Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (22 page)

“Adi told Zeke she wouldn’t hurt him right before Zeke collapsed. And then you—” Maggie tried to recall the exact words. “You said, ‘Zeke’s fucking bleeding’, and you asked her if she was doing it or if the terra firma was under attack.”

But Lill was shaking her head slowly. “While it turns out the terra firma was under attack, that’s not anything close to what happened. We worked on matriculating Karen so we could learn how the healing works. She didn’t have time to open herself to full assessment before we had to deal with the code one.”

But Maggie had been there. She’d been right there, pressed against their shields. The first time she’d been unable to contact Zeke in the sphere, she’d located him. She’d heard him, watched him—watched them all. He’d confirmed the scene she’d described to him. Why was this time different?

“Maybe you were seeing wraiths,” Lill suggested. “Because you care about Zeke, you’re terrified of him getting hurt and envisioned it. The bastards can really mindfuck you.”

“I know how to control myself in the sphere enough that I don’t get visions.” What had she seen? She took Zeke’s arm and peered up into his stern face. Her finger brushed his bare wrist, and the whisper of tangible felt like a taunt. “Zeke, you truly don’t remember Adi hurting you or arguing with her about forcing Karen to cooperate?”

“Karen was too tired to do much.” Zeke licked his lips. “I think…I mean, she’s not ready. We have to protect her from the Master. He wants the weak ones.”

“Last I heard, you all thought the Master was lie. Did you meet him after I left?”

Zeke blinked. “We exited when we found out we had a code one. That you caused. But the Master… Wait, if he was coming, we would have stuck around to see what the hell he was.”

“Karen didn’t cooperate,” Lill said suddenly. She rubbed her eyes and then squeezed her forehead as if fighting a brain freeze. “She hung on Zeke like a coat on a rack.”

“She tried to help, didn’t she?” Now Zeke looked less certain. “She explained something about shields and healing.”

“We already knew about shields and their hypothetical connection to the hypothetical healing before we not so hypothetically tranced in,” Lill said. “Karen made no effort to fulfill her part of the agreement. She was useless. The Master was a no-show, despite her claim he was there.”

“I don’t…” Zeke glanced down at Maggie, and his gaze softened. He put his hand over hers. “You understand why I’m pissed at you? You could have been killed, Mags.”

A thrill shocked her skin at the point of contact. Maggie swallowed hard. “I was worried about you.”

“Not now, you two,” Lill growled. “You dumb shits.”

“Fuck off, Lill,” Zeke said offhandedly, and his thumb stroked Maggie’s hand. It didn’t make up for his anger, but until they could speak privately, it reassured her that the man who’d made love to her this morning was still inside Zeke’s post-warzone shell.

“Zeke?” A soft, quivering voice came from the doorway.

He stiffened and stepped away from Maggie. A scowl twisted his face. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“What are those things?” Karen, no longer dressed in a hospital gown but in gray standard issue sweats, toddled into the room, balancing herself against a wall. Her eyes grew huge in her thin, pallid face. “Oh no. Oh God. Those are real bodies. Oh God.”

She swayed. Zeke ripped out an oath and darted forward to catch her before she hit the ground. Lill watched impassively.

“This proves it,” Karen wailed. “He’s coming. He’s going to escape the dreamsphere and come after us.”

“Who’s coming?” Zeke demanded.

It was as if Karen’s wail had sapped the last of her strength. She went limp in Zeke’s grasp, and her next words were barely a whisper. “The Master.”

Lill uttered a disgusted sound but stomped closer to so she could hear. “The one who was supposedly in the dreamspace but wasn’t?”

“He was there. He must have hidden from you, but he can’t hide from me once he gets close enough. He never could. That’s how I met him.”

“And you met him when?” Lill asked. “Valentine’s lonely heart mixer for psychos?”

“Before.” Tears welled out of her eyes, down her cheeks. “He found me before the Somnium did.”

Lill raised her eyebrows. “We’re blaming him for Harrisburg now?”

Zeke adjusted his grip on the woman, hefting her into his arms like a baby. Her bony hand rose feebly to pat at his face.

“It’s been his plan all along,” Karen whispered. “The first time he wasn’t strong enough, but now he’s got a new portal. He means to find a way into the terra firma and kill us all.”

Chapter Fourteen

Zeke’s skin chilled like ice. While he might not trust everything Karen said, she obviously believed the Master was on his way to kill them.

“That’s not what the corpses mean,” Maggie said, her gaze locking with his. “You don’t believe her, do you? Don’t you remember what we discussed?”

Maggie’s head wound—had it scrambled her brains? When had they talked about the corpses, other than her telling everyone she had no idea why they’d appeared? Maggie stared at him with a worried frown.

“If there’s something relevant you two aren’t sharing, now would be a good time,” Lill added.

He’d mentored Maggie long enough to recognize the guilt that flashed across her face. She did know something. If she knew it, why didn’t he? The corpses had no precedent. Maggie was—she was important to him, yes, but she was a half-trained L5. Not even vigils at the manifestation tank could create physical corpses.

Could the corpses mean some Master blaster lurked in the dreamsphere, attempting to break free? And would that mean Maggie wasn’t responsible for the code ones? Wraiths had been unusually attracted to Maggie the whole time, both inside and outside the sphere, which indicated the metaphysical aspects of it could be changing. Or it indicated something about Maggie was different.

The more he contemplated it, the more he could swear Maggie was connected to the corpses somehow, and—

“Zeke, you have to take the Master seriously.” Karen’s eyelids fluttered shut, and a down-soft breeze puffed over his exposed skin. His vision blurred. The customary tangible buzz from her hand on his face intensified.

“What are you doing?” Lill demanded. She grabbed Karen’s hand and jerked it away from Zeke.

Karen squealed with surprise. Lill froze, her mouth open in mid-accusation.

Zeke didn’t need to be able to see clearly to defend his charge. He smashed his boot into Lill’s knee, forcing her to release Karen.

“Asshole!” Lill lurched backward, out of the room and into the hallway.

Maggie yelled at him. “She wasn’t hurting Karen. Why did you do that?”

He blinked fast to clear his eyesight, but everything remained hazy, as if the edges of the world had melted. Was the corpse odor getting to him? He pushed into the hallway too, followed by Maggie, who slammed the door behind her.

A little unsteady, he focused on Karen’s face—the hollows under her eyes, the almost translucent skin. Her eyelashes were a pale circle on her cheeks, and the sweatshirt couldn’t hide the way her collarbones jutted from her malnourished frame. She’d suffered so much. If this Master was responsible for all of it, controlling her, hurting her, was she crazy and murderous after all?

Could he continue to hate her more than any other person in the world if it wasn’t her fault?

“Don’t worry about me,” Lillian said in a snarl. She rubbed her knee, then her eyes. “You didn’t knock my kneecap out of joint or anything. I’m fine.”

“I’m not worried about you.” If he’d wanted to break her kneecap, he would have. “I overreacted. Still tense from the code one.”

Lill shook her head as if to clear it. “I thought I sensed Karen doing something.”

“Like what?” Maggie asked.

“I’m frightened, I’m tired, and I’ve been in a coma for a year. Zeke rescued me at last, and now we’re all going to die anyway.” Karen’s rant paused when a couple soldiers trooped past. Not that her thin, whispery voice could be heard outside a three-foot radius. “What could I possibly do, Lillian, when I couldn’t even matriculate? I hoped to teach everyone about the healing so you wouldn’t make me go back there.”

“I know you did,” Lill said.

“He’s going to come after me anyway,” Karen finished, sniffing back tears. “Those corpses must be an experiment. It’s the only thing that explains it. He’s that much closer to succeeding.”

“Hold on,” Maggie interrupted. “A minute ago Lill said Karen didn’t cooperate. That all she did was cry and blubber. That’s consistent with what I observed too.”

Zeke and Lill exchanged a glance. This was the third time Maggie had remembered things incorrectly. Gently, Zeke set Karen on her feet and turned his attention toward his other student. Lill, he noticed, sidled behind Maggie as if expecting her to bolt.

Was Maggie sick? Had she been injured, causing hallucinations? He peered at her pupils, but they weren’t dilated or showing signs of concussion. Her only injury was under her hair somewhere, and a little blood trailed down her temple.

“Maggie,” he began.

Before he could finish, Adi’s voice crackled over the intercom and requested their immediate presence in the common room.

They hastened up the corridor to the room where the group trance had taken place. Did this have anything to do with Adi’s mysterious phone call? More guards than necessary milled outside the door, one with a recent cut on his chin from the battle.

The vigil waited inside with Blake and an elderly gentleman Zeke didn’t recognize. No manifestations. No corpses. Some old guy using a walker could hardly be worse than another code one.

“Shut the door behind you,” Adi said as they filed in. She occupied a wingchair even though nearly everyone else stood, an indicator of how exhausted she was. Lines Zeke had never seen on her face before bracketed her lips.

Behind him, several soldiers, breaking the level of discipline he’d come to associate with the coma station’s staff, attempted to peek into the room.

Lill, in the rear, did as Adi asked and remained by the door, hand resting on a hilt. Maggie shifted from foot to foot while Karen leaned against Zeke’s arm. He could practically feel her body heat through his Kevlar vest.

“Is this the one, vigil?” The old man clopped forward, pushing the walker, and reached for Maggie’s hand. His accent was non-American and hard to place. “Is this the girl?”

Maggie backed away from him. “Excuse me?”

Who was this guy? Zeke bristled and moved to insert himself between Maggie and the weird grandpa, but the dead weight of Karen on his arm stopped him. Funny, considering she was half-starved and fragile.

“Margaret Louise Mackey, I’d like you to meet the curator,” Adi said tonelessly. “He’s come in response to the…unusual incidents we’ve been having.”

Karen whispered, so softly only Zeke could hear. “A curator. Yes.”

Zeke gawked at the man. The only curator he’d met was the tall, dark, cranky one. This old codger was ninety if he was a day and looked like Albert Einstein crossed with a mummy. Was he here because of the corpses and the hypothetical Master—or because of Maggie?

Something worse.

Fear spiked through him. He’d promised Maggie she wouldn’t be reassigned to a curator, that he’d keep her safe. Adi didn’t want curators sniffing around because of what she suspected about the healing. Yet here one was.

That being said, if this guy possessed the power of eternal youth, Zeke would eat his boots.

“Did you put in a request for assistance?” Zeke asked Adi, though she’d been pretty shocked by that phone call.

“She didn’t have to. It’s my job to read the sphere, son. I’ve been on an aeroplane since…” The old curator, who didn’t offer his name any more than the younger guy ever had, checked his watch. “Since yesterday.”

Karen clutched Zeke’s arm tighter. If she weren’t so listless and frail, he’d say her grip seemed excited, like a child walking through the gates of Disneyworld.

“What did you read in the sphere?” Zeke asked the man.

Adi narrowed her eyes at him warningly. She clasped her hands around one knee as if holding herself upright. “The curator is aware we’ve had several uncontrolled, mid-scale events.”

As Adi had been adamant that she didn’t want to tell the curators anything, Zeke believed she hadn’t petitioned the curator. Did the old guy know about the corpses or not? “We haven’t lost any civilians, sir. We don’t need a mass confounding.”

The curator cocked his head to the side and studied Zeke. “You’re Ezekiel Garrett. And you’re Karen Kingsbury. Harrisburg.”

The curators—the other curator—had been summoned to help deal with the devastation Karen had caused prior to her coma. The abilities of a few alucinators like Lill, who could confound normals who’d witnessed things they shouldn’t, hadn’t been enough to conceal a manifestation on that scale, nor the subsequent deaths. Curators had the capacity to confound, amped up to frightening levels.

It was best when they never had to use it.

Karen shrank against Zeke’s side. “You know who I am. Are you here to execute me?”

The curator waved his knobby hand airily, keeping the other on the walker’s handle. “No, no, curators don’t handle terminations. I’m here about Margaret.”

Maggie crossed her arms. “Me?”

The curator winked at her. “You’re a powerful L5, kiddo, but I don’t think you’ve been doing your homework. Still having trouble with that conduit lock?”

“Actually,” Maggie said, “I’m not.”

“Oho, no memories of the event, I see.” The curator tsked. “That’s a sign right there.”

“It’s not a sign I’ve heard of,” Adi said. Zeke couldn’t gauge by her expression how worried she was that the curator might know about Karen’s healing—and Adi’s attempts to learn more. “Would you care to explain, please?”

“I suspect Margaret has a rare condition called conduit blindness.” The curator nodded his head as he spoke, agreeing with himself. “It’s an inability to gauge conduits—sort of a depth perception issue. You’re all aware how some people have color blindness? It has similarities.”

Maggie pursed her lips doubtfully. “The problem is with my eyeballs?”

“I doubt it, but it’s nothing to worry about. We’ve developed training methods to help you work around your handicap.”

“Why can’t Zeke teach them to me?”

Beside Zeke, Karen stood straighter, taking some of her weight off his arm. “He’s my mentor now. It’s good that you’re being reassigned to a curator. It’s good that there’s a curator here. Available.”

“Well, thank you, my dear,” the curator said. “That’s not always the reaction we curators receive.”

Maggie cocked an eyebrow at Karen. It was like looking at himself in the mirror—Zeke recognized his own expression on her face and almost laughed.

“What if I don’t agree to being reassigned?” Maggie asked.

“It would take too long to train Ezekiel to train you, if he even could. This is standard procedure, young lady.” The curator scooted his walker a couple feet toward the door and smiled. “How about that beefsteak you promised, vigil? They don’t let me out of my cage much, and I’m mean to enjoy this while it lasts.”

Zeke glanced at Adi but she barely lifted drowsy eyelids to acknowledge him. What did she want them to tell the curator? About the Master? The corpses? Information about the corpses, at the least, had been bound to escape sooner or later. Not that this guy seemed like a threat, but he was a curator—and he’d stated his intention of acquiring Maggie.

A twinge of rage and grief zinged through Zeke at the thought, but the touch of Karen’s thin fingers against his wrist distracted him from the building emotions. His vision blurred again, like before, but when he rubbed his eyes this time, it cleared up.

He must be tired. That was it. He couldn’t remember if he’d slept well last night—everything before the turmoil of the manifestation was a blur—but no doubt he’d been uncomfortable. He preferred his bed at the base, especially if he had to share it with a student.

Hopefully tonight, with Karen, he could sleep restfully. She wouldn’t take up much space, as thin as she’d grown. After this afternoon, he doubted they’d be doing any training.

“Where’s the other one?” Lill asked abruptly. “The curator who usually comes.”

“Who, Moody?” The curator completed his slow progress toward the door, the tennis balls on the legs of his walker making it easier to slide. “I couldn’t say where he is, exactly. The Orbis is a big place. We don’t live in each other’s pockets.”

Lillian straightened, her back leaving the wall. She opened the door for the curator. “His name’s Moody?”

The old man smirked. “It’s what I call him. Margaret, do join me in the mess hall for luncheon, would you? I want to hear all about your training.”

“Go,” Adi said, when Maggie appeared likely to resist.

“I need to get cleaned up first.” Maggie pointed at her scalp. “I suspect I need more stitches.”

“Blake, would you help Maggie find the doctor?” Adi suggested. “I intend to retire for a few hours.”

“Perhaps more than a few, ma’am.” Blake accompanied a reluctant Maggie out the door. She cast Zeke one parting glance he couldn’t decipher.

When the curator, Blake and Maggie were gone, Karen tightened her hold on his wrist.

“You know it’s for the best,” she said in her whispery voice. “Your former student is weak, and the Master wants her. A curator is valuable—more valuable than a vigil or an ordinary L5.”

“Valuable?” Lill said. “That’s an odd way to put it.”

“Powerful,” Karen corrected. “If we tell him about the Master—”

“No,” Adi said, followed by a yawn. Her jaw cracked. “We won’t speak of your Master figure to him, Karen. He isn’t here for you. Count yourself lucky.”

“He doesn’t seem half bad,” Lill mused. “Rather have him than Moody, but I can see it’d be harder for the old guy to travel.”

“You know what’s at stake here,” Adi said. She rested her forehead on her fingertips. “Please keep that uppermost in mind. Curators can be charismatic—”

Lill cracked out a disbelieving laugh.

Ignoring her, Adi continued. “They can be charismatic, even charming, but never forget who they are and what they can do—and all the things we don’t know about them.”

The doctor didn’t give Maggie enough numbing agent before she placed the stitches in her scalp wound, though happily she didn’t shave off much hair. Blake escorted her, her wound stinging like hell, to the small kitchenette where the curator was enjoying a plate of steak, eggs and hash browns. She hadn’t noticed any food of that ilk in the fridge and wondered where he’d gotten it.

“Come in, come in.” The curator waved at her, though the three of them were the only people in the room. Adi had ordered everyone to give the old man complete privacy. She probably intended to keep her staff from inadvertently sharing information she didn’t want the curator to know.