A Perfect Darkness (26 page)

He scrubbed the top of her head, an affectionate gesture that surprised her. She felt a bond open between them. “Eric, I'm sorry about Dad.”

His expression hardened. “He's not my dad. I don't want to talk about him.”

Way to go.

They sat in silence. She wondered if his hard glare was from thoughts of her father or of something else. All around them people went about their business, beeping at slow drivers, talking during their drive. Normality right there, yet so far away. Finally she couldn't stand the silence anymore. “What's the plan now?”

“We need to stay low for a while, try to find other Offspring, put the pieces together.”

She liked the prospect of laying low. She needed that.

Eric's mouth tightened. “Then we'll take that damned asylum by storm and find out what the hell they're doing. And what they did to our mother.”

A
my was watching Lucas sleep on the couch when she heard footsteps coming down the tunnel. He woke, too, and in a flash shot off the couch and ran to the storage room in the kitchen. “Come here,” he whispered, waving her over.

She joined him as he pulled out one of the rifles. His gaze was riveted on the door. For a moment he reminded her of Eric, ever vigilant and ready to kill. She shivered at the thought.

He kept the rifle down but his finger on the trigger. “When Eric first came to me about the government guy watching him, I thought he was being paranoid,” he said. “He was always thinking people were out to get him. But this time he was right. Now here I am, paranoid, too.”

She stood next to him in the darkened kitchen. “You have good reason to be.”

They heard beeping, and the door slid open. Petra's eyes locked onto Lucas. He set the gun down, and he and Amy walked out of the kitchen. Petra ran into his arms, and he held her, stroking her hair. She closed her
eyes, obviously relishing the sensation of being with him again. Amy felt odd, knowing how Petra felt about him. She sensed Eric looking at her from the kitchen, though he started unloading the two paper bags he'd carried in, including two boxes of Pop-Tarts—one chocolate, one strawberry—and a bag of chocolate-covered raisins. She mouthed the word
Thanks.
He shrugged.

Finally Lucas stepped back and looked at everyone. “We need to talk.” He nodded toward the dining table.

Petra looked at Amy as if she knew what he was going to tell them. But Amy had no idea. Whatever it was, she thought, it would be serious. She grabbed her bag of raisins.

Lucas waited until they had all taken a seat, though he remained standing. Just as she tossed a raisin in the air, he said, “We've got to go back to the hospital.” He glanced at Amy. “The asylum.”

The raisin bounced to the floor. “No,” she said, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The blood had drained from Petra's face. “No
way
.”

Eric narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

Lucas walked over to the board above the desk and took down the photograph of the children by the pool. He pointed to the boy. “Rand.”

Amy said, “I saw his profile on Cyrus's computer.”

“They brought him in while I was there. In one of my visions I saw him strapped to a table like I was. They're using his grandmother, threatening her safety if he doesn't cooperate.”

Eric asked, “What do they want him to do?”

Amy asked, “What did they want you to do?”

“It's political stuff. Spying.” Somehow she knew he wasn't telling them everything; he'd turned away while answering. He continued. “They're giving him something that's making him nuts in a different way than what they gave me. He's stressing big-time.”

Petra said, “That's what the woman meant when she said her boss still had another prisoner.”

Lucas nodded. “He's one of us.” He slapped the photo down in the middle of the table. “We can't abandon him.”

Eric banged his palm on his forehead. “Oh, no, don't tell me you have abandonment issues, too!”

Lucas's eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

Eric pointed at Amy with his thumb. “She drove me crazy about not leaving you there. Then she had to get the car Cyrus left just because he'd left it for her. Now she wants to get some stupid parrot. This girl has abandonment issues. We can't risk our asses getting things because we can't stand to abandon them.”

Lucas looked at her with such soft emotion she felt it in the pit of her stomach. He turned back to Eric. “She lost her mother and her father before she was six years old. Maybe she does have abandonment issues. I can't blame her for that. Do I have them? Who knows? But I will tell you, I'm not leaving Rand there. I know what the Devil is capable of.”

“The Devil?” Petra asked.

“That's what I called the guy in charge.”

Petra said, “I think his name is Darkwell.”

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose. “How do we even know Rand will trust us? He doesn't know who we are.”

“Because we're a better bet than the people who have him now.”

“And it's not only Darkwell we have to worry about,” Petra said. “The enemy Offspring can remote view, though apparently only to me. We have some kind of connection, like you and Amy, only a bad one. Figures. That's how they found me at the asylum. They call him their ‘star Offspring.' Darkwell told him he probably has other skills—like yours, Eric. He's eager to work on them, and…practice on us.”

Eric's eyes hardened. “Then we'll get him while we're there.”

Petra said, “Eric, what happened to laying low for a while? That was a really, really good plan.”

He ground a fist into the palm of his other hand. “I need to kick some ass. These people have to go.”

“So you're in,” Lucas said. He took in Petra and Amy. “Not you two.”

Petra looked relieved, but Amy shot to her feet. “No way. We are a team. We've proven that we're stronger when we work together.”

Lucas said, “Amy, I saw you fall.”

“So I fell. Big deal.”

His voice got low. “It was more than a fall. You were shot.”

She sank back into her seat. “You didn't tell me that part.”

“I was waiting for the right time.”

“Then we change it,” she said. “You saw your death, but you didn't die.”

Eric smiled in that know-it-all way. “See, told you she was a pain in the ass.”

Lucas gave her a wry smile. “I see that.”

“We are a team,” Amy said again. “Stronger together. I'm not going to play the little woman back here all worried while the menfolk are off to war. I'm in.” She looked at Petra. “Are you?”

She swallowed hard. “Okay. The good news is, they don't think we'll be back.”

Lucas leaned forward. “Eric, our mission tomorrow is to get Rand. I know you want to take the enemy by storm, and believe me, I want to annihilate them as much as you do. But we need to focus on one thing at a time. Rand is at the rear of the east wing, where I was. It's an easy in and out. To get the others, we have to go farther in. It's too dangerous. We need to find more of us. Amy's right. We're a team, and if we're a bigger team, we've got a better chance.

“After Rand,” he continued, “what we need is information. Why are our psychic abilities so strong? Did our parents die because of the original program? What are we up against? We need to take one of them, and Robbins is our best bet. I could tell he was uncomfortable with what the Devil was doing to me.”

Amy said, “We know what he looks like.” She glanced at Eric. “We saw him when we remote-viewed you.”

“Good,” Lucas replied. “If we see him in the east wing, we take him. But we don't hurt him.” He leveled his gaze at Eric.

Amy said, “Cyrus told me that the two men in charge of the program were extremely dangerous. It sounds like Robbins is the Devil's right-hand man.”

“Maybe he was only pretending to be your ally,” Eric said. “So you'd cooperate.”

Lucas shrugged. “Maybe. I'm not saying we'll be
his buddy. But we don't take him out. We give him the chance to tell us what he knows. If he doesn't, we return him—alive.”

Eric's eyes narrowed. “Since when are you the boss? I was the one who took charge and got you out of that place. Now that you're out, you want to take over.”

“I'm not trying to be the boss, Eric, but you have a tendency to go off half-cocked. We can't afford to do that. We're not playing a game over at Radical Paintball.”

Eric pushed away from the table and went into the kitchen. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and took several swigs before returning.

Petra turned to Lucas. “I heard the woman talking to someone named Peterson.”

Lucas nodded. “He was a combination strongarm and nurse.”

“He was supposed to give you a shot the night you were rescued. Darkwell implied that it would…kill you.”

Lucas looked at the inside crook of his elbow where a faint red mark remained. “They gave me three injections of something called the Booster. It was supposed to boost my abilities.”

Amy said, “That's what Cyrus called the nutritional cocktail the people in the original program got.”

Petra said, “He didn't give you that last shot. The woman called him right after you got busted out. He asked her to cover for him and tell Darkwell you'd gotten it. He was worried.”

“Thank God.” Lucas's face looked haunted. “Each one made it worse.”

“Made what worse?” Petra asked.

“I get this storm of images now that kicks me in the ass.”

Petra's face creased in worry. “Lucas, if you go in…if they get you again, they'll give you that shot. And you'll die.”

His expression remained passive. “Then I won't get caught.” Lucas turned to Amy. “Did Cyrus tell you what was in it?”

“He didn't know. He said a scientist created it, and the ingredients were top secret.”

“This is what our mothers were involved in.” Lucas looked at Amy, Eric, and Petra. “And your dad, Amy. The Devil—Darkwell—mentioned my mom, said she was talented, a dreamweaver, but wouldn't say much more. That's how I can get into other people's dreams.”

“Other people's dreams?” Eric asked. “Not just Amy's?”

“I was able to get into Rand's dreams, too. Last night I told him we were coming.”

Eric said, “I went to my…my father's house. Before the bastard turned me into the police.”

“Turned you in?” Lucas said. “Dad?”

“Yeah. Because I'm wanted for arson. Anyway, I found a letter from the president of the Society for Psychic Phenomena, sending condolences for our mother's death. He was suspicious of the program she was involved in.”

“What did your father say?” Amy asked.

Eric and Petra exchanged a meaningful look and he subtly shook his head. “He didn't say jack. We figure the trust funds we have are blood money, paid by the
government to shut him up. Or at least stuff his curiosity. He didn't deny it.”

“I got some money, too,” Amy said. “Cyrus told me it was an insurance policy, one that didn't exclude suicide as a payoff.” She cleared her throat. “There's something else Cyrus told me. Something I didn't mention.” She looked down at her hands on the table for a moment before meeting Lucas's gaze. “You and Eric are Ultra Offsprings.”

“Say again?” Lucas said.

“You were born of affairs between two of the subjects in the program. I told you about the sexual side effects. Well, some of the subjects got involved with each other, and their offspring are even more enhanced, more powerful.”

Just as she suspected, Eric's face lit with pride. “Cool.”

“There's something else, before you get too cocky. It also makes you more susceptible to the other side effect…mental instability. Cyrus said one of the subjects went on a rampage and killed three people.”

A shadow passed over Lucas's face. “You mean we could go crazy.”

Eric leaned across the table, aiming a hard look at Amy. “Why didn't you tell us this after you talked to Cyrus?”

“Remember why you didn't tell Petra that her extraordinary hearing was probably bioenergetic? Ditto. I didn't want you to get full of yourself.”

Lucas said, “Wait a minute. Eric, if you're born of an affair between two program members—”

“My father isn't my father,” he finished.

Petra said, “Yeah, we know that.”

A breaking news announcement caught their attention. With Eric wanted by the police, they left the television on and kept one ear open for any more broadcasts.

A woman was saying, “…a follow-up on the mysterious death of Major General Napoleon Darkwell, a highly respected and celebrated war hero who was found dead in his bed early Saturday morning. A preliminary autopsy indicates heart failure, and an investigation is under way. We will bring you updates as we learn them…”

Amy said, “Darkwell! Is that the man who's in charge?”

Lucas stared at the television. “No, but I'll bet it's his brother,” he said in a low voice.

Eric went to the desk and returned with a piece of paper. “This is the sketch we made of the facility's layout. We'll make a plan.”

Petra said, “There's still a hole in the fence where Amy drove through. I overheard that it's supposed to get fixed tomorrow morning by the Calistoga Fence Company. Their truck is in the shop but will be repaired by then.”

Lucas pulled his dark gaze from the television. “First thing tomorrow we call the fencing company and tell them to never mind, we got it fixed.”

“Robbins was the one who called, so pretend you're him,” Petra said.

Eric's face lit with the momentum of a good idea. “And we steal the truck from the repair shop and show up to fix the fence.”

Petra said, “They change guards at nine in the morning, so we'll have to be out of there before then.
Otherwise there will be twice as many armed men during the overlap.”

Eric held up a finger and then disappeared into the gun storage room. A few minutes later he leaped out, his arms extended. “Boo!”

They jumped at the sight of him in a gas mask that made him look like a sci-fi movie bug creature. He lifted the mask and held up a silver canister that was about six inches high and four inches around. “We have several of these and this canister of tear gas.”

Lucas raised an eyebrow. “I understand the gas masks, but why would the people who built the shelter have tear gas? That's an offensive weapon, and everything down here should be defensive.”

Eric shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe one of them was paranoid like I am.” He slammed the canister on the table. “We go in with this and set it off in the hallway where Rand is. Anyone who comes down the hall will choke before he gets off a shot.” He looked at them for their reaction. “Well?”