Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (20 page)

“You must have endless questions,” she says as she takes my hands in hers. “But right now I need your help to get everyone to safety.”

All I can do is stare at her, dumbfounded, gormlessly watching her lips move as she speaks.

“Theresa has them confined in an enclosure much like this one, on the far side of the dome. I overheard her plan to lure you here, so I waited for you to arrive. I’ve deactivated the motion sensors, concealed your lights, and created this shield over you to hide you from her. She has no idea you’re already inside, and she doesn’t know I’m here, either, so we have the element of surprise on our side.”

I still don’t say a word.

“I’m sorry I didn’t show myself right away when you came through the hatch, sweetheart. I meant to, I really did, but you’ve grown into such a beautiful young woman, and when I saw you, I . . . I was a little overwhelmed. I also didn’t want you to faint again like you did this morning.”

I just stare at her.

“Finn?” she says, looking at me quizzically. “Say something; you’re starting to scare me.”

“You’re here,” I whimper. “But . . . you died.” I honestly don’t know why those particular words slipped out of my mouth. There are a million things I could or should or want to say right now . . . but of all the questions rampaging through my mind, I choose two of the most inane sentences I’ve ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth, including mine.

My mother just smiles. “Yes, my darling, I’m really here, and even death couldn’t keep me from you forever. In fact, I’ve never felt truly alive until this moment.”

“Mother?” I ask, staring at her in wonder.

“Yes?”

“What . . . am I?” Oh my god. Even though it is a question that has plagued me for every minute of this accursed day, I’m dumbstruck that right now it seems I’m unable to utter any more than three words at a time. That’s the last straw, brain. You’re fired.

My mother looks me in the eyes with a serious expression on her face. “You’re my daughter, and I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for, but I need you to focus. When this is all over, we’ll sit down together and you can ask me anything you want, I promise. But now I need you to be strong for me. We have to get Graham and your two school friends out of the dome. Can you be strong, Finn?”

“I can’t believe you’re standing here,” I murmur. “I mean, I know
how
you’re here. At some point before you died, your mind must have been downloaded, but—”

“Finn!” my mother barks. “This is not exactly the reunion I was hoping for, either, but I need you to be here right now. Are you with me?”

“What?” I say, snapping back to my senses. “Yes . . . of course. I’m sorry. Wait . . . what do you mean Graham and my
two
friends?”

“There’s a young girl. I heard you on the radio, you called her Bettina?”

I nod.

“And there’s a boy, skinny, with brown hair.”

“Dean?” I whisper. “He survived?”

“Is that his name?” my mother asks. “I peeked inside Theresa’s enclosure. They’re all OK, except for Dean, he looks dazed, confused.”

“He was connected to the R.A.M. when Nanny Theresa took control of it. Something happened to his mind.”

“Oh, that poor boy. Then we need to get him and the others out as soon as we can.”

“OK,” I say with a huge breath and a determined nod. “What do we do?”

“That’s my girl. I have a plan,” my mother says with a smirk. She backs a few steps away from me and closes her eyes.

Suddenly there’s a quiet hissing sound, and my mother begins to get shorter as the top half of her dress sprouts long sleeves and a hood and instantly turns from white to black. The lower half of her dress turns gray and transforms into jeans on her legs as the flat-soled shoes on her feet morph into green sneakers with white stripes on the sides. Her face thins ever so slightly as the years melt away, reverse-aging her from the thirty-year-old I’d always seen in her photograph to a teenager my age. I always thought I looked a lot like her, but as she opens her eyes and smiles at me, it’s like staring into a mirror. My mother now looks exactly like me in every way, even down to the satchel hanging by her side.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“I think that’s amazing. And also really weird, but I think I know where your plan is heading.”

My mother smiles. “A little deceptive distraction while you get the others to safety.”

I return her smile, but then my eyes go wide as I remember Gazelle.

“I brought a friend. She can help. She’s waiting on the ladder underneath the hatch.”

“Then we’d better go and get her, I suppose, but first, I had better hide these.” My mother looks down at the glow stick and the flare at my feet, and they instantly sink, engulfed by the black floor. “OK, c’mon, this way,” she says with a flick of her head, then she turns and breaks into a quick jog. I follow right behind her as the white dome moves along with us, quietly hissing as it goes. Because of the opaque nature of the minidome, I can’t see where we’re going at all, but my mother clearly has no problem navigating, as it isn’t long before the hatch slides into view on the floor at the edge of the enclosure.

I crouch beside the hatch, take the flare from the gap, stuff it into my satchel, and fully open the lid. “Gazelle,” I whisper. “Get up here.”

“Yes, Commander,” she says as she pushes the hatch lid open and climbs up onto the glossy black floor. She looks up, and her eyes go wide as her head ping-pongs back and forth between me and my mother.

“It’ll take too long to explain,” I say as Gazelle stares bewilderedly at me and my doppelgänger. “All you need to know is that she’s here to help.”

“Hello,” my mother says, smiling at Gazelle.

“Ohhh-kaaay,” Gazelle mutters blankly as I take her hand and help her to her feet.

“What’s next?” I say, turning to my mother.

“I’ll announce myself, pretending to be you, and demand to see Graham and your friends are safe,” my mother explains.

“She promised she would let them go if I faced her,” I say.

“Good. Hopefully she’ll keep her word and release them,” replies my mother. “If that happens, I can insist that they safely leave the dome before she does what she came here to do.”

“You mean . . . kill me?” I ask.

“Yes,” my mother says solemnly.

“Why
does
she want to kill me?”

“She blames you for things that are not your fault.”

“What does she think I’ve done?” I ask.

“Well, among other things, Theresa holds you responsible for my death, and she believes that was the beginning of your father’s descent into madness.”

“Why?” I murmur. “I . . . I don’t understand.”

My mother looks at me curiously. “What exactly have you been told about your Nanny Theresa?”

“I know she was a doctor of some kind and she was married to Graham, but that’s all. Apart from that she was just an angry old lady that used to live at the house.”

My mother looks surprised. “So no one has told you who she really was?”

I slowly shake my head, frowning.

“Finn, Theresa was your grandmother.”

The lines of my frown deepen, and my eyes narrow with confusion. “What?”

“Theresa was married to a man named Reginald Blackstone, and your father was their only child,” replies my mother. “Reginald died in a terrible train crash when Richard was very young, and it would be many years until Theresa would remarry, but when she did, it was to my father . . . Graham.”

“Dr. Pierce is your father?”

“That’s right. My mother, Linda, passed away from an illness when I was young. Graham and Theresa worked together. They were both lonely, and they grew very close. But after I died and Richard shut himself away and the military took more and more of your time, Theresa and my father were all each other had, and eventually they married.”

“She’s my grandmother?” I blurt out, still trying to wrap my head around what I’ve just been told.

“She was also my stepmother, too, I suppose. But the Theresa in this dome with us now is very different from the woman she used to be. I fear she’ll stop at nothing to eliminate the one who she blames for her son’s insanity.”

“Me.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so, sweetheart,” my mother says sadly.

“You said there were other reasons why she wants me dead.”

“There will be time to discuss that later, but right now we need to concentrate on getting everyone to safety.”

I nod in agreement. She’s right; I should be focusing on one thing at a time.

“If Theresa doesn’t release them, I will hold her back for as long as I can, and you two get them out, OK?”

“OK,” I reply.

“Yes, Commanders,” Gazelle says, still glancing back and forth between my mother and me.

“I’ll reduce the size of this enclosure, so it isn’t blocking the hatch and to lessen the chance of Theresa noticing it. I’ll also change the view on the wall so you can see out my eyes and hear what I’m hearing. If Theresa breaks her promise, I’ll let you out right away, and you be sure to move fast.”

“No one moves faster than me,” Gazelle says to my mother.

“Alright. Good,” my mother says with a determined nod. “Are you both ready?”

“Yes,” I say and turn to Gazelle. “Ready to do this?”

“Ready, Commander,” she replies.

“Commander,” my mother says with a bemused smile. “I like that. It’s nice to know my daughter is so well respected.” My mother looks at the floor and opens her palm, and the flare I dropped before suddenly resurfaces and rises to her palm on a shiny black column. “This should get Theresa’s attention,” she says as she grabs the flare and the column sinks back down.

I can’t help myself, and I lunge across and throw my arms around her shoulders, hugging her to me. “Good luck,” I whisper, and she holds me tight.

“Thank you, honey. I’ll be fine. She can’t hurt me.”

We separate, and she looks me in the eye. “Be careful,” she whispers, then she turns, strides across the floor, and walks right through the wall of the minidome like it isn’t even there.

“I’d ask,” Gazelle says, staring at me in confusion. “But you’d probably just tell me it’s a long story, wouldn’t you?”

“Something like that,” I say, smiling at her.

All around us the enclosure begins shrinking, and the opening to the hatch appears to shift away, out of sight beyond the border, as the little dome gets smaller. Gazelle and I shuffle together and crouch down, huddling together on the floor as the minidome reduces down to a tiny version of itself, barely ten feet wide and five feet high. The bright white wall of the minidome suddenly goes pitch-black, but it doesn’t stay that way for long as I hear the strike of an ignition pad, and suddenly everything illuminates in the intense red light of the fizzing flame burning from the end of the flare. It really is a strange sensation as the wall of the dome displays the view from my mother’s eyes. It’s like Gazelle and I are sitting inside her head as she walks forward holding the flare aloft in her hand. The smoke pouring from the flare billows into the air, painted scarlet by the glow of the flame beneath it, and all around my mother a thirty-foot-wide circle of red light flickers and dances over the shiny black floor.

“I’m here!” my mother shouts. “Now let everyone go!”

Suddenly Nanny Theresa comes into view like a ghoulish apparition, and Gazelle gasps beside me. I also shudder at the sight of Nanny Theresa, not walking but seemingly floating an inch above the floor, sliding out of the darkness toward my mother, the wrinkled skin of her face made all the more severe by the vivid chemical hue of the flame. She’s looks just like she did when she was alive two years ago, with her long, plain dark dress, her dowdy cardigan, and her hair tied up in an ample gray bun on top of her head. But her simple, practical clothes don’t detract in the least from the fact that in the harsh red light of the flare, Nanny Theresa is the very vision of a demon bathed in hellfire. She comes to a stop six feet from my mother.

“You’re hardly in any position to make demands, now are you, child,” Nanny Theresa says snidely.

“I’m here like I promised,” says my mother. “Now you keep yours.”

Nanny Theresa folds her arms on her chest, glowers at my mother, and then snorts indignantly. “Fine,” she says, waving her hand through the air. “Far be it from me to renege on a deal like the members of your disrespectful generation.” On the edge of the circle of light, a big black box slides into view, and its walls quickly lower into the floor.

Bit, Dr. Pierce, and Dean flump onto the shiny ground. Dean still looks as gormless and floppy as before the crash, and Dr. Pierce’s hands seem to be bound together, and he has a glossy black gag over his mouth. Bit looks like she’s in a lot of pain. She groans, cradling her broken arm, and I glare at the emotionless face of Nanny Theresa, angrily gritting my teeth.

“Go! Get out of here!” my mother shouts at Bit and the others.

“I’m not leaving without you!” shrieks Bit.

“Yes, you are!” my mother shouts back. “I’ll be fine, Bettina! Now go!”

“No!” she yells. My heart swells with pride that Bit is so loyal to me, but at the same time I can’t help wanting to slap her in the back of her stubborn head. Her selfless bravery could ruin a perfectly good plan.

“She needs to see you, Finn,” my mother whispers as she glances back toward Gazelle and me. “I’m going to lower the enclosure. Be ready.”

“OK,” I reply.

“Who are you speaking to?” Nanny Theresa growls at my mother.

“Go straight for Bettina,” I say to Gazelle as I reach into my satchel, retrieve a couple of glow sticks, and shove one into her hand.

“Yes, Commander,” she says as she shuffles around into a sprinter’s position. “Judging by the other Commander’s view, I estimate the hostages are approximately thirty yards straight ahead.” She cracks and illuminates the stick.

“I’ll lower the enclosure after three,” my mother’s voice whispers from the wall of our enclosure as Gazelle tucks the glow stick under the wristband of her watch.

Nanny Theresa glares at my mother. “What are you babbling about, child?”

“Two,” whispers my mother, and I crack a glow stick of my own as Gazelle raises up on her haunches.