Secret Legacy (24 page)

“Window,” Sarah repeated.

“And my personal contact key?”

“Home base.”

“I’m your last-resource link to the lab. Your home base in the dream. I’ll be your link back to this reality while you deal with whatever obstacles are thrown in your path. Keep your focus on Trinity. Let the rest go, so you can evolve in the matrix. Your brothers will pull you back if you need us.”

Sarah nodded, even though it was Richard more than any of the rest of them that she was trusting with her family’s safety.

“You’ll get us home.” Sarah turned her head to where her twin lay on the table beside her. They reached for each other’s hands.

Jeff’s grip closed around their hold. “You have my word as a Watcher.”

Sarah looked from Maddie’s nod to the promise swirling in Richard’s expression.

“And you have mine,” she said while the voices in
her mind howled, kicking her heart rate into a tantrum on the cardiac monitor Richard had her hooked to. It was terrifying, wanting to believe this badly. Wanting to feel an entire room of powerful, valiant minds believing in her.

Jeff moved to a table just beyond where Sarah and Maddie and Jarred were grouped at the center of the team.

Richard’s hand was warm on her shoulder.

“Trust me,”
his mind said to hers.
“Come back to me.”

“I will,”
she promised.
“I’ll see you in my dreams.”

The ocean felt almost too real this time.

And alarmingly empty.

The familiar pull of water washed over Sarah’s skin. Currents tugged. But that was it. There was nothing else to see.

“Maddie?” Sarah turned in the shallow water near the surface. She could feel her twin’s hand still holding hers in the lab, but there was no one beside her in the ocean. “Jarred?”

Her voice echoed through the sea’s hollow perfection. Shadows lurked nearby. She could sense them just out of sight. And there was a malevolence to the sea’s dimness, dangerous intent sliding across her body. The cold, wet feel of it wasn’t the charming, beguiling sensation normally waiting for her in the shallows.

Overlaying it all was an unnerving silence. Only when she stopped looking for Maddie did she hear a faint hint of Trinity’s call merging with a deeper sound, a roar—the ocean’s dawning awareness that she’d come back.

The first whiff of panic struck. Where were the colors she was supposed to control? The cries and voices she needed to follow? The water swelled with her anxiety.

“Relax,”
Richard’s mind said to hers.
“You’re just getting started.”

Their link was allowing him to circumvent the headset covering her ears back in the lab—the communication network that connected her to the rest of the team.

“There’s nothing here,” she said. No programming painting the nightmare she’d never initiated before. “How much time do we have before the center discovers what I’m doing?”

“Enough. You’ll have enough time. You’ll have everything you need. Focus on what’s there, not what’s missing. Build the matrix from your memories.”

Bright colors suddenly infused the water, a welcome dazzle of beauty. They burst into a magical swirl, infusing Sarah with their essence. The amethyst streaks were Maddie. The turquoise touches, Jarred. Intertwined, their unbreakable link was a reflection of everything they’d found in each other. Everything they were putting on the line to help Sarah.

Their bodies formed as near-solid images in the mist. Maddie’s emotions permeated the ocean dream, syncing with Sarah’s. Their connection fired Trinity’s screams to cruel life.

The little girl’s pain sucked Sarah down, rocketing her into the ocean’s depths. Maddie sank with her, leaving Jarred’s image at the surface, where his job was to bridge Sarah and Maddie’s psychic link, augmenting it and communicating their status back to the lab.

Sarah could feel her twin’s fear.

“I can’t stop,” Maddie said.

“Neither can I.” Sarah concentrated on the lure of Trinity’s call, growing louder the deeper they went.
She tried to visualize the plan. They were supposed to wait until Jeff arrived and organized the team’s descent. But returning the dream to the surface was impossible, no matter how hard she tried to go back.

“We knew plans would change once the dream began,”
Richard assured her.
“Leave your mind open to your team. They’ll track your energy. Focus on your connection with Trinity. See what you have to, to find her.”

“We’re falling too fast,” Maddie said. “Where are we going?”

“It’s okay. I just need . . .”

Sarah closed her eyes and listened. She relaxed into the descent, letting it take her closer to the truth. The ocean’s voice was there with Trinity’s now, mumbling something Sarah couldn’t understand, intensifying the nightmare’s hold. It was terrifying, but this was what she’d come for.

“I need to be deeper in the matrix to hear enough of Trinity to find her,” she said.

She needed to feel more of the fear that had fed the projection the last time.

“Stop,” Maddie insisted. “Jeff wanted us to wait—”

“The team can’t do anything until I know where to take them.” Sarah grabbed her sister’s hand, pulling Maddie along with her. “Where are the colors? Can you see them? They’re supposed to be here. They led me to the door before, but I can’t see them yet. We have to go deeper.”

“Five minutes,” Richard said through the team’s comm link. “Jeff and the rest of the team are going under now. They know you’re on the move. They’ll be no more than five minutes behind.”

Sarah kicked into the currents that were really shadows, dragging her twin through the sea’s darkening blue. They were swimming without really swimming. The way what should be a struggle often feels effortless and surreal within a dream. The deeper they went, the stronger Sarah’s panicked memories became—the same emotions that had been her downfall in the last dream.

“You’ll never make it,”
the ocean chanted.
“This is where you belong.”

“Help me
. . .” Trinity screamed.

“Who said that?” Maddie asked. “Those voices. Are they—”

“They’re the dream.” Sarah forced herself to remember that she belonged with her twin, not alone at the bottom of an empty sea. But her fear grew along with the memories of how close she’d come to dying and taking her sister with her last time. “The voices are what I heard coming for me as a little girl. When I was in the coma, too. Then in the nightmare.”

“They were telling you that you were alone?” Compassion filled their link. Maddie was reliving each memory with her. “You were screaming for help in the coma before Richard found you. You thought no one would ever hear, and that you deserved it. Sarah . . . I’m so sorry. I never knew. Mom and Dad and I, we never knew.”

Her twin’s understanding wrapped around Sarah, Maddie’s regret and her need to make the past right. Her love lit the bubbling water around them, warming them, shielding Sarah from the desperation of the voices dragging at them. They jerked to a stop, both of them breathing heavily. Sarah basked in the amethyst aura
surrounding them and her sister’s calming presence. The dream’s madness swirled just beyond the light’s protective embrace.

“Where are the other colors?” Maddie asked.

“The voices are all I’ve found so far. I heard them as soon as you arrived.”

“The ones that have been telling you to give up since you were a little girl? You can’t follow them, Sarah. Not without the colors Richard said you should trust. Not without the Watchers here to help.”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice.” Sarah searched the empty water surrounding them. “Now even the voices have stopped. I don’t understand. Why is nothing happening?”

“It’s not the same dream as before,”
Richard said with his mind.
“You’re different, and you’re initiating the matrix. Something’s holding the dream back. You have to dig the nightmare out of your Dream Weaver programming. You have to—”

“I have to lose control.” The dynamic she’d feared most was the answer to starting her search again.

“What?” Maddie asked.

“Like I was when I was a little girl. Like in the coma, when there was no connection to anything. Like in the last nightmare, before you came. I’m closest to Trinity and the ocean’s command when there’s no one else to anchor me.”

“When your emotions are free,”
Richard agreed.
“Even the destructive ones. Like they were when we sparred in the lab’s gym, and when I forced you to confront your bedroom in Lenox.”

Sarah’s stomach churned. She glanced at her sister. Maddie had nearly died the last time Sarah let the
dream’s madness too close. She closed her eyes and reached for the voices swirling beyond her twin’s aura.

“Sarah . . .” Maddie said. “What are you doing?”

“Welcome back,”
the ocean gushed in a tone that was a ghastly combination of the wolf’s and Trinity’s voices.

Sarah’s terror returned. She forced herself to feel it, to embrace the shadowy consciousness she could sense just beyond her grasp. Her mind dug for the madness within her programming until it was itching along her skin, up her spine, worming its way into her crumbling psyche.

“What are you doing?” Maddie demanded.

“I’m remembering. The ocean’s voice. The red that I saw when the dream sucked me under.”

Sarah opened her eyes to see clouds of crimson and black forming around them.

“Good girl,”
Richard’s mind said.

“How are you doing that?” Maddie asked.

“I was scared then. I’m scared now. The colors are going to take us back to Trinity.”

“Okay.” Maddie’s “okay” sounded as if she were staring down a rabid animal. She eyed the threatening haze churning in the water. “Good. But we need to wait here for Jeff and the team to catch up. They’ll know how to use what you’re doing safely.”

Maddie’s healing energy reached for Sarah. Her amethyst aura rolled toward the crimson and black haze, swallowing it and Sarah’s fear until they dissipated into the ocean’s gloom.

“No!” Sarah grappled for the terrifying emotions that had painted the path she needed.

“We need to wait until the team gets here,” her sister insisted.

Sarah shook her head. She shook off Maddie’s concern. She closed her eyes and swam several yards away, her mind reaching for the strength she needed from—

“From Metting?” Maddie’s image grabbed Sarah’s arm. Outside the dream, her hand clenched around Sarah’s wrist. “Richard’s mind is here with you? Is he telling you to do this? We have no backup yet, Sarah. You’re losing control. I can feel it.”

“I’m—” Sarah tried to pull free. Maddie wouldn’t let go. “I’m doing what I have to.”

“You’re exhausting yourself. Wait until we’re sure what we’re dealing with. Wait until the others are here too—”

“I . . .” Sarah yanked away. Grabbed her head.

“Help me!”
Trinity and the wolf screamed together as soon as she and Maddie were separated.

“The voices are together now,” Sarah said. What did that mean? “The wolf’s voice is too close to Trinity. The dream is telling me something. If I could just hear—”

“Stop.” Maddie frowned when Sarah swam farther away. “It’s not safe.”

But the voices were growing louder. The ocean’s shadows were feeding Sarah’s instability. The answers were reaching for her.

“I can’t do this and be safe,” she said. “And I don’t know how long I can keep the nightmare from overwhelming me again. I have to go while I still can, without anyone holding me back.”

“Go where? You’re not going anywhere without me.”

Maddie’s bright, healing aura was fading. The amethyst of her control weakened as the voices grew louder
in Sarah’s mind. Pockets of crimson-draped black reformed around them.

“See?” Sarah said. “They’re waiting for me to follow. I have to trust what my mind is telling me.”

“Is this your idea or Metting’s?”

“He knows what he’s doing. He knows me.”

“And I don’t? This is crazy, Sarah.”

“This is me. Everything you’re seeing. Everything you’re hearing. It’s all me, remember? It’s crazy. I’ve always been crazy. But I can’t retrace my steps to the door we need to find without trusting the unstable emotions driving the colors. The dream’s matrix is wired into them.”

“And you can’t fully connect with any of it”—Maddie stared across the distance Sarah had forced between them—“while I’m protecting you?”

“No.” Sarah felt her sister’s tears, like tiny knives slicing through her heart. “I love you, Maddie. But I don’t think I can.”

Crimson red rimmed the coal black shadows that rolled closer, creating a demented, blood-rimmed haze threatening to unleash a violent storm. A storm Sarah would let consume her if that’s what it took.

“Help her do this,”
Richard projected to Maddie, absorbing her into his and Sarah’s psychic link.
“Help her get this done so she can come back to us. I’ll keep you two connected. We’ll protect her and stabilize her dream projection together. But this will only work if you let her become what the dream needs her to be, to lead us to the truth.”