. He hopped to the dirt floor with barely a thud and stretched his lanky arms to the ceiling.
While the guard’s face was pointed at the ceiling in his stretch, I pulled Theo’s other arm and both legs free from their binds with one quick move. He gasped but was quiet enough not to gain the guard’s attention.
What the…? Warn me before you do something like that again!
Sorry.
The guard shot us a glance then looked steadily at his watch, counting the minutes to the next shift change. Suddenly his appearance changed again. From my mind’s eye I knew the man was still peering down at his watch, still calculating. But through Theo’s eyes the disturbing blonde woman was back, and her black eyes looked wild as her gaze met ours.
“Teddy Bear!” her voice scratched like broken glass. “You listen to me and get your skinny ass down there like Sonny said. Do you want to go back in the coal room?”
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