Accused (Ganzfield) (12 page)

The first day of October was cool. The sky was painfully blue and the trees shocked our eyes with their reds, oranges, and yellows. I’d heard some people actually traveled up to New Hampshire just to see the foliage. Before I’d come here, that seemed absurd. Why drive for hours to look at leaves? But now, I was beginning to see the appeal; being surrounded by their fiery beauty made me feel more alive.

Ann finally cornered me in the dining hall a week after my return.
Maddie, I really do need to learn how to blast minds
. She sat down across from me and looked at me intently, as if trying to find the instructions written across my face.

The delicious apple pie suddenly lost its flavor for me—and that was just a crime.

She rolled her eyes.
A crime? You’re still not allowed to say things like that, you know.

Trevor gave me a quick kiss as he stood.
I’ll meet you back at the church when you and Ann are done with the brain-frying lesson.

I still felt reluctant to show her. Our abilities were very similar, but she was too… gentle for this part of it. Killing people… well, it bothered me, but I wasn’t traumatized by it. I felt… justified. I was pretty sure that, if Ann did something like that, it would hurt her more than it did me.

She shook her head.
I’m not weak
.

I know you’re not. If someone threatened Zack, you’d blast them to hell in a heartbeat.

She nodded.
Absolutely.

I’m thinking about afterward. In the days and weeks afterward, it would bother you. Haunt you.

She frowned, considering.
It would haunt me more if someone hurt Zack and I didn’t stop them.

Okay, she had me there. I called up detailed memories of how it felt to incapacitate someone with a mental blast, and then went through them a few times with her.

We lacked an obvious way to test her capacity. We weren’t going to blast anyone’s mind—not when she didn’t know her own strength.

I had an idea.
Ann, you’re not a vegetarian, are you?

Her jaw dropped in horror.
I’m NOT killing an innocent cow!

Chickens?
I asked.

No!

What’s the problem? We’ll have the animals delivered in the morning and you can practice. If you’re too strong, hey, they can be served at dinner!

Maddie, you’re sick!
She laughed, but a sick-grey lump formed in her gut.

See what I mean about your gentle nature? Hamburgers aren’t made from cows that died of old age, you know. How are you going to blast a human if you can’t even deal with livestock?

What? Have you ever killed a cow?

No cow ever got on my bad side.
I was pretty sure that, if civilization crumbled, I’d be able to hunt for food, though.
Survival sense.
But, yeah, I could also see Ann’s point. Killing an animal—feeling its cold burst of primal fear, sensing the last spark of life fading within it, knowing that I’d caused it to die—I’d never seek out the experience.
So, do you have a better way to practice?

She scowled, but eventually shook her head.

Think about it.
I suspected Ann might not be able to stomach the dining hall entrees for the next few days.

Trevor had commandeered my laptop back at the church. He sat on his bed and wrote an email to his uncle Bill. They hadn’t known about each other before we’d all been thrown together briefly in Chicago. Bill Davis was Trevor’s birthfather’s younger brother, and Trevor had only met his birthfather once. Explaining the connection had been awkward for Trevor, but Bill had just laughed and clapped him on the back. “Ah, hell. I’d actually be surprised if you’re the only kid Jared had that way. He could talk women into anything.”

Trevor and Bill had stayed in contact after Bill had returned to Chicago, where he sold high-end real estate. As a charm, he made a lot of sales. Bill was a little brash and loud, but this new uncle gave Trevor a warm—if incomplete—sense of family. His mom and grandmother had cut him off after his grandfather’s death. They’d blamed him when Archer had died. Actually, they’d blamed all of us at Ganzfield, since Archer hadn’t been able to recover after the healers removed his cancerous tumors. But most of their disdain fell on Trevor… and me. I felt another pang of loss for Archer.

I sat down next to him and an invisible arm drew me close.
Say hi to Bill for me
.

Trevor finished up and hit send. “So, I have an aunt.”

You do?

“Yeah. Bill’s sister. He told her about me and she wants to meet.”

I felt a flash of fondness for Bill, for giving this to Trevor.
Good.

“Is it pronounced Ahh-nt? Or Ant?” he said, bemusedly.

No clue. I never had one before.

“Me neither.”

Ahh-nt sounds pretentious. Ant sounds like a bug.

“Maybe I’ll just call her Karen.”

Only if that’s her name. Otherwise, that’d be weird.

Trevor chuckled and pulled me in to kiss the top of my head.

Does she know about Ganzfield?

“No. Bill says she’s a carrier, not a G-positive. He wants to get together for Thanksgiving out in Chicago next month.”
But we probably won’t be able to go—not with the Feds still watching us.
The thought of us going into another airport threw a cold shiver down his back and his embrace tightened around me.

Would that “we” include your weirdly-silent girlfriend?

“Fiancée,” he corrected me. “Weirdly-silent fiancée. And you know that ‘we’ always includes you.”

I felt a giddy thrill at that.

Fiancée.

I closed the computer and moved it to the floor, taking its place on Trevor’s lap in a way that started red energy crackling along his skin.
So, let’s assume the Feds are gone by then. Is Bill cool with charming his sister into thinking I’m normal or do we need to get Williamson to sign off on letting her know about Ganzfield? Or were you planning on sleeping out in the winter Chicago weather by yourself?

His hands found my waist and slid me closer. My arms looped around the back of his neck. “We’re still working out the details. He thinks his ballroom might be large enough for me to sleep there—if they do something with the chandeliers—and it’s far enough from the wing where he sleeps that you’ll be out of range, too.”

Ballroom? Separate wing? Sounds like Uncle Bill’s doing okay for himself.

“Says the seventeen-year-old multimillionaire.”

I leaned into Trevor, feeling our hearts throbbing together. Plans for Thanksgiving gatherings, eluding the ever-present watch of federal agents, my frustrating inability to speak—everything suddenly seemed irrelevant. Trevor’s lips touched mine. Invisible hands slid along my back and a strong core of need built within us both. The scarlet energy danced across our skins as Trevor rolled us over, covering my body with his as the kisses deepened. Then, the light pulled us together as the world fell away.

So,
I lay wrapped in Trevor’s arms in the quivering aftermath of soulmating,
are we going to have sex after we’re married?

Think we can?

I suppose I could shield
. I was pretty sure soulmating wouldn’t happen if our mental connection was closed. It seemed… unsatisfactory, though.

That would take away the best part,
Trevor agreed.
I love feeling what you’re feeling.

I nuzzled in against Trevor’s neck, reveling in his response.
I hear some of the other parts are pretty good, too. Think we should try it? Just to see what all of the fuss is about?

I want our first time to be special.
I felt the deeper meanings in his mind behind the word “special.”

Beautiful. Magical. Safe.

With you, it will be. I am so in love with you, Trevor Laurence.

I love you, Maddie.
He pulsed his emotions to me, pulling his arms more tightly around me. I felt so cherished… so adored.

You know, we don’t use endearments or nicknames with each other.
We’d played around with calling each other “four-arms” and “freak” for a little while, but it’d lost the light, playful meaning for us since I’d been tortured for being one. Now I pondered the idea of pet-names. I never thought of Trevor as “honey” or “sweetheart.” He was my beloved soulmate and I knew no word more filled with love than the name, “Trevor.”

Trevor kissed my temple. “If you want, I can start calling you snookums.”

I snorted, feeling our shared emotions tilt into a giddy, silly place.

“How about sweet-cheeks?”

Only if you want to be my hunny-bunny
.

“Baby-doll?”

And you can be my sweet baboo.

“Punkin?”

I’ve got it!
I laughed.
Trevor, you are now my official stud-muffin.

“I would hope so.” Mock seriousness filled his voice.

“Luff.” I said back, surprising him with the sound of my voice. It sounded strange to me, too, after all these months. It still worked, of course, but wasn’t hooked up to the right feeds in my brain anymore.

“Luff?”

It’s what comes out of my messed-up Broca’s area when I try to say your name aloud. You’re my “luff.”

“Maddie, I luff you.”

Trevor, you’re the luff of my life.

Heather McFee dropped the PET scan onto the table in front of me, nearly knocking my coffee over the rest of my breakfast.

Grrr… don’t mess with the coffee.

I gathered it close to me and took a proprietary sip.

“This is
it. This is how we fix it.”

I nearly did a spit-take.
Are you serious? You’ve figured out how to get me to talk again?
I grabbed up the brain scan.

She flashed me a McFee-sized grin. “Yup. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner. We kept focusing on repairing the damaged area in the left hemisphere. But then one of the MRIs came up backward on the monitor, like a mirror image, and I thought, ‘Hey, Maddie’s got an intact right hemisphere. Why don’t we just stimulate the corresponding area there and grow a whole new Broca’s area for her?’ I figure, if I use my ability while you do some intense speech therapy, we could restore partial control in a matter of days. I’ll try to divert the microelectrical flow though the corresponding part of the new Broca’s, and then enhance those neural pathways. Once your brain starts using the new area, it’ll keep improving the more you use it.”

A whole new speech center—in a few days. I inhaled her thoughts as I looked at the scans.
And you think the risk of losing other functions…

“Minimal. Matilda wanted to fix the original speech center by redirecting neurons and blood supply from the surrounding tissue. That could’ve caused some damage. But this area already has all that stuff. I think we can try to hook it up and program it.”

It’s that easy?

Heather snorted. “That sounds
easy to you? Look, for this to work, I need to redirect microelectrical impulses at a cellular level and trick your neurons into a plasticity that usually isn’t found in adult cells. But your brain once had the ability to adapt like this—all of our brains did. Little kids who suffer head injuries often re-develop the lost functions from one hemisphere in the other. We may not be able to get you back one hundred percent of your language capacity, but you should be able to talk again, even if it sounds a little slow and stilted.” Green energy sparkled around her.
C’mon—say yes already. We can fix this!

Trevor’s eyes danced as he followed the conversation.
Think that’ll include being able to say “I do?”

I grinned back at him.
I think we need to find out.

CHAPTER 8

The problem with brain surgery—even non-invasive brain surgery with medical superpowers—is that it’s hard. I leaned my elbows on the table and rubbed my hands across my face. Over the past three weeks, the healers had had their hands on my head so often I felt like an exhibit in a petting zoo.

And I’m so SICK of these stupid picture books.
I pushed them across the infirmary table. They were nursery school fodder. I had to try to name the objects on each page. The fact that I was less talented at this than the average two-year-old leached my hope away. No wonder toddlers had tantrums.

So much for the miracle cure.

“Hey, watch it!” After weeks of less-than-successful efforts, Heather was as frustrated as I was.

Trevor caught the books before they slid off the table. “If you’re going to complain, try to do it out loud.”

“Eee kuba de cha books, Luff.”

“Hey, you said ‘books!’”

I rolled my eyes.
Yeah, I did. That makes three words in the past—
I glanced at the clock
—six hours.
At this rate, I’d be able to finish a whole sentence by my next birthday.

“Aloud, Maddie.”

“Suu how goo.” That just sounded infantile.
I hate being so pathetic.

Heather scowled at the back of my head.
What the hell’s taking so long? This should’ve worked by now. The blood flow’s good. Neural signals are good. Neurotransmitters are tasting okay. The area just isn’t… booting up. It’s like she can’t access the new area.

I gritted my teeth.
Great. My stupid, refurbished brain has a 404 error. “Lobe not found. Please try again later.”

Matilda watched us with resignation.
Maddie still looks too thin.
“Why don’t you stop for today? You all seem tired.”

Understatement of the day.

I’d become Heather’s science project, and the potato that was my brain still wasn’t powering the clock.

“Maddie, you actually ARE improving. You know you are.” Trevor pulled me up to stand. The fall air bit at us as we left Blake House.