She went back to work, looking for the data.
***
Jordan felt a twinge of fear. It was his fear, her fear, their fear. He thought about what she’d said. It was all so much to take in. His life had always been strange. Odd things always happened beyond the fact that he was always seeing people die. But, now, he could feel in his mind a certain strength. He suddenly knew things he’d only guessed at before. Moments from his past came back to life. Decisions he’d made which he’d wondered were right at the time became clear.
“We can share powers?” he asked. “How does that work? I don’t have any, so what good do you gain using mine?”
“You have latent power you don’t know how to use, but you will. We all do, and we develop them as we grow. Our experiences shape and change our ability just like it would our personality. What I have, you don’t understand yet, and what you have, I can only learn from.”
Jordan watched her work, studied her features. Those blue-green eyes her fine nose and soft lips. With all that was going on he’d never really had time to let her absolute beauty sink in. He knew she was pretty, but something just seemed to change about her. She was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on.
It was with a sudden intensity that he felt himself locked on her face, frozen with wonder. She was all he saw. His mind was playing frantic again, but it was all images of Kayci. He got the impression of a thousand things, some that were nice, some horrible. He was swaying again, feeling dizzy. Thank God he was already sitting down because the next thing he knew…
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jordan woke up, but was not awake. He was sleeping, dreaming, or floating. Everything was black, except for the red lines.
The world had turned into red lines, lasers. Everything he saw, the table, chair, couch, Kayci, everything was composed of lasers constantly beaming shifting shapes. The entire world was a living three dimensional laser show in the darkness. He was both astonished and disturbed at the same time. He got up from the couch. His body was there. Kayci was still working on the laptop.
He walked into his laser world, away from Kayci and the couch, and into another long room. He was not alone in the room. A human form was standing in the center.
“Who are you?” Jordan asked. The form only nodded its head but didn’t respond. “What is this place?”
As he got close to the form, it flashed out and disappeared. Then the lasers refocused and started to draw another human form from the ground up. Side-to-side the laser swept until it completed the perfect form of a woman in a flowing dress with flowing, long hair slowly shimmering. The laser painted in exact detail.
The now completed woman nodded to Jordan and held out her hand. He moved to her, but he did not walk. He just went. He looked down at his body and the laser was drawing him as he moved.
“What is this place?” Jordan asked again as he studied the woman.
They did not move, but suddenly, a world was being drawn around them. Multiple simultaneous lasers worked feverishly until a detailed red on black laser world came to life. Jordan recognized it right away. It was his West Orange, New Jersey neighborhood. The laser world moved around them and situated until everything stopped.
Jordan felt his breath catch because he knew what was coming. The laser drew the grill of the Mitsubishi, then the twisted bicycle, then the body.
“Why are you showing me this?” Jordan looked to the laser guide.
“Because you must see.” The laser woman’s voice was quiet but also hollow and electronic, as if it were a million miles away, on the other end of a phone built in 1920.
“See what?” Jordan sniped. “What am I seeing? I saw this movie years ago. I didn’t like it the first time in multicolor. You think I want to see it in blood-red lasers drawn on some ink-black world in my head?”
The woman bowed her head and lifted her hands, palms up. From her hands, an orange light grew and burst. The entire world that had been red was now a soft orange. Oddly, the color change altered his mood.
He looked away from the woman and back to the scene of his first death. He looked at Christie on the ground, studied the scene, but he still did not see anything.
“I still don’t get it. I appreciate the color change, but I don’t see anything. There’s not a lesson here.”
“You must see it, Jordan. You must see the pattern used to weave the tapestry, to synch the frequency.” The woman started pointing to places in the black space, and another scene of a death Jordan had seen was there. With each thrust of her pointed finger, another scene was born. In a few seconds, every scene was there.
He looked around at them, gliding through them, scene after scene. But not every scene. “Some are missing,” Jordan stated.
“Those were not yours,” she replied.
“The guard at the bank.”
“Not your death to prevent.”
“So I was supposed to prevent them somehow? They died because of me?” Jordan wanted to feel sick, but he felt nothing.
“No, Jordan, you could not have prevented them. You were not meant to prevent their deaths. You were meant to guide their souls. They were within your frequency band, so you were drawn to facilitate their ascension. You are a Savior Frequency, and you can save those in your spectrum. And if you cannot save them, you can comfort them in their moment of passing so their soul goes peacefully through to the next world. It is very easy to lose our way when we become souls, Jordan. The first and most common savior is the Savior Soul. It is common among healers, doctors, and nurses. It is time for you to ascend to the next level on The Frequency. It is the most powerful of all the frequency levels. You have the ability to do great things. You have the ability to change future history.”
Jordan looked to her through the scene from the bank. “Who are you? Are you my imagination? Am I dreaming?”
“I was like you once, long ago, a gifted human. Now I live here, on the frequency plane, sentenced to help guide budding practitioners like you.”
“Sentenced? As punishment of some kind? Are you a soul?”
“Yes, a trapped soul. I didn’t have anyone on my frequency to help me, no savior. So I became trapped on my own frequency.”
Jordan suddenly felt her angst, her pain. “You’re trapped here…” It was not a question but a statement. She only nodded at him sadly.
“No one can save you?”
“No one has shown the ability yet.”
“And you hope I can, so you came to me.”
“No, Jordan, I came to you to help you, guide you. It will take you years to understand this frequency level at a modulation that could possibly save me. I came to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“Warn you to be careful, so you don’t end up here like me, trapped inside this electrical world of frequency.”
“Am I in danger?”
“You are in mortal danger, yes, but you are also in danger of this world, of becoming trapped in here with me, a lonely world, Jordan.”
“What can I do?”
“You must never look into the eyes of evil and become like them. The eyes of evil pass the souls of evil.”
“What does that mean?”
“That’s all I can tell you. And you must at all costs protect Kayci as she protects you. You are responsible to each other from now until the end of time. You must be careful.”
“I’ll be careful.”
The orange-colored laser world faded back to red. Then the scenes disappeared.
“Don’t go!” he pleaded. “What’s your name?”
The woman looked to him, smiled a red laser smile. “My name is Anna.”
“How can I talk to you again?”
“I’ll find you when you need me.”
The red laser scene faded away, and Jordan drifted into sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nathan Pratt unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned back in the passenger seat. He let his mind guide him, opening that intima
te link he shared with Kayci. They’d triangulated her to a specific location, but he wasn’t able to lock on before she’d moved.
It was like any good prizefight, stick and move, rope-a-dope, sucker punch. There were many techniques one could deploy to attack and defend. He knew them all. He’d been doing this work for twenty years.
There was no doubt in his mind he still looked good for a man in his middle forties. Sure, his hair was thinning a bit and had a lot more salt in the pepper these days. But he was distinguished. He kept in good shape, physical and mental, by the power of denial.
Nathan believed denying himself delectable foods kept his power strong. There was a great power in denying wanton mortal things. He knew most people let their power slip with age because they gave into human demands for things like cake and fatty meats, alcohol, and tobacco. Children were pure, and their powers strong. They just didn’t understand them. As people aged, they polluted their bodies and minds with unnatural things, and that in turn closed them off to the natural world around them.
“Anything?” Kara Bush asked from the backseat of the black sedan.
“Don’t rush him.” Tom Hamilton was in the driver seat. He shut off the engine.
“Let’s get out of the car.” Kara opened the door.
Nathan ignored both of them and continued working hard. He started sweating. It was a struggle to lock on. His heart was pounding, and his mind was stretching, but he was not able to get over the walls Kayci had thrown up in front of him. She was a crafty opponent, not as experienced as he was, but she was an exceptionally fast learner. Right now, he cursed himself for teaching her anything.
His experiments on her had a dual effect they were not aware of when they’d started. The problem with being part of a pilot program was that sometimes the experiments had unintended results.
The NSA had never before encouraged the members of their psychic programs to sleep together. But Nathan had a suspicion there was something to it and wanted to see the benefits. Kayci was unaware of the experiments and she fell in love. That was apparently the component: love. Since he was not in love with her, he didn’t benefit as she had. In fact, he wondered if he’d benefited at all in comparison. She, on the other hand, made great strides.
He’d also tried sleeping with Kara, but he didn’t love her either. He wondered if he was even capable of love. He took a deep breath, blew it out, and went back into his mind.
***
Standing behind the sedan, Kara took out a cigarette and looked at it, unlit. She didn’t want to smoke the damn thing, but her nerves would get the better of her if she didn’t. She ran fingers her hair, pulling out a few loose black strands and waving her hand until they fell to the gravel below her feet.
She looked to the car and saw Nathan. Her minded faded into the frequency plane just to glance at how he was doing. In just a second it was clear he was in a hard battle. Kara would love to help, but she was no match for Kayci, and that pissed her off.
Kara lit her cigarette and took a long drag. She hated Kayci, just as she always hated the pretty and popular girls back in high school. Kara was twenty-five, but she still looked like a girl compared to Kayci. That gave her even more reasons to hate the great Kayci Dewitt.
It was always about Kayci in the office, and in the field. She was the one that got all the attention so when Nathan told her about the plan to steal the piggybank and blame it on Kayci, she couldn’t have been more ecstatic. Nathan was suddenly paying attention to her, and she loved it. She’d had a crush on him since the first day they’d accepted her into the program.
She looked over at Tom Hamilton and curled her lip in disgust. He was sloppy, unkempt, chubby, and annoying. He was, of course, crushing on Kayci like everyone else. She took another long drag of the cigarette.
Tom was looking at her creepily. “What?” She gave an annoyed shrug.
“Nothing, you just look very pretty today.”
“Save it, Hamilton.” She rolled her eyes.
“What, you can’t take a compliment?”
She just shook her head and focused on the lush hills and expansive farmlands around them. They were only twenty minutes outside of Syracuse, but you’d never know it standing in the driveway of this old and long ago abandoned house.
“I still can’t believe Kayci killed Avery. That’s unreal.” Tom Hamilton looked down and kicked some gravel. “I’m still amazed Kayci went rogue.”
“She’s a psycho.” Kara took another drag. She made sure not to broadcast anything so Hamilton would not see through that lie. She shared no natural like with him so he could not invade her head. But if she were to accidentally broadcast anyone could read it. It was Avery’s idea to trick Hamilton into thinking Kayci had gone over the edge. He was starting to ask too many questions.
“But to kill the boss and steal our money? She never seemed like the type.” Tom shook his head.
“You don’t know her well enough to make that call, Tom,” Kara said with contempt.
“I know her better than you do.”
“You know her ass better, probably every curve. Everyone knows about your little crush.” Kara rolled her eyes, blew out smoke.
“What crush?” Tom smiled uncomfortably.
“What am I, an idiot? Like you don’t work with a bunch of ESP spies or something?” Kara sucked on her cigarette one more time, then tossed it into the gravel and stomped it. “You’re a fool, Hamilton.”
She looked through the rear window of the car. Nathan was still in there working on the linkup. She glanced at her watch. The afternoon was almost over, and they hadn’t made any headway in finding Kayci.
“I still can’t believe she killed Avery,” Tom said again.
“Holy crap, Hamilton. Drop it, will you? She’s a money hungry whore. Get over it. Your sweet, precious Kayci is sour after all.”
From behind them came movement, and Tom turned quickly to see Avery Von Strider standing there.
“Avery,” Tom said excitedly, “You’re not dead!”
“No, Tom, I’m not.” Avery pulled a pistol. “But you are.”
Avery shot him twice in the chest, Tom Hamilton dropped. “And then there were three.”
“What the hell was that?” Kara exclaimed, feeling a little vulnerable. She didn’t trust Avery before but even less now. “I thought we needed him?”
“We don’t. He was a risk. Besides, you three idiots haven’t found her. Obviously you can’t do it.” Avery pushed his gun back into the holster inside his suit jacket.
“Does Nathan know about this?” Kara nodded toward the car.
“This isn’t Nathan’s operation.” Avery moved in closer to her. “I’m still the leader of this unit, and this is my operation until I say otherwise.”
Kara didn’t enjoy being this close to him and backed away. She wanted to challenge him, but her glance slid to Tom’s body. She knew inside this was Nathan’s operation, and Nathan knew it was. He would let Avery play captain for as long as he needed. The reality was they needed each other. Avery couldn’t find Kayci in a million years, and Nathan would never break the computer program to get the bank account information. Kara worried about becoming collateral damage when the two of them decided they didn’t need each other anymore.
She turned away and went back to the car, this time to the driver’s seat. She climbed in. “Any luck yet?” she asked Nathan.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. His lips curled in a half smile. “He killed Hamilton. I suspected he would. Drive south,” he commanded flatly.
She started the car and backed out of the deserted driveway. As she reached the end of the lane, she stopped at Avery’s identical government-issue Dodge sedan. “Follow us. We’ve got her.” She waited briefly for Avery to climb into his car. Then she sped away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Wake up, sleepy.”
Jordan heard her voice and opened his eyes. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Sure, only snoring.” Kayc
i leaned back into the couch and rubbed her neck. “My eyes are crossing. I can’t look at file extensions anymore.”
Jordan looked outside and noticed the sun had slipped away and the evening was here, the gibbous moon floating on display just above the tree line. “I need food.” He stood up, half expecting to be dizzy.
“I left you the other half of a sandwich.”
“Sweet,” Jordan peeled back the waxy paper and started biting into the ham and turkey combo. With his mouth half full, he asked, “Any luck?”
“Nothing yet. My brother was a crafty little devil. I only have one hard drive left and this.” She held up a single USB stick. “So far everything is just run-of-the-mill computer stuff.” She exhaled with a sigh. “I sure hope we’re not chasing the wrong rabbit here.”
“I hope we’re not chasing the white rabbit.”
Kayci turned off the laptop, flipped it over, and removed the drive. She turned the last drive over in her hands. “This has to be it.” She slid the drive into the pins and secured it with a single screw.
As she flipped the laptop back over, she thumbed the power switch and waited for the operating system to boot. Once it did, her brow scrunched.
“What’s wrong?” Jordan asked.
“It’s not a Windows system. It’s a Linux system.”
“So what?” Jordan downed the last bite of sandwich and popped open another can of orange soda.
“I don’t do Linux” She leaned back from the computer and turned her palms to the ceiling.
“I do,” Jordan said as he walked over, wiping the corners of his mouth on the sleeve of his dark green sweatshirt.
“You know Linux?” Kayci was surprised.
“Better than I know Windows.”
“I thought only computer geeks knew Linux.”
Jordan sat on the couch and leaned close to her to read the screen. “Or poor people who can only afford older computers. Linux runs great on any old machine, it’s free, and you don’t need to run virus protection.”
Savior Frequency (Frequency Series Book 1) Page 11