[Ganzfield 2] Adversary

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Copyright © 2010 by Kate Kaynak

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Contact: Spencer Hill Press, PO Box 247, Contoocook, NH 03229. Please visit our website at spencerhillpress.com

First Edition August 2010

Kaynak, Kate, 1971—

Adversary : a novel / by Kate Kaynak – 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary:

The story of telepathic teenager Maddie Dunn continues as she and her friends train to protect the people at Ganzfield. But things are more dangerous than they know, and not everyone will survive.

Cover design by K. Kaynak

Song lyrics in this work are parodies of the original songs and adhere

to the fair use principles of Section 107 of the Copyright Act.

ISBN 978-0-9845311-2-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9845311-3-4 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

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The
Ganzfield
Series

Minder

Adversary

Legacy
(January 2011)

Accused
(Summer 2011)

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Dear Reader,

Adversary
is the second book of the Ganzfield series. I hope you’ve read
Minder
, the first Ganzfield book, before reading this one. Otherwise, you’re entering Maddie’s world of minders, sparks, charms, and RVs without knowing what these things are, and that will confuse the heck out of you.

Some TV shows have a little montage at the beginning that says, “Previously, on…” and gives you a quick summary of the stuff that happened earlier. So, this little intro is the “Previously, at Ganzfield...” montage that reminds you who people are and what they can do. Here’s what you need to know:

GANZFIELD

Ganzfield is a secret training facility that occupies a couple hundred acres near North Conway, New Hampshire. Inside the walls, there’s a lake, two big, rambling farmhouses (the main building and Blake House), and an old red barn between them. The smaller houses at the old crossroads now serve as dorms for students and housing for some of the instructors. Maddie and Trevor live in the old church that sits back in the woods. The sparks sleep in a cluster of fireproof cottages at the edge of the lake. A few isolated cabins lie scattered around the rest of the wooded property, and some wind generators sit atop one of the hills.

G-POSITIVES and DODECAMINE

The people of Ganzfield have a recessive genetic trait that they call “G-positive.” People with this trait naturally have flashes of an extra ability—like telepathy—from time to time. However, if G-positives receive regular doses of the synthetic neurotransmitter dodecamine, they can develop into minders, telekinetics, sparks, charms, healers, or RVs. G-positives need to keep taking dodecamine every few weeks or they lose their abilities. Most people at Ganzfield are teenagers who’ve been on the meds for less than two years and are still learning to use their abilities.

MINDERS

Minders are mind-readers, a.k.a. telepaths. Sixteen-year-old Maddie Dunn came to Ganzfield last October after three guys from her high school dragged her into a van and tried to do things that still haunt her nightmares. She ended up frying their brains and killing them. Now that she takes dodecamine, she can hear people’s thoughts when they’re near her and block her own thoughts from other minders with a mental shield. Maddie accidentally projects her dreams to others when she’s asleep, so she tries not to do that around most people. She also can blast people’s brains with different intensities of energy, sort of like setting herself from “stun” to “kill.” Only one other G-positive has ever had this lethal ability: Isaiah Lerner—and he’s not nearly as dead as he’s made people think.

Two other minders live at Ganzfield. Dr. Jon Williamson runs the place. He can hear everyone’s thoughts and shield his own from other minders. He’s been telepathic for decades, starting when he was part of Project Star Gate (by the way, this was a
real
U.S. Government project. Really. You can Google it). Dr. Williamson funds Ganzfield by reading the minds of investment bankers and playing the stock market. His niece, Ann, used to be a minder, but she left shortly after Maddie arrived.

The other minder, Seth Black, can’t project his thoughts to non-telepaths, although he has the strongest receptive telepathy of all of the minders. This makes people’s thoughts very loud for him, so he usually keeps his distance from others, especially the other minders, since their thoughts sound even louder to him.

TELEKINETICS

Telekinesis is the ability to move things mentally, and Trevor Laurence is Ganzfield’s only telekinetic. He’s also Maddie’s boyfriend—even more than that, he’s her “soulmate.” The two of them have an amazing way of connecting as pure energy. They also share dreams in which he uses lucid dreaming techniques to change their imagined environment—and to help Maddie with her nightmares. Trevor controls two extra-strong mental hands with his ability. He can extend them about fifteen feet from him or widen them to cover large areas. In
Minder,
he shielded Maddie from being shot. Trevor needs to sleep in a large, open place, since his telekinetic ability comes out during his dreams…and it’s strong enough to knock down walls.

SPARKS

Sparks can control fire, and they also have telekinesis with burning objects. There are two known families of people with this pyrokinetic ability. The McFees—a big clan of Irish firefighters—include Trevor’s best friend, Drew, his brother, Harrison, and a bunch of burly, red-headed cousins. The Underwoods are descended from William Underwood, who was a real person and the first “documented” pyrokinetic. There are about twenty sparks at Ganzfield.

CHARMS

Charms can control other people’s actions with verbal commands. When they use their ability, it’s like strong hypnosis or the “Jedi mind trick,” and only minders are immune to them. Some charms become sociopathic with their ability, using it to take advantage of others. Charm compulsion usually doesn’t wear off with time, although charms can remove each other’s commands. A few charms, like Cecelia Mitchell, have started using charming to help people—and to keep the other charms in line. About thirty charms live at Ganzfield; this is the most common G-positive ability.

REMOTE VIEWERS (RVs)

RVs can see people, objects, or locations that are far away from them. Rachel Fontaine used this ability to find Trevor after he’d been abducted, although they arrived too late to save her Uncle Charlie, another RV, who’d been vivisected by a scientist trying to find out more about G-positive abilities. About a dozen RVs live at Ganzfield.

HEALERS

Healers use their ability to rev up the body’s natural healing and instantly mend cuts, burns, broken bones, etc. Matilda and Morris Taylor, a brother and sister originally from Liberia, do most of the healing at Ganzfield. They also train the two teenage healers: Hannah Washington and Lester Gale.

And now, back to the show…

Kate Kaynak

New Hampshire, January 2010

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For Yaya

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CHAPTER
1

Were we too late? Sick fear twisted my gut as we ran, and the dark hall seemed to lengthen with each echoing step. I tried to type the code into the keypad by the door but my shaking fingers wouldn’t cooperate. Drew started burning around the lock. The sudden blare of an alarm jarred my frayed nerves to the shattering point. I felt telepathically behind the door for a familiar mind, but all that I could get were fractured images of nightmarish tortures. Tears streaked down my face; I felt so useless.

So stupid.

I hugged my arms around my waist tightly, as though I could keep myself together through sheer, blunt will.

We were too late. I just knew we were too late.

Drew kicked the door open and it disappeared into the dark. A little ball of flame rose above his hand and a macabre scene floated out of the firelight. People I knew lay strapped to gurneys with metal rings screwed around their heads. Their skin was grey in death; their eyes filmed white. Bloody head wounds shone slickly black.

The world tilted when I recognized the cold mask of anguish in front of me.

Trevor.

Oh, God. No, no, no, no, no!
My mind exploded in pain. I fell to the floor, racked with sobs.

Too late…

“This one again?” A familiar voice came from behind me.

After a flash of confusion, light flooded back into the world as I recognized Trevor’s voice. It didn’t come from the unmoving body on the operating table. Trevor knelt next to me, beautifully whole and alive, wrapping his arms around me. I clung to him, a fairly useless mass of quivering relief, as he pulled me up to stand. His eyes fell on the corpse on the operating table next to us. It was his own mangled corpse.

Okay, that makes no sense.

Was this just a dream? Trevor and I must be sharing dreams again. I exhaled with a half-sob. The sickening nightmare landscape faded away. Thanks to Trevor’s lucid-dreaming skills, he and I now stood in a high mountain meadow in mid-summer. A glittering river, white with little waterfalls, danced below us. The air felt like it cleansed my lungs with every breath. Wildflowers overflowed around us—gold, white, and purple—rippling with a gentle push from the wind.

I met his warm, chocolate-brown eyes, feeling gratitude on many levels.

“You couldn’t dream about kittens, could you?” Trevor smiled with mock exasperation. “Oh, no. No cute little puppies for you.”

I pulled closer to him, shut my eyes, and rested my cheek against his chest as I felt my heart unclench. “Thanks.”

“Have you considered looking at pictures of bunnies before going to bed?” His hand stroked my hair. “Maybe baby chicks, all yellow and fluffy?”