“Greg!” I reached out my hand. “Trust me!”
“You see, Langston!” Rex called triumphantly from beneath the massive bench. “She knows you can’t win. Go give her a goodbye kiss.”
Greg flung his arm forward. His muscles bulged as he grabbed Rex around the calf and tried to pull him back to this side of the floating barricade. He barely dodged a kick aimed at his head.
“Greg,” I said urgently. “You can’t beat Rex this way. Take my hand.”
“But …”
“Now!” I demanded.
He looked back at me as his hand loosed its grip, and his whole body slumped. His eyes held the bitterness of defeat, as he reached back to me. But it wasn’t over yet. I closed my eyes and clasped my hand around his, holding tight as the expected electrical field raced through my body. The details of the turbula swirled around me crystal clear, and in the quantum foam, my mind locked onto the shadow of the unlatched QIT in Greg’s pocket. The noise and chaos of the station subsided as I focused on the quantum waves, spinning through space and time, defining an unseen but real existence. Clear as morning dew under the sun, yet pervasive like fog at night. At once solid, yet flowing like air.
Rex was beginning to scramble out from beneath the hovering bench, when, with a final thought, the wave function in Greg’s pocket vanished and a new one collapsed around Rex’s leg. The blue glow lit up as the contacts locked together, and Rex disappeared from existence, until I opened my eyes. The massive bench, no longer suspended by Rex’s translocations, crashed down. He screamed in pain as it crushed his legs, and slammed him backwards onto the floor. His head hit with a dull thud. He convulsed once, then lay still.
Greg took one look at me and down at our clasped hands, then felt his pocket. In front of us, sections of the seat and back of the bench glittered in a silvery goo for a moment, then flittered away like pieces of delicate ash.
Greg stared at it, stunned. “What the hell?”
Chapter 31
Greg
I spread my arm across the cool, smooth sheet. Good. I wasn’t in a hospital. It had been a dream. A bizarre nightmare that I could only catch glimpses of now. That meant when I opened my eyes, I would find myself in my room in the Alpha Delt house. No murderous sociopaths were taking over the government, no one could see the quantum foam, and Kinzie Nicolosi never existed. My heart dropped – the Kinzie-part of the nightmare hadn’t been so bad.
The dramatic voice of a TV news reporter crept into my conscience – something about a carbon monoxide elevation somewhere. Weird. Pete and Boomer never had the news on. I flung my arm the other direction to bang on the wall for them to turn it down, but it didn’t reach that far. My arm dropped back onto the bed and I was too tired to move. The back of my head puzzled over what day it was, and whether I was missing a class right now, but the rest of me didn’t care. Maybe I was hung over, although I couldn’t remember last night to know if I’d had fun.
A pressure settled next to me on the bed, and I started to roll toward the warmth when every muscle in my body groaned. My eyes flickered open to see the Army pant-clad thigh of a girl in front of my face. My head reeled for a moment in confusion. Kinzie? She was real? I tried lifting my head, but only got half way before it dropped back to the mattress with a grunt. Kinzie’s fingers stroked along the stubble of my jaw, and an electrical thrill followed the path. She was staring down at me with a smile.
“I’m the one with the broken arm. Why are you moaning?” she teased.
I forced myself to sit up, against the resistance of my muscles, and blinked trying to get my bearings. I was fully dressed in a bedroom with stone walls and tapestries like some sort of castle. A TV’s noise was floating through the door and Kinzie’s arm was in a solid cast to just above the elbow. A broken arm. Wasn’t that part of my dream?
“Where am I?”
“The Rothston Institute,” a man’s voice answered before Kinzie had the chance. He was now standing in the door way and I knew him from somewhere. Something with Kinzie. Her dad? I studied his square body and salt and pepper hair. Yeah. That’s who it was.
“Man, I gotta hand it to these guys on the clean up,” he said to Kinzie. He eyed his daughter’s position on the bed next to me with a bit of distrust, but didn’t acknowledge it. “Did you see that on the news, Kinz? Passed it off as carbon monoxide from a blocked vent confusing people into thinking a student cinema project that was being filmed at Grand Central was real. These guys are good.”
“They aren’t all that good, Dad,” Kinzie answered with a shake of her head. “Think about it, people using mind-control to make others break out in fights? Furniture moving through the air on its own? Come on. No one would buy it. Carbon monoxide is a much better story.”
“Well, I’d say The Seven are worried someone might believe you guys exist,” Ken replied, then nodded toward me. “He needs to get ready. I don’t think I can hold them off much longer.”
“Get ready for what?” I asked, looking between them, but Kinzie was already pulling me from the bed. “Ow!” I yelped as pain shot around my chest. “What was that?”
“You don’t seem to remember much,” Kinzie said as she helped me up more slowly. “You have two cracked ribs.”
I stared at her blankly, trying to grasp the pieces of what I thought had been a dream. They kept slipping away like sand, but aches all over my body were filling in the gaps. The dungeon, being beaten by bodyguards. And somewhere – Grand Central in New York – pummeling Rex Brolie. I lifted my hand to my forehead at a sharp stab, and felt a butterfly bandage above my right eye. But I still didn’t know how we’d gotten here.
“Guess that’s good you don’t remember. Let’s me off the hook,” Ken Nicolosi joked, when I asked. Kinzie shot him an evil look with her dark eyes, and he grinned sheepishly. “I … uh,” he started and paused for a moment, shuffling his feet uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Greg. I said some things to you last night I shouldn’t have. I guess you’re okay and … uh … thanks for saving her.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Kinzie added. From the pointed tone, my guess was that she’d badgered her dad into an apology, especially since I had no idea what it was for. She pointed me into a bathroom, supplied with mini-shampoos and body-cleanser like a hotel room, as well as a razor. “Get cleaned up,” Kinzie directed me. “And I’ll explain everything.”
ψ
A half-hour later I ached, but was otherwise refreshed and ready to go. Ken slapped my phone into my hand and I nodded as we strode out of the room. The t-shirt I’d borrowed from him was on the small side, but it was clean and in one piece, and that was good. Kinzie’s life might be out of danger for now, but her safety wasn’t yet assured. Nor was mine. And the phone in my hand remained my only bargaining chip, and I didn’t want anything – even a grimy, ripped shirt – to detract from the power of that position.
Kinzie had filled in the details I’d forgotten while I shaved. We’d been taken, along with Brolie and Rita Mendez, to the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital. Rita had suffered a mild concussion but was fine, and Kinzie had no injuries other than her arm. A twinge of guilt passed through me every time I looked down at the cast, but I knew I’d had no choice. She wouldn’t be here if I’d let her slip from my grasp.
An orthopedic surgeon had put screws and plates in Brolie’s legs so the bones would set. He was supposed to remain in the hospital to recover and watch for infection, but The Seven managed to have him released anyway. He’d been sedated when we’d flown back to Maine by private jet at two-thirty in the morning.
I had only vague recollections of any of it, and got pissed that The Seven had messed with my head, making me forget. But Kinzie didn’t think that was right. She pointed out that I’d been awake for nearly two days straight by the time we arrived here. My memory had probably shorted out.
Ken had been waiting for us when we arrived at this place, and we’d gotten in an argument when they tried to give us three separate rooms. We’d both ref
used to leave Kinzie by herself in this place, but Ken didn’t trust me alone with her, and I’d had no intention of letting her out of my sight. In the end, they put us in a suite, where Ken slept on the couch, and Kinzie and I in the bed – or on the bed was more accurate. I’d passed out the moment I hit it and slept all night. I guess I should say all day. It was three-forty in the afternoon.
“Do you know the way?” I asked Kinzie who was striding down the hall between us.
“I do,” Ken answered. “And I like this idea. Go to them before they try to come get you again.” Apparently, several members of The Seven had stopped by while I slept, purportedly to welcome Ken back. But each had made sure Ken had my phone to give me. And each made sure he understood the urgency of me calling to stop my threatened investigations of this place. Fortunately, Ken understood the importance perfectly, and had declined to wake me up.
“It’s all about power,” I confirmed to him. “Keeping it on our terms instead of theirs as much as we can.”
“They’re running a little scared, if I had to guess,” Ken added. Jamison and Brolie were like gods around here for the past few years, from what I’ve heard. And now …”
“Jamison’s missing,” I finished through gritted teeth. I couldn’t believe The Seven had let him vanish into the crowd in New York, but they’d been so stunned by Rex’s blatant murder of the guard and his assault on Rita Mendez, that they’d forgotten to pay attention to what Bradley Jamison was doing until he was nowhere to be found.
“Yeah. So their most popular leader is gone, and they’re going to have to do something about this Brolie-kid,” Ken continued. “Gonna be tough for them to manage the public opinion.”
“Public?” I spat. “Adepts aren’t the public and they could always just tell them what to think, like they do with us commons.”
“It’s not that easy, Greg,” Ken added, and fell into silence as we marched through the halls of the giant castle. We nodded curtly to those we passed, even though most were kids. But no one here was “just” a child, I reminded myself. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to wield the kind of power they had at age twelve or thirteen, with no one paying attention to how you used it. Or worse – encouraging you to use it. Even I hadn’t had that. The result was inevitable – creating callous monsters like Brolie. I steeled myself for what lay ahead.
We reached the top of a stairway and stepped through a large doorway into The Seven’s audience chamber. The woman I’d encountered before – Brenda something – rose from a tidy desk on the opposite wall and bustled over with a momentary dazed expression.
“Ken Nicolosi. Welcome back,” she said in a way that was not welcoming.
“Nice to see you again, Brenda,” Ken responded in kind.
The woman gave me an icy glance, but it didn’t compare with the glare she aimed at Kinzie. My fists clenched at my sides. These people were not our friends.
I drew myself up and looked her in the eye. “Gather the Seven,” I ordered as two of the bodyguard types appeared in the doorway. “We are ready to see them.”
She sniffed at the impudence, but had no comeback. “I will tell them you are here.” She walked up the steps on the side on the room, across the raised dais and out a hidden door. The elevation of the bench and its curve were no doubt designed to inspire reverence and fear of The Seven, whether or not it was deserved. I read the words carved into the stone – Guiding the Way; a benevolent sentiment, except that these navigators held the pilot hostage.
“Brenda liked me until I was dragged in here by the guards,” Kinzie told me, shaking her head. “Rex must have poisoned that well with whatever he’d said about me.”
“That’s exactly what I was afraid of,” Ken muttered. “Best to get you out of here. The sooner the better. You could become a lightning rod for anger over what’s happened to Jamison and Brolie.”
My fists clenched at the idea anyone would have a problem with Kinzie after what she’d been through. But I knew Ken was right. She was still an outsider here – an unknown – making an easy target to hate or fear. But it didn’t matter. No matter what happened next, we would get Kinzie out of here. I turned to face the dais, and waited.
Chapter 32
Kinzie
Brenda stormed through the hidden door at the back of The Seven’s raised platform. “They wish to see you, Ms. Nicolosi,” she said to me with another scathing look, then returned to her desk without giving us further instructions.
Were we supposed to wait here? I didn’t like this. I knew Greg wanted us to be strong and confident, but it was difficult when I didn’t know what would happen next. I looked up at him. Aside from the cut over his eye, it was the same beautiful face, but seemed different. More regal and in control, like he’d been when he talked to the MTA cops in the subway station. I’d never seen this side of him before. It made me feel like we had a chance at this, although I still couldn’t fathom why The Seven would agree to do what we wanted. No one negotiated here, but my Dad said that no one had ever held the cards that Greg held, simply because Greg was rich.
Dad hadn’t been sure why they were taking the threats seriously until Greg told us who he was. Or tried to tell us. Being the heir to some fortune meant nothing to me, and he’d turned bright red when he tried to describe the magnitude of his wealth. He said, he’d never had to tell anyone before, and had been taught to hide it. Dad seemed to get it as soon as Greg said his Maserati was pocket change, but it still meant nothing to me. Or maybe I was numb. Nothing in my life made sense anymore – and hadn’t for months.
The hidden door opened again, but instead of The Seven filing out, only Melvina Whitacre emerged. She gave us the warm smile I’d seen at the beginning of every lesson. “Good, good. You are here,” she said beckoning us to come with her. “I hope you are well rested and feeling better.”
None of us answered. I didn’t know what to say. Polite banter didn’t roll off my tongue when I still didn’t know what they intended to do to me, or to Greg. Maybe they wouldn’t kill me, but now they knew I’d violated another of their rules in telling Greg about adepts. Melvina stopped and gave me a look of grandmotherly concern as we came to the secret door. “You can relax, Kinzie,” she said, including my dad and Greg with a glance. “No one is going to harm you here.”
I stared at the face I’d spent so many good hours with, but couldn’t accept her word. “No offense, Mel, but you’ve told me that before.”
Her eyes dropped, and she was silent for a moment, before quietly admitting, “Yes. That is true.”
The three of us followed her through the door into a room that had none of the grandeur of the audience chamber. Functional was the theme here – broken up into work areas. Some of the walls were stone, and others looked like sheet rock. One had been turned into a giant whiteboard on which various dates and people’s names were written. A group of chairs was clustered around it. Desks with docking stations for laptops and extra monitors were scattered in no apparent order, and a basic, round conference room table and ergonomic chairs occupied one corner. Three members of The Seven – Rita Mendez, George Alphonse and Norman Reynolds – were at the table, but they rose, gesturing to the remaining chairs as if we were being welcomed in for a friendly game of bridge.
“We thought this would be a more comfortable setting,” Rita Mendez began, as she sat back down. A purple bruise could be seen at the frizzled gray hairline near her temple. She gave a fond smile to my dad. “It is good to see you again, Ken, but we truly regret the circumstances.”
“You should,” Dad growled, looking around at them before taking a seat.
“We are grateful you are alive, Ms. Nicolosi,” Rita continued, then shot a quick glance at Greg. “All of you. And we thank you for saving Curtis, as well as preventing Rex Brolie from escaping, even if the disruption caused significant problems for us.” The praise was rather weak and sounded rehearsed. Dad didn’t like it either.
“I saw the news,” he said firmly. �
��You seem to have taken care of the problems just fine.”
Rita’s lips thinned, but the smile remained firmly on her face. “Yes … well … it has taken a great deal of effort to …”
“Sorry to inconvenience you,” Greg stated to my right. He tipped his head, maintaining that air of superiority that surrounded him. “But I would remind you that it was your psychopathic murderer who created the scene, not us.”
The old woman’s face twisted in a mixture of anger and surprise. She wasn’t used to being spoken to that way. Greg wanted to keep them off balance so we were in control, but I wasn’t sure this was helping us. He’d offended Rita Mendez. She opened her mouth to speak, when George Alphonse, beside her, raised his hand to get our attention.
“That reminds me,” he said, sounding melodious in his deep voice. “We have something for you.” He leaned back, opening the drawer of the desk that sat behind him and pulled out a silver flip phone. He slipped it across the table to me. “I believe that is yours, and that you will find several texts on it. It’s was going off every few minutes awhile ago,” he said with a laugh. I stared at him for a moment, thinking his demeanor was out of place for the conversation that had just occurred. But that was probably the point – keep things light and get us to relax.
I picked up the phone, feeling the weight in my hand. I looked at my dad on the one side of me, then Greg on the other, before flipping it open. At the push of a button, a string of texts appeared – all from Sasha. I leaned toward Greg so he could read them as well as I scanned through. Over a dozen, all from today, and all looked apologies for getting me in trouble mashed up with horror at what Rex had done, although it was hard to tell since half of them cut off before they finished.
“My granddaughter has been rather persistent in trying to reach you,” Norman Reynolds said with a faltering smile.
I glared at him for a moment, thinking Sasha must be part of their plan – to make me think these people were our friends. I snapped the phone shut, making it clear I wasn’t going to accept Sasha’s apologies. I didn’t care if she felt bad. I thought about her horrified expression the night I’d translocated Rex – what was that? Only five days ago? She should feel bad. Her actions had condemned me to death, without even waiting to find out what had happened. I didn’t need to make her feel better about having done it.
Foreseen (The Rothston Series) Page 34