by John Dixon
But this guy didn’t carry a white cane, and he certainly didn’t look like an asshole. He looked famous, like a celebrity—a cool one if you got to know him, completely down to earth, the type who would conquer the world but crouch down to listen to your cares and concerns.
A haggard-looking woman walked beside him, arm in arm. At first glance, she looked pretty old, like thirty-five or forty, but Seamus looked again and realized that she was in her middle to late twenties, tops, just frazzled and prematurely gray, not old.
His fear had faded, replaced by curiosity.
Others were coming into the subway behind them—Seamus was vaguely aware of someone very large squeezing through the opening now—but his eyes returned to the man in sunglasses. Part of him wanted to crawl out from beneath the train, to welcome the man…
A loud bang startled Seamus. The stairwell door behind him—the one through which he himself had come—popped open, and he heard a familiar voice coming into the corridor. “Wes? Where are you? What’s with the surprise visit and all this backdoor drama?”
Seamus shuffled around on his belly and inched his way forward and saw who had come through the doors. His fists clenched.
Rhoads.
“Here,” the silver-haired politician called.
Spotting the politician across the tracks, Rhoads half smiled, obviously confused. “Who’s that with you?”
“I’m sorry, Oscar,” the politician said. “I had to see my daughter again. I had to see my baby Penny.”
Seamus heard a high-pitched giggle. Goose bumps rose along his forearms. A little blond-haired girl wearing a tiara and a pink feather boa stepped forward and took the politician’s hand.
“Penny?” Rhoads said, looking dumbfounded. “Your daughter, Penelope?”
“The same,” the politician said. “She’s changed. Grown up, dyed her hair, and gained incredible talent.”
“Oh, Wes…I’m so sorry,” Rhoads said, and reached for the walkie-talkie that hung from his belt like a six-shooter.
“Colonel Rhoads,” a deep voice drawled, its tone warmly mocking. “What a pleasure it is to see you again, sir.”
“You,” Rhoads said. His face twisted with alarm, and he started to unclip his walkie-talkie, but then his hand fell away from his belt line, any all-call distress signal apparently forgotten.
The man in shades smiled and executed a lazy salute. “Staff Sergeant Antonio Jagger reporting for duty.” His laughter was loud and rich. The others—Rhoads included—joined in.
Stranger still, Seamus had to slap a hand over his own mouth to keep from joining in. Instinctively, he glanced away from Jagger and felt a measure of sanity creep back in. Something was wrong here. Very wrong.
“You wrote me off as a regular guy,” Jagger said, his voice still ripe with humor, “just some likable dime-a-dozen drifter, lucky at cards.”
“You’re a charismatic,” Rhoads said, his voice throaty with awe.
“Is that what you’re calling me?” Jagger said, and Seamus forced himself to look away again, not liking the way the corners of his mouth lifted at the sound of Jagger’s amusement. “Well, that’s accurate enough, I suppose, as long as you’re speaking biblically. Divinely conferred charisma, full of grace. And yes, I have my church. Of course, the church is the people, not the place.” He spread his palms and swiveled, gesturing toward those who surrounded him. “I’ve traveled many a mile, baptizing lost souls in hobo jungles, bus stops, homeless shelters, county jails. You see, the human race was in a bad way. They had lost faith. But when they witness a miracle…”
He lifted into the air, coasted across the wide gap of the tracks, and landed on the platform five feet in front of Rhoads, who stood there, dumbstruck.
“So the reports were true,” Rhoads said. “You can—”
“Levitate,” Jagger said. “Yes. And other things. Many, many things, as you will see soon enough.” His smile returned, so bright this time that Seamus almost felt like he needed a pair of shades, too. He felt warmth, too, goodwill toward Jagger, who deserved to be happy. If only Rhoads wasn’t here, Seamus could crawl out and introduce himself, offer any help that Jagger might need. As it was, he felt like Odysseus lashed to the mast, driven mad by the sweet singing of the Sirens.
“I’m just a people person,” Jagger said. “I really understand people. So much so that I’ve learned to duplicate their magic tricks.”
Rhoads’s walkie-talkie lifted from his belt and hovered in the air between them.
“Even telekinesis,” Jagger said. The radio whipped sideways and smashed into the tracks inches from Seamus’s face. He shut his eyes and felt walkie-talkie shrapnel scratch his face, and suddenly dread flooded over him, cold as a bucket of ice water, bringing him back to reality. He was lying on the hard ground beneath a train, face stinging, and…
Somehow Jagger had enchanted him even though the man didn’t even know Seamus was here.
Seamus closed his eyes tightly. That helped clear his head.
How had Jagger done that? And how had he mesmerized Rhoads so easily, so completely?
“Trouble is, using multiple powers takes a lot of energy. It drains me like a sink.” Seamus could feel Jagger’s smile. “Luckily, you just happen to have the solution that I need: Scarlett Winter.”
SCARLETT WEPT.
Somewhere nearby, the woman burned, howling with pain. Scarlett could hear her and smell her but not see her. Oh, no, not that. She wouldn’t look, couldn’t look…
“You’re too late,” her father’s voice said. “Always too little, too late. Because you were too busy having a good time, too busy looking out for number one.”
Scarlett held the crying baby in her arms. She’d done her best to peel away the burning fabric, but some of the material had melted into the baby’s flesh and into hers. That was how she had gotten her scars, the ones that were itching like crazy now…itching yet not hurting. There was no pain. No physical pain, anyway. Reliving this moment, the moment of her great failure, was incredibly painful, especially with her father here, saying all these terrible things that Scarlett knew deep down were true.
“You’re pitiful,” her father said. “You disgust me.”
“I don’t want to die,” the woman in the car screamed.
Did she really shout that the night of the crash?
“Please don’t let me die!”
Now Scarlett turned and could see the woman’s face pressed against the window, staring out at her, blood draining from the split in her hairline, tears streaming from her face. “Why won’t you save me?”
Scarlett could hear the woman plainly, as if she, too, were in the car, could hear her and hear the crackling flames and feel the tremendous heat.
I have to help her!
She handed the baby to Sav—only it wasn’t Sav; it was Scarlett’s father—and rushed back in to save the woman…or rather, she tried to rush forward again. Her legs barely moved, they were so heavy with fatigue.
The corners of her mouth betrayed her, lifting into a mocking smile. You’re not tired. You’re high and drunk, and this is it, this is the life, right here…
She felt a wave of intense pleasure and saw Seamus’s head between her legs.
“Please save me!” the woman cried.
You really should help her, she thought, but a warm breeze soothed over her and carried that thought away.
Why bother? The woman didn’t say those things. This isn’t real. In reality, Scarlett had saved the baby, but there hadn’t been time to save the woman.
Besides, she felt awesome now. Why in the world would she interrupt Seamus?
“You don’t care about me,” her mother’s voice said.
She turned her head and saw not her mother but the woman behind the wheel, speaking to her in her mother’s voice. “Is this what you want? Are you tryi
ng to kill me?” The flames rose all around her, leaping from her burning clothes to ignite her hair in a halo of flame, and Scarlett smelled her burning.
Do something, she told herself. Get her out of there!
But she couldn’t move, could only lie there, high as a kite, the smell of her mother’s burning flesh filling her nostrils as Seamus pleasured her.
Scarlett gagged.
“Don’t you dare puke,” her father said. “You’re so weak.”
All pleasure disappeared. She wasn’t high or drunk. Seamus had vanished. She was just a little girl, and her father was back from the war, and the house was cold, and she was shaking like crazy, shivering from fear, and she just wanted to make it stop, wanted to escape, wanted to run away or fall asleep…anything to make it stop.
“You only care about yourself,” her father said, and Scarlett ached, knowing it was true, hating that it was true. Always had been, always would be.
I’m nothing but a self-centered piece of shit.
“You had so much potential,” her father said. “Good brain, good looks, good family. School, sports, boys…everything was easy for you. And what do you do with all those advantages? Nothing, that’s what. You don’t care enough to try. You just coast along until you get into trouble, and then you sweet-talk your way out of it.”
The truth burned into her, seared into her mind and heart and soul like battery acid.
“You don’t deserve to attend The Point,” her father said. “You just lucked out and woke up one day with superpowers. And still you coasted. Why? Because you’re lazy and weak and don’t care about anyone or anything.”
She wanted to shout back at her father, wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true, that her whole life she really had cared, that she really had tried, it was just that something always ended up happening…but those thoughts died beneath the roar of her own self-loathing.
Soft and weak and lazy like a little baby.
The woman screamed, burning.
“You didn’t even try to save her,” her father said.
“I tried to save her.”
“You didn’t try to save him. You weren’t even there.”
Him?
The screaming changed, deepening…and called her name. “Scarlett! Help me!”
No, Scarlett thought, filling with terror. Not this. Anything but this.
Hands turned her head, forcing her to look at that which she did not wish to see.
Flames engulfed Dan’s overturned Jeep. He hung upside down in the driver’s seat, trapped, burning…staring out at Scarlett, pleading to her, “Please help me, Scarlett!”
“Your own brother,” her father’s voice said, “and you just let him die.”
No, Scarlett thought, I never would have…I didn’t know…
Her excuses scrambled for purchase within her, found none—everything is my fault—and tumbled into the pit of fire burning at her center, the white-hot hell she’d been tending with pride and greed and sloth, the hell in which she’d burned those foolish enough to trust or love her, the hell to which she herself would one day go, and not a moment too soon…for it was she who deserved to burn, she who deserved damnation in the lake of fire that she’d made of her life.
“Your own brother,” her father said again. “Your own mother.”
And everything changed.
No more fire, no more screaming, no more pressing heat.
Now everything was still and cold and quiet…quiet as death. The field was gone. The burning woman was gone. Dan was gone, taking his screams with him. All that remained was the terrible knowledge that Scarlett was selfish and worthless and everything was her fault.
Her father’s voice spoke as the cold room came into focus. “Your own mother.”
Scarlett gasped and let out a strangled cry, “Mom?”
“All your fault,” her father said. He stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, both of them staring down at the bed where her mother lay dead beneath a blanket of empty prescription bottles, spilled wine, and vomit.
This isn’t real, Scarlett told herself as an icy corkscrew of terror drilled into her heart. Mom is alive. This is just a dream, a nightmare. I’m almost certain that Mom’s still alive.
Her father’s voice said, “How could she possibly carry on with only you for a child?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Spare me, Scarlett,” he said. “You never deserved The Point. Dan did. But you fixed that, didn’t you? Dan’s dead, and your mother’s dead…all because of you.”
Scarlett stared into her mother’s cloudy, lifeless eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I never—”
“It’s okay,” a voice said. “It’s all right now, Scarlett.” The voice was deep and smooth and familiar. A hand stroked her scalp gently. The image of her mother faded. “You are forgiven. You are delivered.”
Scarlett was awake. She lay trembling and soaked in sweat within the machine, tears leaking from her burning eyes. Was it true? Was she really forgiven? The room came slowly into focus, and joy leaped in her heart when she saw who sat beside her, stroking her head. “Dan?”
But that wasn’t possible. Dan was dead—all your fault, all your fault!—and this was reality. She had escaped the dream, so…
She shook her head.
It wasn’t Dan beside her. Not at all. Dan never wore Wayfarers.
“YOU’RE JAGGER,” SCARLETT SAID.
“Correct,” Jagger said with a nod, “and you are the answer to all my problems.” Behind him, people crowded into the Chamber: Rhoads, smiling excitedly; an enormous man, even larger than Lopez, whom Scarlett recognized as the High Roller Kyle Steede; and silver-haired Senator Ditko, staring down at Scarlett as if she were something nasty squashed into the sole of his shoe.
Scarlett shook her head, confused. She was badly rattled from the dream torture. Was this real? Was this really happening? Why would Sav’s dad be here?
Then, seeing Dalia leering at her from behind Jagger, Scarlett cringed, and an involuntary huff escaped her lungs.
Jagger smiled down. “Don’t be afraid, Scarlett.”
“Yes,” Rhoads said, stepping forward with a goofy grin. “Everything is as it should be.”
What was going on here?
But she knew. Even rattled and hurting and fogged over from Dalia’s torment, she knew.
Jagger laid a hand on Rhoads’s arm. “Call your cadets and cadre to the auditorium. I want everyone in attendance. Tell them they’re about to have a special visitor but don’t spoil the surprise. My people will help you set up. Oh, and I’ll be needing the big projector screen, okay? Great. Now you go ahead. I’ll be down momentarily to give them a nice pep talk.”
“Yes, sir,” Rhoads said. He saluted crisply.
“Colonel Rhoads!” she shouted, but Rhoads exited the Chamber without looking back.
“It’s Jagger,” she called after him. “He charmed you.”
“Shh,” Jagger said.
“Go to hell,” she said, wishing she could get her hands around Jagger’s throat.
Dalia stepped forward, anger flashing in her crazy eyes. “If you speak to him that way again, Scarlett, I’ll hurt you.”
Oh, no, Scarlett thought, so terrified of Dalia that she almost didn’t notice the tickling at the back of her neck. No, no, no…
“That won’t be necessary, Dalia dear,” Jagger said. He regarded Scarlett with a small smile. “Interesting.” He stepped closer to the machine. “Scarlett, my friend, relax, okay? Will you do that for me?”
“I’ll kill you for what you did to my brother,” she said. The tickling on her neck strengthened, vibrating up the back of her skull, and she felt heat building in her chest.
Jagger laughed. “Very interesting, indeed. Kyle, would you please cover Scarlett’s mouth?”
&nb
sp; Steede moved forward.
“Leave me alone,” she said. Restrained as she was, she couldn’t even turn away.
A huge hand closed over her mouth, muffling her complaints.
She squirmed to no avail. She could barely breathe. She had to get out of here, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak.
“Don’t suffocate her, Kyle,” Jagger said. “She’s still quite valuable. Priceless, in fact.” Then he spoke over a shoulder, asking, “How long until lunch?”
“Fifteen minutes,” a woman’s voice said.
“Are the cameras up and running?”
“Affirmative.”
“And we’re recording?”
“Roger that.”
“Excellent,” Jagger said. “Head down to the auditorium with Senator Ditko. Bring the laptops online and double-check the sat phones. Senator, are you ready to do your duty?”
“Yes, sir,” Sav’s dad said, obviously mesmerized like Rhoads. Taking a closer look, Scarlett started thrashing again at her restraints. Holding Ditko’s hand was Penny, the little pyrokinetic who’d burned Dan to death, the absurd plastic tiara still sitting atop her hair, which was pale blond, just like…
It’s Sav’s missing sister, Penelope…
Jagger reached through the metal ribs of the machine and patted Scarlett’s shoulder. “I understand that you must be upset, Scarlett, and I do apologize about your brother. We felt horrible about that, didn’t we, Sadie?”
“I feel positively monstrous,” Daisy said, stepping into view and speaking in a Southern accent exaggerated with cloying sweetness. “Really I do. Daniel was such a fine young gentleman.”
“Yes,” Jagger said. “It was a shame, but I needed to get close to Dan, needed to learn about him so that when I had a chance to visit your dreams, I could do a good impersonation. And Sadie—I’m sorry, I guess you’d prefer that I call her Daisy—needed to meet you. She’s not quite so powerful as dear Dalia, so she needs to meet someone in order to walk within his or her dreams.”
Jagger turned to smile at Dalia. “Unless, of course, that person happens to be a dream walker herself. It was simple for Sadie to find and interact with Dalia after we peeked into the mind of a friend of ours who’s unjustly quarantined at The Farm, and wow—what was this? If Sadie’s a ham radio, Dalia is every radio station on earth, broadcasting at a billion decibels. So yeah, it was easy for Sadie to connect. We watched Dalia’s dream walks for a while before Sadie introduced us. By that time, I understood that you were the answer to my problems, and your brother was the key to connecting you with Sadie and allowing her to tap into your mind so that I could dream walk with you, as him. After all, there’s no more surefire way to summon someone than to arrange the funeral of her only brother.”