Mindsurge (Mindspeak Book 3)

by Heather Sunseri

  “That should do it,” I said. “I’ll just give this to the triage nurse.”

  The man looked completely worn out. “Thank you,” he said.

  After handing the clipboard over, I stood and made my way over to a door that appeared to lead back to the emergency exam rooms. Hospitals always had a way of making me feel like I was trespassing. That any minute someone would stop me and tell me, “Wait! You can’t go back there.” But when a doctor in navy scrubs and a nurse dressed in hot pink exited the exam room area, I slipped by them, doing my best to act as if I belonged.

  Beyond the waiting room, doctors walked about and nurses typed away on computers at their stations. No one looked up or seemed to care that I was there. I peeked around curtains and through doors, looking for any sign of Maya.

  As I neared the end of the hallway I heard a man yell, “There she is!”

  I whipped around. The father of the young boy was standing by the door with a security guard. He was pointing, but not at me. I followed the line of his outstretched arm down the hallway—to Maya. She stood close to a wall at the far end, one hand gripping a metal railing.

  Maya, can you hear me?

  Her eyes popped wider, looking from the screaming man to me.

  “I don’t know what she did. All I know is my son came in with a gash on his head, and now he doesn’t after that girl touched him.” The man had to realize how crazy he sounded.

  Maya was still staring at me. She slowly backed away from the crazed man and the security guard who was trying to reason with him.

  “What’s going on here?” the nurse dressed in hot pink scrubs asked. “Mister, you need to calm down. We can’t have you yelling back here.”

  The little boy, whom I hadn’t noticed until now, was walking toward me. His head was cocked, studying me. He turned and looked past his father to Maya. Then back at me. “Daddy,” he said softly.

  “Just a minute, champ.” Rationality seeped back into the father’s voice.

  “Daddy,” he said louder. “There’s another one. That’s the girl who—”

  I bolted around the corner and out of sight. I hoped I hadn’t scarred the little boy, but I wasn’t sticking around to be questioned about who Maya and I were.

  The emergency room was laid out in a big square. I followed the walls around until I came to the corner where Maya had stood. As I inched closer and peered around, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  I turned and no one was there. However, I felt the familiar presence. Show yourself, Addison, I ordered.

  Don’t be mad at me.

  Mad at you? You’ve been helping Sandra. And you got Maya in and out of the school. She almost drowned me. Mad doesn’t begin to—

  She wouldn’t have killed you.

  Is that supposed to make me feel better? You betrayed Jack, the one person who would have died for you—who fought for you when you were in a coma. What about Jonas? Because of you, he’s back in Sandra’s evil web.

  Sandra has my mother. She sounded so small inside my head, her voice full of regret.

  Anita. We hadn’t been able to find her when the lab began to blow up. Addison thought Anita would get out in time, but she hadn’t. Have you heard from your mother?

  She’s at Palmyra. Dr. Whitmeyer and Dr. DeWeese told me that if I led either you or Jack to them, they would let my mom come home.

  Addison made herself visible. Because she was so intelligent, it was easy to forget how young she was when she was only a voice inside my head. But as she stood before me now, I could see the slumped shoulders of a small child, her face tilted toward the ground. When she looked up, her eyes filled with moisture. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you or Jack. Or anyone. But I had to save my mom.”

  “I’ll give you a chance to make it up to us. Right now, we need to prevent Maya from being questioned by this man and hospital security.”

  Addison leaned around me.

  The father and the security guard were trying to talk to Maya. “I’ve never seen this man in my life,” she said. “I was back here getting my neck stitched up.” She leaned forward to show them the large white bandage on the back of her neck.

  I aimed my mindspeak at the father. Tell the security guard that you’re sorry and that you’ve made a mistake.

  “You know what? I’m sorry. I was so distraught when I brought my son in, I must have made a mistake.”

  “Okay,” the security guard said with a southern drawl, his face a mask of confusion, but most likely relieved to have the crazy man walk away. “Do you need help back out to the waiting room?”

  Tell him no. You’ll be fine.

  “No, we’ll be fine.” The man turned and put his arm around his son’s shoulders. They exited toward the waiting room.

  I had healed the boy, and kept him from a painful procedure of staples or stitches. And it had felt good. With everything that had happened since I’d discovered what I was, I had never really stopped to consider just what it would mean to use my power for good, even if only in small ways. Jonas and Jack had tried to get me to see a different point of view, but I didn’t want to listen. It had always felt too overwhelming, knowing I couldn’t heal everybody or every illness in the world.

  Maya was walking slowly toward me. Nice work, sis.

  Don’t call me sis. You and I are not family. I reached around and grabbed the back of her neck where the bandage covered her stitched-up wound. She flinched. If you move or call attention to us, I will shift your tracker such that Sandra will know that I have control of you, and she’ll be sure to terminate you.

  Maya’s eyes widened as she nodded, grimacing in pain.

  What did you do to Jack?

  Her head shook vehemently. Nothing. I don’t know. Sandra was in complete control of me.

  I squeezed harder. You’re lying. What did you do?

  Addison grabbed my arm, but I kept my grip on Maya.

  “Lex, she’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know what she did, only that she was being controlled by an outside force. She begged Jack and Georgia to remove the tracker. When they got so sick, and the presence controlling her left, she bolted.”

  Maya’s breathing was shallow. She pleaded with her eyes for me to let her go.

  With a frustrated sigh, I released her.

  She backed away and leaned against the wall, placing a gentle hand on the back of her neck. “I hate you, you know,” Maya said. “But I think it’s because I’ve been taught to hate you.”

  “The trackers are so powerful.” Addison touched my hand. “You and I have some power against them, and some power to resist others invading our minds, but to someone whose DNA wasn’t altered like ours…” She glanced toward Maya, who was an exact clone of Sandra, but whose DNA remained pure. “To them, a tracker is like a prison sentence. With that tracker at the base of her skull, Maya has no hope of ever being who she wants to be. Only who Sandra commands her to be.”

  I thought of Jonas. Not that long ago, Ty had gotten inside his head, and at Sandra’s direction—through his tracker—he had convinced Jonas that he was in love with me one minute and wanted to kill me the next. The lines between what was true and what was a lie had blurred for Jonas. “So you think Sandra forced Maya to do something to Jack and Georgia?”

  Addison shook her head. “Maybe. But she always programs someone else to do the dirty work. Wasn’t Ty manipulated to come after you through Jonas?”

  Attracted to me or not, Jonas had nearly killed me at Ty’s direction. Jonas eventually fought Ty off, which led to Sandra discovering that Jonas’s natural mental powers were stronger than Ty’s tracker. So she killed Ty.

  I let that sink in as a pregnant nurse approached us from the right. “Are you girls okay?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “We were just leaving.” I wrapped my fingers around Maya’s forearm and pulled her with me toward the exit. Maya may have been a victim, but that didn’t make me suddenly trust her.

  You’re hurting me
. She sucked in a harsh breath through clenched teeth.

  But I didn’t let her go until we exited the hospital. As soon as I did, she whipped around and came at me like she might challenge me to a catfight. I stood taller. I dare you to hit me right now.

  “What makes you so important?” she said. “What does Sandra want from you?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. And Maya didn’t deserve an answer even if I had one. When I stepped toward her again, she recoiled. Good. I needed her to fear me, even if only a little. “Right now I’m important because I have power. Your evil DNA donor wants me. She wants me so badly that she’s threatening the people I love. And that pisses me off. I also have power because no matter how badly you want to hurt me, you can’t, or Sandra will kill you.”

  After a few deep breaths, she backed away and eyed Addison. “What now?”

  Addison twirled her long black hair around her forefinger. “That depends on Lexi.”

  Maya’s eye twitched with an evil glint. “Why would any part of my future depend on Lexi? She doesn’t control me.”

  I studied Addison. There was worry behind her cold gaze, a vulnerability that came with being too young to make decisions on her own, yet being forced to do so nonetheless.

  “Sandra’s gone.” She let go of the lock of hair she’d been fingering and wiped her palms on her leggings. “She took Jonas, and they left today.”

  “What do you mean, they left?” Panic settled into my heart. Addison was still capable of mentally tracking people’s physical locations—clones and non-clones. And she’d just confirmed that Sandra had officially taken Jonas into her faraway lair.

  “I tracked them to a private plane at Bluegrass Airport. They’re gone.”

  “They went to Palmyra,” Maya whispered. Her eyes seemed to focus on the sidewalk in front of her. “They left me here.”

  It was weird watching Maya. Sometimes it was like looking in a mirror. In that moment, I wanted to feel sorry for her. But I didn’t. She’d tried to kill me. And now she’d done something to Jack.

  She raised her head, and her cold eyes found mine. “Could you remove the tracker in my skull?”

  I gawked at her. Removing her tracker could kill her. “Why would I do that? You’ve brought nothing but harm to us since you arrived.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. You don’t owe me anything—”

  “But she knows Palmyra inside and out,” Addison interrupted. “And she would no longer be a threat to you without the tracker.”

  This was exactly what I wanted from Maya and Addison—my ticket into Palmyra undetected. “That might be true, but for all I know Maya would be leading me straight into a trap.”

  “I’ll help you.” Maya’s voice sounded panicked. “You need me to figure out what’s wrong with Jack. I can do that.”

  “Why would I ever trust you? What’s changed?”

  “It’s not about trust. It’s about need. You need me. And I need you.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “That may be. I’ll consider it. But first, the two of you will need to find a place to stay while I make plans. You’re not welcome at Wellington.” I couldn’t possibly trust them where I sleep. “And if you sneak in using your mind tricks, the deal is off.”

  “What about my tracker?” Maya asked.

  “I won’t make promises. But I’ll see if I can figure out how to safely remove it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You think they’ll sell the atoll to me?” I asked Coach as I kicked into the punching mitts strapped to Jack’s hands. A roundhouse left him stumbling backward a little, and I eyed him funny. I hadn’t kicked that hard.

  “Frankly, I don’t know why they would.”

  I straightened. “Why wouldn’t they? My money not good enough?”

  Coach cocked his head. “Money isn’t the issue. The president’s staff and the Secret Service are currently analyzing every angle and possible threat that could arise from selling that island. And they’re balancing that against every possible threat that could arise from not selling that island.”

  “What about Ms. Meyers? Surely she impressed upon them what’s at stake.”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure she did. I doubt she’ll soon forget your little demonstration. I’m going to take a wild guess that Evelyn Meyers didn’t sleep much last night after that performance.”

  I chuckled.

  Jack removed a mitt and tucked it in his armpit. He wiped his forehead against the sleeve of his T-shirt. I was the one working out, and he was sweating?

  I reached out and touched his arm. “Hey. You okay?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “You think Sandra did something to cause my and Georgia’s severe attacks?”

  Noticing the beads of sweat across his nose, I crinkled my brow. Clearly, Sandra did something. But I had no idea what.

  Jack’s hand shook as he tipped a water bottle back and squirted a power drink in his mouth. He’d been trying to replenish his electrolytes for two days. “I need to take a break.”

  Coach held his phone up as he backed away from the conversation. “I’m going to make some phone calls. And Lexi, your mom is making dinner tonight. We’re supposed to be at the house by seven. I have a surprise for you.”

  I hated surprises.

  When coach disappeared through the door, I zeroed in on Jack. “What’s going on with you? Something’s not right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bull.” I brushed my fingers along his forearm and started to grab his hand, but he yanked it away.

  “I said, I’m fine.” His tone cut straight through to my heart.

  “Okay.” I reached for my own water.

  He closed his eyes briefly. When he reopened them and found mine, his expression softened. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired from getting so sick. I feel like I just got over the flu.”

  “It’s all right. I’ve had enough for today anyway.” I took a drink of water. “Why don’t you take a nap before we meet with everybody.” We’d be discussing our plan to save Jonas and destroy Sandra’s operation. I was ready to confront her, and the sooner the better, if we wanted the element of surprise on our side.

  “That’s a good idea. I think I will take a nap.” He leaned in and brushed his lips across mine. “I’ll call you later.”

  I took another drink of water as I watched him exit the room. I had examined the different areas inside his head after the run-in with Addison and Maya. Everything seemed to be intact and functioning normally, but I had a horrible feeling.

  Jonas, I wish you could hear me. Something’s not right with Jack. I need your help.

  Silence. What had Sandra done to Jonas? Or to Jack? I walked to the corner of the workout mat and pulled my cell phone from my backpack. Maybe Georgia had thought of something.

  “What do you want?” Apparently Georgia’s mood was no better than Jack’s.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been hit on the head a few dozen times with a baseball bat.” A confusing pattern of noises followed. “What? No. Fine, you talk to her.”

  “Lexi?” It was Fred. “She’s not herself. I don’t know what Maya did, but Georgia has never taken this long to recover from an episode. Never. She’s mostly slept since we brought her back to the house. She’s been confused a lot, extremely thirsty, and I just watched her take four ibuprofen. I don’t know what to do to help her.”

  “Don’t leave her alone, okay?” All of those symptoms were side effects of the epileptic attack, but they should have already subsided by now. “I’ll call you back.”

  I grabbed my bag and took off in the direction of my dorm room. On the way I called Kyle. “Any luck finding the Skype or cell phone number for Sandra? I need to talk to her. Now.”

  “As a matter of fact…”

  “Give it to me.”

  He rattled it off without a second of hesitation.

  “How did you find it so quickly?” I asked.

  “I
asked Seth.”

  “Seth? Are we sure it’s current? Why would she keep the same number?”

  “Why not? Seth figures she’s arrogant enough to think everyone will eventually bow to her awesomeness.”

  I thought about that for a few beats. It was true. She’d expected me to join her. “Thanks for the number.” I hung up.

  A few minutes later I entered my dorm room and headed straight to my computer. I pulled up the Skype interface and typed in the number.

  It rang and rang, but there was no answer. I tapped my fingers on my desk in a nervous pattern. We were leaving for Hawaii soon, and I was going to need Jack’s and Georgia’s help.

  I decided to use the free time to pack for our trip. It somehow seemed stupid to pack for a trip to take down an evil empire of scientists and IIA operatives, but I did need some necessities, after all. I pulled my suitcase out of my closet and began throwing in clothes and a few toiletries. When I was almost done packing, a ring sounded from my computer.

  The muscles in my neck clenched. I turned to find Sandra’s number flashing across the screen. I quickly sat and angled the screen so that my suitcase and packing mess was hidden. Then I answered the call.

  “Hello, Sarah. I’m so thrilled that you called. What’s new at Wellington?” Sandra was as cheery as a mother calling to catch up with her teenage daughter.

  “Cut the crap, you evil witch. What did you do to Jack and Georgia?”

  “Why? Are Jack and Georgia feeling a little… off?” She fake-frowned. If I could have reached my hands through the computer screen, I would have wrapped my fingers around her neck and wrung it until she blew out her last breath, her body fell limp, and her eyes went glassy.

  “You know, you think you’re going to win this, but you won’t,” I said. My voice came out calm and even, but the war inside my chest was anything but. “You might even think you’ve won if I were to come to Palmyra, but if Jack becomes one of your casualties, you will lose. I would rather sacrifice myself and die than let you get whatever it is you think I have.”