“No!” my mother yelled, tearing around the counter and past my father who tried unsuccessfully to hold her back. She held the knife up over her head like we were at the Bates Motel and came right at me.
“Dad!” I cried out as I watched the whole scene in slow motion: my mother surging toward me, my father making a grab for the back of her shirt, and me, standing frozen with the phone against my ear. I saw the knife coming at my neck, dropped the phone and swung my leg out, kicking her in the thigh. The knife nicked the base of my neck right before she doubled over in pain.
“Demon child!” she yelled. My father went to restrain her but somehow she got a second wind. She turned on him then and they grappled for control of the knife.
I picked up the phone and yelled into the receiver. “Please send help. Please!”
The 911 operator rattled off our house number and street name. “Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“We have a car in the neighborhood. The police will be there in a few minutes. Just stay on the phone with me. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” I croaked. My father wrested the knife out of Mom’s hand. Relieved, I slid down the wall until my butt hit the floor. “I can do that.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Russ
I barely got any sleep because I was so worried about what had happened to Nadia. I didn’t want to think about how I would live in a world without her. No, I decided, she was fine. Something had happened to pull her back into her body and after that she just couldn’t come back. Maybe her mother’s cat Barry had barged in and jumped on her bed. It had happened before so Nadia usually kept her door closed, but it was possible that she forgot this one time.
At least that’s what I told myself. In my heart, I knew she wouldn’t forget.
When morning came, the artificial light from outside of the building mimicked the rising of the sun. Jameson was still just a lump under the covers, but I was wide awake so I raised the blinds and watched the courtyard below come to life. A young couple sat on a bench holding hands while an employee, a man in a beige jumpsuit, swept the walkway behind them. Another employee, a young woman, fussed with flowers in the planters. The flowers couldn’t be real, I thought, not without bees and true sunlight, but they sure looked authentic. It was a typical hotel courtyard scene, the only difference being that this hotel was located deep below the surface of planet Earth. Anything could be happening topside right now and we’d never know it. Everyone I loved could be gone while I stood here watching a man sweep, a woman arrange flowers, and a couple holding hands. I missed Nadia desperately right then. She always knew the right thing to say to make me feel better. All we wanted was to be together. It didn’t seem to be asking too much.
I wondered if she was safe. I wondered if she thought of me as much as I was thinking about her. And I wondered if I should have fought against my good sense and pulled her through the window that night. The two of us could have taken off and gone somewhere, anywhere. Between the two of us we would have figured it all out.
At eight o’clock we all gathered for breakfast in the hotel restaurant and afterward we met in the lobby where we were broken into smaller groups and told our schedule for the day. Jameson and Dr. Anton left to scope out the hall where the Bash would be held, while Rosie and Mallory went off with one of the guard officials to be schooled in how to approach the vice president. As Rosie said, “You can’t practice mind control on someone if you can’t get close to him.”
Mallory was excited about the upcoming Black Tie Bash. Typical girl concerns—what she would wear and how she was going to do her hair. She’d changed her look on this trip, losing the ponytail and letting her hair just fall naturally on her shoulders. I noticed she tucked it behind her ears a lot. When we’d talked about the Bash earlier, she’d asked, “Up or down?” scooping her hair up and piling it on top of her head to give us the full effect.
“Either way is fine,” I said. I used to find Mallory so fascinating, but now her endless talking put me on edge. I was glad when everyone left and Carly and I could sit in peace. I kept thinking about Nadia and what was going on at her house. Once again I hoped the interruption had been something as simple as the cat jumping on her bed. I wanted that to be it.
My thoughts of Nadia were interrupted when Dr. Wentworth came to pick up Carly and me in the hotel lobby after breakfast. “Ready for your big day?” Dr. Wentworth asked. She had a forced smile, the kind that says let’s get on with this.
I nodded. I was keyed up and nervous about meeting the president, even though she would be unconscious. Dr. Wentworth was all business this morning. The three of us walked silently to the station. We’d been told the hospital was a short subway ride from the hotel, giving me just enough time to mentally prepare. On the subway I found myself interlocking my fingers and flexing my hands over and over again, my way of getting ready for a morning of healing. Or maybe I should say, a morning of trying to heal. I said a silent prayer that I’d be able to do it.
Carly sat next to me with the doctor in the row behind us. The seats were red leather edged by a row of brass rivets along the top. The PGDC appeared to be a mix of old style and new architecture. Nothing in this city down below was scuffed or worn or faded. Everything looked new. I ran a finger over the top of the seat in front of us, trying to keep my mind off the enormity of what they were asking me to do. Carly must have sensed my nervousness because she leaned over and said, “Look at us. Two outcasts from Edgewood, Wisconsin off to see the president. Who’d have thought?”
“Outcast? Speak for yourself,” I said.
She leaned back and gave me a hard look. “I stand by my statement. You and I, we’re both outcasts.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” I knew kids at school who had trouble making friends and didn’t seem to fit anywhere and even they weren’t outcasts. Just too outside of the mainstream. “I have plenty of friends.”
“You can have plenty of friends, but still know on some level that you’re not the same as them. Inside we all have secret lives. Trust me, you’re an outcast. If your so-called friends at school knew about your superpowers, they’d never treat you the same.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t make me an outcast.”
“Okay, have it your way.”
Carly didn’t do it that often, but I hated it when she assumed the wiser older sister role. I had parents to give me advice I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t need it from her too. “Thanks, I will.”
She squeezed my arm. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of you, Russ. You’re doing the right thing even though you know it might not end well.” She had a thoughtful look that made me wonder if this was about more than just me. “Believe me, I’ve seen it not end well.”
“Are you thinking about David Hofstetter?” I asked.
Carly looked down at her shoes, and didn’t say anything. At first I thought she hadn’t heard me, but then she nodded and I saw her eyes were filled with tears.
“Even after all this time, the thought of him still makes you cry?” I said.
“I’m always thinking about him,” she said. “It never stops. Just when I think I’ve got him out of my system I hear a song that reminds me of him, or something he said pops into my brain and it starts all over again. Sixteen years this has been going on. You’d think it would have faded by now. It makes me crazy. Why is it still so painful?” When she locked eyes with me her gaze was steady. “Believe me, I don’t want to feel like this, Russ. I hate feeling like this, but I can’t seem to get past it. I miss him and I’m so angry that he’s gone. There’s no changing the past, but if you can help bring down those lying murderers, the Associates, it might bring me some peace. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come with you on this trip. I want to be there when it happens.”
“But what if it doesn’t happen?” I was already feeling the pressure; now it was escalating, like a ball of stress climbing from my chest to my throat.
“You’re going to do fine,” Carly
said firmly. She leaned in and whispered. “There’s something I need to tell you. Once when you were a baby, Mom and Dad were out of town and I was babysitting you, and I took you with me to meet up with David at the old train station late at night. We fell asleep and David woke up when the lux spiral hit. He had you in his arms when he went outside to see what it was. I think that’s why your powers are so great. You’ve been exposed to it twice.”
Carly didn’t know that I’d heard this story from David already. I tried to look surprised, but I guess I didn’t have the right reaction because she felt the need to repeat herself.
“Twice, Russ,” she said, making a peace sign. “The first time as a little baby. Who knows how long the power has been inside you, growing, growing, growing?” She was still whispering but her voice was excited. “It’s probably been in every cell of your body, building this whole time, but lying dormant, just waiting. And then, when you saw the lux spiral this past spring, it activated every bit of it, like someone had flipped a switch. Boom!”
I nodded.
She said, “You’re probably the first person in the history of the world to get exposed to it as an infant and then again as a teenager. I’ve never told this to anyone.”
In the rows ahead of us, people were gathering up their things, preparing to get off at the next stop. “Thanks for telling me that,” I said. “That’s pretty incredible.”
“You must have been three months old that first time, but David said you had a look of awe on your face. Like you’d been touched by something great.”
Something shook loose in my memory and pushed its way forward. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Maybe because I had a piece of it clutched in my fist?” No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized my mistake. Carly hadn’t told me that my infant self had gotten hold of a piece as it dropped from the sky. David had been the one who’d given me that piece of information. Confused, Carly did a double take. I watched her face and it didn’t take long for her to realize that I shouldn’t have known that fact.
“Time to go.” I felt a tap on my shoulder and glanced up to see Dr. Wentworth in the aisle looming over me. “Quickly now.”
I was saved, for now. But I knew my sister, and there was no way this was going to fade from her memory. The subway slowed to a stop and we got up to follow the doctor out the door. Not one person pressed forward or grumbled. Instead, every single passenger filed out courteously. I was learning that everyone in PGDC was orderly and polite. This was the world as it should be.
Security at the hospital was crazy intense. We walked hallway after hallway, going through multiple doors and up an elevator. Signs everywhere said: Authorized Personnel Only. Dr. Wentworth had a laminated card that hung from her neck which allowed us access through the first set of doors. After that, she entered numbers into a punch pad in the elevator in addition to using the card. When we exited the elevator we faced another locked door. This time, she lined her eyes up in front of a recognition scanner. A woman’s voice said, “Maxine Wentworth, welcome. Please state today’s password.”
Dr. Wentworth spoke each syllable in a clipped, clear way. “Russ Becker.”
My name was today’s password? Carly caught it too—she grinned and jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow just as the door slid open. Dr. Wentworth strode forward, her heels clicking on the linoleum, and we followed down a long hallway, past a nurses’ station to the president’s room. We walked in without even knocking.
The room was nicer than your average hospital room, much bigger, with the kind of decor you'd see in a luxury hotel, but the bed in the middle was set up exactly the way I'd seen it in countless movies and TV shows. The air had a faint antiseptic smell reminding me of Lysol. In the middle of the room was a large hospital bed, and in the bed, under a thin sheet, lay President Bernstein looking worse than I'd expected, completely pale and tiny in the midst of all the medical equipment. Up close, I saw that her curly, black hair was threaded with silver strands. Unconscious, she didn't look like our leader, the one who inspired confidence with her rousing speeches and assured manner. Wires and tubes snaked from her body to the various monitors measuring her vital functions.
“How is the president doing?” Dr. Wentworth asked the doctor who stood alongside the bed. He hadn’t looked up when we walked in, seemingly engrossed in reading something on a clipboard. He had horn-rimmed glasses and wavy hair slicked back with an abundance of product. I could even see the comb lines over the top of his head. He was shorter than me and wore a blindingly white jacket with a stethoscope slung around his neck, like a kid at Halloween wearing a doctor costume.
“About the same,” he said, sighing, but then he looked up, saw us and smiled a greeting. "But it looks like help has arrived." He extended his hand. "Russ Becker?"
For a second I thought he was saying that his name was Russ Becker, which would have been a really amazing coincidence, but before I could make a comment about it, which would have made me look really stupid, I realized that wasn't the case. "Yes, I'm Russ," I said, reaching out my hand.
“I'm Dr. Karke,” he said. "We've been looking forward to your arrival. I've heard good things about all you can do. I can’t wait to see you in action."
“Thank you,” I said.
Dr. Wentworth introduced Carly to him and they exchanged small talk about our plane ride and how we were enjoying our stay. Dr. Wentworth was telling him that we'd spent our first night at the hotel but that we'd be transferring to a luxury suite tonight, which was news to me, but I wasn't interested in being part of that conversation. Instead, I was drawn to President Bernstein. I found myself walking around the bed, trying to determine where to start. Every cell in my body buzzed with electrical anticipation. I sensed all the electricity in the room keeping her alive, and I instinctively knew it hadn’t been enough to keep her here the whole time. Somehow I knew President Bernstein had crossed over the line from life to death and back again.
“She died already?” I said, interrupting the conversation in the room.
“What did you say?” Dr. Wentworth's head whipped back in my direction.
“The president. She died and you brought her back with the paddles?”
Dr. Karke hesitated, then said, “That's right.”
“I wasn't told that,” Dr. Wentworth said sharply.
Dr. Karke shrugged. “It happened. We acted quickly, did what we had to do, and stabilized the president. The details are in the patient notes.”
I walked to the head of the bed. “More than once?” I looked at Dr. Karke, whose face flushed red. “You had to revive her twice?”
Embarrassed, he didn’t meet my eyes. “Yes, it happened twice.”
Dr. Wentworth looked at me in amazement. “How did you know that?”
I didn’t answer. Not that I didn’t want to, just that I was afraid to break my concentration. Once I locked in to heal someone, that was it. It required everything I had and more. I went to the head of the bed, and stroked the president's hair, something that wasn't necessary to heal her, but something I felt compelled to do. Touching her established a connection between us. It said, I am here. I will help you. From that brief touch I could tell that President Bernstein’s essence was in there, lingering inside her damaged body. I guessed from the concerned look on the two doctors’ faces that they wondered if she was too far gone to save. Dying and being resuscitated twice was a lot for a body to go through.
“Can you help her, Russ?” This from Carly who stood right at my elbow.
I gave a quick nod, before extending my arms over the president’s body. I heard the squeaky wheels of a cart being pushed through the doorway—one of the medical staff making a delivery, I assumed. Both doctors spoke at once.
“Not now!”
“Get out!”
Whoever it was pulled the cart back through the doorway and out into the hall. My palms pulsed with energy as I tried to detect the area that needed healing. I held my hands about six inches above
the president’s body, and slowly went from head to toe and back again. The trouble spot, the worst of it, was her head, but that wasn’t where the problem ended. Her entire body had been affected. To me, her organs felt stressed. Every muscle was weak. Her empty stomach churned and her heart strained to pump blood to her extremities. Without these machines and the medicine she’d been given she would already be dead. Part of her spirit yearned to go; but the other part, the warrior part, struggled to stay. I knew all of this, but I wasn’t sure how I knew all this. I just did.
After making an assessment, I concentrated on her head, holding my hands on either side above her ears. I felt a pressure on her left side and intense pain, like a terrible, horrible headache. The pain medication had dulled it, but it was still there underneath. I focused all my energy and emotion on fixing the president. I knew from past experience that I couldn’t let my thoughts muddle the process. Words and ideas didn’t matter to energy. I ignored the fidgeting sounds of the other people in the room. Dr. Karke cleared his throat and shuffled his feet at one point. I heard it, but I didn’t let it break my concentration. My palms moved from her head to her heart and when I felt my energy depleting like a balloon running out of air, I did one last swoop over her arms and legs, before quitting. “I’m done,” I said. I shook my fingers loose and stretched my arms.
“Already?” Dr. Wentworth said, not hiding the disappointment in her voice.
“Yes.”
“But it’s only been fifteen minutes.”
“That’s all I can do for now,” I said, flexing my fingers. “I feel like I’m going to have to do this in stages. The damage is too great to fix all at once.”
The two doctors stared down at the president’s still form. Dr. Wentworth glanced up at the monitors hoping to see some indication that my work had helped, but everything looked the same.
“Could you please try again?” Dr. Karke asked. “We need to have the president fully recovered by the night of the Presidential Bash.”
Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 67