Book One

by K. C. Archer

  “Turn here,” Pyro said. “We’ll dump the vehicle and walk to the dock.” Dara maneuvered the car and cut the engine. Pyro opened the back door and lifted Molly into his arms.

  “We have to get her to a hospital,” Teddy said.

  “No hospital,” Pyro said. “If we take her to the hospital, there’ll be a police report.” He shifted Molly higher in his arms.

  Molly groaned, stirring. “I don’t want to go to the hospital.” She leaned in to Pyro’s shoulder.

  “Molly!” Teddy cried. “Is she awake?”

  Pyro ran the back of his hand against her forehead. “She’s slipping in and out. We’ll take her to the infirmary when we’re on the island. Jeremy, can you handle the boat?”

  Jeremy nodded, fumbling for the keys from his pocket.

  They hiked the two blocks to the marina. Teddy remembered thinking that it was the perfect San Francisco day. Not a cloud in the sky. Pretty pastel Victorians gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Tourists meandered up and down steep sidewalks, stopping in outdoor cafés and browsing in cute shops. Teddy took it all in with a sense of disbelief. Impossible to conceive that something so awful could be happening in the midst of such picture-postcard beauty.

  *  *  *

  The infirmary was deserted except for one lone nurse on duty—the stocky and efficient Nurse Bell—and an upperclassman with a migraine. When the group entered, Nurse Bell snapped into action, guiding Pyro, who carried Molly, to a private room. Once Pyro had gently settled Molly onto a bed, they were shooed into the infirmary’s waiting room.

  After what felt like forever, Nurse Bell returned. “She’s stable for the moment, but she’ll need treatment. I’ve paged Dr. Eversley.” Her gaze swept around the room. “What happened?”

  A beat while they exchanged uneasy glances. Finally, Pyro volunteered, “She fell. Her wrist is broken. Contusions to the head and body. No other broken bones.”

  “I didn’t ask for a diagnosis,” Nurse Bell replied. “I’m fully capable of assessing her injuries.”

  The Misfits stayed silent.

  “How long has she been in and out of consciousness?”

  “About two hours,” Teddy said. She knew it sounded bad. She felt like the worst sort of person.

  Nurse Bell looked between them. The moment stretched. “And you’re coming to me only now?”

  “We were in San Francisco,” Teddy said. “We were—”

  “Hiking,” Dara said. “She fell hiking.”

  “And you didn’t think to bring her to the emergency room?”

  “She doesn’t have insurance,” Jeremy said, speaking for the first time since they’d boarded the boat back to the island. “She begged us not to take her to the hospital.”

  Nurse Bell released a lengthy sigh. No words accompanied it, but her opinion of the way they’d handled Molly’s injury was clear. “I will alert Professor Corbett to these events. Now I have to take care of your friend.”

  Her stomach tied in knots, Teddy asked, “Should we wait?”

  Nurse Bell paused. “There are many things you should have done. Loitering in my waiting room isn’t one of them.”

  *  *  *

  The Misfits trudged together toward Harris Hall. No one spoke. It was easier not to. Fog had begun to sweep over school grounds, shrouding the normally tranquil Zen garden in a gray mist.

  Teddy stopped at the steps of the dorm. She looked at Dara. Someone had to summon the courage to say the words on everyone’s minds. “Did you see—” she began.

  Dara shook her head. “The future can change.”

  “Molly’s not going to die,” Jeremy said. He stated it as a fact, when all of the Misfits knew that the future was always murky, constant only in its inconstancy.

  Jillian brushed his shoulder. “It’s okay, Jeremy.”

  “Okay? How is any of this okay?” He jerked away from Jillian’s touch and turned on Teddy. “This is all your fault. If you hadn’t wanted to go, none of this would have happened.”

  “Jeremy, you don’t mean that. We decided this as a team,” Jillian said.

  Nice of Jillian to come to her defense, Teddy supposed, but completely unnecessary. Jeremy was right. Everything that had happened was her fault. She didn’t try to defend herself. She couldn’t.

  “If Teddy had just thought about what might—” Jeremy said.

  “That’s enough, Jeremy! Molly wanted to get that video file. She wanted to go on the roof. And she was the one who wanted to go down that line. You followed us. It wasn’t a particularly challenging descent. It was an accident. She got hurt. And that sucks. But it was her choice,” Jillian said.

  “Is there any chance that this could have been worth it? Any way of recovering the hard drive?” Pyro asked.

  Dara lifted the backpack with the broken laptop. “It’s shattered. And I looked through the debris. The hard drive was missing. When the computer hit the pavement, it must have skidded beneath something in the alley.”

  After everything they’d been through, they had nothing to show for it. They’d left the island that morning hoping to right a wrong. They’d been so confident they could pull it off. Free Yates, stop Whitfield from turning into another Sector Three, and . . . Teddy swallowed hard as she realized what else: find her mother. Suddenly, she saw their plan for what it was—foolhardy, selfish, shortsighted—and Teddy felt sick.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TEDDY LAY ON THE TWIN bed in her dorm room, waiting for news of Molly’s condition. She rolled the Ping-Pong ball Clint had given her between her fingers. The wall clock ticked off the seconds. Teddy had never noticed it before; now it was all she could hear. Those steady ticks reminded her of how she hadn’t been quick enough in Nick’s office or, later, in the alley.

  “You’re tormenting yourself,” Jillian said. “It’s not like you pushed Molly off the roof, Teddy. It’s not your fault.”

  Teddy ignored her. Of course it was her fault. No one was going to convince her otherwise. “Part of me feels like I should start packing now,” she said. She rolled onto her side, reaching for the purse she’d used earlier that day. She dumped the contents onto her bed, including the cell phone that Molly had given her. She felt strange having a phone again; she’d become used to living in the moment, tech-free. Her heart twisted. The screen indicated one new message. Teddy pushed a button and read it: Just in case.

  Just in case . . . what? As Teddy filled in the rest, she couldn’t help but think the worst. Just in case something happens to me.

  “What is it?” Jillian asked.

  “A message from Molly. There’s an attachment, too. Must have come in before I left.”

  Jillian leaped from her bed and stood over Teddy’s shoulder. “Open it.”

  Teddy pressed the alphanumeric link. Disbelief and incredulity warred for dominance in her mind as she watched a folder containing two video files appear on the cell phone screen.

  She clicked the first. The phone went momentarily dark. A small white arrow appeared, and Teddy pressed it. Then a black-and-white video image filled the screen, revealing a grainy surveillance shot of a crowded sidewalk. No sound. Men and women walking with umbrellas flexed open to shield themselves from rain. Tall buildings loomed around them. It could have been any large metropolitan city. Teddy noted the time and date stamp floating in the lower-right corner: August 17, 08:21. Six years ago.

  Teddy’s breath caught. This was it. The proof they’d been after.

  The video rolled on. A uniformed hotel doorman stepped from beneath an awning and signaled for a cab. Three men followed. The first was slight of build, dressed in full military regalia. The general whom Yates had been ordered to kill. The two men trailing him were dressed in suits, though their physique didn’t fit their attire. They had broad chests, long arms, and stubby legs. Gorillas in suits. Teddy pegged them as bodyguards. One of them held an umbrella over the first man’s head, while the other scanned the street for signs of trouble.

 
A cab rolled to the curb and stopped. Just as the doorman swung open the passenger door, a fourth man rushed forward. The angle of the camera captured him only briefly. He was a short man with a round face and heavy facial hair. Even though the quality was poor, one thing was for certain: he was not Derek Yates. The short man bumped into the general—hard—then leaped into the cab, slamming the door shut as the cab sped off.

  The general staggered backward, and his bodyguards caught him under the arms to prevent him falling. At first it appeared no more than a bit of urban incivility caught on film. A passerby rudely stealing someone else’s cab. But then the general pressed his right hand against his chest as his bodyguards lowered him to the ground. A dark stain spread down his shirt. Blood seeped through his fingers. He hadn’t been pushed out of the way; he’d been stabbed.

  Then the video ended.

  “That was not Derek Yates,” Teddy said.

  “Click the next file,” Jillian said.

  This video was higher quality. A police interrogation room, stark but brightly lit. A young, uniformed police officer stood near the door. A man sat in handcuffs at a small metal table. “That’s Yates,” Teddy explained to Jillian.

  Before she could say more, the door to the interrogation room opened, and Clint, dressed in a shirt and tie with a detective’s badge clipped to his breast pocket, stood before the table. This video was also time-stamped: August 20, 23:07. Three days after the murder of the general.

  Yates spoke. “You know I wasn’t there.”

  “Then why does the murder weapon have your fingerprints all over it?”

  “Come now, Clint.” Yates gave a brief, sardonic smile.

  Clint placed a hunting knife, sealed in a clear plastic bag, on the table. “Are you saying this isn’t your knife?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “But you—”

  “That knife was stolen from me.”

  It was Clint’s turn to smile. “Someone stole your knife and dropped it at the scene of the murder? That’s your story?”

  “You’ve known me a long time. Would I leave prints behind?”

  “They wanted you out of the way, so they framed you. Set you up for murder.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Give me a name, then. You don’t owe them your loyalty. Not anymore. Tell me who’s behind this. Who have you been working for?”

  Yates’s entire body stiffened. Softly, he said, “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?” Clint rubbed his chin in frustration. “I’ll help you if I can, Derek. But you have to give me something to go on.”

  “I’m afraid that’s simply not possible.”

  Clint shoved back a chair and sat. Both men were silent, and Teddy understood that they were communicating not with their voices but with their minds. Yates went pale, and his whole body shook.

  “Sign the confession,” Clint said, his voice even as he slid a piece of paper and a pen toward Yates.

  “Don’t do this,” Yates wheezed.

  “He’s mentally influencing him,” Teddy said to Jillian, aghast. “Forcing him to sign that confession.”

  She pulled Yates’s card from her pocket and found the address for his attorney. She was going to be expelled from Whitfield in any case. At least she could right one wrong before then.

  “Everything Yates said was true,” she murmured.

  Which meant that Teddy didn’t want to stay at Whitfield anyway.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  TEDDY HAD KNOWN CLINT WOULD want to speak to them. She just didn’t expect the summons to arrive so quickly. Less than ten minutes after she and Jillian hit end on the video, a knock sounded at their door. Teddy opened it to find a second-year recruit standing in the hallway: Clint wanted to see them in his office. Now.

  Teddy, though psychically, physically, and mentally exhausted, jolted her wall into place, shoring up whatever remaining currents of power she had available. But even as she did it, she realized how pointless the exercise was. If he wanted information, all he had to do was look into any of her friends’ minds and he’d see everything.

  No sense putting off the inevitable.

  Teddy and Jillian arrived to find Dara, Pyro, and Jeremy already there. She would have liked time to share Molly’s video with her friends before she confronted Clint about its contents, but that wasn’t the hand she’d been dealt. It didn’t matter. One way or another, she was going to see this through.

  Clint’s office, a room that had been Teddy’s refuge, wasn’t spacious. With all six of them crammed inside, it felt like a holding cell. Dara and Jillian sat in chairs facing Clint’s desk; Teddy and Jeremy stood by a tall metal filing cabinet; Pyro hovered near the door. Before she could stop herself, Teddy’s gaze flew to the desk, to the glass dome beneath which rested the screw with the Sector Three symbol stamped on the head.

  “Molly was transferred to a hospital,” Clint began. “She has a grade-three concussion. She’s conscious now, but brain injuries are complex, and her prognosis isn’t clear. Bottom line, the doctors don’t know how it will impact Molly’s life going forward. We don’t know how it will impact her psychic abilities. All we can do is give her time and hope she fully recovers.”

  He studied each of them in turn: Jillian, Dara, Pyro, Jeremy. Teddy had a swift and sudden understanding of the phrase His antenna went up. She could see him thinking, considering, weighing, probing each of them for information. He turned his attention to her. His eyes narrowed, and she raised the voltage on the electric fence that kept her thoughts private.

  “Next,” Clint said, “as each of you are aware, you committed several felonies. You hacked the FBI mainframe and corrupted a confidential file. The charges that could be leveled against you include criminal trespass, conspiracy, cyberattack on a government institution, and computer fraud. And that’s just the beginning.”

  If Clint knew, Nick knew. Nick more than knew. Nick was probably the one who’d told him. Teddy couldn’t think about what that meant.

  “So . . . are we under arrest?” Dara said.

  “No.” Clint leaned back in his chair. “Not today. The Whitfield Institute and the FBI have a very productive relationship. A relationship that nobody wants to see undermined by your stunt. And as you can imagine, the FBI is not eager to admit that its files were breached by a group of lightweights too ignorant to avoid detection on the goddamn surveillance cameras.”

  He shifted forward in his seat, drilling his forefinger into his desk. “However,” he continued, “the evidence collected against you will remain in the possession of the FBI. And there’s no statute of limitations on some of these felonies, so if any of you ever tries a stunt like this again, I’m confident that you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

  Now Teddy would spend the rest of her career wondering if tomorrow would be the day the FBI would come knocking. Why did she always get herself into these situations? She thought she was doing the right thing—no, she knew she was doing the right thing—so why did she always end up worse off than when she started?

  “And as of this moment,” Clint continued, “you’re all on probation. Break one rule between now and graduation, and you’ll all be expelled.”

  Teddy clenched her fists at her sides, silently seething. How dare he act so self-righteous? Yes, they’d acted stupidly. But Clint had ruined the life of an innocent man. Sent Yates to San Quentin for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Unable to stand it one second longer, Teddy spoke. “Before you go any further, there’s something you should see. Something Molly risked her life to obtain.” She handed her cell phone across the desk. “Press play.”

  The video links cycled through one more time. “What was it you told us, Professor Corbett?” Teddy pretended to think. “ ‘A psychic can never use his power to tamper with evidence or testimony to benefit the outcome of a case.’ I’ve forwarded the link to Yates’s attorney. The video clearly shows someone else committing the m
urder. Yates was convicted based on a coerced confession. Key evidence that was suppressed. That should be enough to get him a new trial.”

  “That’s why—” Clint stopped himself. Shook his head. “How did you—”

  “Know where to look?” Teddy realized there was only one way to play this: with the truth. She took a step forward, drew back her shoulders, and met Clint’s eyes. She said, “When I went to interview Corey McDonald in San Quentin, I met a prisoner named Derek Yates.”

  Once she started, Teddy couldn’t stop talking. She tried to slow her rush of words, but it all came pouring out. Everything Yates had told her about Sector Three, how the government had experimented on psychics, how her father had fought back, how her mother was still alive. How Clint had forced a false confession—an accusation the videotape had painfully borne out.

  She spun around, intending to launch herself out the door and never come back, but Clint’s words stopped her: “If you leave now, you’ll never know the truth.”

  “The truth?” she echoed. Her throat felt raw. “The video documents the truth. Coming from you, that’s—”

  “Teddy,” Clint interjected. “There were reasons for what I did. Reasons that I don’t have to justify. Reasons you don’t understand—”

  “Reasons? There’s no justification for what I saw on that tape.”

  He shifted in his chair, obviously uncomfortable. “There are things I haven’t told you, but I wasn’t certain if they were true . . .” He trailed off, looking over Teddy’s shoulder as though staring at some distant image only he could see. “I wasn’t there. I’ve already told you that. But I had friends on base, people I trusted. There were rumors about psychics who were being pushed too far. Subjected to endless psychological tests and physical trials meant to turn them into something they were never meant to be. Psychic soldiers. Killing machines, all empathy destroyed. I heard that your father fought back—that he led an uprising against the people behind the experiments. That would certainly be consistent with the Richard I knew.” He paused, seemingly lost in thought. “The point is,” he finally continued, shaking his head, “the few psychics who survived Sector Three vanished. Including your mother. And a year or two later, a series of inexplicable events began.”