Born to Darkness (38 page)

Bach shook his head. “No one’s asking you to do that.”

“Well, actually, I kind of was,” Elliot admitted as he rubbed the back of his neck and made a rueful face. “Although the experiment wouldn’t actually take place
in
the lab. I’d set up a continuous jot scan, and you’d just go about your day, as it were. You’ll keep a log of your—ahem—activities, and—”

“No.” Bach was absolute. “It’s one thing to volunteer to share personal information, but another entirely to make that kind of a request—not just of a Greater-Than, but of a Potential …?” He shook his head, and said it again. “No.”

“For the record,” Shane chimed in, even though he knew that doing so would needle Mac. Still, if she could play the it’s-just-sex game, he could, too. For now, anyway. “I’m okay with it. I’m happy to, um, experiment.”

“Great,” Mac snapped. “Let’s see what happens when you fuck Diaz.”

As Shane laughed his surprise, Elliot said, “Yeah,
that’s
not going to happen, and you know it, Mackenzie. Now you’re just being an asshole.”

“
You’re
an asshole,” she shot at the doctor. “Oh, and thanks so much for being such a good
friend
, by the way.”

“I
am
being a good friend,” he fired back. “I’m just calling you out on your bullcrap. If sex really were just a biological function for you, no emotions involved …? You’d have no problem with this test.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. She stood up. Looked at Shane. “Let’s do it. Because
I’m
not the one with the problem.”

Shane looked over at Bach, who—just as he’d expected—sighed heavily. “Mac, that’s not—”

“No, Elliot’s right,” she spoke over him. “It’s not a big deal.” She looked back at Shane. “
You
, however, will need to sign a release that says you’ve been told that you’re not functioning under your own free will and that despite being informed of this, you’re
still willing to participate in this
experiment
.” She added air quotes.

“I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign,” Shane said, pushing himself to his feet.

“Really? And this doesn’t raise even the smallest red flag for you?” Mac asked him hotly. “You don’t think it’s troublesome or … weird? That you’re willing to stand here, in front of virtual strangers, and negotiate a chance to get with me again?”

“Honey, I’ve long resigned myself to the fact that ever since I’ve met you, I’ve been submerged in a world of weird. For all I know, this is just another average day at the Obermeyer Institute.”

“Both of you, sit down.” Although Bach still spoke quietly, he didn’t look or sound happy. And that was definitely an order, not a request.

And while Shane was used to working within a chain of command that included higher ranking officers who were far less physically intimidating than he was, he didn’t expect Mac to S-square so quickly.

But she sat down and she shut up—which said a lot about the man who was their leader. So Shane put his ass back into his seat, too.

And then they all just sat there, waiting for Bach to speak. Like a good leader, he knew just how long to extend the silence to convey both his disapproval and his authority.

“This is well outside of my comfort zone,” he finally said, looking over to include Diaz and Elliot in his statement. “But I agree that further testing is warranted. But only—
only
—if all parties are in complete agreement.” He looked pointedly at Mac. “What’s right for Dr. Diaz isn’t necessarily going to be right for me. Or for you. I hope you’ll always keep that in mind, Dr. Mackenzie.”

“Yes, sir,” she murmured.

“While Diaz’s increase to sixty-one is a huge breakthrough—assuming it lasts,” Bach continued, “we’ve also got other important issues to deal with today. Nika Taylor is still missing. However, we’re moving forward. We’ve ID’d Rickie Littleton’s co-conspirator—”

“We have?” Mac sat up. “Who is he? I’ll go, right now, to bring him in and—”

“You aren’t going anywhere.”

Because Bach said it in almost exact unison with Elliot, Mac wasn’t sure where to aim her disbelief. “Why not?” she asked, looking from one to the other and back again. But then she answered her own question. “My fluctuating integration levels.” She turned and spoke to Bach. “Sir, that’s not an issue. Just keep Laughlin away from me and I’ll be fine.”

“I disagree,” Elliot said. “You’ve yet to return to your normal levels. For the record, I wouldn’t have let you leave OI even as a Fifty.”

“The alternative,” she said sharply, “is to let whoever’s got Nika Taylor just bleed her dry.”

Stephen Diaz spoke up. “Michelle, with all due respect, you turned Rickie Littleton’s brain into pudding.”

That shut her up.

“What Elliot’s saying,” Diaz continued, “is that he needs to test you, thoroughly, to find out exactly what your skills are. I’ll be doing the same thing for my new integration levels, before I go out there—before I put anyone at risk.”

“We’ve already got a team of Forties on the street, looking for Devon Caine—that’s Littleton’s partner’s name,” Bach told them.

“Sir, I’ve had a taste of this guy Caine’s emotional grid,” Mac said. “Because of that, I can find him faster.”

“You know him?” Shane asked her. “Caine?”

“No,” Mac said. “But I know what he’s capable of.”

Diaz saw that Shane didn’t understand and added, “We’re pretty sure that Devon Caine raped and murdered a girl in the same South Boston garage where Nika Taylor was originally brought after her abduction. Mac was able to read the past emotional disturbance—both from the dead girl and from the killer. Who we believe is Caine.”

“Jesus,” Shane breathed, looking hard at Mac.

Who wouldn’t meet his eyes more than briefly. “Yeah,” she
said. “That sucked. But at least now I can use it to help us locate him.”

“How does
that
work?” he asked. “I mean, do you just drive through the streets, hoping you get a hit? Or can you feel him from here and …”

“I have to be in close enough range,” Mac explained. “But randomly driving through the streets?” She shook her head. “That’s too inefficient. Although, if we hadn’t gotten this lead, I would have started doing that. But now that we know his name, we can dig through his file and get a sense of the neighborhoods where he’s lived, the places he hangs out … And then I drive through
those
neighborhoods, trying to get a whiff of him.” She looked back at Bach, who was nodding.

“Let’s get Mac stabilized and tested as one of our highest priorities, so we can send her out there,” he said.

“And if she doesn’t stabilize?” Elliot posited. He turned to look at Mac. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but what if you can use your connection with Shane to elevate to a whole new integration level that you
can
control? What if part of the power he opens up for you is an ability, absolutely, to find Devon Caine? What if, with Shane’s help, you can just close your eyes and tell us where the bastard is?”

“That’s expecting a lot, Dr. Zerkowski,” Bach pointed out somewhat sternly, “from something that you have no idea is truly linked.”

“It
is
linked,” Elliot insisted as Shane watched Mac, who was clearly still thinking about what Elliot had just said.
What if …?

“I understand that you
want
it to be linked,” Bach said.

“And that doesn’t mean that it’s not, sir,” Elliot countered as Mac turned to look at Shane—and the look she gave him was so similar to the way she’d looked at him in the bar in Kenmore Square, right before she’d stood up and brought him home, that he momentarily stopped breathing. Was she really considering …?

Jesus, she
was
.

“You’re right,” Bach conceded. “But I urge caution.” He, too,
had made note of the way Mac was looking at Shane, and he repeated, “Dr. Mackenzie. Caution.”

She looked at Bach and even nodded, but Shane knew that this was a woman who was rarely cautious. “If this meeting’s over,” she announced, “I’ll walk Laughlin back to his room.”

Bach was sighing as he shook his head, and Shane stood up, fully expecting to be dismissed. But he had a question he wanted answered before he left. “What’s the status on Edward O’Keefe—the old man?”

“He’s still in ICU,” Elliot reported. “He suffered a massive coronary, and he should be dead, but he’s not. The medical team’s doing their best to keep him that way.”

“This meeting’s not over. There’s more to discuss,” Bach said, and waited until Shane sat back down. “It’s possible that Nika Taylor is the most talented Potential we’ve ever encountered.” He got their full attention with that, but then added, “Even though we’ve never come across anything like this before, I’m virtually certain she’s reaching out to her sister. Making contact via projection into Anna’s dreams.”

As ridiculously whoo-whoo as that sounded to Shane, it was obvious that neither of the other Greater-Thans nor Elliot were on the verge of laughing. In fact, Diaz and Elliot exchanged an almoststartled glance.

Mac, too, was intrigued. “Anna’s been
dreaming
about Nika?”

“Vividly.” Bach said.

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a nightmare?” Elliot asked. “She’s under a lot of stress.”

“I’m aware of that,” Bach said with a nod. “But whatever she experienced, there was projection involved. Even though Anna received the images while she was asleep, it wasn’t a dream. It was too chronological. Too linear. The theory I’m leaning toward is that these projections are unconscious—that Nika is unaware of what she’s doing. And I don’t think it’s by mistake that Anna was asleep when she received the projections, either. I think the two sisters have a connection that’s more easily accessible when Anna’s experiencing REM sleep. FYI, that’s where we came up with the
name Devon Caine. And it was a positive hit—Devon Caine
was
the larger man who abducted Nika.”

“Seriously?” Mac asked, her skepticism apparent. “Anna had a
dream
, and suddenly we’ve ID’d Nika’s kidnapper? That sounds pretty freaking fishy to me, boss. Did you take her word for it or—”

Bach cut her off. “Anna’s definitely not working for the Organization. You’ve met her.”

“Or she’s an Eighty-Nine or Ninety and has us all duped,” Mac said.

“No.” Bach was absolute. “I ran additional tests on her. She’s integrated at only ten percent. She’s who she says she is. Also there’s … more. About the projection from Nika.” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t just Anna who experienced it. I had the exact same dream—this was before we found Littleton. I was out in Newton and I was burning out, so I took a combat nap.”

“While Anna was all the way back at OI?” Elliot confirmed and Bach nodded.

“My best guess,” Bach said, “is that Nika subconsciously picked up on my earlier telepathic connection with her sister and somehow managed to send the same images—the same cry for help—to me.”

“Damn,”
Mac said. “A double projection, across dozens of miles … Who
is
this girl?”

Across the room, Diaz and Elliot were exchanging another long look, and Diaz nodded.

“Sir,” Elliot said to Bach. “It’s possible Stephen can help. We haven’t had time to run tests, so I left it out of our report, but … We just found out that Stephen’s been, um, sharing his dreams with me for several months now. He’s able to project images from a dream state—from his apartment to mine. True, it’s not as far as OI is to Newton, but … He’s also been practicing a form of wake-initiated lucid dreaming that he calls
controlled dreaming
.”

“I can choose what I’m going to dream about before I fall asleep,” Diaz explained. “I’ve learned to retain some degree of control over my unconscious mind.”

Bach was nodding as Elliot continued, “If Nika really is as powerful as she appears to be, and her connection with her sister is so strong … It’s entirely possible that, with Stephen’s help, through this type of projected and controlled dreaming—”

“We can use Anna’s unconscious mind to reach out and make contact with Nika,” Bach finished for Elliot. He stood up. And this time the meeting
was
over. “Let’s do it,” he said. But then, as if he’d just made note of the time, he reached for the comm-station on his desk and typed in a quick message. “Anna was going to meet us for the end of this meeting—I’ll have Ahlam bring her over to the sleep lab instead.” He sent the message, then looked pointedly at Mac as he headed for the door. “Maybe we won’t need you to find Devon Caine.”

Mac nodded, glanced at Shane. “But having a Plan B,” she said, “is always useful, sir. Until we find the girl, I’m going to do whatever it takes to be ready.”

Bach stopped and looked back at her, even as the door opened, seemingly of its own volition. “At least be honest with yourself,” he told her quietly. “That’s all I’ve ever asked of you.”

Mac’s chin went up. “I always am.”

Bach didn’t look convinced as he went out the door with Elliot and Diaz behind him.

Which left Mac and Shane alone in Bach’s office.

She looked at him. “Come on, Laughlin. I’ll walk you to your room.”

Anna followed her escort—a dark-haired teenage girl who’d quietly introduced herself as Ahlam—into a room in the R&D building that bore a sign saying “Laboratory Seven.”