She was in a dark room—it was pitch-black. Even though she strained to see something—the tiny red light on a smoke alarm or the vague afterglow of a recently used computer monitor—there was nothing there.
She was strapped down—restraints held both her arms and legs. As she struggled, she knew that her captors were serious. She was not going to get free until they released her.
Her feet were bare—she could feel the weight and texture of a light blanket that had been placed across her. It was then that she realized that her clothing was gone. As far as she could tell, from her limited ability to move her hands, she was dressed in some type of thigh-length cotton gown.
Anna.
Anna froze, recognizing the voice she’d heard in her head—projecting, Bach had called it.
Welcome to your new home.
Before, the voice had sounded urgent and convincingly frightened. But now—whoever she was—she was faintly mocking and contemptuous.
Who are you? Anna asked, avoiding the obvious and leaving You tricked me, you bitch, as a thought that was mostly unformed.
But present.
My name’s unimportant. Almost as irrelevant as you’ll be, when the board sees your blood test results. All that trouble, for nothing. She made tsking sounds.
If I’m irrelevant, Anna thought back at her, then let us go.
Hot tip, girlfriend. Never ask for that. We don’t let people go. We turn them to ash, and toss them out with the trash. It’s a daily ritual—don’t let it be you.
Where’s Nika? Anna tried. I want to see my sister.
Hello. Which one of us is lying in a dark room, strapped to a bed? That would be not me. And that makes you the one who doesn’t get to make the demands. So wake up your little friend and tell her to lower her mental blocks and shields so I can communicate directly with her. Oh, and tell her if she uses any of her super-secret-special powers against me or anyone else who comes into that room? In any way at all? You’ll both immediately be killed. Over and out.
And with that the girl was gone, leaving Anna listening to the sound of her own ragged breathing, as she still strained to see something, anything in the darkness.
She’d just been told that Mac was in here with her, but she couldn’t hear the Greater-Than breathing. Why couldn’t she hear her?
“Mac?”
Silence.
Anna had a flash of memory. The chopper, the men, the guns firing—Mac getting hit.
“Oh, my God, are you injured? Can you hear me? Mac? Mac! Mac!”
It was not the way she herself would have wanted to be awakened, but her panic made her louder and louder and she finally heard, from across the room, the sound of the Greater-Than stirring.
“What the hell …?” she heard Mac say, heard her straining and pulling against the straps that held her. “What the fuck …?”
“Mac, it’s me,” Anna said. “Anna. I’m locked in here with you. That girl—the one who contacted me at OI, who projected that message … She says to lower your mental shields so she can communicate with you. She says that if you use your powers to harm anyone, or fight back in any way—”
“Fuck. That.” Anna heard popping sounds that were either Mac’s restraints being unlocked, or just flat-out broken.
She heard a sound that had to be Mac, slipping off the hospital bed, her feet against the floor. She must’ve bumped something—another bed—because she swore, and then Anna heard slapping sounds, as Mac muttered, “Freaking light switch’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
And then the overhead lights came on—gloriously, brainstabblingly bright—and Anna had to squint as she lifted her head to see Mac by the door.
And yes, she, like Anna, was wearing a hospital gown that tied in the back. She had blood caked in her hair, and as Anna watched, she reached up to touch her head, and winced. Her fingers came away red, wet with blood. She must’ve been grazed by a bullet back at OI.
“Mac, she was serious,” Anna insisted. “They’ll kill us. You’ve got to get back in that bed.”
“I can’t do that. If we just sit here, Shane’ll come and try to save me, get his fraction-ass killed.” Mac tried the door instead. But it wouldn’t open. She looked at it. Looked at how it was hanging in the door frame, looked at the wall around it, and Anna knew she was intending to blast it right out of the wall.
“Mac,” Anna said again, and the Greater-Than turned to glance back at her, and then to look around the room.
It was small and contained the four beds, two of them empty and one with broken restaints. The walls and ceiling were bare, and painted a dull shade of beige. The floor was industrial tile of the same color.
“Anna. We’ve got to get out of here,” Mac told her. “Now—before they discover what powers I actually have. I kinda suck with the telekinetic stuff, so hold on while I …”
She focused and not only did the straps around Anna’s arms and legs disintegrate, but the entire bed collapsed, too.
“Oh, shit, are you hurt?” Mac asked, running over to help her up.
“No, I’m okay,” Anna said. “But—”
“I heard you,” Mac said, as she gazed up at the cover to an air vent on the ceiling. It was, possibly, big enough for Mac to fit through, but not Anna. “You relayed the message. Threats of death. Me. You. And … What is that noise?”
It was a hissing sound. And then another hissing sound joined in. It was coming from …
Anna lifted the sleeve of her hospital gown to reveal a medical port sewn into her arm. It was more neatly done than the one she’d witnessed in Nika’s projection.
Mac had one, too, beneath the sleeve of her hospital gown. “Shit! Shit!” She grabbed it, as if to pull it off, but then her legs gave way beneath her. “Drugged,” she said as she hit the floor, her words slurred, “Bastards drugged us.”
Anna, too, could feel it now, the numbness coursing through her, and she, too, hit the tile. She found herself looking directly into Mac’s eyes as the Greater-Than apologized. “Sorry,” Mac said. “F’I weren’t gon’ die, Bach’d prolly kill me—’cuz that’s two for two …”
Anna didn’t understand. “What?” she said, as Mac’s eyes rolled back in her head, right before the world went black.
Stephen was dying.
Elliot sat at his bedside, holding Stephen’s hand, knowing that he’d done everything he could possibly do—and it still wasn’t going to be enough.
Stephen’s integration level was steady at sixty-one, and had been right from the moment he was brought in. There was nothing Elliot could do to boost his levels—even though he’d tried some extremely risky procedures.
Just as he’d done with old Edward O’Keefe, Elliot had injected some oxyclepta di-estraphen directly into the self-healing areas of Stephen’s brain. He’d used the massager to attempt to further manipulate and increase Stephen’s ability to heal himself.
But even though the drug burned off—exactly as it had with O’Keefe—Stephen’s self-healing capabilities didn’t increase.
It was true that a mere fraction would have been long-dead by now, but all that meant was that Stephen’s powers had brought him more hours of pain and suffering. In fact, more than one of the other doctors had stopped by and pulled Elliot out into the hall to suggest that, since Stephen was going to die anyway, maybe Elliot should just pull the plug.
It was all Elliot could do not to deck his esteemed colleagues.
“Fight harder,” he told Stephen now. “I believe in you.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Zerkowski …?”
Elliot looked up to see Shane Laughlin standing in the doorway. He’d gone back to his apartment to shower and shave and put on clean clothes. He looked nice, like he was going on a date or …
Elliot somehow managed to laugh. “A job interview,” he said. “Brilliant.”
Shane glanced over his shoulder, looking both ways down the hall before nodding. “May I come in?” he asked, even as he did just that, shutting the door b
ehind him.
Elliot glanced back at Stephen’s slack face. “Maybe we should step into the hall.”
“No, actually,” Shane said, moving closer to the bed, “this is something that Dr. Diaz can hear. I mean, I know he’s in a medical coma, but he can still hear, right?”
“I’m not sure how much he’s able to listen to right now,” Elliot admitted. His telepathic connection with Stephen had failed ever since the Greater-Than had flat-lined.
“I did a little research while I was upstairs,” Shane said, “and I read your report on the old man—Ted O’Keefe—and how you believe you’ve found a possible cure to the addiction of Destiny.”
Elliot sat down again next to Stephen. He was so freaking tired. “And …?”
“And I want some,” Shane said. “Epi Pens. I heard Destiny was available now in that format, which is more convenient than, you know, having to stop and shoot up. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be under a certain amount of duress and won’t have the time.”
Elliot’s mouth was hanging open. He closed it. Opened it again. Finally he managed to access his rather large vocabulary. “Are you suggesting that—”
“I’m not suggesting, I’m requesting,” Shane said. He pulled the other chair in the room up to the other side of Stephen’s bed, and sat down. He was dead serious. “Look, I know I can get into the Brite Group’s security center. They’re going to take one look at me, at my online résumé—which includes that very important word, blacklisted, and hire me on the spot. Once I’m in, I can take out the illegal med scanners and even their entire power system. But that’s where my plan gets a little sketchy. I’m going into an enclosed room to blow out the scanners, and there’re gonna be a lot of angry men with guns waiting outside that door for me. After a very short while, they’re not going to wait for me to come out. They’re going to come in. And then they’re going to kill me.”
Shane looked from Elliot to Diaz and back, and said, “I know I don’t have to explain my motivation when I tell you that I’m willing to do that—to die to make this rescue happen. But I’d prefer not to. And then there’s the fact that simply shutting down the scanners doesn’t mean the team of children—pardon me, the Thirties and the Forties—are going to find Mac and Anna. Bach’s got Nika. Once the scanners are down, he’ll connect with the team and we’ll get her out. But I’m personally invested in making damn sure Mac doesn’t spend the rest of her life bleeding into a plastic bag. If I take the drug, I’ll access some powers and hopefully one of them will be to make myself bulletproof. At which point I have a chance to help search for Mac. Then, once I reach her, I’ll enhance her.”
He smiled at the expression that must’ve appeared on Elliot’s face, and added, “Not like that. Just by being in the room with her. Just by touching her hand. And once that happens, odds of both of us getting out of there are that much greater.”
Elliot looked down at Stephen’s hand, at Stephen’s lifeless fingers entwined with his own. Holy crap. Holy crap …
He looked up at Shane, who was waiting for him to say … something. So he spoke. “The key word in my report was possible,” he told the former SEAL. “I’ve found a possible cure for this addiction. Edward O’Keefe is still in a coma—a real, non-medically-induced coma. We’re unable to rouse him—believe me we’ve tried. His heart is in good condition again—he’s now got the coronary health of a robust fifty-year-old, but … It’s possible he was brain-damaged by the drug, and we just haven’t discovered it yet. It’s possible he’ll just never wake up.”
“But it’s also possible that he will. And that possible provides better odds than the absolutely dead that I’m looking at,” Shane said somberly.
“You understand,” Elliot said, “that we’re talking about a drug that will kill you. An addiction so crippling—”
“I understand.”
“And that my so-called cure includes stopping and damaging your heart—enough so that the drug is burned out of your system by the healing centers of your brain as it attempts to fix that damage. And oh, by the way, as a fraction? We don’t even know if you have a healing center!”
“I won’t be a fraction anymore,” Shane pointed out. “And again, I understand—completely—everything you included in your report. I read it thoroughly. I’ll be in a coma. I may not come out. It’s a risk.”
“Maybe you should take more time,” Elliot suggested. “Figure out a plan that actually includes your escape from—”
“We don’t have time,” Shane said. “Elliot, please. I’m ready to die if I have to. But like I said, I’d prefer at least a glimmer of your possible.”
Nika found Joseph Bach standing in a corner of her mind, within a small area he’d created to shield himself from her private thoughts—both for her sake and his.
Now that he’d managed to unlock her shields and various mental blocks, he was no longer just a voice and a sense of warmth. She could see him, completely, as he sensed her and turned—and then opened the shielded area to let her in.
It was weird. It was nicer in there than it was outside. It smelled good—not unlike the cologne that Anna’s creepy ex-boyfriend David used to wear.
As Nika moved closer, Joseph didn’t put on any fake everything’s okay attitude. He didn’t try to soften this little reunion with a smile. He didn’t even try to hide the pain he was feeling from what he’d done—from what she imagined he’d done. She didn’t know for sure.
So she braced herself and asked, Did you …?
And Joseph didn’t lie. Yes.
Oh, God. She didn’t ask “How could you,” because she didn’t want to know how anyone could make such a terrible choice, let alone this kind man.
We’re safe for a while, he told her. They took more blood. And he’d done some work, stimulating the part of her brain that worked to quickly heal her, replenishing what they’d taken. Nika knew this because she didn’t feel as weak as she usually felt after a bleeding.
Are you okay? she asked him.
Again, he answered truthfully. No.
Nika’s heart broke for him, for having put him in this awful situation, for having brought him to this terrible, hellish place.
She’d come looking for Joseph, pulling herself out of a wonderful memory of a long-ago birthday morning when her mother and Anna had made pancakes, all ready to get up in his face for having treated her like a child.
But one look into the darkness in his eyes, and she was deeply grateful that he’d pushed her away.
And as far as treating her like a child went, he certainly wasn’t doing that now, with his raw honesty.
I’m so sorry, she said.
I’m sorry, too. Nika, there’s more bad news. They took Anna.
What?
Again, he didn’t try to sugarcoat it. He simply showed her a memory—not his, someone else’s … Elliot’s—of Anna running outside, of Anna and Mac being taken away in a helicopter.
Nika was shaking so hard she had to sit down. Is Stephen Diaz dead?
Not yet, Joseph told her, moving to sit heavily beside her. But it doesn’t look good.
I’m so sorry, she said again.
It’s not your fault.
Isn’t it? She looked at him. I think I know who projected that message to Anna. Her name is Rayonna. And instead of attempting to explain, Nika just opened up her memory of the way she’d accidentally found herself in the pregnant girl’s head when she’d been reaching out for Joseph.
I wish you’d told me about this sooner, Joseph said. I would have been watching for her. I should have been, anyway, though … I mean, I thought that there’d been a mental breach when I heard that Anna had received a projection from a girl who claimed she was helping you escape. I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but I thought it was likely that the girl that you’d mentioned coming into your safe room had somehow gotten access to your mind and … In hindsight, I’m pretty sure that I saw her—Rayonna—inside of your head, back when we were at OI—I thought it was a
memory of your mother, but … He sighed. Damn it.
So Rayonna did find Anna through me, Nika struggled, forcing herself not to cry. Does she know about you?
She must, Joseph told her. But I’ve been discreet. Kept a very small footprint. Set up this shield—he gestured around them—so that if there are Greater-Thans here, working for the Organization, they won’t be able to see me. And when you’re in here with me, the read they’ll get from you is that you’re sleeping.
Are you sure Rayonna can’t see you? Nika asked. Maybe … You should go. Until … You know. Just in case Rayonna had access to her thoughts in a way that Joseph hadn’t anticipated, Nika didn’t want to think about the events that she hoped were still coming. Events that now included the rescue of Mac and her sister …
I’m as sure as I can be, Joseph told her. He leaned toward her slightly, to bump her with his shoulder. Either way, I’m not leaving you.
How powerful is she? Nika asked. Rayonna.
Very.
More powerful than you?
He looked at her. And answered honestly. I don’t know, Neek. But I think we’ve got a temporary advantage. I suspect she thought Anna provided the link that allowed us to communicate—the link between you and me. Otherwise, the Organization would have come after me directly. Instead, by taking Anna, they likely believe they’ve not only cut off your contact with me, but that they’ve obtained another fountain.
What’s going to happen, Nika asked, when they find out Anna doesn’t have any power at all?
Joseph looked grim as he shook his head. I don’t know that either. But I do know that they’re not just going to let her go.
As Shane entered the Washington Street building, he was aware that he was being watched—both by the team of Thirties and Forties from OI, and by a half a dozen rent-a-cops who stood guard both outside and in the entrance to the building’s vast lobby.
He was carrying nothing in his hands.
In his pockets, however, he had his wallet, the keys to one of the OI trucks, an open and half-empty pack of cigarettes, a lighter, the pack of “gum” he’d gotten from Bach’s associate, along with a particularly thin detcord that he’d braided into a necklace that had two small silver blasting caps dangling at the end of it—both in rather unique shapes; one a Christian cross, the other a beatific-looking angel.
Born to Darkness Page 47