Born to Darkness (63 page)

“Why go to the trouble to disguise it as chewing gum,” Elliot asked, “if you’re going to sneak in?”

“Never said I was sneaking in,” Shane told them. “And I didn’t
say I wasn’t. I think I’m not going to reveal any further details to you, Dr. Bach, since you have direct access to Nika’s head, and she’s already under the Organization’s control. It’s better that she knows as little as possible.”

Bach, despite his earlier testiness and his obvious fatigue, was a good enough leader not to take Shane’s words personally. “I think that’s wise.”

“But how will you know when he’s in?” Elliot asked, but then answered his own question. “Because the scanners will go down. Analysis will be watching via satellite.”

“And the Thirties and Forties will be waiting, nearby, ready to enter.” Bach nodded. “Meanwhile, I’ll break Nika out from the inside.”

Shane stood up. “Where do I go to get that C4?”

Bach rose, too, but stiffly, as if his back were aching. “I’ll have someone get it for you.”

“What should I be doing?” Elliot asked.

Bach stopped for a moment, briefly resting his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You’re doing it,” he told the doctor, who glanced back in to where machines were both breathing for Diaz and keeping his heart beating.

“Before we’re dismissed,” Shane said. “There’s one more thing that we haven’t discussed, that I believe is important to consider, sir. The girl—the young woman—who contacted Anna. She projected a message into the head of a fraction, across a great distance. Whoever she is? She’s a pretty fucking powerful Greater-Than in her own right. And she’s working for the enemy.”

Anna woke up with her heart racing, her head pounding, and her mouth dry.

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 behind 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.”