“We’ll stay,” Jack corrected, giving me a squeeze.
Briana looked up, holding a hand in front of her face to shield her eyes from the sun. “Where do I fit into all of this?”
I smiled. “You’re one of us, Bree. Where do you want to fit in?”
The sound of running footsteps stopped Bree from answering. An out-of-breath agent stopped when he saw us. “Where did she go?”
Briana and Jonas stood, and Jack and I walked closer to the agent. The muscles in my shoulders tightened in dread. “Where did who go?” I asked, my heart rate already at a steep climb.
“Sandra Whitmeyer. One minute I had her, the next minute she was gone.”
“Shit. Addison.” I shrugged out of Jack’s hold.
We ran toward the airstrip where a plane was supposed to be taking off any minute with Sandra, Dr. DeWeese, Maya, Addison, and Sandra’s followers. Jonas and Bree followed the fed closely. Jack and I brought up the rear; Jack was still weakened by his illness.
Suddenly, I stopped. “Jack, I know where she’s gone. I’ve got to stop her.”
I turned and took off running in the other direction.
“Lexi, wait!” I heard Jack yell.
I knew he would eventually catch up to me, but I didn’t have time to wait. I entered the main building from the side entrance and sprinted up the stairs and down the long hallway. When I arrived at the tracker room, the door was ajar.
Sandra sat at one of the computers, typing furiously, looking up every so often at the monitor in front of her.
“Move away from the computers, Sandra.”
She looked up, but didn’t stop typing. “Oh, good, you’re here. How wonderful to see you again, Sarah.”
I examined her face. The area around her right cheekbone was swollen and starting to bruise. “Looks like Jonas nailed you pretty good. I’m afraid you’re going to have a nice shiner to go with that swollen cheek by tomorrow.”
“He should never have been able to hurt me like that.”
She was speaking of the Omega Directive, of course. Jonas had explained how he’d been able to use his mind to get past that constraint. Our minds had been overcoming obstacles left and right recently.
Sandra stopped typing and turned to face me. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve worked to create the perfect healer, Sarah?”
Surely Jonas and the agents would find us here any second. I decided to stall, to keep distracting her from whatever it was she was doing on the computer. “No. A long time, I guess.”
“I was going to be the one who saved the world from disease and life-threatening injuries.”
“That’s very noble of you.” I eased closer. “Why couldn’t you have worked toward that goal without killing innocent people?”
“Innocent people? I haven’t killed any innocent people. Everyone I’ve terminated was guilty of something.”
“Oh really? And what was my dad guilty of?”
“He kept things from me. You, and the other clones he knew about. And when I discovered Wellington, he planned to hide you and the rest of the clones again.” She started to turn back to the computer.
I held out both hands. “And what about my friend Dani? What did she ever do to you?”
Sandra’s lips thinned into a tight line. “Danielle Gray. Daughter of Victoria and Samuel Gray. Her spinal cord was severed when she was ten years old when a drunk driver struck her mom’s car. She would never walk or use her arms again.”
“What?” I had never heard any such story. “That is a one-hundred-percent lie.” I balled my fingers into fists.
“I beg your pardon. One-hundred-percent truth. Your father knew about it. He let the Grays hide their daughter at Wellington after I healed her injury. They told everyone that their daughter died from her injuries so that they could keep what I did a secret.”
“Why would they keep it a secret?” The blood in my veins coursed like turbulent rapids. I walked slowly toward Sandra.
“Because what I did was very controversial. Genius, an amazing medical miracle, but ‘morally questionable,’ whatever that means.” She shrugged. “I took stem cells from a clone that was a compatible match to your best friend. The clone died after the surgery, but your friend lived. In fact, not only did she live, she thrived.” Sandra sneered. “And then they hid my miracle-working ability from the world. I didn’t know she had survived until I found you both at Wellington. You can imagine my surprise.”
At that moment, all I wanted to do was wrap my hands around Sandra’s neck. The feeling was so intense that I actually imagined doing it. And as I did so, Sandra suddenly struggled to breathe. My mind was smashing through the barriers she had constructed.
“So, you see,” she said between gasps. “She was most certainly not innocent. And her parents deserved to suffer.”
I reached up and pulled a ruby clip from my hair. I could paralyze Sandra for a long time with the liquid from this pin. I stared down at it while keeping my telekinetic hold around Sandra’s neck.
She stared wide-eyed. “What are you doing?” she asked with a shocked voice, refusing to accept that she wasn’t invincible.
I cocked my head. Could I kill her? I could probably justify it. I glanced up at the video screens and nodded toward them. “What were you planning to do?”
“I’ve switched all the trackers over to satellite. I’m going to pull the plug on you and the rest of the clones.” She started to turn toward the keyboard again, and I tightened the grip my mind had around her neck, stopping her.
I looked down at the pitiful hairpin in my hand and tossed it aside. Instead, I slipped inside Sandra’s head and weaved in and around the various sections of her brain. Her neural activity was like nothing I’d ever seen. Hot orange, like a raging bonfire, swirled throughout her frontal lobe, the part of the brain tied to acts of violence and aggression. It was like peeking into the depths of hell. I had fully accepted my ability to fix injuries and diseases, but it had never occurred to me to cure this. Could it ever be possible to cure evil?
Images of Sandra’s terrible acts washed over me. I was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, and then a mental picture came into focus—and I knew in that instant that she would never stop trying to inflict evil.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured firefighters hosing down a burning building. With a surge of power from my own mind, I transformed the orange flame-like flashes of Sandra’s neurons to red, then green, and then black.
Completely entranced by dousing the evil fire of Sandra’s soul, I lost track of my surroundings. Suddenly, I was tackled to the floor from behind. I screamed as I hit the hard tile.
“I won’t let you hurt her!” Addison had me pinned. Sandra slumped out of her chair, and Addison left me to scramble over to her. She gathered Sandra’s head into her lap. “What did you do to her?” She stroked Sandra’s hair. “I’ll fix it. I promise.”
I stood up and backed away, confused by Addison’s intense reaction. I heard footsteps behind me, and turned to see Jonas, Jack and several agents enter the room, staring at Addison, who rocked Sandra’s limp body back and forth.
The agents approached Sandra and Addison with slow, calculated steps. I could have predicted what would happen next. The agents reached down and started to reach for Addison—and she disappeared. The agents turned in frantic circles, looking for her, but I knew she was gone.
One of the agents spoke into his two-way radio. “We’re going to need a stretcher in the large upstairs lab.”
Jonas and Jack stared at me open-mouthed for a brief eternity before I turned and exited the server room. Neither questioned what I had done to Sandra.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Two weeks later…
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was chilly but bearable. The seasons were changing, and the cold November air had left bare the many trees lining the Roslin Farm’s roads and fences. Though the trees appeared naked and vulnerable, the seasons that came before winter prepared them for a
time of rest.
The Roslin Farm was my home now, I supposed, as I walked along the drive from the house to the fence line. Jack and I, along with Briana and Kyle, had decided to return to Kentucky to finish our senior year of high school at Wellington, but a long weekend away from school was certainly in order. We figured we deserved a day off from class, and who was going to stop us? I owned the school, after all.
Alyson and Seth stayed behind at Palmyra to help Jonas right Sandra’s moral and ethical medical atrocities, so we had the house to ourselves. Separate bedrooms, though, at Alyson’s insistence.
I gripped my down jacket tighter. The gold scarf around my neck protected my skin from the brisk late autumn air.
Jack rode along the fence line on the back of Cheriana. She whinnied as they approached, and when he pulled back on the reins and stopped Cheriana in front of me, she snorted and pawed at the ground in her version of “Hello.” I climbed up on the fence. After giving Jack a quick kiss, I climbed on Cheriana in front of him.
“Briana, Kyle, Georgia, and Fred are coming over Thursday,” I said. “I’m thinking I’ll make a turkey.”
Jack chuckled. “You don’t ‘make’ a turkey. You roast a turkey.”
“You’re in charge of mashed potatoes.” I smiled. “I hate peeling potatoes. And I don’t want to know how much butter you put in them.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time with Briana since we got back. How does she seem? Has she spoken to Jonas?”
I nodded. “She’ll be okay. She knows she needs to finish school. And she wants to learn more about her abilities. Jonas isn’t going anywhere.”
Jonas was fighting his own demons on Palmyra. He was still working through his feelings of guilt for hurting Jack and Georgia, and like the rest of us, he was trying to figure out what role he should play in our advanced world of medical research and what he truly wanted out of life. For now, he was determined to do what he could for Sandra’s clones—humans who knew no other life than what she had taught them inside her cold, sterile laboratories.
Jack’s arms circled around me. He clucked his tongue to the roof of his mouth and led Cheriana away from the fence. “You think the Delta clones have a chance?”
“I think a lot of them will survive.” My eyes watered as Jack picked up speed and the cool air hit my face. With Seth’s and Alyson’s help, we’d done the best we could. We’d discovered a lot of mutated cells, a terrible byproduct of Sandra’s flawed attempt to recreate what she, Dr. DeWeese, Alyson, and my dad had produced all those years ago. I still struggled with the number of viable embryos and live humans who had died at Sandra’s hands. “There’s just so much that can go wrong when we try to duplicate something that’s a miracle in the first place.”
“And when you add a heavy dose of crazy to the science…”
“Sandra Whitmeyer was something beyond insane. She was…” I shuddered. Evil. I snuggled into Jack’s embrace. We rode around the farm and explored the entire property, getting to know the land my father had left me.
“It’s amazing: your mom has more security on this farm than all of Wellington.” He pointed to the double-wired electric fence in addition to the plank fencing on the back of the property. “She’s got video cameras with motion detector sensors installed for every possible angle. No one is getting on this farm without her knowing about it.”
“I guess we should feel safe, then.” I leaned back into his chest.
“Do you feel safe?” The warmth of his breath feathered against my cheek.
“When you’re with me, I do.” I was still having nightmares almost every night, replaying the many ways Sandra had manipulated and tormented the human clones she’d created. And worse, I was still haunted by memories of her power to destroy any one of us whenever the whim struck.
“She can’t hurt us anymore.” Jack squeezed his thighs against mine and held me tighter as Cheriana walked along a stream that ran through the property. “The best way to get back at everyone who wreaked so much havoc on our lives is to go out and live.”
“Which is why I have something to tell you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I felt his body go rigid against mine.
I shifted my body so that I could look him in the eyes. “I’ve been accepted into Brown University’s pre-med program for next fall.”
Jack’s face remained expressionless. “You have, have you?”
I turned back around. A wind picked up and bit at my cheeks.
“Brown, huh,” Jack said as if he were trying it out on his tongue. “You know it gets cold in Rhode Island.”
We rode in silence for a bit longer before Jack directed Cheriana back to the barn. He dismounted, then helped me down, letting me slide down the length of his body.
I backed up and sat on a bench while he took care of the equipment. “You didn’t ask if I was planning on going.”
Eyeing me briefly, Jack tossed some grain in Cheriana’s food container. “I’m trying to decide how I feel about it, first.” He held out his hand to me. Brown wasn’t a school Jack had applied to.
We held hands as we walked up toward the back of the house. As we neared, I noticed that someone had lit the large fire pit on the stone patio. I looked up at Jack, and he winked at me. “Thought a cozy evening outside might be nice. But first, I have a gift for you.”
“You know I hate surprises.”
“Not a surprise. A lost treasure.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Well, when you put it that way.”
Jack disappeared inside the house for a moment and returned with a long skinny package wrapped in white paper with a pretty green ribbon. “It’s a belated birthday present.” He tilted his head from side to side. “Partly.”
I smiled, then held the present to my ear and gave it a little shake. It made a nice rattle.
“Go ahead, open it.”
I tore through the wrapping, then slowly removed the lid from the silver box. “My necklace!” My hand went instinctively to my neck where my starfish necklace used to hang. “But it’s different.”
Jack reached in the box and took out the silver chain that now held not just one, but three charms. “I searched the yacht for your necklace after you left—tore the boat apart, to be honest.” He grinned. “I finally found it under the dresser in your cabin. The clasp was broken, and it had found its way behind one of the dresser legs. Then, during the week we spent on Palmyra, I found this piece of sea glass.”
I studied the frosted green piece of glass—smooth and uniquely shaped. “A gem of the sea,” I whispered. “My father taught me about sea glass years ago. He was a lover of all things from the ocean.”
“I had the jeweler add the pearl.”
“Another treasure of the ocean.”
He nodded. I turned around and let Jack put the necklace on me, then faced him again. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I love it.”
We snuggled into the large chaise lounge under an oversized comforter. I lay across his body, my cheek pressed against his fleece pullover. “So, have you decided?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
When he said nothing else, I strained my neck to look up at him. His head was propped up by a bent arm. He leaned forward and placed a kiss gently across my lips.
“Fine.” I sat up. He kept a hand on my leg and drew nervous circles on my thigh. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” I began. “I know I’m supposed to be this strong, independent girl.”
“Woman,” he corrected. I quirked a brow at him, and he shrugged. “It sounds better. More mature.”
“Okay, a strong, independent woman. And most high school students are eager to go off to college—to study and experience and figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. We’re supposed to be just reckless enough to learn who we really are.”
“Let me guess… You’ve decided to give up your life of recklessness?”
I poked him in the ribs, and he flinched. “Ha ha.” I grabbed his hand. “I know I’m not supposed to f
ollow a boy off to college—”
“Man.”
“Stop.” I laughed. “And I’m not supposed to want a man to follow me. And then there’s Wellington to consider. Like, what are my responsibilities where the school’s concerned?”
“Seth has already agreed to travel back and forth between Palmyra and Wellington. And you’ve got Dean Fisher and Coach Williams. And your mom.”
“Right. I know.” It was a foreign feeling to have so many people around me who cared and wanted what was best for me. “But none of them share our abilities. Think about how much easier it will be for the clones at Wellington to learn what powers they have with us to guide them. Think about the months and years of confusion they could skip with our help.”
“Why can’t you just say it?” he asked.
I pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I think I have to stay near Wellington. And attend the University of Kentucky.” I fidgeted with the corner of the blanket. “I don’t expect you to stay with me. We’ve been through so much, and you deserve to go out into the world and find your own way. You need to—”
He raised up and cut off my words by covering my lips with his. When he pulled back, his eyes captured mine. “I need you to listen to me now. And I don’t want you to say anything.”
I nodded.
“I’ve watched you practically die several times. And now you’ve seen me on the brink of death.”
Moisture pooled in my eyes.
“You saved my life.” He cupped my face as the tears spilled over. “I don’t think two people can look death and evil in the face the way we have and not come out of it with a renewed sense of purpose.”
I leaned into his touch. “Just spit it out, will ya?”
The flames of the fire reflected off the blue of his eyes as he pinned me with his intense gaze. “I go where you go.”
I waited several beats while his words sank in. “Are you sure?”
Mindsurge (Mindspeak Book 3) Page 30