Mindsiege (28 page)

I’m seeing what you’re seeing, Lexi.
Georgia’s voice was quiet inside my head.

Do you see the thin prongs?

Yes. They look like they would break off easily.

Well, I’ve held one of these in my hand. The prongs are very strong and gripping, especially when the device is moving backwards against resistance. If we pull this device out while the prongs are extended, it will grab hold of whatever it can. Those prongs could pierce the brain or the spinal cord in a millisecond.

Georgia went silent. I still sensed Jack.
Jack?

I’m here. Georgia is freaking out a little. She doesn’t want to risk Jonas’s life.

Well, it’s not up to her. And we’re not removing his right now anyway. I need her to help me remove Addison’s first.

Jonas nodded. He had already insisted that Sandra would not terminate him yet.

I’ll make sure Georgia’s ready.

Jack wasn’t coming with us into the facility. I massaged the spot on my chest where my heart beat furiously. I could do this. I just had to focus.

“I’ll be with you the entire time,” Jonas whispered. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. It will be better with fewer of us anyway. But we’ll need Briana.”

I had no idea how Jonas could sound so calm. He was at risk of dropping dead any second with a single key stroke if Sandra chose. Also, Jonas was my ticket in and my ticket out of the facility. And I wasn’t completely confident in Briana’s abilities yet. “Why do we need her?”

“She can confuse the agents. When they look at us, they’ll think they’re seeing Ty, Dia, and Lin. And with your mind-altering abilities, you can convince them that that is exactly what they’re seeing.”

I turned the ring on my right hand round and round, careful to avoid twisting the pearl. I could do this. I had to. And if Georgia and I could figure out how to get the tracker out without killing or paralyzing the hosts, we’d be able to do serious damage to at least part of the IIA’s cloning program.

“So, we’re good?” Jonas asked. I answered with a slight nod. “We can do this.
Georgia
can do this.”
Besides you, I’d say she’s probably the most powerful of us all.

Yes, but with the most severe side effect.

~~~~~

“Last chance to turn back,” Jonas said. He, Briana, Kyle, and I stood at a back entrance to the agriscience building. “This is where I used to sneak in and out. Back when Mom…” His voice trailed off.

I touched his arm. “It’s okay. She’s the only mother you ever knew.”

“Right. You don’t really believe that it’s okay.”

No, I didn’t. I decided it was probably better if I said nothing. He probably heard my thoughts anyway, despite my attempt to pocket them.

“Anyway,” he continued. “This is where I snuck in and out of the facility back when Sandra trusted me. I was fairly certain they monitored my every move. Or they were too busy with crazy experiments that no one noticed my comings and goings.”

Briana slipped a hairband from her wrist and pulled her thick red hair into a low ponytail. “Well, here’s hoping they don’t monitor this entrance tonight.”

Kyle and I traded worried glances. I then directed my determination at Jonas, who stood directly in front of the retinal scanner. He looked at me for permission to continue.

I nodded. “Let’s do this.” He had better do it quick, before I changed my mind.

But I wouldn’t change my mind. Addison was in there somewhere, and I had to find her. And I had to locate and destroy the server controlling the trackers. Without the ability to alter the trackers, Sandra’s ability to manipulate minds would be lost, and we would have time to remove the remaining trackers.

Jonas leaned down, aligning his eyes with the scanner.

My heart sped up immediately, and my stomach began to churn.

The latch on the door clicked. Jonas wrapped his palm around the handle and pulled. Just like that, we were in.

The four of us entered a dark hallway. The lights immediately flickered on. I felt exposed by the brightness.

We were in the basement of the building. Jonas led the way. We walked wordlessly behind him, careful to make as little sound as possible. The walls of the hallways were a light gray. The doors alternated between a deep gray and navy blue. Nothing like the white hallways of The Program.

I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but I thought I smelled the scent of the gas the IIA had used to put Lin and Dia to sleep the first time I entered The Farm.
Jonas, is that—

I smell it, too. I’m the only one who might be affected by it because of the tracker, but my device has never been programmed to react to the gas before, so we’ll just have to be careful.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Does everyone remember the plan?” We all nodded. Jonas zeroed in on Briana. “You up for this?”

Is she up for what? Strange time to be asking her that.

Briana nodded. The features of her face were tight; her eyes were deer-in-the-headlights big. “I’m already one step ahead of you.”

What does that mean? What is she doing?

She’s already altering what someone would see if they saw us.

I looked behind me at Kyle. Only it wasn’t Kyle. It was Jack.
Okay, that’s weird.
When I turned back around, Jonas’s tattoos were gone. He was Ty. Briana looked like herself, I supposed, but she and Dia were identical.
Who do I look like?

You look like an older version of yourself.

“What?” I asked in a loud whisper. “She made me look like Sandra?”

Will you keep it down? It had to be someone Briana’s seen before and who’s supposed to be here. She couldn’t very well make you look like Dia, now could she?

I sighed.
I guess not. But what if Sandra sees us?

Jonas closed his eyes for a moment.
We’re only in disguise in case guards or agents see us. Hopefully, it will throw them off. If Sandra sees us, it won’t matter what we look like. She’ll know it’s us.

Well, especially if she sees her twin. Shit!

Jonas furrowed his brows at me.
Can we continue?

I gestured with my hand for him to lead the way. The overhead lights hummed—the only other sound besides our light footsteps.

Jonas led us down two halls, each one dark until our motion was detected and lights above flickered on. I suspected armed agents would jump out any minute. I couldn’t imagine how it was possible that we were wandering these halls undetected. Jonas stopped in front of one of the gray doors. The window at the top—at Jonas’s eye level, but not mine—was dark. He reached down, turned the knob, and pushed it open. I raised a brow, surprised that it was unlocked. After looking both ways down the hallway, he ushered us in.

He flipped a light switch. Instead of an overhead fluorescent, two lamps glowed—one beside a full-sized bed, and another on a small black dresser on the other side of the room.

I turned in a circle. Besides a bed and a dresser, there was just a small desk with a laptop and a desk lamp. A couple of textbooks were spread across the end of the bed. A guitar stood in the corner of the room on a stand. This was a teenager’s room. I jerked my head toward Jonas. “This is your room, isn’t it?”

“You lived here?” Briana asked, a little taken aback.

“Of course. Well… until I got my tracker and was allowed to leave the facility. But that was after we moved here to Kentucky. Where did you think I lived before I moved in with Georgia and Fred?”

“I assumed you lived with Sandra. Just not inside some laboratory.”

“I’ve lived with Sandra most of my life. Usually at some research facility.” He sat at his desk and opened the laptop. His lips tugged downward in a look of sadness I’d never seen on him before. “She lived wherever the work was. I was just part of that work.”

Kyle stood watch at the window.

It was too quiet. Why hadn’t agents descended upon us? Standing over Jonas, I watched him click around on his laptop at what appeared to be some sort of floor plan. “Is that this building?”

“Yes.” He continued to click.

Then, suddenly, a video image popped up on the screen.

“Holy crap!” I leaned in closer.

Briana joined me. “Who is that?”

“That’s Addison,” I said. Addison sat in the middle of a bed, hugging her knees and staring straight ahead. Nothing like the little girl that had jumped on her bed like a monkey back at Wellington. “What is she doing?”

“Watching TV, maybe?” Jonas answered, unsure. He clicked some more and was able to show us a panoramic view. She
was
watching TV, and she wasn’t moving. At all.

“How are you able to tap into this camera?” Briana asked.

He smiled up at her. “I’m a man of many talents.”

She slapped at his shoulder playfully. I rolled my eyes.

“So, you’ve somehow hacked into their security system? How did you know where she’d be?”

“There were only a few rooms I thought they’d place her in. The residential wing of this facility isn’t that big. And it’s fairly full.”

Addison remained motionless while I continued to study her. She was not the energetic eight-year-old that I remembered. She looked… sad. Even more childlike and innocent than I recalled. I had to get her out of here. A woman walked into her room, her back to the camera. Addison didn’t even look up.

Why was someone walking into her room at this hour? Normal people slept at this late hour.

Then I realized what was bothering me. It was something Jonas had said after I healed Sandra, after Addison had been taken. “Jonas, why is Addison in the residential wing?”

Jonas wouldn’t even look at me. I drilled holes into the woman in the video.
Turn around. Let me see your face.
As if she could hear me, she turned, walked back toward the camera, and, I assumed, out the door. It was Anita, Addison’s mother and the DeWeese’s housekeeper. She was here.

And I knew what Jonas had meant when he’d said, “Addison was the one that got away.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“She lived here, didn’t she?”

“Well, not here,” Jonas said. “But she was born in one of the previous research centers.”

Did you know this?
I asked Jack. I had pretty much left my mind open to him since he had left me to find Georgia.

No, but it makes sense. I didn’t meet Addison until the summer she came to live with us. I had been told she lived with her father before that. I never questioned it.

Interesting. So, Addison probably didn’t have memories of the research facility where she was born. “Who’s her father?” I asked Jonas.

“None of us really have fathers, Lexi. You and Jack are two of the lucky ones who feel as if you were raised by a father, and in Jack’s case, a mother, too. Most of us simply have the one person our DNA originated from, and a surrogate.”

“I have parents,” Briana said.

Kyle looked over from his spot by the door. “My upbringing is definitely… complicated.”

Complicated
, I stifled a chuckle. That was too nice of a word to describe how each of us was raised. I was raised by an absentee father and by my grandmother, who was the mother of the woman who carried me for nine months then disappeared soon after I was born. It would be a disgrace to give her the title of Mom.

Jonas closed the laptop and stood. “I’ve got what we need. Let’s go.”

“Go where, exactly?” There was a heaviness in my chest. So far, our adventure into the building had been uneventful. Way too easy.

Jonas grabbed a piece of paper off of his printer and crossed the room to the door. He taped the paper onto the back of the door and pointed to a square at the bottom left corner. “We are here.” He stuck the end of a red ink pen in his mouth and pulled, leaving the lid between his teeth. After placing an “X” over his room, he traced a line down what appeared to be a hallway, made one left turn, and then placed an “A” over a square on the right. “This is where Addison is. That’s where Lexi and I are going.”

“What? They’re not coming?” I lifted my head toward Briana and Kyle.

“No. Too many people. Too dangerous.” He placed his hands on Briana’s shoulders and stared straight into her eyes, pausing a moment before he spoke. “If I give you the word, you and Kyle leave. Georgia and Jack are at this door.” He pointed. “You knock three times slowly. Georgia knows how to open it from the outside.”

“What if you need help?” she asked, her eyes searching his.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “What if we need help?”

“Then we’ll mindspeak to them.” Jonas replied.
I can control Briana. She doesn’t know it. And Kyle can hear me, he just can’t answer back for some reason. To any of us.

Please promise me that I’m around when you tell Briana that you can control her mind. If you thought
I
was upset…
I laughed.

“Let’s go,” he said, ignoring me.

Briana looked from Jonas to me and back. “Be careful.” She pulled me aside and lowered her voice. “I promised Jack I wouldn’t leave you.” She wrung her hands and glanced nervously toward Jonas.

I grabbed one of her hands and squeezed. “I’ll be fine. We’ll alert you guys if there’s trouble.” I didn’t believe we’d be fine. Not for a second.

Is Georgia ready?
I asked Jack.

She’s ready. We’re ready. Use your ring if you need to and run like hell if something goes wrong, okay? Promise me.

I didn’t.

~~~~~

Jonas and I crept down a hallway farther away from the door through which we entered, and farther away from Jack. All was quiet: nothing other than the light sound of the rubber soles of our shoes.

We just have to round the next corner,
Jonas said.
Addison is the second door on the right.

Lexi, something’s wrong.
Jack was in my head.
Three government cars just pulled up to the curb at the back of the building. Strange for the middle of the night, don’t you think?