Horror. Pain. Death. Intense, everywhere. I could hear a million shrieks as the light penetrated through the green cloud and myriads of minuscule, green globes shriveled to dead, brown particles. I screamed, clamping my hands to my head. This, it occurred to me, must be how it felt to be shot—a million times.
And yet . . .
I, the real I, knew this was salvation, as light coming from heaven. At first it was only a murky glow through the cloud, just enough to call to my soul in its prison, but as the cloud fell away like fog under a warming sun, the light grew brighter, dazzling, healing. I looked directly into it, held my gaze right there as I felt the voices, the thoughts, the chains of lies and confusion fall away. I had a thought of my own: “My! The destruction of the fungus is quite rapid!”
My next thought came as a declaration of freedom: “I am Dr. James McKinney—and that’s all I am!”
The rumble was deafening, and even more so as I returned to this singular planet and my own situation within my own skin. Everything around me was awash in blue. The steps, the walkway, the senior citizens, the lawn, all blue. Dead powder, looking blue, was settling like fine snow on the ground all around me, and only now did I become aware that my body was not standing, but lying feebly within a web of arms. With my own eyes, still there and still working, I found myself safely held and steadied by Brenda Barnick, Bjorn Christensen, and Andi Goldstein.
“Am I . . . am I back?” I asked them.
Andi’s jubilant smile was the first I saw. “It sure looks that way!”
I got my feet under me and put my weight on them, still steadied by my friends. With arms free and eyes focused, I dusted the brown powder from my sleeves, shoulders, and pant legs as I looked around. “Did we get it all?”
I could see the two patients from the BHU were back to . . . well, normal for them. They were lightly dusted in brown, but surrounded by senior friends and making their way up the steps to sample some punch.
“I think we got it all,” said Tank, and it was only then I realized how we were shouting to hear each other. Where was all that noise coming from?
When the noise moved from directly above us to out over the Senior Center grounds, I recovered my senses enough to recognize a helicopter settling on the lawn. On the nose of the chopper was a sizable black cylinder still emitting a powerful beam of blue light.
I looked at Brenda, astonished. “They mounted it to a helicopter?”
“The chopper belongs to Jacob,” she said. “All I had to do was ask.”
The brilliant blue light switched off as the chopper’s engine and rotors wound down. The door opened, and there in the passenger seat, his hand on the spotlight controls, was . . .
Daniel Petrovski, smiling like a cherub.
What a feeling. That kid of questionable allegiance just saved my life. Our lives. Countless lives, as a matter of fact. I turned an icy eye toward Brenda. “And just how did he get involved in this?”
Brenda smiled. “I had him come along—separately, just in case. He stayed with some friends of Sadie and Jacob. Turns out we needed someone to show the chopper pilot where we’d be—and to work the light.”
“But how did he know where we’d be?”
She shrugged. “He has . . . friends that you don’t like.”
Daniel looked up at an invisible someone sitting in the chopper with him.
Oh, the things I had to accept with this bunch! “And to think I trusted you.”
She put a fist on her hip, cocked her head, and up went those eyebrows. “Yeah, to think you did.”
Well, where would I be if I had not? And where would any of us be if not all five had been here? I put my arm around her and gave her a nod. “Well done. And thank you.”
That left one last debt to settle. I took Tank aside. “You asked me what I was so mad at.”
“Well, we don’t have to talk about that if—”
“And I said I didn’t share such things with people I didn’t trust.”
Now he just listened.
“Her name was Autumn,” I said. “We were in love, but I was a Catholic priest. Because of my vows, I lost her; because of our love, I was defrocked. End of—well, beginning of story, actually. But now you know—and I’m still just as angry.”
He nodded. “Got it” was all he said.
Brenda and Andi joined us. I think it was supposed to be a group hug, but nobody organized it and it looked more like a collision. Well, we’d get better organized with time.
“Hey,” said Tank, looking at Daniel, “one thing I still wonder about: he had his face right next to Abby’s, but he never caught any of the fungus.”
“He’s prepubescent,” I surmised. “Remember how Mathis said the fungus piggybacks on testosterone to infiltrate the neuro-receivers? In our young man, the fungal toxins lacked a sufficient handle, and the fungus died isolated.”
I could tell Tank was impressed. “For real?”
I smiled. I shrugged. “Well, suffice it to say, the powers-that-be, whatever they are, wanted him fit to tackle his role in this little project.” I said to everyone, “Come on. Let’s help him down out of that chopper . . . and shake his hand.”
Contents
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CHAPTER
1
What’s that address again?” I asked Tank, who held the professor’s note. “Was it 2468 Gulf?”
“Twenty-four sixty nine,” he said, bending to peer out my window. “Probably that one right there.”
I pulled into the narrow driveway and shut off the ignition, then surveyed the place the professor had rented.
“Cool beach cottage,” Brenda said, opening the rear door. “Come on, Daniel my man. Let’s see what the prof’s been up to while we were packing.”
I drew a deep breath and slowly released it in an effort to calm my pounding heart. Only two days ago our team—me, Brenda Barnick, Tank, and Professor McKinney—had been involved in a life-or-death struggle with green powder and flying orbs, and I wasn’t exactly eager to go another round with whatever had confronted us. But the professor had been adamant about not stopping to lick our wounds. We had to go on the offensive, he kept saying, we had to stop reacting and start being proactive.
The thought didn’t thrill me.
I got out, then went around to open the trunk. Anything to keep from rushing headlong into whatever the professor was planning.
I grabbed a couple of bags, then turned to survey the street. Gulf Boulevard snaked along the coast in this part of the county, so dozens of beach houses and condos here were available to rent. Still on an emotional high from our last escapade, the professor had rented this house for a month—but I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t need it that long. I could handle an occasional adrenaline rush, but running with Brenda, Tank, Daniel, and the professor full time was enough to fry my circuits. After all, none of them had ended up in the hospital’s behavioral health unit, but I did. And though I’d been pronounced physically fit by my doctor, my emotions felt a little unsteady. And for good reason: I’d been only hours away from exploding like a bag of green powder.
“Andi?” Tank turned, his smile fading to a look of concern. “You okay?”
“I’m great.” I plastered on a big, fake grin and trotted up the concrete porch steps.
Inside the house, Brenda and Professor McKinney were bent over the dining room table. I dropped my bags onto a functional sofa as Tank entered behind me. In no hurry to join the others, I turned to admire the not-so-admirable art on the walls. “Interesting place, don’t you think?” I murmured, taking in the nondescript lamps, the mostly empty bookcase, and the stack of tattered magazines on the coffee table.
“All the comforts of home,” Tank said. His gaze wandered to the dining room, then shifted to Daniel, who sat on the couch, his hands empty and his gaze bla
nk.
“That reminds me,” I said, rummaging in my purse. “I picked up a little something for Daniel.” I found the small box and handed it to him. “Here. I hope this will give you something to do while we’re talking. Plus, if you ever get separated from us, you can give us a call.”
Daniel’s eyes went wide as he held the iPhone box. “For me?”
“For real and for you,” I told him. “My provider has a package plan, so no big deal. I’ve already programed it with our names and numbers, e-mail addresses, all that. I’m sure Tank would be happy to recommend some really cool games, too.”
Daniel opened the box and lifted out the phone with an almost reverent look.
“I’ll help you download some killer apps,” Tank promised, “soon as we’ve finished talking to the prof.” He turned to me. “Don’t you want to see what the professor’s been up to?”
“I guess.” I forced another smile and reluctantly followed Tank into the dining room. On the table, gleaming beneath a chandelier that might have been fashionable in the seventies, was an orb—a slave, we assumed, of the organization that had apparently tried to wipe out the human race.
I halted in midstep, my heart pounding hard enough to be heard from across the room . . . if anyone had been paying attention.
Brenda was bent over the table, dangerously close to the orb. “How’d you get this?”
The professor folded his arms. “Yesterday I went back to Dr. Mathis’s lab at the aquarium. The police were there, of course, and a guy from management was telling them about a case of vandalism. While he was holding their attention, I slipped in and walked directly to the spot where Tank had destroyed one of the orbs.”
“Didn’t anyone stop you?” Brenda asked.
“Of course not. I had borrowed one of their lab coats.” The professor’s smile deepened. “If you wear a lab coat and behave as though you know what you’re doing, most people will defer to your authority.”
“And this orb was just lying on the floor?” I asked, embarrassed to hear a tremor in my voice.
“It was shattered, the pieces resting where Tank left them. I put all the bits and chips into a specimen tray and carried it out. Note that, please. The orb was in at least a dozen pieces. It looked nothing like this.”
Despite my innate abhorrence of the object, the professor’s comment sparked my curiosity. “A substitution,” I suggested. “Someone took the broken orb and left this sphere.”
He shook his head. “Once I reached my car, I placed the tray in a box and sealed it. I slept with the box under my bed at the Goldsteins’. I didn’t break the seal until this morning and this is what I found.”
My gaze drifted back to the orb, which didn’t have a single scratch or blemish.
“I ain’t buying the idea that this thing put itself back together,” Brenda said. “So maybe someone saw you take it. Maybe there’s a GPS in all those pieces, so someone tracked it. A good inside man could have switched it out while you were asleep and you’d never hear a peep.”
The professor shook his head. “When I opened the box at the Goldsteins’, the orb had regained its spherical shape, but I could see ridges in the metal—or what I assume is metal. I put the box in my car and drove here. When I opened the box a few moments ago, it looked exactly as it does now—perfectly smooth.”
The atmosphere thickened with the silence of concentration. One by one, we pulled out chairs and sat, our gazes fixed on the orb. And as we watched and thought and theorized, I couldn’t help feeling that the orb was staring back at us.
“Any markings at all?” Brenda asked, tapping the orb’s silver surface with her fingernail. “I take it you didn’t find a spot stamped ‘Made in China’?”
“No markings—in this incarnation, at least. And I didn’t see any in its first incarnation, either. Then again, I was fighting the thing, so it would have been difficult to give it a thorough examination.”
“Are you certain the surface is smooth?” I asked. “There could be a pattern too small to be seen without magnification.”
The professor pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket and slid it toward me. “Be my guest.”
Brenda tapped the orb and sent it rolling toward me. I put out a hand to catch it, and the instant my fingertips made contact, something began to buzz in my head. I closed my eyes, wondering if my ears were playing tricks on me, but like a radio tuner homing in on the correct frequency, the buzz disappeared and the voices began.
Any god who desires worship is arrogant and vain; you are the source of knowledge.
Faith is useless. Knowledge is all-powerful.
Become enlightened. You are god. Knowledge is the source of all power.
I dropped the magnifying glass and pushed away from the table. The voices were so loud that I could no longer hear my friends. Squinting in annoyance and anxiety, I mumbled something about a headache and stood. I tried to walk back into the living room, but stumbled into the half wall that served as a room divider.
Seek knowledge, and become one of us.
You are not a being, you are becoming.
Belong to us. We are the enlightened, the powerful.
I felt strong hands on my shoulders, then someone turned me around. Tank stood before me, his face filled with concern, his mouth opening and closing, but I couldn’t hear a word. All I could hear were the voices and their incessant chatter.
Tank looked away and said something else, then the professor appeared in my field of vision, his brows drawn into knots of worry. He said something to me, then snapped his fingers before my eyes. Why?
Next thing I knew, he had guided me to the couch and pressed on my shoulders, forcing me to sit. Brenda, Tank, the professor, and Daniel stood around or sat on the coffee table and stared at me, their lips moving in time to the voices in my head. Was I hallucinating, too?
Everything you’ve heard about God is a lie.
There is neither good nor evil; there is only knowledge.
Once you become enlightened, everything becomes clear.
God desires slaves; you deserve freedom.
Freedom is knowledge.
You are god.
You are—
Knowledge is all.
Join us.
Unable to listen a minute more, I closed my eyes and snapped, “Shut up!” but the voices only spoke faster and higher, as if someone had increased the speed on an old record player. I clenched my fists, frustrated by my inability to block out the sounds.
God is a lie.
Knowledge—
Freedom—
New music—
Join us!
I threw back my head and screamed, then crumpled into darkness.
CHAPTER
2
I sat in an office waiting room, arms crossed, hands fisted. Professor McKinney sat at my left to keep me from bolting, and Daniel sat at my right, because I figured if anyone knew psychiatrists, he did. Brenda sat next to Daniel, because where he went, she went, and Tank sat next to Brenda because he didn’t want to be left behind. “We’re a team,” he had reminded me as we left the rental house. “So if all the others are going, I’m goin’, too.”
I was present under protest, because seeing a shrink was the last thing I wanted to do. But the professor had made a deal—when the medics who responded to his 9-1-1 call wanted to take me back to the hospital’s behavioral health unit, the professor talked them out of it by promising that he’d take me to a shrink as soon as possible.
So here we were.
I closed my eyes and let my head tip back to the wall. After I fainted yesterday, I woke to a young guy shining a flashlight into my eyes. “She’s awake,” he called, while voices behind him murmured. Only when he snapped his light off did I see the professor and company standing behind the medics, all of them wearing expressions of grave concern.
“I’m okay,” I told them, sitting up. “It’s just that I kept hearing voices—”
That offhand comment nearly
landed me back in psych. Mentally healthy people apparently do not walk around hearing voices. People can talk to themselves, their dead aunt, or the dog, but if another voice joins the chorus, extreme steps must be taken.
Later that night, the professor knelt on the edge of the couch and placed a paternal hand on my shoulder. “Andi, it’s only natural that you feel some aftereffects from our experience with that nasty fungus. I’ve felt an odd moment or two myself, and you were, shall we say, under the influence a lot longer than I was.”
“You’ve been touching the orb,” I said. “Has touching it ever made you . . . hear anything?”
His brows rushed together. “Never.”
That’s when I agreed to see a psychiatrist, but after a good night’s sleep and a decent breakfast, I no longer felt the need to have my head examined.
“Who is this Dr. Drummond, anyway?” I asked, turning to the professor. “I live in this area, you know. My grandparents will have to deal with any fallout if he decides I’m crazy.”
The professor gave me an indulgent smile. “I asked your family doctor for a recommendation when you went in for that emergency check-up. He said Dr. Drummond would be perfect for you—he has a sterling reputation in the international medical community, and he’s in the area temporarily, working on some research project as a visiting fellow. He’s British. Won’t be around long enough to gossip, so you can tell him anything you like.”
“Even about our work?”
The professor’s smile twisted. “Well . . . you might want to be discreet in that area. Tell him only what you must.”
I snorted softly, then looked at the others. “I hope you all know that a person’s visits to a psychiatrist are private. I appreciate the group support, but I’m going into that office alone.”
“Noted,” Brenda said, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. “Not that I wanted to go with you, but okay.”
I leaned forward. “You know, this shrink might be able to help you lick that smoking habit.”
“I’m licking it just fine, thanks,” she answered, the tip of her nicotine placebo bobbing with each syllable. “Daniel’s helpin’ me.”
The Assault: The Revealing, Infestation, Infiltration, The Fog Page 13