Born to Darkness (71 page)

When Mac opened the door, the hallway outside the room was dimly lit and filled with smoke.

She moved out into it, keeping a firm grip on Anna’s hand, pulling the other woman along with her. She knew where to go. She could feel—Shane was close.

There was a lot of activity in the corridors—guards with guns who seemed to be leaderless.

At first Mac had considered the white hospital gowns they were wearing to be detrimental, but now she realized they worked to their advantage.

All they had to do was cower, and the guards would leave them alone—they had bigger fish to fry.

There was a crowd of guards outside of the control room—which was close to the entrance of the ladies’ room where Shane was holed up. Instead of fleeing the smoke, they’d outfitted themselves with what looked like firefighter’s masks, which was too bad. Mac had been hoping that the area would be clear.

But the entrance to the men’s was around the corner, so she pulled Anna through the door.

Some clown was actually in there, taking a leak.

“Hey!” he said as he saw them, and Mac used her imprecise telekinesis to toss him against the wall, hard enough to knock him out.

Or kill him. She didn’t particularly care which.

“Grab his weapon,” she ordered Anna, who staunchly did just that. She even took off his air mask and went through his pockets, looking for more ammunition.

“Heads up,” Mac warned as she grabbed hold of one of the urinals—there were three along the wall—and pulled, attempting to use her hands to guide her telekinetic power.

She ended up nearly crushing her foot and had to dance somewhat wildly to avoid the pipes and pieces of wall that came with it, but her effort created a hole—one through which noxious smoke came pouring out.

She started to squeeze her way in, but bumped into Shane, whose eyes were watering, even with a piece of cloth tied up and over his face. And she ended up pulling him back with her into the men’s room, instead. Pulling him back, and clinging to him tightly, gratefully—he was still alive!

He held on to her for a moment, too, but then pushed her away in order to pull off his makeshift mask—and vomit in the nearest intact urinal, even as he coughed and wheezed and hacked. And apologized.

Mac just held on to him as he finally cleared his lungs and took several deep gulping breaths—although this air was getting fouled pretty quickly, too.

“So much for the big, romantic,
hallelujah, we’re still both alive
kiss,” he said, glancing up at her with that expression that was pure Shane Laughlin. “But here’s something almost as good. Check this out.” He flushed the urinal without touching the handle.

Mac laughed despite herself. “That’s some talent,” she said. “What else can you do?”

“I’m still figuring it out,” he told her as he pulled away to rinse
his mouth in the sink, and to cough again. “I’m not bulletproof, and I can’t walk through walls. My biggest guess so far is that I’m really,
really
great in bed.”

She laughed again. “I was thinking more in terms of potentially life-saving talents?”

“I can heat metal and start fires,” he told her. “Blow shit up without explosives.”

“Telepathy?” she asked.

“I did what I did with Cristopher,” he pointed out. “I haven’t exactly had access to other minds to read until now, and I kind of always know what you’re thinking anyway.” He reached for her, pulling her close. “One step at a time,” he told her quietly.

Mac nodded—because she
had
been thinking that even though they were both currently still alive, that status could change, fast. And even if they could go directly from here to walking into OI, the fact that Shane was now a Destiny addict filled her with fear and dread.

But he was right. There was no point worrying about that right now. They were facing so many obstacles between here and OI—any one of which could kill them.

Shane let go of her to cough again, turning to spit into the sink.

And Anna was there, holding out the mask. “Maybe this’ll help.”

Shane shook his head as he wiped his mouth with his hand. “You should put it on. But I’ll definitely take
that
.” He reached for the weapon she was cradling, as he turned back to look at Mac. “So what’s our plan?”

“Get the hell out of here,” she said. “Go find Nika and bring her home.”

Shane nodded. “Works for me. Door or wall?”

“Ceiling,” she told him, and blasted a hole right above the row of toilets, so they could use the stalls to climb up.

He smiled happily at her. “I love the way you think.”

Nightmarish images continued to swirl around Nika.

Anna, crying in the bathroom, when she thought Nika was asleep and couldn’t hear her.

Devon Caine, chasing Nika down the sidewalk as she heard her own labored breathing loudly in her ears, as she desperately tried to get away.

Her mother’s face, hours before she died. She was so small and so still and …

“Anna?”

Nika turned, and oh, thank God. It was Joseph. She’d found him. Or maybe he’d found her.

“No,” she said. “It’s just me.” Just like the last time they’d met inside of her mind, their words were both so clear, it was as if they were standing on the street and having a conversation.

He was looking at her so strangely, and he shook his head. “Yeah. Sorry,” he said. “It’s crazy—there are times when you look so much like your sister …” He laughed. “Of course, right now, I’m un-fucking-believably high, so my boot looks kind of like Anna to me. Still, as nice as it would be to linger here and listen to a little Pink Floyd, we really do have to hurry.”

“Who’s Pink Floyd?” Nika asked. And why did he think his
boot
looked like her sister …?

Joseph laughed. “Some day I’ll play you
Dark Side of the Moon
,” he told her, “and tell you all about my cannabis phase, aka the wasted years. You can learn from my mistakes. Or not. Some mistakes we just have to make for ourselves, don’t we?” He laughed and held out his hand to her. “Come on, Mini-Anna. We have to get out of here. Frankly, I have no idea how, but let’s start by making sure we don’t lose each other.”

He wiggled his fingers at her, and Nika laughed even as she wondered at the fact that, had anyone else called her
Mini-Anna
, she would’ve gotten all up in their face for it. She reached for him and clasped his hand.…

And her world exploded.

Shane linked his fingers together and held his hands out so he could give Mac a boost up to the hole she’d blasted in the bathroom ceiling. But before she did more than turn toward him, it happened.

Some kind of massive explosion went down. It rattled the entire building, the entire street, possibly the entire city. Mac could hear glass shattering, and she was glad they weren’t near any windows.

Pipes burst and water sprayed, and she lunged for Anna even as Shane did, too, and they all held on to each other as the floor shook.

The door popped open and Shane moved in front of both of them, clearly expecting an attack, but no one was there. He pushed himself forward, leaning against it, but it still remained unlatched, as if it had come unaligned.

When the blast finally stopped, the sprinkler system was going off, and Shane looked up at the water gushing down on them, like rain. “You have no idea how freaking hard I tried to get that thing to go on before,” he said, but Anna interrupted him.

“Oh, my God. Your gun!”

Mac and Shane both looked down where she was pointing and …

The barrel of the weapon he was holding had been bent, as if heated in some unnaturally hot fire and twisted, up and around.

Shane looked at Mac. “I hope whoever she is who did this, she’s on our side.”

The water falling from the ceiling was, almost ironically but not unexpectedly, making the smoke from the control room that much worse.

Shane moved from his lean against the door, opening it quickly and peeking out before shutting it again.

He did the same move again. And one final time, before shooting Mac a
wait here with Anna
glance, then opening the door far enough to slip outside.

He was back almost instantly, pulling them out into the hall with him, where the air was slightly less smoky.

“Whoever did this,” he said again, taking the clip out of the mangled weapon, and holding it instead as a club, “did the same to all the firearms in this area.”

And sure enough, many of the guards who’d been out in the hall had tried to fire their weapons—and had them explode in their faces. Others of the uniformed men were unbloodied, but were still, somehow, dead.

The emergency lights were flickering across the wreckage, creating an even more hellish effect.

Theirs wasn’t the only locked door that had been opened—all of the doors on the entire floor were ajar, and girls clad in hospital gowns like the ones Anna and Mac were wearing began to emerge. Slowly at first, and then faster, they poured into the hallways.

“Slow down,” an odd-sounding voice commanded from the smoke at the end of the hall. “No need to panic. No need to run. You’re safe now.”

“Who is that?” Shane asked.

Anna answered. “Bach,” she said, wonder in her voice. “It’s Joseph Bach.”

And yes, there Bach was—partly obscured by the smoke at the end of the hall. He was lit, but not by one of the emergency lights. Instead, the glow seemed to come
from
him, from within him. And from within Nika, who was standing beside him, holding tightly to his hand.

“Help is coming,” Bach told the little girls, and Mac realized why he sounded so strange. Nika was speaking in exact unison with him—as if their voices were one and the same. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“Neek!” Anna called as she realized her sister was with Bach, as she ran toward them.

Nika looked up at Bach, as if asking permission to release his hand. He smiled down at her and nodded. “We’re safe now,” he said again.

And sure enough, the team of Thirties and Forties came pounding down the hall to surround them, ready to assist.

And it was the weirdest thing, but as Nika let go of Bach, to
throw herself forward into her sister’s arms, he vanished. He just disappeared—as if he hadn’t really been there at all.

“
That
was weird,” Shane said.

And Mac turned to look at him.

Shane smiled. “Yeah, right?” he said as he put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Like all the rest of this shit is normal.”

Mac held him just as tightly. “Get used to it.”

He laughed, and even though Mac wasn’t telepathic, she knew what he was thinking. Nika, Anna, and Mac were all safe—along with hundreds of little girls. But the life-threatening part of Shane’s day was far from over.

“Let’s get you back to OI,” Mac told him.

He didn’t argue. He just nodded.

And together, they headed for the stairs.

Bach regained full consciousness in the back of the OI van, where Charlie was at the computer, monitoring the situation on the ground and gathering information from Analysis.

Jackie and her team of Thirties and Forties were working at top speed to clear the Brite Group’s floors of all children and raw product.

Because Child Services had been privatized, and there was no way to be certain that the Organization didn’t have connections that would allow them to kidnap the girls all over again, the children were being sent to the Obermeyer Institute, where they’d be cared for until their parents could be found. And for those girls with no parents, it was going to be their new home. A new beginning, surrounded by people who would nurture and respect them.

The dead guards and staff were of a lower priority than the kids and the drugs—but if there was time, they’d be photographed and fingerprinted so that Analysis could ID them at a later date.

But there wasn’t a lot of time.

Dr. Obermeyer herself had put in a call to the Boston Police Chief, requesting he keep all personnel away from the scene for another few hours. In return, Bach and his OI team would continue to remain on call to the city force, well into the future, to
take care of any dangerously jokering addicts who threatened the civilian population.