From Black Rooms (30 page)

Hey, kiddo.

She was glad that Evan had left the tape over her mouth or she might have screamed then. Instead, she strived to suppress the sudden anguish so that Evan would not see it on her face, while she silently commenced her

spectator mantra.

Dad, what did he do to you? she asked as he settled into
her consciousness.

That doesn't matter, Wade said. What matters is what
he hasn't done to you. Is Callie okay?

So far. But Evan's going to give us to Pancrit. What
about Calvin?

He sent me. You know where we are?

In a car. I was knocked out until a minute ago, and all I
can see through the windows from this angle is the sky.
Can you stay a few minutes? Maybe I can find out
more.

I guess I'll have to. Calvin told me to find Serena, but
unless I have some info to give them...

The whoosh of a jet engine, like a conch shel 's roar amplified a thousandfold, descended upon them.

Wheels screeched on a runway.

"Oops," Evan murmured. "The boys got here sooner than I thought. I guess I need your answer now." He tore the tape from Natalie's mouth.

Although it burned as if he'd ripped off the bottom half of her face, Natalie refused to flinch. "I'd sooner date the Devil," she said.

Evan chuckled. "Apparently you misunderstood me. We aren't negotiating what happens to you; Pancrit has already promised I can have you when he's done. I'm giving you the chance to save your daughter." Natalie's gaze flicked to the seat where Cal ie remained comatose, but she barely paused before responding.

"She'd be better off with her real father." If Evan had any problem hating her before, the

reference to Dan eliminated it. "Your choice," he said. He took a box cutter from the glove compartment and cut the rope from her ankles but left her hands tied behind her back. Natalie barely had a chance to

straighten her stiff legs before Evan got out of the car and dragged her from the backseat.

As he set her on her feet, she saw that she stood on the grassy fringe of a tiny airfield whose two landing strips formed a Maltese cross of asphalt. Off to one side rose a single smal white tower with a flagpole in front of it, while several hangars for light aircraft clustered near the ends of each runway, including the one beside which Evan had parked his Nissan. On the tarmac about twenty yards away, a corporate Lear jet had come to rest, the fin of a gangway lowered from its side. The thread of orange dawn on the horizon il uminated the figures of Block and Tackle as they descended the plane's gangway steps. They had ditched their white medical uniforms in favor of military fatigues, and now carried both stun guns and sidearms on their belts. Natalie tamped down her fear in order to give clear, firm instructions to her father. Get an eyeful, Dad, she told him, surveying the airport. Tel Calvin and Serena
everything you can. And hurry.

I will, Wade promised. Hang tough, kiddo.

His soul fluttered off like a carrier pigeon as Evan prodded Natalie with his dart gun. "Time to fly," he said.

25

Message Received

I BELIEVE IN NATALIE. I BELIEVE IN NATALIE.

I BELIEVE IN NATALIE...

Calvin squatted on the concrete bumper of a parking space outside the Exxon station on Commercial Street, shivering as the morning sun peeked above Boston

Harbor. He pathological y repeated his mantra, not only to stave off inhabitation but also to keep himself from contemplating al the worst-case scenarios he could imagine. What if Wade couldn't reach Natalie? What if she and Cal ie were already dead? Worst of al , what if they were stil alive, but Calvin could do nothing to help them?

I believe in Natalie...

Although he believed passionately in those words, he couldn't repeat them forever. He had to sleep sometime. Yet if he let down his mental shield for even a minute, the souls started knocking again. Without the genetic

"filtering mechanism" that real Violets possessed, the node points in his brain would remain ghost magnets, sucking souls into his head twenty-four/seven. When Natalie asked whether it would be possible to give him that filtering mechanism, Dr. Wax told her no...but Calvin, who had eavesdropped on his thoughts, knew he was lying. If he could only get Wax to help him...
I believe in Nat--

Calvin smacked his forehead. Wade may have been

trying to knock al this time, and Calvin was

unintentional y keeping him out with his protective mantra. Why couldn't the dead use cal waiting?

He broke off his protective mantra and grabbed the bloodstain on his shirt again, concentrating on Natalie's father. Wade inhabited him almost immediately,

skipping the formality of a greeting in order to brief Calvin as quickly as possible.

"They're at a little municipal airport," he said aloud,

"but I couldn't tel where."

At least they're alive, Calvin thought in reply.

"For now. Some guys were about to fly them away on a plane when I left."

Great. What about Serena?

"Here comes your answer now."

With a rather prissy, alto purr, a blue Yamaha

motorcycle decelerated into the service station's parking lot to idle in front of Calvin. The leatherjacketed rider who straddled the bike's saddle raised the tinted visor of her helmet to reveal Serena's violet eyes.

"Heard you need a ride," she said.

Using Calvin's voice, Wade described the airport he'd seen to Serena to see if she could identify it. She took a wireless Internet-equipped PDA from a pocket inside her jacket and cal ed up maps of the Boston vicinity to narrow the possibilities.

"You say the place looked provincial, so they must have left the city," she deduced, "but they probably wouldn't go more than an hour's drive away. Did you see or smel the ocean?"

Wade shook Calvin's head. "Definitely not."

"That rules out the landing fields on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. They must've gone inland.

Somewhere nice and private for Mr. Pancrit to do his dirty work. Hmmm...let's try Fitchburg." Serena tapped her stylus on the PDA screen to cal up the airport's Web page, then showed the site's thumbnail photos to Wade. "Look familiar?"

Wade shook a finger at the airfield as if picking it out of a police lineup. "That's it! I'm sure of it!" Serena looked even grimmer than usual as she shut off the PDA and tucked it back in its pocket. "I was afraid of that. Fitchburg's over fifty miles away."

"B-but it can't be," Wade stammered. "The plane-they were going to take off any minute...

"I don't suppose Evan said where they were flying?"

"No." He grasped for hope the way a fal ing man claws the empty air. "M-maybe I could go back--stay with Natalie until they land?"

"On the other side of the country?" Serena asked, her tone heavy with fatalism. "We'd never make it in time."
I can think of one person who probably knows where
they're going, Calvin interjected. When Serena didn't
react, he remembered that he couldn't be heard.

"Wait! Calvin has an idea," Wade said on his behalf.

"What is it, Cal?"

Bartholomew Wax. He must be familiar with every rat
hole Pancrit's ever crawled out of.

Wade brightened with excitement. "Yes! Yes! But can you get him to talk?"

I'm not sure. He inhabited me at the museum, so I guess
that makes me a touchstone for him. You'll have to
leave before I can summon him, though.

"Of course. Right away."

"Care to let me in on this conversation?" Serena said.

"I'm a Violet, not a mind reader."

"Oh! Right...Actual y, I'l let Calvin tel you. I've got to go."

The cottony numbness in his limbs ebbed as Natalie's father ceded control. Godspeed, son, he said. Take care
of my babies.

"I wil , sir," Calvin answered aloud. "Whatever it takes."

Serena grew testy. "If this is Calvin I'm talking to, wil you please tel me what you have in mind?"

"I'm making a col ect cal to Dr. Wax," he told her.

"But let me do the talking." And, since he did not yet have a spectator mantra, Calvin concentrated on the one thing that he and Bartholomew Wax had in common,

the image that bound them together: Edvard Munch's
The Scream.

The anesthetic tingling returned to his extremities, and the wraithlike countenance of the figure in Munch's painting morphed in his mind into a series of spectral faces, al with shaved heads and violet irises. Beings that screamed and scratched and bit him before he shut their staring eyes with the deliverance of death... His head and shoulders drooped as Wax settled into his bones like a cold dew. "Why can't you leave me in peace?" the scientist lamented when he reluctantly assumed the ability to speak.

Calvin thought of the murders he'd witnessed in Wax's memory and decided to be blunt. Because you're going
to have even more blood on your hands if you don't
finish the project.

"I did what had to be done." Because he could not address Calvin directly, Wax pleaded his case to

Serena, who watched him with the stone face of a juror.

"Don't you see that? It was for the greater good."
Oh, yeah? Calvin shot back, the inner voice of
conscience. And when Pancrit kil s a nine-year-old girl
and her mother, will that be for the greater good, too?

"I can't keep Carl from committing his crimes," Wax said, "but I can stop him from perpetrating an atrocity on al of humanity."

You say that now, but until Natalie told you that your
precious "children" were safe and sound, you were
ready to sell out the whole human race for a few pieces
of cloth covered in old paint.

Wax wrung Calvin's hands, flustered in his haste to rationalize. "Y-you of al people should understand. You're an artist--I've seen it in your thoughts. You know those masterpieces are irreplaceable."

And a person isn't? You spoke to Natalie at the
museum. You've seen the replica of The Scream she
made with Munch, but you haven't seen what a brilliant
artist she is in her own right. And you never will if Carl
Pancrit murders her. Think of how many artworks will
be destroyed if she dies. A lifetime's worth...
Wax touched trembling fingers to Calvin's open mouth.

"My God."

Sensing that an avalanche of guilt threatened to crush the doctor, Calvin softened his tone. You get it now,
don't you? Everyone is a masterpiece.

"Yes. Yes, you're right." Bartholomew Wax glanced around at the service station with a frantic eagerness.

"What can I do?" he asked Serena in a plaintive tone.

"Tel us where Pancrit took the girls." She nodded toward the back of the cycle's seat. "Then hop on and hold tight. We got a plane to catch."

26

Treatment #17

WINDOWLESS BUNKER OF A building that

crouched among the gypsum dunes of White Sands

Missile Range. Even Tackle and Block appeared to

dread the structure, probably because they were aware of its history. Natalie and Cal ie didn't need to know about the place to fear it, for they could see Carl Pancrit's gold BMW parked in the lot out front.

It was after noon when they got to the compound.

Tackle had piloted the Lear jet during the five-hour flight from Massachusetts to Texas, and Block had driven them the ninety miles from the El Paso Airport to Las Cruces, New Mexico, in a Humvee. An actual U.S. Army Humvee, not a steroid-enhanced SUV for

testosterone-chal enged weekend warriors. Although Cal ie awoke from her drug-induced doze during the plane flight, she and her mother passed the entire trip in almost total silence. Neither one had had anything to eat that day, and both stil had their hands tied behind their backs.

The intuitive revulsion Natalie felt for the White Sands facility only increased when they descended from the Hummer, for Evan began to mumble to himself as they approached the front security door. Usual y too macho to let anyone hear him saying his protective mantra, he whispered with furious speed.

"f
ive times three is fifteen, five times four is twenty,
five times five is twenty-five..."

Natalie tensed, her presentiment confirmed. This was not a laboratory. It was a mausoleum.

As they stood before the entrance, she whispered to Cal ie, "Say your mantra, honey."

Her daughter must have sensed the same danger, for she obeyed immediately. Natalie then took her own advice, thinking, The Lord is my shepherd; I shal not want... Block apparently did not possess either the identity card or thumbprint necessary to unlock the security door, so he punched in a number on the alphanumeric keypad beside the door and spoke into the intercom above it.

"It's us," he said, staring into the lens of the surveil ance camera mounted above the entrance. "Tel the boss we're here."

"Check," a female voice barked from the speaker. A minute or more passed before the portal final y disengaged from its jamb with an electronic buzz. Tackle pul ed the door open, and they stepped into the minimalist institutional foyer to find Carl Pancrit waiting to welcome them.

"Ah, the two Ms. Lindstroms! At last, we have the pleasure of working together." He smiled. Pancrit could smile because he was not a Violet, and so could not feel the crush of angry spirits pressing in on him.

But Cal ie did. Despite repeating her mantra with breathless insistence, she shrieked and crumpled to the floor the instant they crossed the threshold.

Natalie felt the souls, too, their lust for rebirth tril ing through her teeth like foil on a bad fil ing. As they vied to occupy her brain, she glimpsed flashes of their past: captives in Hades, like Persephone, their minds caught between life and death, until Bartholomew Wax had pushed them completely into the darkness with the poison in his vaccination gun. Although she had never been here before, Natalie knew exactly what the ward beyond the next security door looked like, for she could see it in her mind, littered with the bodies of the doctor's previous patients.