That was you? You told them what was going on here? Why would you do that?
I told them some of what was going on here. Enough for them and the president of the United States to know that this is not the kind of publicity our country needs.
Sandra has no idea.
Exactly. And I need her to heal Jack—or to let me or you heal Jack—before government officials arrive. If she freaks out and we don’t get to Jack in time…
I’m still not letting you turn yourself over to her. Just wait until they leave. Let’s at least get the trackers transferred over first.
There isn’t time, now. That can be your job. I tried yanking my arm away from him, which only resulted in pain in my hand, elbow, and shoulder. Let go of my hand, Jonas, or I’ll scream. And then we’ll both be caught.
When Jonas’s grip wouldn’t loosen, I raised my knee and used my escalating adrenaline to nail him in a spot that I knew would make him let go of me.
He released me and crumbled to the ground. His face turned crimson red as he suppressed a scream. I had to hope the constant sound of the cooling system would mask the sound of his fall.
I moved farther down the row of servers. When I reached the end, I glanced around the machines at Sandra, Maya, and Addison.
“Why can’t we connect with her tracker?” Sandra asked Maya.
“I’m not sure. It’s here. I can see it, but the system’s not connecting with it.”
“Can you see if the Omega Directive is programmed into the tracker already?”
Maya cast a glance over her shoulder. She shifted in her seat before she typed again on the computer. “It’s there.”
“Is she on the satellite system? Did Alyson get it set up before the three of you left?” Sandra placed a fisted hand on her hip as she stood over both girls.
“No.” Addison’s voice was quiet. “But Lexi’s first job when she got here was supposed to be to make sure all the tracker communications were transferred from the cell tower to the satellite system.”
A lighting storm of rage fired through my body. I couldn’t believe Addison had so easily revealed my plan.
“Is that right?” Sandra sighed. She suddenly about-faced, and I jumped backward and out of sight. My hand flew to my heart as I tried to catch my breath. Sandra walked to the only doors that led out of the room. If she turned in my direction even a little, I was caught. I held my breath as she approached a glass cabinet containing a fire extinguisher and a fire axe. She grabbed the axe and marched back to the computers.
“Can you see where she is?” Sandra asked Addison. She white-knuckled the axe like she was about to chop down the largest coconut tree on the island.
I slipped inside Addison’s brain but found no tracker there. She was willingly helping Sandra. “No.” She squinted her eyes. “That’s so strange. I’ve never had trouble finding her before.”
I glanced backward at Jonas. He was on his hands and knees. He reached up and grabbed the edge of one of the machines and began pulling himself to his feet. Are we even now? he asked. I hit you when I didn’t know it was you. In return, you’ve made sure I’ll never have children? Can we please work together on getting you out of here now?
I walked back to him. He was bent over at the waist, his hands on his knees. Why is Addison having trouble tracking me?
You’re suppressing your mind from others more and more every day, especially when you’re angry. You think I’ve been staying out of your mind because I’m nice? I don’t do nice. You’ve been blocking me.
What is the Omega Directive?
Jonas bowed his head and shook it slowly from side to side. Oh, Lexi. Why did you have to go and let that tracker burrow itself into your neck?
What is it?
After a long, heavy sigh, he mindspoke again. There are two features of the tracker that I can’t block or bypass: Sandra’s ability to terminate me with the push of a few buttons, and the Omega Directive. I’m only guessing you’ll be in the same boat.
What does it do?
It’s not what it does. It’s what it prevents you from doing.
And what is that?
The Omega Directive prevents anyone with a tracker from harming Sandra. Now that you have a tracker, you’ll be unable to do anything that goes against Sandra, including defending yourself. Nor will you be able to direct someone else to harm Sandra. That tracker completely prevents any one of us from hurting Sandra in any way. Period.
But you said you had complete control of your tracker. What makes this feature different?
No idea. I just know that Sandra has a team of specialists improving these trackers every day. So even if we’re able to get the trackers switched over to satellite, she may already know a workaround.
The situation was becoming more and more hopeless. And I had no idea how much time Jack had left. Especially now that Sandra knew I had deceived her by pretending to be Maya.
I grabbed Jonas’s chin and directed his face toward mine. I wished his eyes were open so he could see my eyes. If Jack dies, I will never forgive you. And everything that I’ve been working to save will be nothing to me. I’ll give you one last chance to help me get the trackers transferred over to the satellite, but if we can’t make that happen soon, I’m going to turn myself over to Sandra, and whatever happens, happens. Even if this mission failed, I craved that communication with La Luna y el Sol, if only to make sure that Jack was all right before I sacrificed myself. I hoped I wasn’t already too late.
Jonas lifted his chest. His eyes remained closed. I hadn’t been able to see his eyes during any part of our conversation. If Maya and Sandra were able to activate my tracker, they’d see I was standing less than a hundred feet from them, and with Jonas. And then Sandra would know that Jonas had command over his own tracker and was betraying her. Again. She’d have me cornered, and Jonas would no longer be able to help me. I didn’t even want to think about what she would do to Jonas if that were to happen.
I’m sorry about Jack and Georgia. I did what I thought I had to. They’ll understand.
I turned away from Jonas and paced. Nothing but the large machines separated me from the person who wanted to poke and prod me like a giant lab rat. But if Sandra was telling the truth, the same large machines separated me from the cure for Jack.
I eased toward the end of the row again. I’m letting you inside my head so that you can see what’s going on over there.
Jonas slipped inside my head and watched as Sandra continued to hold the deadly axe in her hand. What’s she going to do with that?
Maya punched a key and looked up. “I found Lexi’s tracker. It’s now synced with the system. You can communicate with her.”
“Why can’t we see what she’s seeing?” Sandra asked. I stared at the snowy monitor above Maya’s head.
Maya pushed away from the computers in frustration. “I don’t know. I can’t seem to tap into the feed. Maybe her tracker was damaged. She carried it around for several weeks. And there’s no telling what Alyson did to it.”
Finally, a break. If I could just continue to control my own actions when Sandra got inside my head, the tracker would be useless to her. Unless she decided to terminate me, of course. I shuddered.
Sandra growled in exactly the way I imagined an angry mother bear would, and lifted the axe. For a brief moment, I thought she might split it over Maya’s head. My entire body tensed. I was about to scream out when Sandra ran past the chairs where Maya and Addison sat. Past the computers and monitors.
She raised the axe over her head and let it come down. Metal crunched on metal. Sparks flew. A direct hit.
My breath was knocked out of me. I closed my eyes tight, trying to unsee what she had done. The distinct smell of burning electricity reached my nose.
When I reopened my eyes, Sandra breathed heavily and dropped the axe to the floor. She had just taken out the switches that would allow me—or anyone—to switch the trackers to satellite communication. There was no way Alyson could h
ack in now. I was further than ever from communicating with Alyson, Jack, or anyone on La Luna y el Sol.
~~~~~
Jonas never had the slightest chance of stopping what happened next.
I need you to do me a favor, I mindspoke to Jonas as I backed away from him toward the edge of the row of servers.
Anything.
Don’t try to be a hero right now, and don’t, under any circumstances, open your eyes. I’ll let you into my head, but don’t open your eyes.
I took a deep breath, rounded the corner, and faced the group. “Well, well, well,” I said. “Look at what we have here. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Addison.”
After the initial surprise, Addison looked down at her plaid canvas Toms. Maya stood up from her seat, glancing from Sandra to me and back to Sandra. And Sandra just stared open-mouthed. Her usual confident grin was missing in action. Instead, rage still colored her face red from her fire-axe tirade, when she’d shattered my hopes of connecting with Alyson and Jack.
“What? You’re surprised to see me?” I rotated my shoulders back and stood tall, trying to be the largest one in the room, which proved to be difficult given that three of us were identical heights. “I told you I would come.”
“And here you are.” Sandra crossed her arms across her chest and jutted a hip out. “Maya, call Security.”
Maya pulled a phone from her pocket and began tapping it with her thumb. I held a hand up. “That won’t be necessary.”
Maya looked to Sandra for direction.
“Tell Security to come to the tracker room, now!” Sandra ordered.
I slipped inside Maya’s head, allowing equal parts anger and fear to fuel what I needed to do. Drop your phone on the floor. She lowered her arm to her side and let the phone slide from her fingers. It fell with a clank to the tile floor. Pick up that axe and smash the phone.
Maya did exactly as I ordered, cracking the phone’s screen into a thousand pieces and splitting the phone in half like a piece of firewood.
Now, my dear twin, I want you to grab your friend Addison in a headlock, and place the blade of the axe to her throat.
As the blade made light contact with Addison’s skin, the eight-year-old gasped. Her chest rose and fell in quick repetitions.
Sandra just stood back and watched as I took control of Maya’s mind. She cocked her head, studying me. “You know I’ll only kill them both, right?” Her grin resurfaced. Maya’s brows pulled inward, forming a vertical line in the middle of her forehead. Addison’s face paled.
“Whatever,” I said. “They’re nothing to me.”
Maya’s scowl deepened. Did they really think I was without a breaking point? If I’d learned nothing else from my evil DNA donator… Sandra killed people whether I wanted her to or not. Sometimes, especially if I didn’t want her to.
“However, I’ll only come willingly under one condition.”
Sandra smirked. “You think you’re in a position to bargain with me?”
I smiled back, trying to look more confident than I felt. “Do you really want a fight? I escaped once. I can do it again. Either way, I’ll leave a nasty path of destruction. Do you even have any idea what I’ve been doing since I arrived on Palmyra?”
Sandra narrowed her eyes. “What’s your condition?”
“I want proof that Jack and Georgia have been completely healed.”
Before Sandra could respond, the doors behind me opened, and in walked three people: Dr. John DeWeese; Dr. Mendez, the doctor from The Farm who took blood from me and hooked me up to machines at Sandra’s orders; and an armed security guard dressed in a khaki uniform.
Sandra smiled. “Apparently, Maya’s a fast dialer.” She nodded toward Dr. Mendez and Dr. DeWeese.
Before I could react, Dr. Mendez stuck me in the arm with a needle and syringe. The room tilted and the people in it went fuzzy.
And I collapsed into the arms of my boyfriend’s father.
Chapter Thirty
I woke to the sights and sounds of various medical machines. The heart monitor to my right beeped at a constant rate. An oxygen tube led from my nose to some unidentified source behind me, but did nothing to block out the smells of sterilization.
I turned my head left and right. Leather straps bound my wrists and ankles. I was dressed in gray hospital scrubs.
After several seconds, Dr. Mendez came into view. “This would have been much easier if you had simply complied with Dr. Whitmeyer’s wishes from the beginning.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I couldn’t form words. I opened my eyes wider, pleaded with Dr. Mendez.
“Oh, honey. Don’t bother trying to talk. Dr. Whitmeyer thought it necessary to simply—how should we say—turn off the area of your brain that would allow you to speak. It will wear off shortly. In time for the tests.”
I heard what she said. Understood it even. But I struggled to process what it meant.
Dr. Mendez leaned over me, lifting one perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she spoke. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We need to get a complete picture of what happens inside your brain. We’re going to measure the changes in blood flow to the different areas of your brain, and we’re going to take readings of your neuronal activity.”
As her words sank further and further into my thoughts, they began to make sense. I wanted to ask how she planned to take these pictures, but then the reality of my situation began to rear its ugly head.
I had turned myself over to Sandra. Strapped to a gurney and hooked up to various machines, I was living my worst nightmare. I stretched out my fingers, curling them into fists, while trying to slip them from the straps that held me there.
My pulse sped up. I could feel it against the table where my wrist was bound too tightly. An alarm sounded on one of the machines.
“Sarah, you need to calm down. Your heart rate is too fast.” Dr. Mendez placed her small hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. “Breathe, Sarah.”
I bucked, but Dr. Mendez quickly placed a strap across my hips, keeping me immobile. She backed away, then turned and sprinted to an intercom on the wall. “Dr. Whitmeyer, come quickly.”
I willed myself to slow my respiration. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I could do this. If I was the ultimate healer Sandra believed me to be—and what my father had created me to be—then I should possess abilities that would get me out of this predicament.
Sandra raced into the room, followed by Dr. DeWeese, who limped in with the help of a cane. The image of me shooting him in the leg at The Farm flashed through my mind.
I should have aimed higher.
They both stood over me and regarded me like a caged animal. Dr. DeWeese looked so much like Jack…
Jack. What had happened to him? How long had I been out? I searched Sandra’s eyes for any sign that she had held up her end of the bargain and made him better. My heart constricted. The pain of missing him overwhelmed me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t.
Sandra smiled. “Oh, look, John. It wants to speak.”
Dr. DeWeese leaned toward me, using his cane as support. A sneer touched the corners of his lips.
“Dr. Mendez, I would like for you to do the fMRI immediately,” Sandra said. “We don’t have a lot of time. It has to be complete before our guests arrive. Then I want her sedated and locked up. This lab needs to be running a completely normal operation before the Nature Conservancy arrives. They need to believe we’re studying the effects of tropical plants on the treatment of chronic illness. Or some such shit.”
If the Nature Conservancy would be here soon, it was already the next morning. I’d been out the entire night.
“Right away, ma’am. But we’ll need her brain fully functional while I run the fMRI.” When Sandra looked at her questioningly, she continued. “A functional MRI can only be done when the brain is in use. In order to measure the cerebral blood flow, I’ll have to—”
Sandra held up a hand, effectively si
lencing Dr. Mendez. “Just do it.”
I narrowed my gaze at Dr. DeWeese. Did he know how sick his son was? Would he care? I lowered my eyes to look at the area of his leg that I had injured with the rubber bullet. I saw through his khaki pants, his skin, and zeroed in on the healing kneecap. The muscles, ligaments, and bone structure surrounding the knee were surrounded by significant inflammation. The doctors in the room continued to speak about the tests and computer mapping of my DNA and neuronal activity while I used my mind to wrap a hand around Dr. DeWeese’s patella. Then with a surge of mind power, I squeezed it with every ounce of strength I possessed.
Dr. DeWeese screamed out in agonizing pain. My eyes popped wider in surprise at what I had just done. He reached for his leg as he crumpled to the floor. I squeezed even harder, making him yell out louder.
Both Dr. Mendez and Sandra knelt beside him. After I let go of his knee and Dr. DeWeese stopped screaming, Sandra’s head popped to attention. “We have to do this quickly. She’s figuring out how to use more of her abilities.”
I suppressed the smile of satisfaction that threatened to lift my lips. Instead, I leaned my head back and mentally brought up an image of my own brain for examination. My neurons fired in many shades of purple. Some neurons fired with a dark indigo hue, some glowed lavender, while others flashed almost a bright white, like a streak of lightning with purple edges.
I immediately saw the darkness in my frontal lobe. That same darkness ran in a straight line from the frontal lobe all the way to the tracker at the base of my skull. I was seeing the effect of the tracker, seeing precisely where it was suppressing my ability to speak. But Jonas had told me that he was able to control every aspect of his tracker—perhaps I could do the same. I found the spot on the tracker where the darkness was the greatest. With my mind, I closed off that part of the tracker’s function, shutting down the message the tracker was sending to my frontal lobe. I knew instantly that I was able to speak again.
Jonas, where are you?
Nothing.
Mindsurge (Mindspeak Book 3) Page 27