“Uh-huh. Sure. But with him and Max on our side, I think we’re in safe hands. It’s just a shame that Max can’t read Casey’s mind. Or Brawn’s.” Abby looked up at him. “Odd, that. The two biggest threats are the two Max can’t read. . . .”
Lance said, “You’re wondering if maybe they’re the two biggest threats because Max can’t read them?” He shrugged. “Nah. If anything, it’s the other way around. They’re scared of him because of his powers, so they’ll do whatever it takes to stop him.”
“I guess so.” Abby nodded off to the south. “Guys are back . . .”
Lance turned to look. Half a mile away, a couple of hundred yards in the air, James and Roz were moving swiftly toward them. “Anything?” Lance asked.
James’s voice appeared all around them. “Oh, sure. We found him and decided to leave him be.”
“I love it when you attempt sarcasm, Jimmy. It’s like watching an eight-year-old thinking he’s beating his dad at chess.”
Abby asked, “Is Roz flying on her own, or are you doing it?”
“Me,” James’s voice said. “But she’s getting there.” Then he added, “Lance, don’t call me Jimmy if you don’t want me to call you Lancelot.”
“No problemo, Jimmy-Jim-Jimbo.”
James said, “Now you’re showing off because you think it’ll impress Abby.”
Lance immediately looked at Abby, but she didn’t seem to have heard that.
“That was only for your big ears, Lance.” Louder, James added, “What’s Max saying about this?”
Abby replied, “He’s mostly just relieved that we weren’t hurt.”
“I thought he’d be ranting and raving about us letting Casey get away.” James and Roz slowed and dropped lower as they approached the base’s parking lot.
Behind Lance, Max stepped out through the door. “We’re pulling out. James, you and Abby are going home, at least until we can figure out Casey’s next move. The data he pulled from our computers isn’t critical, but he’s smart enough to find something to use against us.”
Roz and James landed simultaneously. “Data?” Roz asked. “Max, the computers were all powered down last night.”
“And I definitely would have heard them starting up,” James said.
Max said, “Yes, now they’re shut down, because Abby shut them down when you two went looking for Casey. You saw him operating them.” He handed Roz a small portable hard drive.
Lance thought, How could they not remember that? They were right there with us when me and Abby found Casey copying all those files!
Then Roz said, “I’m pretty sure he didn’t get anything.” She handed the hard drive back to Max. “He dropped this, and it didn’t look like he had another one with him.”
Max turned the hard drive over in his hands. “Good work. All right, guys. Start packing.”
• • •
For the next four weeks, Lance stayed with the Daltons in their Manhattan apartment. It occupied the entire top floor of the building, and Lance calculated that the floor space was at least three times the size of the average house in the suburbs.
On his first day, Max showed Lance to one of the apartment’s four spare bedrooms. “This is yours.”
Lance looked around the room. It had a west-facing window, a single bed, a small wardrobe, and an empty bookcase. “Cool, thanks. How long will—”
“I don’t know, yet.” Max had an annoying way of answering questions before they were fully asked. “Until we’re sure that Slaughter’s not looking for you anymore. That’s why we can’t ship you off to your relatives.”
“What about—”
“Roz has a private tutor—Mrs. Gianneschi—and she’s agreed to teach you too. I’ve arranged for your old school to send her your records. Mrs. Gianneschi’s very good, but she doesn’t suffer fools, got that? No messing around. Study hard and do what you’re told.”
Lance began to speak again, and this time Max completely preempted him.
“Five hours a day, Monday to Saturday. And I expect you to put in at least a couple of hours each day in the gym.”
“So you—”
Max used his thumb to point back over his shoulder. “The gym’s at the end of the hall. It’s not huge, but it’s big enough for you and Roz to work out together.”
Lance dropped his backpack onto the bed. “Max, will you please stop—”
“Sure, sorry.” Max grinned. “One of the drawbacks of being a telepath.”
“I’m guessing there aren’t many other drawbacks.” Lance opened the wardrobe and peered inside. “So where’s Josh?”
“Summer camp.”
Lance looked back. “Seriously?” He walked over to the window and tapped the glass. “That’s inch-thick bulletproof glass, you’ve got all this high-tech security and guys downstairs who look like the CIA rejected them for being too tough, probably a dozen other things to make sure that no one unauthorized gets anywhere near your apartment, and you send your ten-year-old brother to summer camp? What if he gets kidnapped?”
“I’ve got some of my people watching him. And no one there knows who he really is. He’ll be fine.” Max stepped back out of the room. “I’ll give you the rest of the tour.”
Lance followed Max into the hall. “What about food and making the beds and stuff? Do you have a cook and a housekeeper?”
“We do.”
Lance grinned. “Cool! No chores!”
“Don’t get too happy. You won’t have time for chores. You’ll have almost no free time.”
“Five hours with Mrs. what’s-her-name, two in the gym. Where’s the rest of the time gone?”
“Mrs. Gianneschi will tutor you for five hours, but she gives a lot of homework. And she expects it to be done, so don’t think you can just charm your way out of it. She’s not easily swayed. Talk to Roz about that.” Max indicated the door they were passing. “Speaking of Roz, this is her room. Stay out of it.”
“Sure,” Lance said, nodding. “I’m not the kind of guy who’d snoop—”
“Yes you are. But I mean it.” Max stopped walking. “Roz is my only sister, and I look out for her. You get what I’m saying?”
“Uh, sort of . . .”
“You’re a teenage boy with a tidal wave of hormones charging through your system. I remember what it was like being your age. So. Let me spell this out for you so there are no misunderstandings. You lay one hand on my sister and you’ll spend the rest of your life thinking that your eyes are being eaten out by spiders.”
“Don’t worry, she’s not interested in me anyway.”
“I mean it, Lance.”
“I know. And I know you’d do it too.” I guess it’s an older brother’s job to protect his sister, Lance said to himself, then found himself wondering whether that thought was his own or one implanted by Max.
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Max said, “You remember what Casey—the other Casey, in Krodin’s world—said about you?”
“That I’m not superhuman, but I’m not exactly human either.”
Max resumed walking. “Right. You’re like Cord, a proto-superhuman. Whatever it is that makes us superhuman affected you, but didn’t take. You’ve been wondering why I’m keeping you around. Now you know. You’re almost one of us. Almost.”
Lance followed him into the apartment’s dining room. “Why don’t you just use your mind-control powers to make me do whatever you want?”
“Because I don’t think I need to, do I?”
“No, but . . . Max, you know I’m not your greatest fan, so—”
Max sat down on the arm of a large leather sofa and smiled. “You think I’m a jerk. You’ve said so a dozen times. You think I bully everyone, that I’ve got some sort of messiah complex. But if that were true, I would be using my abilities to make everyone obey me. What have I ever done to make yo
u think I’m anything but one of the good guys?”
Lance shrugged. “I dunno. I just sort of have a bad feeling . . . that I can’t completely trust you. And that makes me wonder if maybe you already have changed my memories. Maybe stuff happened in the past that you’ve just erased from my brain because it makes things easier for you.”
Max nodded slowly. “Interesting . . .” He gestured to the armchair opposite. “Sit.” Then he added, “That’s an offer, not an order.”
Sure, Lance thought. It’s an offer as long as I do what you say. If I don’t, then it becomes an order.
Max rolled his eyes. “Lance, you’re getting paranoid. And, no, I wasn’t reading your mind—that one was written all over your face.”
Lance sat down and began, “I’m starting to think—”
“That the reason you don’t trust me is that I’m immune to your own skills?”
“No. Well, yeah, a bit.”
“I’ve read a lot of your memories, Lance. I know all about your scams and confidence tricks. You have an incredible knack for getting people to like you.” Max laughed. “I quite liked the pocket-watch trick. I mean, I absolutely do not approve of that, and I don’t want you to ever do anything like it again, but it’s pretty clever.”
“I’m probably too old to pull that one off now, anyway. No one really trusts you once you get past about twelve years old.”
“But you still have the watch. And don’t tell me you’re keeping it for sentimental reasons. You can’t lie to a telepath.”
“What’s that like?” Lance asked. “People lie all the time, usually about dumb stuff that doesn’t really matter, but you can always tell. I mean, you know that thing where you’re going to movies with a friend and you ask, ‘Do you want to watch the action movie or the comedy?’ and they go, ‘I don’t mind. Whatever.’ But they really want to see the comedy . . .”
“Yeah, I’ll know,” Max said. “But only if I look. It’s not like everyone’s thoughts are blaring out at me. I have to pay attention to them. Of course, that particular situation doesn’t come up as often for us as it would for normal people. We don’t tend to have a lot of friends.”
“True. Why is that?”
“I think you know why, Lance. You’ve got the answer to that in the back of your mind, but you’ve never really allowed yourself to explore it.”
Lance stood up and walked over to the room’s patio doors, and looked out onto the balcony. After a minute, he turned back. “Is it because subconsciously we know we’re different from everyone else? Is that why? And is that why we’re drawn to each other? The first day I met Paragon, I was running a scam at the local mall. There were hundreds of people there, but he singled me out. There was no way he should have known what I’d been doing.”
“A few times now I’ve met people—complete strangers—and found myself reacting to them as though I’ve known them for years.” Max spread his arms and shrugged. “I don’t really know why it happens. All I know is that all of us are in pretty much the same boat. For people like you and Solomon Cord, well, you were changed on a fundamental level. For the rest of us, as soon as our powers kick in at puberty, we start to leave the ordinary people behind. Maybe it’s a survival trait. We band together for mutual protection. But whatever the reason, outside of the superhuman community none of us have any real friends.”
“So we look out for each other?” Lance asked.
“Right,” Max said. “And just because I can alter your memories and feelings doesn’t mean that I will. I don’t like doing it—I’d be a lot happier knowing that you trusted me of your own volition rather than because I made you do it.”
• • •
On the Monday of his fourth week in the Daltons’ apartment, Lance and Roz spent the morning in the study—a room Max had set aside as a small classroom—with Mrs. Gianneschi silently watching them as they attempted to translate a chapter of Huckleberry Finn from English into German.
By the time the tutor called lunch, Roz was well into the next chapter, and Lance was still on the first page.
As soon as the woman had left the study, Lance stretched and yawned. “I hate this,” he said to Roz.
“That’s pretty obvious.”
“But I didn’t learn German in school!”
“Yes, you keep telling me. Let’s see.”
Lance’s workbook floated up from his desk and landed in front of Roz. “Hmm.”
“What? Did I get something wrong?”
“You nearly got something right.”
“It’s too hard! Why can’t we do Spanish? I know a bit of that, and it’s easier.”
“We’re not doing Spanish because I did it last year. And the year before that I did French.”
Lance stood up, the legs of his chair scraping on the wooden floor. “That’s nuts. A year isn’t enough to learn a language.”
“It is if you’ve got Mrs. Gianneschi teaching you.” Roz followed Lance to the door. “So what do you want to do for lunch? Sandwiches?”
“Again? Mervin didn’t make anything?”
Mervin, the Daltons’ cook, was Mrs. Gianneschi’s husband. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he prepared food for Roz and Lance, but most of the time he and his wife spent lunch together in their own apartment downstairs.
“Not today,” Roz said as she entered the kitchen. “I suppose we could order something in. That yours?”
“Is what mine?” Lance asked, walking past her. There was a wrapped package on the table.
“You order a book?”
“No.” Lance sat down and lifted up the package. It was light, wrapped in tan-colored paper, about six inches long, four inches wide, and two inches deep. “It’s addressed to both of us. No one knows I’m here, do they? Apart from Abby and James.” He peered at the address label. “And that’s not their handwriting. No return address, either.”
The package flew out of Lance’s hands and came to a stop in midair in front of Roz. The paper unwrapped itself, revealing a small cardboard box. Roz telekinetically popped the lid and lifted out a small tape recorder.
“Who’s it from?” Lance asked. “Any note?”
“No. But there’s a tape in it.”
“Do we assume that it’s not going to blow up? Or do we leave it until Max gets back?”
Roz went “Hmm . . . ,” and the recorder floated up out of her hand.
“Balcony?” Lance suggested. “Y’know, just in case it is a bomb.”
“Good idea.”
They followed the floating recorder out of the room and toward the sliding patio doors, which opened as it approached, then mostly closed again when it passed through, leaving a one-inch gap.
Roz and Lance stepped closer to the doors, and Roz used her telekinesis to press the “Play” button.
Casey Duval’s voice said, “Roz, Lance . . . What you’re about to hear is a recording I made four weeks ago in Max’s base in New Jersey. This is not fake. Trust me.”
Lance looked at Roz. “The more people say ‘trust me,’ the less inclined I am to do so. If they were really trustworthy, they wouldn’t have to keep saying that.”
“Shhh,” Roz said. “Just listen.”
LANCE AND ROZ SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the dining-room floor, facing each other with the tape recorder between them.
After the third time playing the entire message, Lance asked, “What do you think?”
“It’s a fake.”
“Well, duh, of course it’s a fake. But what’s it supposed to achieve?” To himself, Lance said, It’s real, but I can’t tell her that.
“No idea,” Roz said. “Those sound like our voices, but . . .” She shrugged. “I’m sure Max knows someone who can analyze it.”
The recording had played out their encounter with Casey, from the moment he entered the small kitchen in the base in New
Jersey right up to the point where he left.
Then Casey’s voice said, “Of course, you don’t remember it that way, do you? And that’s because Max altered your memories. Roz, he’s done it to you before, probably dozens of times. And you don’t remember it because, well, how could you?
“You’re both probably thinking right now that I’ve never given you any reason to trust me, right? But you have no reason to distrust me either. The truth is that Max gave all of you fake memories of me breaking into his base. Your memories tell you that I hacked into the base’s computers and used a portable hard drive to copy the data. But the hard drive you remember is one that Max handed to Roz long after I’d left. The recording proves that you can’t rely on your memories. Now, ask yourself this: What else has Max done that no one remembers?
“If you two value your safety—and your sanity—you’ll leave right now, before he gets back to the apartment, and never come within a hundred yards of him again.
“I realize that it’s not easy for you to leave, Roz, but Lance can go. Lance, think of somewhere safe that Max doesn’t know about. Of course, you can’t be sure anywhere is safe from him, because you might have already told him about the place you’re thinking of, and he just made you forget that you told him. But that’s a risk you’ll have to take. And don’t tell Roz where you’re going, because Max will just pick it out of her mind.
“As long as you’re around Max Dalton, you have no way of knowing what is real and what isn’t, including your own memories and emotions. So go now. Leave Max’s apartment and disappear.”
Now Roz looked at Lance. “Tell me you’re not buying it. You’re not, are you?”
Lance gave her a slight smile. “Please. Give me some credit.” He was already trying to figure out how to get out of the city without Max tracking him. He picked up the recorder and climbed to his feet, then carried it back into the kitchen and put it with the box and paper. “Max is going to want to check it out, I guess. See if he can figure out where it came from. So. Lunch?”
Roz checked her watch. “We only have half an hour now. Soup?”
“Meh. What’s in the fridge?”
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