Secret Legacy (32 page)

Sarah stared down at the tiny body still shoving against her, trying with less and less conviction to push her away.

“You’re . . .” Sarah grabbed Trinity’s shoulders and shook her until the child stopped fighting. “You’re asleep. That’s how they control you, by keeping you asleep when they need your powers. Just like Richard first trained me in my coma. If you wake up, they can’t use you to attack the Brotherhood’s mission to invade the center.”

“Leave me alone,” the child begged. “It’s a trick. I don’t want to die. They said if I wake up without them, I’ll die. They’ll—”

“You’re not going to die, Trinity. The Watchers will come for you. They’ll protect you. But you have to wake up and stop whatever the center’s about to do. You have to tell me how to reach you.”

“You can’t make me.” A new bout of fury blasted them. “You’re all trying to make me do things I don’t want to, and I won’t. I won’t do it anymore. Leave me alone! I just want to be alone.”

Trinity shoved harder than before, knocking Sarah
off-balance. Off the bed. Sarah clung to her child as they sailed through the air, crashing onto unforgiving tile instead of the fluffy carpet of Sarah’s childhood bedroom. Her senses were scrambling, melting. Her ears rang from impact while she blocked the razor-sharp nails of the little girl who’d landed on top of her.

Trinity’s fear and desperation and exhaustion clawed at them, ripping at their skin. Colors consumed them, exploding through their minds until nothing was left but dazzling white. Blinding white. Searing light binding them together and filling the link they’d formed with every memory Trinity had pushed away. Each distant sensation and muffled voice and unavoidable demand that had been made on her vulnerable mind. All of them impersonal and remote and unattached, while a lonely child’s heart had begged for help.

“I’m here,” Sarah said to her daughter. “I’ll help you. I’m finally here, and I’ll never leave you again. I promise, Trinity. Wake up for me. You don’t have to keep sleeping or dreaming about anything you don’t want. Never again. I love you, honey. If you can’t believe anything else, believe that. Wake up, Trinity.”

The seconds that followed while Trinity’s struggles grew weaker and weaker stretched on forever until the child finally collapsed, lying limp in Sarah’s arms.

“Mommy?” a tiny voice asked, the light of Trinity’s nondreaming consciousness stirring to life within the vision.

“Explain yourself, Colonel,” Jacob said the instant Richard’s eyes opened.

Richard shook his head, unclogging the memory circuits he’d designed his suppression meds to deaden. Jacob, not the elder’s hologram, was standing across Richard’s detention cell, his floor-length white robe billowing around him.

“We’ve already tried that,” Richard said. “By now, you’ve obviously determined that Sarah and her sister and I might still be useful to the Brotherhood. What else do you need to know?”

“How long has Sarah Temple been capable of projecting beyond your chemical protocol?”

“Since the night Trinity’s nightmare first consumed her mind. Her legacy’s grown far beyond our control.”

“And you? Surveillance detected psychic activity emanating from this location, as well as from Madeline and Sarah Temple’s cells.”

“I’m part of who Sarah’s becoming. If you don’t trust her and her twin, you have no reason to trust me.”

“At the same time, we detected no target for the projection.”

“What?” Richard pushed himself up on his bunk, sitting with his head hanging, his eyes closed. Even the cell’s recessed lighting was too painful for his hangover to process. “How long . . . When did the bunker’s sensors detect Sarah’s projection with Trinity?”

“Then she has gone after the child? And your mind isn’t still linked with hers.”

“How long ago?”

“Half an hour.”

“But there was no answering surge at the center?”

“No.”

“You have a team in place to infiltrate the complex,” Richard reasoned. “But you haven’t yet tried to take the center down. Something has you spooked. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Can you feel Sarah now?” Jacob asked.

Richard had been trying to since his mind began digging itself out of unconsciousness.

“There’s nothing where our link should be,” he admitted to his elder. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the room’s chill. “But I trust her to—”

“We’ve just detected a psychic burst from the center. The energy readings are stronger than anything we’ve ever encountered, and they don’t match Ms. Temple’s psychic imprint or the imprint of any other consciousness we’ve tracked.”

“She’s found Trinity.” Richard smiled. “That’s my girl.”

“That’s our suspicion. The question is, why? Why would there be a flash of activity now, after thirty minutes of psychic silence?”

“It could be a trap, but the center’s already baited their hook. They already think they’re reeling us in.”

“Exactly why I’m contemplating pulling the infiltration team back from the complex. More unknowns are not what we need, when we’re targeting an adversary this volatile.”

“Something has changed. Something the center wasn’t expecting.”

“Such as?” Jacob’s gaze sharpened. His mind swept the thoughts and emotions Richard kept open as he analyzed the situation.

“Don’t call off the team.” Richard pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the way the room dipped and spun around them. “Send the team in. Now. But on a recovery mission, not an assault.”

“Recovering whom?”

“Trinity. If you can read her energy but not her mother’s, she’s sending us a signal. The center itself would have no reason to tip its hand and show us Trinity’s location. The child’s asking to be brought in, before her handlers—”

“You’re suggesting I order the extraction of a consciousness that’s strong enough to block the psychic projections of a woman whose unstable gifts have already grown beyond our control?”

“I’m suggesting you bring in the Temple Legacy, sir. And the details about center tactics she’ll deliver.”

“We’re already in position to shut the complex down. We have all the information we need.”

“Not about the details Trinity extracted from Lieutenant Coleridge about our legacies. Whether the center’s
research facility itself survives, the organization behind it and the government already have intel on our principals. Trinity knows what they know. She may be able to tell us who they’ll hit first. We need to know more about the government’s overall plan.”

“The strike team can access that intel from the complex.”

“Assuming their mission is successful. The center’s expecting an assault, not a covert infiltration. Take them off guard, secure information they’ll have no way of recovering, and we have an advantage it’ll be hard for them to recover from. We’ll have Trinity.”

“What about the programming they’ve embedded to control the child’s mind, the way they’ve continued to control her mother’s?” Jacob linked his hands together in his robe’s front placket.

“Sarah will help me remove the center’s latent footprints. Both of the twins are ready to do whatever it takes to reclaim Trinity and their legacy.”

“You truly can’t sense Sarah Temple?” Jacob’s mind began peeling away the layers of Richard’s consciousness until he reached Richard’s memories from Sarah’s idealized seashore.

“No.” Richard slapped his hand to the wall, bracing himself against the strain of accepting Jacob’s presence in his mind. “I can’t reach her now.”

“But you believe she’ll bring Trinity’s consciousness back to you and her twin.”

“Yes.”

“You believe,” Jacob said, continuing to read Richard’s truth, “the child’s been a pawn, and that the mother
will be able to negate the center’s programming. You believe they’ll both be assets to the Brotherhood.”

“Yes.” Sarah had already succeeded. The surge of psychic energy at the center was proof that she’d reached Trinity. Richard refused to consider any other explanation.

Jacob’s consciousness retreated.

Richard sagged but managed to stay on his feet.

“How much of your belief,” Jacob asked, “is your fear of losing your mate, and how much is your intuition as a Watcher?”

“Both, equally, sir.” Richard ignored the migraine pounding behind his eyes. He stayed on his feet by picturing the smile he knew he’d see on Sarah’s face once she was holding her child in her arms. “To be everything I can for the psychic realm, I need Sarah in my life. So does the Brotherhood. She and her daughter and her twin are integral to all our paths. To win the war we’re facing, we need legacies like the Temples fighting by our side, even if it means sitting out a few battles. We need them, sir, even more than they need us.”

Sarah’s mind woke with her child’s in the white-on-white lab from Trinity’s nightmare. Her daughter was curled in her arms, quietly crying, clinging, and more real than Sarah had ever dreamed possible.

It was still a projection. Trinity still lay within her center laboratory alone, Sarah in her cell at the bunker. But her mind and Sarah’s were linked now. Completely. Trinity finally trusted her.

“It’s going to be okay.” Within their projection, Sarah stroked Trinity’s silky hair. “I know you’re afraid. But you’re not alone.”

“They’re coming.” Trinity was shaking.

“The Watchers who are coming will help you. But you have to—”

“The doctors. They’ll know I’m awake. They’ll send me back.”

“Shh. . . .”

Sarah noticed for the first time the equipment around her daughter’s bed. The tapes and leads and tubes attached to her child, feeding monitors and readings. There was no one else in sight. Her gaze flew to the door. How long did they have before that changed?

“Trinity?” She sat up and pulled her daughter with her, praying she was helping her little girl become more conscious within her real lab. “Honey, I need you to focus on the door. Lock it, Trinity. Do whatever you have to so your doctors can’t get in. Then detach the monitors and sensors they’re tracking you with.”

“But—”

“Please, you have to trust me, so I can help you from where I am. You have to buy yourself time until your Watchers arrive.”

Where was the Watcher team?

Sarah reached for Richard’s mind but still couldn’t sense him. She looked down to find Trinity staring across the lab. The same red haze that had marred Sarah’s shoreline in the vision’s mural was oozing over the door, until it completely covered it. The tubes and wires attached to Trinity began to fall away, including the IV hooked to the shunt in her chest.

“Good girl,” Sarah pulled her daughter closer in their shared dream. She wiped Trinity’s tears away and gauged the alertness of her gaze. “Now let me talk to Richard.”

“No! He’ll—”

“He’ll help you. The Watchers are coming to help you. Let me prove it, honey. Let me show you his mind.”

“He’ll hate me.” Trinity buried her head against Sarah’s neck. “Everyone will hate me.”

The door rattled behind the barrier Trinity had painted. The little girl whimpered.

Sarah saw a brief flash of her daughter’s reality. Trinity lay on a bunk, alone in a room with walls of glass, her eyes almost completely closed as she pretended to sleep. The jumble of wires and tubes from the monitors
and other equipment were no longer attached to her. A team of scientists stood on the other side of the transparent walls, an elaborate observation suite beyond them. No one could reach the door or the floor-to-ceiling windows protecting Trinity—as if an invisible field were holding them back.

The men were furious. Arguing. Strategizing how to force their way through.

“They’ll hate me now, too,” Trinity cried in the vision, curling deeper into Sarah’s arms. “They said I’d die if I woke up without them.”

“The Watchers will get you out before the doctors can reach you. But you have to help them, honey. You have to trust them.”

“They’re not coming. Not for me.”

“They’re already here.” Sarah pushed her child away until they were looking into each other’s eyes, the vision feeling more real by the second. “I’m a Watcher, Trinity. And I came for you. I’m your guide out. You’re awake. You’ve trusted me this far. Now let us help you be free of this horrible place forever.”

The anger in Trinity’s mind was gone. There wasn’t a hint of the hate from Ruebens’s programming. There was only shock and confusion and the smallest flicker of hope staring back at Sarah from her child’s blue eyes.

“You came for me?” she asked.

“As soon as I knew about you. As soon as I woke from our last nightmare, I started making my way back to you, honey. And I’m never leaving, whether you let the other Watchers help you or not. If you stay, I’ll be here. Right here, with you. Whatever the center does next, they’ll do it to both of us.”

“You . . . you won’t make me go back to the nightmares?”

“No more nightmares,” she promised her child, “for either of us. No more living for nothing but other peoples’ dreams. The Watchers won’t let the center take either of us there again. Now let me contact them.”