by L. J. Smith
In a way, she wouldn't be surprised. The strain on Gabriel had been growing every day. He was desperate, and desperate people look for desperate cures.
But if he'd betrayed them, if he'd gone to Mr. Zetes behind their backs ...
As she listened, though, her heartbeat calmed a little. It didn't seem to be that kind of conversation. Mr.
Zetes seemed to be stroking Gabriel's ego, complimenting Gabriel in a vague and extravagant way. Like somebody buttering up a fraternity pledge, Kaitlyn thought. It reminded her of the speech Mr. Zetes had given the first day at the Institute.
"I know how you must feel," he was saying. "Repressed, hemmed in by society-forced into this ordinariness. This mediocrity." Mr. Zetes gestured around him, and Kaitlyn instinctively scrunched lower behind her bush. "While all the time your spirit feels caged."
That's nasty, Kaitlyn thought. Talking about cages to someone just out of a boys' prison . . . that's low.
"Alienated. Alone," Mr. Zetes continued, and Kait allowed herself a grin. She knew for a fact that one thing Gabriel was not feeling these days was alone.
Mr. Zetes seemed to sense that he was off the mark, too, because he went back to harping on the repressed and caged bit. He was manipulating Gabriel; that was clear enough. But why? Kaitlyn thought.
She could barely feel Rob, Lewis, and Anna from here, and she didn't dare try to get in touch with them.
It would certainly alert Gabriel, and she wanted to find out what was going on.
"Society itself will someday realize the injustice that's been done to you. It will realize that extraordinary people must be allowed a certain liberty, a certain freedom. They must follow their own paths, without being caged by laws made for ordinary individuals."
Kaitlyn didn't like the expression on Gabriel's face, or the dim feelings she could sense from him behind his walls. He looked . . . smug, self-important. As if he were taking all this crap seriously.
It's the strain, Kaitlyn thought. He's so sick of us that he's gone right round the bend.
"I think we should continue this discussion at my house," Mr. Zetes was saying now. "Why don't you come up with me this evening? There's so much we have to talk about."
Horrified, Kaitlyn saw that Gabriel was shrugging. Accepting. "I've been wanting to get away," he said.
"In fact, I'd do just about anything to get out of here."
"We might as well go from here," Mr. Zetes said. "I was going to pay a visit to the Institute, but I'm sure Joyce can carry on without me."
Alarm flashed down Kaitlyn's nerves and her heart thumped. Gabriel was getting in the car. They were going to leave right now-and there was no time to do anything.
Only one thing. She stood up, trying to look bold and casual at once, and to think clearly despite the pain in her head.
"Take me, too," she said.
Two heads snapped around to look at her. Gabriel had paused with one foot inside the limousine. Both he and Mr. Zetes looked very startled, but in an instant Mr. Zetes's expression had changed to fierce, pitiless scrutiny.
"I've been listening," Kaitlyn said, since this was obvious. "I just came down to-to think, and I saw you, and I listened."
Gabriel's eyes were dark with fury-he was taking it as another invasion of his privacy. "You little-"
"Different rules for extraordinary people," Kaitlyn told him imperiously, standing her ground. "Society shouldn't cage me in." It was the best she could do trying to remember the gibberish Mr. Z had been spouting.
And it seemed to soften Mr. Z's fierce expression. His grim old lips curved a little. "So you agree with that," he said.
"I agree with freedom," Kaitlyn said. "There're times when I feel just like a bird hitting a pane of glass-and then flying back a little and hitting it again-because I just want to get out."
It was the truth, in a way. She had felt like that- back in Ohio. And the ring of truth seemed to convince Mr. Zetes.
"I often thought you might be the second one to come around," he murmured, as if to himself. Then he looked back at her.
"I should very much like to talk to you, my dear," he said, and there was a tone of formality, of finality, in his voice. As if the simple words were part of some ceremony. "And I'm sure Gabriel will be delighted to have you along."
He made a courteous gesture toward the limo.
Gabriel was gazing at Kaitlyn darkly, looking unconvinced and not at all delighted to have her. But"" she slowly got into the car, he shrugged coldly. "Oh, sure."
"Shouldn't we go to the Institute first?" Kaitlyn asked, as Mr. Zetes got in and the limousine began to move, backing up smoothly toward the bridge. "I could change my clothes. . . ."
"Oh, you'll find things quite informal at my home," Mr. Zetes said, and smiled.
They were getting farther away from the purple house every second. Rob, Kaitlyn thought, and then with more force. Rob! Rob!
She got only a distant sense of mental activity as an answer. Like hearing a muffled voice, but being totally unable to make out the words.
Gabriel, help me, she thought, deliberately turning her face away, looking out the limousine window. It frightened her to be using telepathy with Mr. Zetes in the car, but she didn't have a choice. She sent the thought directly at Gabriel, jarring through his walls. We need to tell Rob and the others where we're going.
Gabriel's response was maddeningly indifferent. Why?
Because we're going off with a nut who could have anything in mind for us, that's why! Don't you remember Marisol? Now, just help me! I can't get through to them!
Again Gabriel seemed completely unaffected by her urgency. If he were going to put us in a coma like Marisol, he would hardly need to take us to San Francisco, he said contemptuously. And besides, it's too late now. We're too far away.
He was right. Kaitlyn glared out the window, trying not to let her tension show in her body.
Nobody asked you to come and invite yourself along, Gabriel told her, and she could feel the genuine coldness behind his words. The resentment and anger. If you don't like it, that's your own fault.
He hates me, Kaitlyn thought bleakly, putting up walls of her own. She wasn't as good at it as he was, but she tried. Right now, she didn't want to share anything with him.
It was getting dark, the swift chilly darkness of a winter evening. And every mile the limousine went north was taking her farther and farther away from Rob and the Institute, and closer to she didn't know what.
By the time they reached San Francisco, it was fully dark, and the city lights twinkled and gleamed in skyscraper shapes. The city seemed vaguely menacing to Kaitlyn-maybe because it was so beautiful, so charming and cheerful-looking. As if it were decked out for a holiday. She felt there had to be something beneath that lovely, smiling facade.
They didn't stay in the city. The limo headed toward dark hills decorated with strings of white jewels.
Kaitlyn was surprised at how quickly the tall buildings were left behind, at how soon they were passing streets of quiet houses. And then the houses began to be farther and farther apart. They were driving through trees, with only an occasional light to show a human habitation.
The limousine turned up a private driveway.
"Nice little shack," Gabriel said as they pulled up in front of a mansion. Kaitlyn didn't like his voice at all. It was mocking, but dry and conspiratorial, as if Mr.
Zetes would appreciate the joke. As if Gabriel and Mr. Zetes shared something.
Something I don't share, Kaitlyn thought. But she tried to put the same tone in her own voice. "Really nice."
Under heavy eyelids, Gabriel gave her a glance of derisive scorn.
"That's all for tonight," Mr. Zetes told the chauffeur as they got out. "You can go home."
It gave Kaitlyn a tearing sensation to watch the limousine cruise away. Not that she'd ever said more than
"hello" to the driver, but he was her last connection with . . . well, normal human beings. She was alone now, with Mr.
Zetes and a Gabriel who seemed to resent her very existence.
"I live very simply, you see," Mr. Zetes was saying, walking up the columned path to the front door. "No servants, not even the chauffeur. But I manage."
Prince and Baron, the two rottweilers, came bounding up as he opened the door. They calmed at a glance from Mr. Zetes, but followed closely behind him as he and his visitors walked through the house.
Just another thing to make Kaitlyn nervous and unhappy.
Mr. Zetes took off his coat and hung it on a stand. Underneath he was wearing an immaculate, rather old-fashioned suit. With real gold cuff links, Kait thought.
The inside of the house was as impressive as the outside. Marble and glass. Thick, velvety carpets and polished, gleaming wood. Cathedral ceilings. All sorts of foreign and obviously expensive carvings and vases. Kaitlyn supposed they were art, but she found some of them repulsive.
Gabriel was looking around him with a certain expression-one it took her a moment to categorize. It was... it was the way he'd been looking at the magazine with the expensive cars. Not greedy; greed was too loose and unformed. This expression had purpose; it was sharp and focused.
Acquisitive, Kaitlyn thought. That was it. As if he's planning to acquire all this. As if he's determined to.
Mr. Zetes was smiling.
I should look like that, too, Kaitlyn thought, and she tried to stamp an expression of narrow-eyed longing on her own face. All she wanted was to fool Mr. Zetes until he let them go home. At the beginning she'd had some idea about finding things out about Mr. Zetes-but not anymore. Now she was just hoping to live through whatever was coming and get back to the Institute.
"This is my study," Mr. Zetes said, ushering them into a room deep in the large house. "I spend a great deal of time here. Why don't you sit down?"
The study was walnut-paneled and darkly furnished, with leather chairs that creaked when you sat on them. On the walls were gold-framed pictures of horses and what looked like fox hunts. The curtains were a deep, lightless red, and the lamps all had rust-colored shades. There was a bust of some old-fashioned-looking man on the mantelpiece and a black statue of a foreign-looking woman on the floor.
Kaitlyn didn't like any of it.
But Gabriel did, she could tell. He leaned back in his chair, looking around appreciatively. It must be a guy thing, Kaitlyn thought. This whole place is so masculine, and so ... Again, she had trouble finding a word. The closest she could come was old money.
She supposed she could see why Gabriel, used to living on the road o!r in a cell with one bunk and a metal toilet, might like that.
The dogs lay down on the floor. Mr. Zetes went over to the bar-there was a full bar, with bottles and silver trays and crystal decanters-and began pouring something. "May I offer you a brandy?"
My God, Kaitlyn thought.
Gabriel smiled. "Sure."
Gabriel! Kaitlyn said. Gabriel ignored her completely, as if she were a fly buzzing around the perimeter of the room.
"Nothing for me, thanks," she said, trying not to sound as frightened as she felt. Mr. Zetes was coming back with only two glasses, anyway-she didn't think he'd even meant to include her in the offer.
He sat down behind the desk and sipped golden liquid out of a ballooning glass. Gabriel sat back in his chair and did the same. Kaitlyn began to feel like a butterfly in a spider's web.
Mr. Zetes himself seemed more aristocratic and imposing than ever, more like an earl. Someone important, someone who ought to be listened to. This whole study was designed to convey that impression, Kaitlyn realized. It was a sort of shrine that drew your attention to the figure behind the large, carved desk. The figure with the immaculate suit and the real gold cuff links and the benevolent white head.
The atmosphere was beginning to get to her, she realized.
"I'm so glad we're able to have this talk," Mr. Zetes said, and his voice went with the atmosphere. It was both soothing and authoritative. The voice of a man who Knew Best. "I could see right away at the Institute that you were the two with the most potential. I knew that you'd outstrip the others very quickly.
You both have so much more capacity for understanding, so much more sophistication."
Sophisticated? Me? Kaitlyn thought. But a part of her, a tiny part, was flattered. She'd been more sophisticated than other kids in Thoroughfare, she knew that. Because while all they'd been thinking about was cheerleading or football games, she'd been thinking about the world. About how to get out into the world.
"You can conceive of... shall we say, broader horizons," Mr. Zetes was saying, as if he'd followed her train of thought. It was enough to bring Kait up short, to make her look at him in alarm. But his piercing old eyes were smiling, bland, and he was going on. "You are people of vision, like myself," he said. He smiled.
"Like myself."
Something in the repetition make Kaitlyn very nervous.
It's coming, she realized. Whatever it is. He's been building up to something, and here it is.
There was a long silence in the room. Mr. Zetes was gazing at his desk, smiling faintly, as if lost in thought. Gabriel was sipping his drink, eyes narrowed but on the floor. He seemed lost in thought, too.
Kaitlyn was too uneasy to speak or move. Her heart had begun a slow, relentless hammering.
The silence had begun to be terrible, when Gabriel raised his head. He looked Mr. Zetes in the eyes, smiled faintly, and said, "And just what is your vision?"
Mr. Zetes glanced toward Kaitlyn-a mere formality. He seemed to assume that Gabriel spoke for both of them.
When he started talking again, it was in a dreadful tone of complicity. As if they all shared a secret. As if some agreement had already been reached.
"The scholarship is only the beginning, of course. But naturally you realize that already. The two of you have such . . . enormous potential. . . that with the right training, you could set your own price."
Again Gabriel gave that faint smile. "And the right training is . . . ?"
"I think it's time to show you that." He put his empty glass down. "Come with me."
He stood and turned to the walnut-paneled wall of the study. As he reached out to touch it, Kaitlyn threw Gabriel a startled glance-but he wasn't looking at her. His entire attention seemed fixed on Mr. Zetes.
The panel slid back. Kaitlyn saw a black rectangle for one instant, and then a reddish glow flicked on as if activated automatically. Mr. Zetes's form was silhouetted against it.
My picture! Kaitlyn thought.
It wasn't, exactly. Mr. Zetes wasn't wearing a coat, for one thing, and the red light wasn't as bright. Her picture had been more a symbol than an actual rendition-but she recognized it anyway.
"Right this way," Mr. Zetes said, turning to them almost with a flourish. He expected them to be surprised, undoubtedly, but Kaitlyn couldn't work herself up to pretending. And when Gabriel entered the gaping rectangle and started down the stairway, she realized she couldn't protest, either. It was too late for that. Mr. Zetes was looking at her, and the dogs were on their feet and right behind her.
She had no choice. She followed Gabriel.
This stairway was longer than the one at the Institute, and it led to a hallway with many doors and several branching corridors. A whole underground complex, Kaitlyn realized. Mr. Zetes was taking them to the very end.
"This is ... a very special room," he told them, pausing before a set of double doors. "Few people have seen it. I want you to see it now."
He opened one of the doors, then turned toward them and stopped where he was, gesturing them in, watching their faces. In the greenish fluorescent light of the hallway his skin took on an unhealthy chalky tone and his eyes seemed to glitter.
Kaitlyn's flesh began to creep. She knew, suddenly and without question, that whatever was in there was terrible.
Gabriel was going in. Mr. Zetes was watching her with those glittering eyes in a corpselike face.
She didn't have a choice.
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The room was startling in its whiteness. All Kaitlyn could think at first was that it was exactly what she'd imagined the laboratories at the Institute would be like. White walls, white tile, everything gleaming and immaculate and sterile. Lots of unfamiliar machinery around the edges, including one huge metal-mesh cage.
But that was all incidental. Once Kaitlyn was able to focus on anything, she focused on the thing in the center of the room-and then she forgot everything else.
It was . . . what? A stone plant? A sculpture? A model spaceship? She didn't know, but she couldn't look away from it. It drew the eye inevitably and then held it fast, the way some very beautiful paintings do-except that it wasn't beautiful. It was hideous.
And it reminded Kaitlyn of something.
It was towering, milky, semi-translucent-and that should have given her a clue. But she couldn't get over her first impression that it was some horrible parody of a plant, even when she realized that it couldn't be.
It was covered with-things. Parasites, Kait thought wildly. Then all at once she realized that they were growths, smaller crystals sprouting from a giant parent. They stuck out in all directions like the rays of a star, or some giant Christmas decoration. But the effect wasn't festive-it was somehow obscene.
"Oh, God-what is it?" Kaitlyn whispered.
Mr. Zetes smiled.
"You feel its power," he said approvingly. "Good. You're quite correct; it can be terrible. But it also can be very useful."
He walked over to the . . . thing . . . and stood beside it, the dogs padding at his heels. When he looked at it, Kaitlyn saw that his eyes were admiring-and acquisitive.
"It's a very ancient crystal," he said, "and if I told you where it came from, you wouldn't believe me. But it will amaze you, I promise. It can provide energy beyond anything you've ever imagined."
"This is the training you were talking about?" Gabriel asked.
"This is the means of training," Mr. Zetes said softly, almost absently. He was still looking at the crystal.
"The means of sharpening your powers, increasing them. It has to be done gradually to avoid damage, but we have time."